Animoto - changing the way we look at slideshows

Animoto was just launched today and provides a funky alternative way to view and listen to slideshows. Created by film and music producers, you upload your photos or link through from your Facebook, Flickr or whatever account your photos are stored, you choose some music you like from their huge range of styles and artists and you get an impressive slideshow, different from anything anyone else has produced. This one shows of some of the places I work, just to show what can be done with some shots and a dash of hip hop.

Comments

[chris]

This is too seductive! Just as well I'll have other distractions this weekend! ;-)

[stewart]

This is GENIUS!!!!

[Tracy Rosen]

Love it. I've been making slide shows for a couple of years now using OneTrueMedia.com.

Though Animoto seems to have much more of an edge...I'm going to go check it out!

thanks,
Tracy

This is really cool! I am going to check it out right now. Thanks for sharing such a great tool!

-Dianne

[Chris]

This looks like soooooo much fun...

[Dean Shareski]

I made one yesterday as well....
http://animoto.com/play/3ab97c695d6d07d00d1f083002cf9a5a

[Lynne]

Looks great, thought you might be amused to hear my son just asked me where the music was coming from. I replied it was coming from a blog. He then told me off and said I shouldn't be reading someone else's blog its private like a diary!

[Paul Harrington]

Another cool tool for us thank you Mr McIntosh :) I will be away now to play :) Any news on the Mini McIntosh yet ??

[Charles Faust]

Looks really cool. Hopefully it was just my connection because it loaded a little slow.

[Alan Dawson]

A very nice piece of software. How do you see it being used in schools? What age group would you have in mind? Clearly it makes it's money from the advertising on the right. I wondered if the choice of advertising plus the obvious need to have an email and then giving of a lot of personal information (just need my house number from public records and they have me)makes a problem in e-safety terms. I would love to use it in primary schools but I think because of the issues above, schools are not likely to take it up. Your thoughts?

Alan

[Sandi]

I am positively thrilled with this post... I have been watching everyone's videos. Then I made a short of my own... and two remixes of it.

My problem is that I was able to easily post it to my pageflakes and igoogle pages... but cannot get it to show on my edublogs site. Please help!

[James Farmer]

Works just fine on edublogs guys:

http://test.edublogs.org/2007/08/25/animoto/

What you need to do is follow the instructions at the end of this page:

http://edublogs.org/embedding-slideshows-and-other-flash-stuff-in-your-blog/

And you'll end up with something liek this:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/46928cc51133af17/46d0b8c59c836d86/46928cc51133af17/794306a9/autostart/false/file/3ab97c695d6d07d00d1f083002cf9a5a" width="400" height="300" wmode="transparent" /]

Cheers, James

[Dorothy]

Hi James
Sorry but that wasn't simple enough :-(

I looked at the instructions. I tried using the code from Animoto, using the F button in the editor and then selecting the information from the embed code as prompted, and ended up with the kml bit you put here. But nothing then showed in my edublog.

There's obviously another thing I need to do, which you probably think is obvious, but unfortunately not to me!Do I need to put the rest of the embed code in somewhere?

[James Farmer]

Hi Dorothy,

Can you email us with the URL of the post you're trying to embed it into and the full embed code and we'll get you fixed up: support /at/ edublogs (dot) org

Cheers, James

[angelamaiers]

This is an incredible tool. Thank you for sharing! I am going to check out the software
and get started!

[Ewan McIntosh]

@Alan Dawson: I think your points on registration go for almost any site that requires an email. In East Lothian we provide guidance on using email for registration and using first names only or pseudonyms agreed with the teacher. As long as the 'common sense' is spelled out at the beginning of a session, and reminded throughout the year, these kind of concerns become secondary to the education point coming out of it.

What is the education point? It's another presentation tool that avoids kids simply copying and pasting someone else's work into their own PowerPoint. The simplicity of the tool also means that, if you're short of time (happens in schools sometimes ;-) you can still get an incredibly worthwhile result to present your summary. Show that to a class and provide a one minute summary speech and I think you've got quite an exciting, fun way to recap on learning.

[janien]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ewan McIntosh! I / we (from learning blog The Sausage Machine) are in your fan club! Please, have a look at our 1st Animoto - inspired by your blog article ...: The Sausage Machine's Bakery at Work (Part 1). Of course, we don't have the strong competences, nor the high quality that you have ... therefore you are one of our eminent 'extreme teachers'-on-the-blog, and we want to be your humble but enthousiastic learners.

[janien]

Please, I forgot the link to TSM's 1st Animoto: welcome to http://janien.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/the-sausage-machines-bakery-at-work-and-other-fotd-favourites-of-the-day!

[Craig]

Great, but for my money Microsoft's Phtotostory 3 is the best thing for producing stuff with stills. Free and not too difficult to use.

[Craig]

Great, but for my money Microsoft's Phtotostory 3 is the best thing for producing stuff with stills. Free and not too difficult to use.

[Rebecca Brooks]

Hey Ewan,

I am Rebecca Brooks, from animoto.

I think you were one of the very first people to blog about us... thanks! We actually just launched an "Animoto for Education" program. Be sure to check it out!

http://biz.animoto.com/education/overview.html

Take care,
Rebecca

[Kevin Jarrett]

Ewan ... and Rebecca ... thanks!!!

This is awesome!!!

I've been rocking Animoto since the start of the school year, though we've had some network issues on our end, I think they are resolved now, and since we now have all-access passes for the kids, we can really let the creativity fly!

Thanks!!!

Kevin Jarrett