Ravi’s Rants

If I had to pick just one blog, and could read only one blog for the rest of my life - including my own blog (the one you’re reading right now) - I would pick Seth Godin’s blog.

Seth’s blog is (hyperbole alert) amazing, educational, informative, remarkable, mind-blowing, extraordinary, purple, eye-opening and goose-pimple-raising good.

Seth’s books, his blog and his words have become such an integral part of my life, that I ended up creating a separate category here. I still have to go back and tag some of my older posts, but you can read all of the posts where I’ve written about or referred to Seth Godin, by going here.

But don’t read just Seth’s blog. You don’t have to.

Read some of the best blogs out there, along with Seth’s, all on one page by clicking here.

I found this amazing site yesterday through one of the feeds on LinkOverLoad.com. Awesome video coming right up…

Animoto basically turns your pictures into a fantastic MTV-style video, with some great soundtracks available on their site for free, or you can use your own audio - with your pictures almost flashing in rhythm to the beats of the soundtrack, with some great-looking special effects.

When I signed up, uploaded my pictures, picked a great-sounding track they had on their site (for free) and tried to create my video (remember, their software supposedly creates all of this in an automated fashion), I got this very friendly error message:

Hi there,

We’re sorry to inform you that we have experienced an error in the
production of your recent video, “Beautiful People”. Rest assured, we’re
on the case and we’ll have it rendered as soon as we can–but, depending
on the complexity of the issue, it could take a little time.

We’ll email you the moment it’s ready. Thanks for understanding!

…

That didn’t bother me, as they are still in beta, and still hammering out the rough edges. What did surprise me, is that they promptly sent me this email the next day:

Hi there.

We’ve finished your video, so it’s time for you to go take a look.
Head to:

http://animoto.com/play/…..

We hope you like it! Give us some feedback when you get a chance to
let us know what you liked and how we can improve. Remember, no two
Animoto videos are ever the same so keep making videos and see what unique
pieces you can generate.

…

I excitedly clicked over, and was simply blown away by the results (see video below).

Remarkable idea, great (almost perfect) execution, instantly viral! Pass this along…

Video from Animoto.com