Wall Street Journal’s Embedded Player

 I first learned about this on BeetTV.  The Wall Street Journal is working with online video site Brightcove to offer it’s content to people through an embedded player — see story here.  This is a wonderful step in the right direction for major media companies. 

I shave ubscribed to the WSJ print edition for about 10 years, but this may be my last.  Maybe now I can find some of their video stories online, since my WSJ online subscription just ran out.   Back to the embedded player…

YouTube is popular for many reasons, but one of its magic bullets was the early use of an embedded media player that people could copy and paste into their blog or Website.  This proliferates a video story and turns blogs and other Websites into distributers…at no cost.  Everytime someone clicks play — no matter where they found the video — the source hosted on YouTube’s site logs another view.  This is what’s allowing people to become “we the media.”

More video sites offering this, and even companies are offering their videos through  media players that can be lifted and shared.  This shows a willingness to try new ways of reaching more people and possibly making more money by sharing content — or giving it away.

There’s a lot of arguing and fighting about old and new media, and what’s the best way to move forward.  But what’s rising to the top these days — people and companies trying new things.  Exciting to see and I’m curious if “power of the people” might actually give companies, countries even, a competitive edge.  I strongly think so!  Magic and possibilities are sparked when a variety of people are involved in the process, as long as clear goals and good intentions are spelled out.

I have been embedding PodTech’s elegant player ever since I started blogging here a few months ago.  In fact, being able to embed a video & audio player right into my blog posts was a major reason I finally started blogging publically.  It allows me to really participate more.  Rather than just posting my rants and deep thoughts, I could actually show examples of what’s influencing me and others. 

While checking out Brightcove today, I watched a video of musician Regina Spektor — what a great voice, what a great song!  Here’s Brighcove’s embedded player:

<embed src=’http://admin.brightcove.com/destination/player/player.swf&#8217; bgcolor=’#FFFFFF’ flashVars=’allowFullScreen=true&initVideoId=361418447&servicesURL=http://www.brightcove.com&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://www.brightcove.com&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&autoStart=false’ base=’http://admin.brightcove.com&#8217; name=’bcPlayer’ width=’486′ height=’412′ allowFullScreen=’true’ allowScriptAccess=’always’ seamlesstabbing=’false’ type=’application/x-shockwave-flash’ swLiveConnect=’true’ pluginspage=’http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash’></embed&gt;