For quite some time now I’ve been showing clients animoto, particularly when I’m out and about doing social media training, as it’s a wonderful way of creating high-impact videos for your site without the costs normally associated with video production. I always suggest that clients use istockphoto to download good quality images, so I’m delighted to see the two companies pair up at last. See the animoto blog post for further information.

Last week I attended a close friend’s wedding in Ireland. I took the flipvideo camera along and within 12 hours of stumbling to bed after the festivities of an Irish wedding (I hit the sack at 3am and the bride, groom and Irish family were all still up singing in the bar), I had an edited version of the video online on facebook thanks to the excellent built-in software on the camera, instant usb connectivity and free wifi in the hotel.

I thought that was quick! Then this morning I received the latest updates from animoto and learn that they’ve now created an iPhone app so you can create animoto videos on your iPhone (or touch iPod) whilst still on the move. I haven’t tested it yet (might steal my partner’s touch iPod later to have a play around), but in theory this is a very cool idea and just speeds up even more the ability to go from a photo (or in the case of flipvideo a video clip) to a fairly polished looking video online in a matter of minutes – and at hardly any expense at all.

With this in mind, and for no other reason than the fact that I like to have a new techy toy to play with every so often, I bought a flipvideo handheld camcorder the other day. It cost about £90 or so, and is pocket sized so I can take it out and about with me. It’ll record up to about an hour’s worth of footage, and runs on bog standard batteries. The beauty of it though is that it’s so quick to use. You whip it out of your bag, press the button on the side and in 2-3 seconds you’re ready to record – fantastic for catching something that needs to be caught quick (though still not quick enough to catch footage of my snoozing rabbit laying stretched out on his side this other day, but then that’s more testiment to my speed at grabbing the camera than the camera itself).

So, I’ll be carrying this around with me from now on, grabbing the odd bit of footage here and there, and hopefully picking up some interesting interviews and think pieces. I’ll start posting some examples soon – need to find some interesting people to speak with first – and keep reporting back on how I’m getting on.

Basically all you do is upload a selection of still images to the site, select a music track (they have a library of licence-free tracks for you to choose from) and the site does the work for you. I had a little play around using my rabbit photos (why not?) and here is what it created. This took about 20 mins to upload the photos and about 10 mins for the video to be created. I hadn’t edited the photos or anything, so this is a real rough-and-ready attempt. Imagine what you can do with a little more effort.

I was then very easily able to put it on facebook (just the click of a button takes you straight through) and get the html code for embedding it in this blog post.

I will certainly be buying the commercial licence for using this site to create a little promo real for Pickle Jar Communications, and perhaps even offering this as a service to our clients. It is just wonderful!

US-based company Stitcher are launching a customisable radio facility for use on mobile phones. Initially being rolled out on the iPhone, the player will allow you to syndicate audio content that you want to listen to – a bit like an RSS reader for audio, I guess. Quite rightly so they’re pitching this at commuters, offering them a way of getting digests from their favorite audio content sources back to back while on the move. Check out the ‘about’ section on their site, and also read the Mashable blog article about this.