On June 3, at Videoday, we launched the redesign of www.23video.com and we have been really happy about how it turned out. However, that is not the only website we launched.

Since we introduced 23 Video a year ago, we have helped launch more than 130 sites and that number keeps growing. We believe that over 90% off all video sites launched in Denmark in that period are running 23 Video, and we want to show them off to the world.

Having a showcase with 130 sites on our own website would be a bit excessive, so we gathered ’round the good old whiteboard and tried to figure out how we could approach this in the best way.

We came to the conclusion that we are not the only video platform provider out there, and what matters immediately is not whether organizations use a free or paid service to reinvent their communications strategy visually. What matters is that in most situations, those on the verge of getting started with video have no idea where to get started and how to approach the task.

This is where Act Visually comes into play.

We wanted to have a place where we could show the world how we help organizations act visually, but also make it a community-driven collection of cases that share a common trait of being visually oriented.

The site already has a number of cases that we have put in to get it off the ground—both some of those running on our platform, but more importantly, also a range of sites that we think are inspiring.

If you are interested in how you can get started, you should go to www.actvisually.com and have a look. If you already have a case you want to show to the world, you can easily add it by creating an account and filling out the submission form. It should show up on the site right away.

You probably didn’t notice this, but in the mad rush to get VideoDay up and running last Thursday we also managed to relaunch the 23 Video product site and our company web site with a new design and a some nice new information.
First, the 23video.com has been upgraded with much more information about the platform’s features, about our many wonderful partners and some of the best examples on how organizations are using 23 Video (if you’re not on the list, go to our new inspiration site, Act Visually, and tell us what you’re up to…).

We’ve also revamped the support section of the site. It now includes video guides to the most important administrative tasks on 23 Video along with succinct instructions on how to prepare, upload, track and organize your content.

For the developers, designers and creatively inclined people out there, we’ve set up 23 Developer. Here you’ll learn how to style, mash up and extend 23 Video sites. We’ve added introductions, detailed guides, examples, sample code and detailed API documentation on the site — and a forum where you can ask the community for guidance when our documentation falls short.

The future of video on the internet changed yesterday when Google launched The WebM Project and open sourced the VP8 codec. Effectively this puts us on a trajectory where broad support for browser-native video (usually called HTML5 video, which is a terrible term) will be a reality in about 6-9 months. That is huge.

For the geeks in the audience, Robert Nyman has a nice recap of the current state of things and Jason Garrett-Glaser goes into exhaustive detail with the codec.

Can I upload WebM and VP8 to 23 Video?

Yes, we have already added support for WebM and VP8. So you can upload the new format to your 23 Video site and it’ll work perfectly.

Will you switch all your content to WebM?

No, but we’re committed to bringing video to the web, and we’re committed to HTML5 video (see, terrible term). Today, this is achieved with H.264 and Flash combined with HTML5 where Flash isn’t available (for example, on the iPhone and iPad).

As the web and the world of web video evolves, 23 Video will too — so today we’re committing to extend support for WebM and browser-native playback.

(This project internally, by the way, is called Eingebaut and we’ll be doing a Request For Comments-type session in June for developers to ensure its technical foundation. Also, I’ll probably be showing off the prototype at VideoDay, which is shaping up nicely.)

Two simple take-aways

First, 23 Video now supports WebM and VP8: You can upload .webm files and have them played and distributed with 23 Video. Second, we’re committing to support video playback in both H.264 and VP8 very soon through the mysterious Eingebaut project.

Businesses and organizations are embracing online video like never before, but untill now there hasn’t been a place for people to come together and share ideas and learn from each other. So in 23 we’ve decided its time to gather all the people in Denmark, who are working with or have an interest in online video to a day filled with inspiring cases and conversations.

Videoday is the first event of its kind in Denmark, and we’re really looking forward to have people come and share their experinces within such different user cases as Campaigns, Events, Product Service, E-commerce, Communites, Media, Video Section, Brand Channels and Intranet. On top of that the day will include workshops for video production, production concepts, UI design, site design, how to develop program format and guidelines to what kind of videoa that actually works online.

Videoday will take place on june the 3rd 2010 and is made in collaboration with FDIM, Kommunikationsforum and FDIH.

We’re just back from a nice week in Berlin where we visited the re:publica conference and met with nice people. We shot a bit a video (with berliner backgrounds) showcasing some of the geeky stuff we’re working on for 23 Video. Here I am talking about some of the challenges of purely browser-based video playback (and of course, how we’ll solve that in an awesome and timely fashion):

Mark said it on Friday: We absolutely adore HTML5, and the prospect of delivering great-quality, speedy video directly in your browser without using Flash has us thinking unpure thoughts here at 23. (There are plenty of reasons why we’re not quite there yet. I won’t dive into the details, but if you want me to drag you in to that vortex, just ask…)

We’ve actually used HTML <video> for a while in the mobile version of 23 Video, but today we’re beginning to test wider adoption of the possibilities. To do this testing, we’ve enabled HTML5 video on a few sites including Reboot and Madbio. In practice this means that you will be able to play video in most modern browsers and mobile devices even if there’s no Flash installed — this includes Safari, Google Chrome and the iPad.

