Recently in Community Category

In the last week we’re added a neat new calendar feature that means you can now book one-to-one appointments with the vzaar team.

The team here are more than happy to work with you to make video a success for your business so if you have certain questions about:

• The vzaar platform
• Our features
• Billing
• General tips on video best practice

Or indeed any other question then do book a slot and we’ll call you! We are available Monday to Friday and you can book as many slots as often as you’d like.

You can book an appointment from today here

What is TechHub?

TechHub is a new and exciting project to create a physical space for tech startups in London which reaches out and embraces entrepreneurs across the UK, and the USA. It aims to be affordable, accessible, but at the same time create the right atmosphere and bring together the right people - the people who really do want to “change the world”.

When Does It Launch?

Soon they say, and so to give the project our support vzaar joined in with the current “One Minute Why-I-Want-TechHub competition”. Watch our entry below.

Oh by the way!

Given that this is a video competition and…well…we like video, we are happy to extend our service to any business out there that is looking for a easy to use, professional video solution for their website. Drop us a line and we’ll give you a free trial of the service. Happy to chat.

We love Vimeo. We really do. They’re inspirational to us. We have however noticed a recent increase in ex-vimeo users switching to vzaar & I felt a post on the difference between the two services was just.

For those of you that have not heard of Vimeo, it’s is a community of creative people who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. They provide awesome tools and their video quality is exceptional. We are big fans of their work, and think that they do a really good job. Mauricio, our design dude, really rates their user workflow and believes it sets the standard for usability across all service websites. If you are a film maker or a creative individual making creative videos/films, this is a perfect site for you.

If, however, you are a business and want to use video to sell or promote a product or service then this is not the service for you as they don’t allow this sort of content. Here is a link to their terms of use.

vzaar, on the other hand, is all about business. We want you to use our service to shout and scream about your products and services. If you are a creative, you can use vzaar too but vimeo may have more features for your creative needs. Similarly, our features are built with business in mind. A good example of this is the Brand text option that allows you to add a tag line and like to your video player.

To compliment this post we have created a special page that welcomes any Vimeo users who fall into the “commercial video” category.

All the best,

video guy

PS….. Big thank you to the girls of TNR for allowing us to use their awesome video promoting the launch of Speedo’s FASTSKIN LAZER RACER for the above mentioned “special page”.

Next Friday June 4th, Video Guy and myself will be joining a number of other businesses at the first Start To Sell Online seminar in Reading, Berkshire. The event is aimed at introducing traditional businesses to the world of selling online or for those who are already online but want to expand their operations.

vzaar are down on the agenda to talk about rich media and in particular how video can hep you sell online. Best to stick to what we know eh?!

What I really like is that after a 10 minutes Dragons Den style pitch, we get to meet each of the local businesses attending in what has been billed as a speed dating meets round table discussions. Should be interesting.

Other speakers include eBay, Royal Mail and Lloyds Banking Group and the whole event has been put together by the good man Chris Dawson of Tamebay fame and his cohort John Pemberton of Give Me Designer Clothes.

If you fancy coming along or would like to know more you can see details here

Ever wondered what dimension we encode our videos at or just how on earth do I add my video to my eBay listings via Turbo Lister? Well ponder no more as I’m pleased to say that we have spruced up the vzaar Help pages and added two new sections on Encoding and Embedding Guides.

The guides might prove particularly useful if you are new to both vzaar and the concept of adding video to your eBay listings or blog page. We have guides that cover the following tools and services:

eBay Tools - eBay's Sell Your Item Form - eBay’s Turbo Lister - eBay’s Blackthorne - eBay’s File Exchange - Auctiva - ChannelAdvisor - Seller Source Book - Spoonfeeder

Blogging Tools - Blogger.com - MoveableType.org - Typepad.com - Wordpress.org

All our help pages can be viewed in our Help Section

Earlier this month Lawrence Matthews, a vzaar user, contacted me with a problem. He could not add his vzaar videos he uploaded to his blog. He uses WordPress.com and wanted to simply add the video embed code we provide into his blog. At the time this was not possible or at least it was not working in this manner. So we then recreated the problem at vzaar HQ, and indeed the blog did not accept the vzaar video embed code. Given the size of the WordPress.com user base we wanted to fix this problem. I reached out and got in touch with the good people of WordPress.com and explained our plight. It took a few weeks, but today I have been enlightened that there is a way to add vzaar video to your WordPress.com blog. Hurrrah!! I tried it out this morning, first thing, and I was very impressed.

WordPress.com have teamed up with Vodpod to create a smart blogging video button that you can drag on to your tool bar. Here is how it works.

1. When you want to add video to your WordPress blog simply click on the “post To Wordpress” widget in your toolbar and it will open up a pop up window offering you a set of fields with details on your blog.
2. If you do this on the vzaar page of your chosen video Vodpod will automatically insert the video from your chosen vzaar page into the Post Video To Your Blog box. If not then…
3. Simply insert the video code into the top left field marked, Video Preview.

