Will This Online Video Company Survive?

Finding a market niche in the online world is tough going but Howcast seems to be surviving.  Forming alliances with the big boys such as Yahoo!, AOL, Hulu and Microsoft's MSN has certainly helped.

Howcast streams over 25 million videos a month and was founded by Jason Liebman (pictured) a former Googler.

Approaching two million downloads across iPhone, iPad, Android, and BlackBerry phones, Howcast claims to be "the #1 mobile app for instructional content - wherever you are".

The are some offbeat "how to" topics waiting to be discovered and shared. These include:

• How To Survive a Bear Attack
• How To Pick a Karaoke Song If You Can’t Sing
• How To Stop Blushing ( presumably after the bear attack?) and
• How to Walk in High Heels
  

How To Survive a Bear Attack on Howcast

Its "How to Kiss With Passion" has so far proved its most popular, with 20 million views on YouTube. 

300 videos a month are being produced by the company but they are aiming for 10,000 a month.  That's a lot of instructional video to choose from.

My favourite title to date is "How to Stop Eating Crap to Stop Feeling Like Crap", which I would have thought was self explanatory

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Now The Technically Challenged Can Build Apps

Want to build Apps but not sure how to do it? 

Here is an opportunity for the "technically challenged", that is those of us who are not developers, to build apps with ease.

Google has just announced the release of App Inventor for Android.  The burning question though is whether this Google Labs Project will remain in the lab or realise its potential  and revolutionise the web?

As it has access to a GPS-location sensor, you can build apps that know where you are. It's drag & drop making the app creation process very simple. These are a couple of the pluses, as is the ability to use this tool for educational purposes. 

The downside is that the market for Android Apps is now likely to be swamped by inane apps which will make it difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

To begin one needs to sign an online form to register interest.

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Better Than A Flushing Toilet?

Image via Wikipedia

According to a survey just released by Tesco mobile most Brits rate the iPhone as a more important invention the flushing toilet and just behind the discovery of penicillin.

Even more surprising is the revelation that they rank it ahead of the car and the camera.

It is pleasing to note that the 4,000 respondents did rank the invention of the internet higher, at number four.

Without the internet the iPhone would be as useful as a food processor before the invention of electricity.

I will be upfront and reveal that I do not own an iPhone; which is an almost sacrilegious confession in gadget - happy Singapore.  This excludes me from lunch time discussions on the most exciting App. of the day. Not that I find this overly worrying as to be truthful only a few of these are used on a regular basis.

3G Phones (and now 4G) are tangible evidence of the convergence of technology.  The iPhone is one of Apple's most profitable inventions with more than 42 million units sold in the first launch in 1997.

There have been times when I have felt like throwing my mobile into a flushing toilet, especially when the faulty battery cover prompts an automatic reboot.

The survey also reveals that spectacles rank in the top twenty of all time inventions.  This too is hardly surprising as staring at a small hand held screen all day will guarantee the need for this body adornment.  My prediction is that the increased use of one will have a similar ranking impact on the other.


Here then is the full list of the Top 20 Greatest Inventions:

1. Wheel
2. Aeroplane
3. Light bulb
4. Internet
5. PCs
6. Telephone
7. Penicillin
8. iPhone
9. Flushing toilet
10. Combustion engine
11. Contraceptive pill
12. Washing machine
13. Central heating
14. Fridge
15. Pain killers
16. Steam engine
17. Freezer
18. Camera
19. Cars
20. Spectacles

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