Sclipo hosts Facebook Developer Garage in Barcelona on May 30th

Posted on May 9, 2008

We are happy to announce that Sclipo will host Barcelona’s 1st Facebook Developer Garage on May 30, 2008.

“… Attending a Facebook Developer Garage is an opportunity for a deep dive into Facebook Platform: it is a forum to share ideas with local developers, look for partners on your latest project, see and participate in Facebook App demonstrations, seek technical support, or just network and socialize with other developers interested in the Facebook Platform … ” (See Facebook Wiki for more info.)

Besides developers and companies sharing their experiences about Facebook apps, Javier Olivan Director of International Marketing at Facebook will also join. After the event, we will go for tapas.

If you know of developers or companies who could be interested in attending and/or presenting, please invite them. To attend, you must sign up to the event on Facebook (see link below).

If you want to present, please send me a message through Facebook.

When: Friday 30.5.2008 - from 4 pm to 8 pm
Where: Sclipo Office, Barcelona
Sign up for the event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18993571292

Sclipo hosts the EU Start-Up 2.0 Competition Video Challenge

Posted on April 22, 2008

The 2008 Start-Up 2.0 Competition is about finding Europe’s best web 2.0 start-up. We at Sclipo, having participated and won last year’s contest, believe every EU web 2.0 Start-Up should participate, because:

1. You will get noticed by the right people. You are all looking for financing and references. By participating, your company will be re-viewed by a first class jury including Martín Varsavsky, Loic Le Meur, Daniel Waterhouse, Tom Raftery, Ouriel Ohayon, Nicole Simon, Bernardo Hernández, Luca Conti and Yaron Orenstein.

2. It is free PR: The competition will drive attention, traffic and new members to your site.

3. It is a motivation booster: Motivation is your most valuable resource (more than cash!). This competition will put you and your team on fire. You will be applauded, voted and celebrated. All doubts will go away! This adrenaline is essential to help you overcome the challenges you are facing.

What’s new this year is that start-ups can submit videos showcasing their product. We are excited that Sclipo was selected to host these videos. It is not mandatory, though we dearly recommend submitting a video. Imaging being a judge who has to struggle her way through thousands of lines of text describing hundreds of start-ups … a video makes it so much easier to understand and value your product. So, take the time and create a video! It’s worth it!

Thanks to the organizers for making the event happen: Alianzo and La Caixa Emprendedor XXI. Partners of this year’s event are Microsoft, Sun and Techcrunch.

Register here for the 2008 Start-Up 2.0 Competition. Registrations will be admitted till May 10, 2008.

To submit a video at Sclipo, go to the Start-Up 2.0 Challenge at Sclipo and follow the instructions.

Good luck!!

Red Herring selects Sclipo as finalist for the Red Herring 100 Europe 2008

Posted on March 25, 2008

We are very proud to announce that the Red Herring selected Sclipo as a finalist of Red Herring 100 Europe, an award given to the top 100 private technology companies based in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region each year. We are thrilled that a jury as knowledgeable and savvy as the Red Herring validates our value proposition.

Quoted from Red Herrings Press release:

“This year’s impressive list of submissions from companies demonstrates Europe’s growing role as a major center of innovation in the global technology sector,” said Red Herring Editor-in-Chief Joel Dreyfuss. “The exceptional accomplishments of European technology startups and entrepreneurs are a testament to the rapid advancements being made in building the European innovation ecosystem.”

Red Herring’s lists of top private companies are an important part of the publication’s tradition of identifying new and innovative technology companies and entrepreneurs. Companies like Google, eBay, and Skype were spotted in their early days by Red Herring editors, and touted as leaders that would change the way we live and work.

Red Herring’s editorial staff rigorously evaluated several hundred private companies through a careful analysis of financial data and subjective criteria, including quality of management, execution of strategy, and dedication to research and development.

Red Herring will honor the Red Herring 100 Europe Finalist companies at its Red Herring Europe 2008 event. Scheduled for April 14-16, at the Westin Dragonara Resort, this intimate, three-day event is themed “The Pursuit of Disruption” and will explore how European firms are leading the charge in many technology sectors, gaining the competitive advantage, and driving entrepreneurial success in ways that create business opportunities for challengers and incumbents alike.

About Red Herring
Red Herring is a global media company which unites the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine, an online daily technology news service, technology newsletters and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy. More information about Red Herring is available on the Internet at www.redherring.com.

TubeMogul partners with Sclipo

Posted on February 28, 2008

We are very excited to announce our partnership with TubeMogul, the premier distribution and analytics service for online video.

With this partnership, posting educational videos – how-to, tutorials or lectures - to Sclipo will be as easy as checking a box for the almost 16,000 content creators that currently use TubeMogul to distribute and track their video-tutorials online. TubeMogul’s analytics package tracking video viewership will also be integrated. Sclipo is the only site dedicated to educational videos on TubeMogul.

“We love Sclipo’s quality content and their global focus,” reports Brett Wilson, TubeMogul co-founder and CEO. “Our syndication and analytics tools will propel them forward and further cement us as the ultimate service for content creators.”

Check out TubeMogul … a very cool and needed service. Enjoy!

Here is the official Press Release.