Good work WordPress, we are impressed. I invite you to test it out and please share your experience.

The eBay community have always been a very giving set of people. During my time at the company I was constantly impressed at the lengths strangers would go to help one another with advice, pointers or just encouragement. Sadly ever since eBay UK put a halt to the eBay University programme there has been a pronounced gap in the social calendar for eBay sellers to actually meet face to face. Whilst events like ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst offer certain sellers the chance to meet, socialise and share in experiences, the ball now appears to be firmly in the court of sellers themselves.

Thankfully various social networking tools now make the idea of organising and rounding up a few sellers a little less onerous that it used to be. There are Facebook Groups, Twitter Feeds and various online forums around which people can meet on and offline. Adding to that list is the new London eBay Seller Meetup. Loosely based around a monthly gathering, the MeetUp website allows any person to set up there own social event.

Last month vzaar was invited to come along and meet some of the eBay sellers in attendance at one of the newly set up eBay meets in London. Never one to turn down a beer, I met with ex eBay staffer and MeetUp organiser, Nathan O’Hanlon, who has done his best to create an evening that is both relaxed and welcoming.

Held on the third Thursday of every month the eBay London Meet Up gather upstairs at the Walkabout pub in Putney and its well worth dropping in if you fancy networking with fellow users of the auction platform. Here’s Nathan with a personal invite!

Although its in its early days Nathan has some lofty aims and I can see how quickly such an event could quite easily grow into a more powerful and educational voice. As with any of these meets you tend to get back what you put in so why not pop along? The next meeting for the London group is on Thursday 19th February and to sign up you can click here

Given that pretty much everyone knows someone who trades on eBay or has an ecommerce site we wanted to let you know of a competition we are running this month on vzaar.

To be entered into a draw for a Nikon Coolpix 2500 digital camera, we simply ask that you recommend to us a friend, business or eBay seller that you think would be interested in hearing from vzaar. To learn more you can watch the video below from me (think I was having a bad hair day!) or simply click on the link below which will take you to a form where you can recommend up to 5 friends or associates.

Recommendation Form

The competition will stay open for a month and we will contact the winner by email on February 16th.

Good Luck!

Following on from our positive reception at eBay Live we were invited to join Dan Trunk of Auction-Tutor on his weekly podcast. Never one to turn down a chance to address the eBay masses, our man Dan Wilson put his hand up the highest and got the plumb role of joining the transatlantic interview at 11pm UK time! The topic of discussion for the Two Dannies was eBay and Video in your Listings which you can listen to by clicking on the button below.

For a small start-up opportunities to market your service are always gratefully received so a big thank you to Dan. We're really pleased that we got the chance to share the vzaar story with a host of eBay listeners and to make new friends in the eBay-sphere but sometimes, just sometimes, someone can say it better than you ever could so we leave it to Dan Trunk to summarise us...

...if you can't get vzaar to work in five minutes you need a check up from the neck up."

Since vzaar started we've been creating contacts and building bridges with various people across the business industry with the aid of our trusty moo business cards. When handed over, they never fail to illicit a response like "oh they're neat," or "what a funky card!". We like that.

Our business cards (not actual size!)

And in actual size (with no obvious thing to scale next to)

In the US at eBay Live they went down a storm and so pockets stuffed with cards Adrian and I tagged along to the Moo.com annual street party last week (except it wasn't in a street) to say hello to a few folks. Free drinks and free food (check out the feeding frenzy) helped to bring lots of like minded fans together in the name of the world's oldest industry, printing, but to get a feel for the night watch our brief video here:

So eBay Live! is just around the corner (in case we haven't mentioned it much already...)

As many of us might be a long way from home and in much need of refreshment after the long and busy days in Chicago, vzaar has teamed up with Channel Advisor, Frooition and Tamebay to host some drinks on the Friday night.

We'll be at the Elephant and Castle Pub on Adams street and if you should find yourself thirsty in Chicago, please do pop by. We'll be there from 7.30pm and if you come and visit us at our stand at eBay live we might give you a little Moo card that will get you a free drink or two!

We hope you’ll be able to join us and we look forward to seeing you then!

I evolve but I don't...er...revolve? [Alan Partridge]

Here at vzaar HQ we couldn't agree more with the man. It's all about refining your product to suit the needs of your customers and so having developed an approved service that supports eBay sellers we are keen to improve on what we have built to date. Call it our evolutionary plan.

To that end we've created a very short and ever so simple online survey that we'd like your views on. It is a short and snappy little survey so if you have 30 seconds spare and a coffee to hand then we'd love to hear what you think of the service to date.

You can participate in the survey here.

Many thanks