** Handheld Video **

Apple Computers recently announced the addition of a small video screen to its new iPod, the perennial favorite portable MP3 music player.

Apple's announcement comes as no surprise to many "expert" market watchers, but their stock did go up about 10% within days of the announcement.

Though certainly not the first handheld video player on the market, it carries the power of Apple's iTunes distribution channel behind it.

That means instead of getting a video player and then searching for content to play on it, users of the new video iPod can easily download and play their favorite videos, TV shows and more from the already hugely popular iTunes service.

For information marketers and small business owners, this means a whole new world just opened up for video content distribution.

Home video enthusiasts will also benefit because of the ease with which you can now share high quality video with friends and family.

The iPod plays not only Apple's proprietary QuickTime video format, but the newer Mpeg 4 video format which offers a much higher compression rate (and smaller video file sizes) than previous formats.

Though others partially paved the way, the age of handheld video finally arrived.

** Video Title Gem **

I recently found a piece of software that just plain rates "cool" when it comes to creating title screens and sequences for your digital videos.

With just a few mouse clicks it enables you to create title sequences that look like you spent hours in development time, instead of less than 10 minutes!

Log on to www.blufftitler.us for free examples of what the software can do, along with a free trial download.

You can also view a 20 minute tutorial on how to use the software (a video quick-start guide) at www.mediablitzed.com

Once you complete your title sequence, you can save it in a number of different formats which you then import into your digital video editor for inclusion in your finished movie.

** Google Video Maturing **

Several months ago I reported that Google launched a video service at http://Video.Google.com where they solicited users to upload their video content.

At the time, with the exception of local and national news content, very few actual videos showed up for playing online.

After a recent check of the service, the lack of videos certainly reversed itself.

Though not overflowing with video content, the Google Video service does carry a significant number of videos now and a search under your main keyword topic should produce at least a couple of related videos.

Since the search engine can't actually search the content of a video or audio file, the one drawback to the system stems from that fact that the search engine must decide what represents a "relevant" search from text that accompanies the video.

This text typically ranges from just a few words to an entire transcript of the video.

As such, a search for "employment tips" results in video from the Employment & Career Channel along with the Long Beach City Council hearings on development impacts on employment.

However, once Google gets the search aspect of video ironed out, watch for this service to explode in popularity.

Copyright 2005 Jim Edwards