Huzzaz

This week’s awesome list is pretty epic. I mean, when I can sit down and watch 100 of the best Indie Sundance Short Films in one place, that makes me pretty happy. I only have one choice, and that is to call Netflix and put my subscription on hold; it might be a while before I return.

Gary (LearnBlog.org) - 100+ Indie Sundance Short Films.

Chloe Brooke - DIY, Fashion, and Makeup.

Annvega - A Librarian with 9 Awesome Education Collections.

Jarebearsall - Stay Fit with Crossfit and the Kelo Diet.

AussieZ - Thanksgiving recipes and dishes!

With 15,000+ videos now on Huzzaz, we're excited to showcase some of the awesome people who have built amazing video collections. This is the first of many blog posts that will highlight 5 people on Huzzaz.

Each of us is inspired by something different. We all seek to learn and explore our passions, and discover new ideas. Below you will find 5 people doing just that. Go on now, explore their story and the videos they love!

Vdejesus - A teacher with 7 awesome education collections.

Stuff Thus Far - A New Zealander creating collections for her blog.

Webselecta - Videos from around the web. A curation master.

Druryandcurry - Around 250 music videos. Whoa!

David Hanley - He doesn't just collect extreme sports videos, he jumps from planes too.

Check them out, follow them, and enjoy their awesome collections!

Whether you are a YouTube superstar or not, there are certain limitations to relying on YouTube to grow your brand, business, and vision. YouTube is great because it provides free, global, HD video hosting, but that does not mean you need to stay in their box and be limited by them. In fact, YouTube gives you the tools break out of their own box! Most people just don’t take advantage of them because it’s cumbersome, requires a bit more work, and probably most common of all, they just don’t realize they can. The first step to breaking out is to recognize the walls that are put in front of you. By doing so, you can pick the right tools to gain your freedom. An iron file won’t help you bust through a concrete wall, but it can give you hope if you’re staring at iron bars.

YouTube owns your subscribers and the relationship with your fans - YouTube knows who they are but you don’t have an easy way to connect with them. Do you have the ability to email your entire fan base? You should.

YouTube controls the advertising and advertising relationships - They control the sponsored videos that appear next to yours and they control the dollars coming in from advertisers.

YouTube controls the look and feel of your channel - It’s difficult to personalize your page, organize your videos to make it easy for viewers to watch, and the commenting system is a mess.

Now what? - Time to bust loose!

Create your own website - Put a flag in the dirt and claim your ground. Set up a home turf where you make the rules. There are many free options out there like tumblr and blogger, each with unique themes to make it your own. There’s also Wordpress and WYSIWYG website builders like Squarespace, Weebly and Wix that make building your own internet home easy.

Get to know your fans! - Set up an email sign up form so you can reach out to them, update them, interact with them, and start to create deeper relationships with them. Mailchimp makes it easy to set up a sign up form on any website and if you have less than 2,000 subscribers, it’s free.

Personalize and control your website - Make it your own. Embedding 10 videos on a single page feels antiquated and is a poor user experience. Huzzaz make it easy to organize and create video galleries to show off all your videos and make it easy for your users to watch them all. If you're not happy with the commenting system of Google+, there are plenty of other options that could server you better. Disqus is integrated with Tumblr and Wordpress has its own commenting system that is easy to manage. You don't need to settle.

The nice part about all of this is that you don’t have to abandon YouTube’s video hosting services. With a little bit of work, you can do all this cheaply and add to the benefits that YouTube provides.

Even if you’re a video content curator, you can use the same tools to build a brand or network around the videos you like or want to promote.

Huzzaz is bringing together people and videos from all over the web. Our mission to help you collect, discover, and share the web's best videos just got a lot more fun with our new search page.

Search YouTube and Vimeo simultaneously while adding videos you love to your Huzzaz collections. Below we’ve broken down some of our favorite features on the new search page.

Search Box Tips:

Lets you search both YouTube and Vimeo at the same time.

After you perform a search, the most popular videos on both YouTube and Vimeo are shown.

By default, the video stream is pre-loaded with “today’s most popular” videos.

Video Stream Tips:

You can toggle between YouTube and Vimeo search results by clicking on their logo.

There are 4 actions you can take on each video shown in the video stream.

Play the video.

Queue the video and continue searching. You can also pre-load one of your Collections underneath the video player and queue videos within it.

Add the video to a New Collection, or add it to an existing Collection that you have already created.

Applaud the video if you enjoyed watching it. You can keep track of videos you applaud on your personal home page.

YouTube Categories & Vimeo Channels:

If you aren't sure what to search, or you want to explore curated videos click on any category or channel to populate the search page's video stream with awesome videos.

Video Player Tips:

Load a Collection you have already created. As you discover videos you want to watch in the stream, click “Queue” to add them to the Collection you have loaded.

Save videos in your Queue to a pre-loaded Collection, or save them to an entirely new Collection.

Over the last couple of weeks, James and I have had the pleasure of speaking with many of you about our video gallery embed feature and our WordPress plugin. It has been fascinating to watch how Huzzaz is helping people collect, organize and share videos across the web. 

This week we rolled out two new features that were suggested by those within Huzzaz's community. 