We’ll be beta testing these new features for a few weeks before rolling it out to all customers — but if you want iPad and HTML5 video support now, drop us a mail or ping us on Twitter.

You can already make your 23 Video site run on iPhone, Android and a whole bunch of other mobile phones that support H.264 encoded video, but we’ve just got our hands on a rather promising device…

We present to you: Obligatory Blurry Pic Of Beta Service Running On Cool Hardware:

We don’t have a timeframe on when this will be wider available, but watch this space, and you’ll be the first to know.

Congratulations to Normann-Copenhagen who was awarded for their use of social media last night at the Danish e-business award. We are of course very proud of the fact that the danish design company is using 23 Video as part of their online presence.

But 23 Video is only one of many platforms where you’ll be able to meet Normann-Copenhagen. I had a short chat with online sales & brand manager Michael Rying about why they have embraced social media.

“A lot of companies are talking about getting on facebook, using twitter or getting a videosite. What sets us apart is the fact the we’re doing something about it instead of talking. We’re not waiting for a great master plan or social media strategy. Our approach is to try things out and learn from the experience. We had no idea what it would lead to when we started to blog, got a twitter account and a facebook page. So if we have a strategy it’s the fact that we allow ourselves to fail and learn from our failures. That wont give you a perfect result to begin with, but you’ll end up with a practice and most importantly you’ll actually get something done,” he says.

Behind the “just do it” attitude there’s also a great belief in the fact that social media will bring the company closer to both customers and retailers. That motive has recently led to a videosite where people can get a glimpse of the work in the workshop and meet the designers behind their great products.

“Video is really close to my heart. No matter how good you are with words or how great your photographer is, you simply can’t communicate how a great craftsman is going about is daily business in his workshop in the southern part of Sealand. But with video you can capture the experience and pass it on to your customers. We also use it to communicate to our retailers in Tokyo, Sydney, Italien, Finland. US and the rest of the 80 countries we’re exporting to. And we have videos running in a loop from a couple of mac’s when we’re exhibiting. So to us video has become essential.”

In less than two weeks more than 200 bands have entered the Royal Beer rock competition by uploading videos and music on RoyalBeer.tv. The campaign is crafted and designed by online agency Stupid Studio and features are beautifully integrated 23 Video solution. The agency were given free hands as to which platform to use as long as the final site could support a competition centered around Kashmir and work as a future brand channel for brewery.

“So we started looking for a video solution that we could integrate on our own terms to avoid being forced into a youtube environment. We needed complete freedom and control in order to integrate videos with related content, so when we encountered 23 Video, we were like, this is it” says project manager Matthias Flugge Hansen.

WordPress Integration

The greatest challenge for Stupid Studio was to make a seamless sign-up flow for the participating bands. Allowing them to upload both music, video and images and being able to control it all in a wordpress setup afterwards. Thus this project is also one of the first to take advantage of the fact that you can use 23 Video to handle audio.

“We have created a wordpress plugin, to make the wordpress integration as smooth as possible, and I must say that we’re pretty happy with the way it turned out. The users of the site can now login to wordpress and control their videos and sound files from there. Apart from that we’ve also worked on customizing the design, we’ve added color coding to the channels and worked on how to trigger related videos, when they get embedded,” says Matthias Flugge Hansen.

During the proces the development team at Stupid Studio have been in close contact with their 100 % human contact from 23. 100% Human is our service program which gives you your personal contact person. We don’t usually talk about it since it’s a regular part of our daily work, but I can’t help to finish this post with the following quote from Matthias Flugge Hansen.

“Its been great working with 23 on this project. The support level is awesome, so the 100 % human concept makes 100 % sense to us.”

We’re very happy to let you all know that our two partners, Plant and Eyeworks, has teamed up to create 3 inspirational seminars on how to get an online video project to take off.

The two agencies has several years of experience with online video projects and will share their experiences from a joint project they did for Novozymes. Novozymes will also be present to let you in on their thoughts on adding online video to their communcation.

Co-founder of 23, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, will also be present at the event to a bit of 23 spice.

The seminars will take place on, April 8th, April 22nd and May 12th. The Location is Eyeworks Denmark, Sølvgade 32, 1307 Copenhagen and event will unfold from 2 pm to 4 pm.

It’s free to sign up. Just send an email to Anne Stein – anne.h.stein [a] eyeworks.tv or call her at +45 3344 7400.