The DEMO 2007 conference started yesterday, and I’m terrifically jealous of anyone who’s out there now. Luckily, we’ve been able to make a few arrangements to keep us up to date on any juicy DEMO news. Dave squeezed me into Marshall Kirkpatrick‘s schedule for a SplashCast briefing, and I’ve got a friend on the ground who promises to send on-site DEMO photos.
Here’s the deal on SplashCast: Marshall calls it a “media syndication platform” and Liz Gannes calls it a widget. Whatever the right term is, it’s a pretty cool tool. Simply put, SplashCast lets you string together text, images, audio and video for a multimedia production viewable (and listenable?) on a Flash player. Unlike YouTube-alikes, SplashCast also embeds a menu to provide access to multiple videos from just one embedded web player.
Here’s a sample SplashCast with text and random ZNF photos. More details after the jump.
Despite giving people the ability to generate low-tech creations like the sample above, SplashCast seems to be going primarily after folks who want to syndicate video. In that area, the company is certainly not alone. However, SplashCast does have some good things going for it. For one, it supports several different file formats including .mov, .wmv, .mpg, .mp4 and .flv. For another, there is absolutely no branding visible on the SplashCast player unless you hover over it. And yet if you’re using files from a third-party source, say YouTube, credits automatically appear – a feature that’s sure to go over well with content producers.
SplashCast does still have some bugs in the system, but it’s a lot of fun to play with. My one concern is that it takes some dedication to produce a SplashCast, just as it does to produce any multimedia work. For example, I love Scrapblog, but how often do I have the time to create new online scrapbooks?
According to the SplashCast site, the company is considering several different business models, but is “inclined to avoid pre and post roll video ads.” More info to come later in the year.