New Custom Colors Feature

Custom colors was the most requested feature that came our way. Here are the new variables:

bg = background color

color = font color

button = button color

highlight = accent color for button hovers, link hovers, and selected video

Now there are more ways to make your awesome video collections look good in your Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger, or HTML pages!

If you already have the Huzzaz Video Gallery WordPress plugin, update it now in the WordPress admin panel to activate the new custom colors feature. Don't have our WordPress plugin yet? Download it here!

One-click embed code generator

This request came in from a self taught machinist, and I really like the idea that someone who shapes metal has also had an influence in shaping Huzzaz. We've definitely increased our man-score now that we can say machinists have helped build Huzzaz. It is now easier than ever to generate the code you need to place a Huzzaz video collection on any web page or blog post.

Just go to any collection page and look for the embed code button.

After you click on it, a magical box will jump in front of you. This box delivers to you an array of customization goodies. As you adjust each field the embed code will update on the fly. 

There you have it, two new awesome features suggested by YOU,

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments section below.

The most fun and efficient way to collect and save videos you love is to install the Huzzaz Bookmarklet. Installing our bookmarklet is easy, but sometimes your browswer settings can get in the way, so we've provided some helpful tips below.

Just find your browser below to get started!

CHROME

The first thing you need to do is get your "bookmarks bar" to display. Not sure what that is? No worries! There are two easy ways you can get it to display:

Keyboard short cut: shift+ctrl+B, or if you are on a Mac shift+command+B

Or, find your bookmarks manager, and within it look for "show bookmarks bar".

Once your "bookmarks bar" is showing, just drag our bookmarklet icon to your "bookmarks bar". That's it, easy and simple. 

FIREFOX

Similar to Chrome, the first thing you need to do is get your "bookmarks toolbar" to display. Not sure what that is? No worries!

All you need to do is navigate to your bookmarks manager and look for "bookmarks toolbar", or  "view bookmarks toolbar". Unlike Chrome, there aren't any short cuts available to make adding and removing your "bookmarks toolbar" super easy, but once you know what to look for in Firefox you should be all set!

After you've set your "bookmarks toolbar" to display, just drag our bookmarklet icon to your "bookmarks toolbar".

INTERNET EXPLORER

IE might have the trickiest settings to navigate, but fear not! If you know what to look for you'll be in good shape.

You need to locate, "Favorites bar". The easiest way to find this is to locate the little "house" at the top right hand corner of your browser. Next to the house, right-click and look for "Favorites bar". 

After you've got your "Favorites bar" to display, just drag our bookmarklet icon to your "Favorites bar". 

SAFARI

Just like all of the other browsers, you need to get your bookmarks toolbar to display. Luckily Safari has a very easy shortcut to help you do just that: shift+command+B.

After you've got your bookmarks toolbar to display, just drag our bookmarklet icon to your bookmarks toolbar.

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There you have it, a few simple tips to help you install the Huzzaz Bookmarklet.

We've compiled a list of some of the best education channels on YouTube. Use Huzzaz to collect and organize the videos you like, share with friends, and watch without interruption from video ads.

General

Khan Academy - Providing a world-class education for anyone, anywhere

National Geographic - Geography, archaeology, natural science, world culture and history

Crash Course! - Six awesome courses in one awesome channel: US History, Chemistry, World History, Biology, Literature, and Ecology

Common Craft - Short explanatory videos for use by teachers and trainers

C. G. P. Grey - Complex things explained

TED-Ed - Original videos that aim to capture and amplify the voices of the world's greatest educators

TED Talks - Videos that showcase the best ideas from the TED Conference

REUTERS - Coverage around the globe and across topics including business, financial, national, and international news

Science

AsapSCIENCE - Fun and interesting science videos

MinutePhysics - Cool physics and other sweet science

Periodic Table of Videos - Videos about each element on the periodic table, science news, interesting molecules and other stuff from the world of chemistry

Vsauce - Videos that strive to answer interesting questions through science

Veritasium - Science experiments, cool demos, and discussions about everything science

Sick Science! - Cool science experiments that will make you think

Natural History

BBC Earth - 50 years worth of astounding, entertaining, thought-provoking and educational natural history content

American Museum of Natural History - Spreading knowledge about human cultures, the natural world and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education and exhibition

Language Arts

SpokenVerse - Poems read out loud

Math

Numberphile - Videos about numbers

Vi Hart - Videos from a professional mathemusician at Khan Academy

Kids

Sesame Street

Yo Gabba Gabba!

Hoopla Kidz - Animated nursery rhymes and stories designed to entertain and educate children between the ages of 2 and 8

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Today we've entered a very exciting time in the development of Huzzaz. Private beta invitations may now be requested by anyone. 

Here's what we've built Huzzaz to do.

Create Video Collections: Save and organize YouTube and Vimeo videos anywhere you find them on the web.

Stream Videos: After you build a collection, or you are watching someone else's collection, stream all its videos without any interruption from video ads.

Learn: Build a video library around any class subject, or store all your how-to and DIY videos in once place while keeping them nicely organized. 

Share and Follow: Easily share video collections you've created, or follow someone else video collects to discover what videos others are collecting.