Grant Laird, Jr. Blog

This is my vlog response to Oh I See Blog - RE: Self Expression via Vblog - click here

Basically, I mentioned that I like both formal and non-formal vblog. I really love Amy’s vblog – she’s simply amazing. Not just special effects… but she has beautiful smile, too.

All vlogger should make every effort to improve their own vblog but of course it is not required. One of the biggest challenge to keep video maintain high quality is keep your room well-lighted. If you doesn’t have many light in your room, consider invest $10 lamp or something better. Believe it or not, it will make the difference.

In my case, it is non-formal but maybe it is between non-formal and formal because I do included title, URL address and date. If you notice in some of my older videos, I didn’t look really nice like t-shirt, etc. So, I try to make it little better every time.

Sometime, my dog bothered me while I am talking to webcam. He thinks I am weird or something. Hehe… Other things look like my glasses doesn’t have anti-reflect in it which cause reflect horribly front of monitor. I have no choice but remove it while I am talking to webcam.

Note: In case you wonder what software I primarily use for my vblog — I use Logitech ImageStudio which can be found at Logitech website. Click here to download ImageStudio 7.3 - Enjoy!

The more I’ve done vblog for my blogsite; I’ve learned few things.

Let’s talk little about Google Video and YouTube accounts. Basically, I like both programs – no questions about it. I think Google Video display looks little clearer on all of my videos than YouTube.

Also, I noticed that YouTube doesn’t accept over 100mb video even it’s less than 10 minutes. That’s what happened to one of my recent video about “10 More Wordpress Plugins” which only 6 minutes long but it is little over 100mb. If you upload any videos thru Google Video Uploader (standalone; small program; require for over 100mb) instead of uploading online, it will take few days to approve. It’s silly but that’s something you have to prepare little ahead of time.

I still create all of my videos on both services as long as it accepts within their requirement. Why? It reaches more people and different kind of geography around the world.

I noticed that Jared prefer to use Google Video (mostly) while Lenois prefer to use YouTube (mostly) then finally Joey Baer stick with higher quality, mov format video.

Hmmm…

Of course, it would be even better if you view it from my own server. It is very much higher quality but many times deaf people told me it did not work! Especially on Firefox and Opera browsers – I felt that Google Video and YouTube is more compatibility on all browser. It is also benefits to Mac/Apple deaf users since I heavily use AVI format which uses on Windows Media player.

In general, I still see blog owner would use either YouTube or Google Video which is good. Best of all, it is free service. You still should use video from you server anyway. (higher quality)

To view video thru YouTube, click here or to view video from my server, click here.

Note: This is six minutes long. Click here to view pop-up video from my server.

I had several comments regarding Wordpress Plugins couple of weeks ago. It’s positive feedbacks and I decided to do another 10 more Wordpress plugins. It get little harder because some of them you probably don’t need it at all. You decide.

To view my last vblog about Wordpress plugins, click here. Enjoy!

Add Sig - Add a custom signature to the bottom of posts with the author’s information.

Home-Page Control - Allows you to put pages on the same permalink level as the blog’s directory and to set which page you want to be the “home” page. Go to Options » Home-Page Control to adjust the settings.

KG Archives - sortable archives page. It’s great if you have alot of archives. More archives stuff plugins - click here.

Links Page - Output links onto a static page, filtered by a dropdown list. It’s great if you have alot of links in your wordpress. (Scroll down little and look for Links Page) More links plugins - click here.

Netflix plugins - Displays info from your Netflix account. This includes text and images via RSS feed. By Albert Banks. Also, you need to install Netflix widget. (click here)

Wunderground.com Weather Sticker - Adds a sidebar widget to display the standard wunderground.com Weather.

Crawl Page - This generator will create a crawl page for your WordPress blog. (You may have to ask me for file if you can’t find it)

WP-Stats - Display Your WordPress Statistics. (Nothing fancy but nice plugins) 

Google Sitemap - This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. If you are not familiar with it, skip it.  Google Analytics and Google Adsense also available if you are familiar with it, too.

MeeboMe - They now offer MeeboMe widget based on www.meebo.com. This is perfect tool for "customer service" or just for fun. I turned it off on my site but I will turn it on whenever I need it up there. I wrote little about it, click here for more details.