So, we did it! New Best Tech Videos site version has been released today. Of course, it could have some issues, and we are really looking forward for your feedback on our support forums.

Let’s review main improvements we’ve made here:

• First of all, I want to mention our first step to socialization of the BTV - all our users could signup now and get their own lists of favorited, commented and voted videos and much more - they could have their own personal RSS feeds.
• Next cool thing we’ve prepared for you is user-generated content! You can find some great videos on the Net and share them with fellow BTV readers. At this moment our posting system works in pre-moderated mode to keep really high level of videos we post here, but later we want to delegate moderation to our most active members.
• As I mentioned before - we have our own video rating system. All our users could vote for videos they like and then we’ll let users to decide, what videos they would like to watch based on these votes.

So, these are just small part (but most valuable) of our ideas. If you want to have a look at all of them, just sign up and start using the service - you gonna like it, we’re sure!

Thanks to all our readers, without your help this release would not happen!

We’ve decided to start a support forums to let our users to report any problems with the main site. So, welcome to the Best Tech Videos Support Forums!

We’ve moved our blog to separate domain and preparing to deploy new release of the BestTechVideos to let you enjoy the best video content on the Net.

It’s been a long time since last news about BTV development, but it really worth it! Now I want to spoil some of coming changes with this site…First of all, we’ve started development of completely new BTV engine with completely different ideology than this site has now. Thanks to great tools (Ruby on Rails) and my friend Dmytro Shteflyuk we’ve already implemented most of new functionality planned for initial release and going to roll out new release really soon (looks like it’ll take 2-3 weeks because of high load of project developers). So, what you’ll get in new release?

First of all, we’re going to ’socialize’ this site - all of our reader would be able to register here and get highly customizable interface along with really cool feature - customizable RSS feeds. You’ll be able to select just what you like to read here on site and in your RSS readers and engine would show you all newly posted videos in categories/tags/etc you’ve asked it to show. Along with customization, you’ll be able to save videos you loved on this site to your favorite videos list and watch them again when you want.

Next ’social’ feature would be user groups - it will be neat idea of grouping users with similar interests and sharing great videos between them. Every user group will get its own start page and RSS feed, so you’be able to add this feed to your personal page and watch videos your fellow users like to watch.

Of course, we’re going to add voting for videos to let you, our users, to vote for videos you like and share your impressions with other site users. Later we’ll be able to suggest you new cool videos to watch based on your favorites and positive votes.

And last but not least for the first release would be maybe of the most valuable features of new BTV - user-generated content. Service users and video author would be able to post here videos they saw somewhere and share their experience with their friends and other people who like to watch Best Tech Videos. To keep high level of quality of our service, we’ve invented set of rules and user levels that will guarantee only the best videos will be posted here.

If you’re an author of one screencast or even big screencasts site owner, you’ll be able to register here and we’ll give you set of really cool tools for videos sharing to post your new videos here. Of course we’ll help you to import your old videos here to help you to drive more traffic to your site and to share your knowledge with constantly growing userbase of this service.

So, as you can see, we’ve prepared lots of new features for first release of new completely redone BTV. So, stay tuned and we promise - you’ll be impressed with new service! If you want to participate in closed beta testing phase of new service development (both as author or as generic user), drop me a line on beta at bestechvideos dot com or leave comment here.

Few weeks ago I bought new laptop and it was a Mac! It is first Mac in my life and I’m really happy to get such interesting opportunity to try it personally. Because I newbie in Apple’s preducts and MacOS X, I decided to learn more with screencasts and started looking for information sources about this topic. So, here is what I found (I’m going to update this post later if I’ll find something new):

• ScreenCastsOnline - huge collection of hi-quality screencasts for the Mac users. Published each week, the free video tutorials (screencasts) cover many aspects of using your Mac including OSX tutorials, switcher tutorials, Mac applications, Web 2.0 and much much more!
• Murphy Mac (and Windows too) - great set of really interesting and useful screencasts for different levels of users of MacOS and Windows: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced.

Hello, All! Today we’ve reached great milestone - there are currently 400 posts on BTV now!

Another awesome news is that we’ve got new design and will deploy it really soon. With new design we’ll change layout of pages on servers and ideology of service… We want to become something like small search engine (or, if you wish, directory with search engine) for technical videos around here. So, stay tuned and there will be lots of interesting changes!

Matthew East has announced the creation of a Ubuntu Screencast Team.

Screencasts are videos which show users how to achieve a specific task in Ubuntu. They can be seriously useful when walking users through a new task and are intended to complement Ubuntu’s other support resources, such as documentation, forums, mailing lists and irc.

The project is led by Alan Pope, who has already done some great work on screencasts. But now the project is expanding, and you can help out! Simply head over to the team wiki page and soak up the material there. You’ll then be ready to contribute to the team by requesting or even making new videos!

Contact the Documentation Team with any questions or simply to get involved!

Our site has been added to one of eContent / eLearning Google Search Engines created by Richard Hoeg to index lots of useful engineering knowledge sources by Google Co-Op.
For those of you who is not familiar with this new Google service, Richard created short tutorial screencast. Along with this screencast you could find some other screencasts on Richard’s site:

• CamStudio Tutorial
  (create your own web demos using CamStudio, a free software tool)
• Drivetime Podcasts
  (listen to podcasts in your car w/o a MP3 player or iPod)
• Google Alert
  (create custom RSS feeds using Google Alert)
• Google Blog Search
  (create custom RSS feeds using Google Blog Search)
• Google Book Search
  (create custom eBooks using Google Book Search)
• Great News RSS Feed Reader
  (learn how to install, configure and use the RSS feed reader, Great News)
• Honeywell Shanghai Learning Center
  (take a trip to the grand opening of Honeywell’s Shanghai Learning Center)

Thanks Richard for such useful resource and for adding BTV to your search index.

This site is for everyone who is new to Ubuntu. Here you will find short video clips that highlight Ubuntu’s features and demonstrate how to complete common tasks using Ubuntu.

Thinking about trying Ubuntu? Take a video tour of Ubuntu.

Recently installed Ubuntu? Explore your new operating system.

Can’t find a video clip? Submit a Clip Wanted posting.

Already familiar with Ubuntu? Contribute your own video clips.

New year is already here and we have new features! First great feature we’ve implemented for our users is RSS Feeds for Categories and Tags.

If you want to use these features, simply go to category or tag page and:

1. Use your browser’s feeds auto-discovery feature (RSS icon in address bar in Firefox and IE7)
2. Or simply scroll page down and you’ll find RSS feeds links in Syndication section on the Right sidebar.

Stay tuned - we’re going to roll our many new features soon.