New Year’s Features

Posted on December 31, 2007

We had a fantastic year (it was our first one :)! And we are sure joining Sclipo was your most memorable social network event (just kidding). Well … not really. Facebook is for keeping up with friends, YouTube is for having fun, and Sclipo is for sharing knowledge and meeting people to teach and learn from through video … or, Sclipo is for social learning.

And yes! It is New Years … so below are some New Features for you. We hope these help you improve your learning experience. If not, please tell us what features you’d like. We will work our butts off to fulfill your wishes during 2008.

All the best for 2008 from your Sclipo Team!!

======

Here our New Features for you:

Google thumb: When searching videos via Google, thumbnails of your videos at Sclipo will show on the Google search result page, which means more people will find your videos at Sclipo through Google.

Enhanced player: To ease learning from a video, we added a slow motion and step-by-step functionality to our player.

RSS: Keen on a specific area? Or, do you like a specific member Academy? Just subscribe!

Invite Students, Friends, …: Do you want to teach your students through Sclipo? Now you can automatically invite students, colleagues and friends by importing their email addresses from your Gmail / Hotmail / Yahoo email address book.

Sclipo launches Webcam Record

Posted on November 4, 2007

Creating and uploading tutorials to Sclipo has just become much easier with Webcam Record. This new feature allows you to create and upload videos instantly with the webcam of your computer.

With Webcam Record, we are adding a second tool (the first was SclipoLive) that allows our members to create content in addition to publishing it.

Here is how Webcam Record makes sharing your skills so much easier:
1. No digital camera needed! You do not need an (expensive) digital video camera to film your skills. Any computer webcam will do (by the way, a decent webcam costs only around $20-30, a really top webcam costs around $100).
2. No lengthy file transfer needed! You do not need to transfer the video file from your camera to your computer.
3. No export or compression needed! You do not need to compress or export your video file with a video editing software. Webcam Record does all that work for you.

Yes, a webcam is probably no good to film your mountain bike tutorials, but there are many skills you can nicely capture, like for example cooking, language or any music / singing lessons. Our Webcam Record allows you to pause the recording, so you can easily create different chapters.

Here a video tutorial showing how Webcam Record works.

To use Webcam Record, just go to Upload. After describing your video, select Webcam Record to create and upload it.

For a review of Webcam Record, check out Kristen Nicole´s post on Mashable: Sclipo’s “Webcam Record” for Easy Video Addition.

Oh, have I mentioned that Sclipo is the first social learning network to offer such a feature? We hope you like it!

Questions or feedback? Just email edwin-at-sclipo.com.

And our Wacom Challenge winner is… MartinNH!

Posted on September 28, 2007

Well it is time to announce the winner of the Wacom Challenge, which is … MartinNH! for his video Painting Jack Sparrow using a Wacom tablet. Congratulations Martin!

Martin will take home our Grand Prize, a fantastic Cintiq 21UX, which we are sure will help Martin do even better Illustrations and videos. You can enjoy more of Martin’s work in his Sclipo Academy and his blog Martinity.com.

Also congratulations to the other 6 runners-up winners, who won one of Wacom’s newest products, a wonderful Bamboo Pen Tablet!
Comic strip
Quick Z3 Doodle
How to create Fonts
Intuos configuration
Animation
Digital painting tutorial

We are delighted about the active and enthusiastic participation: 42 participants, 82 videos and hundreds of thousands of visitors! Also, the response and feedback from our viewers have exceeded our expectations. Thanks a lot to all who participated!

Finally, thanks to Wacom, the Sponsor of this Challenge. It was great to work with the Wacom team. Thanks for trusting Sclipo with running this challenge (we know there are quite a few video communities out there …)!

Sclipo launches SclipoLive - a pioneer webcam teaching system

Posted on September 14, 2007

How was your summer? We had a great one … crunching out the public version of SclipoLive, our new webcam system for teaching. With SclipoLive, our Academies can now choose if they want to share knowledge via video, or webcam or both.

SclipoLive is a powerful new app that offers our members two distinct advantages:
1. To teach personalized classes live (how-to videos are, in the end, not customizable one-fits-all micro-lessons).
2. To make good money (teachers may charge for a live class, whereas users would hardly pay to watch a video, except for tips here and there). Teachers can use their videos as self-advertising! What better way to convince somebody that you are great teacher then showing her how good you teach in a short video?

Sclipo takes a small commission from the seller of a class. For classes taught for free, Sclipo charges nothing.

Here’s how SclipoLive works. Besides a large webcam window where you see the teacher / learner and a small window to see yourself, SclipoLive allows to chat and to take private notes. These are deep-tagged into the video stream, which is recorded. This means, classes (which remain private) can be reviewed, and by clicking on a note or chat text, you jump forward to the point where the chat / note was made.

Pretty cool, isn’t it? Don’t you wish you could have video-recorded all your classes, and that all your notes where deep-tagged, so you can easily find exactly that part of the lecture where the prof explained …

Here was what others say about SclipoLive: Genbeta, Mashable, Techcrunch.

We hope you like SclipoLive. Questions? Or interested in a demo? Please email Edwin [edwin-at-sclipo.com].

Sclipo launches Academies

Posted on July 21, 2007

We have just enhanced our tab “Masters” to become “Academies“. This improvement will have a strong impact on how people use and experience Sclipo.

Academies benefit our users, because, hey, its more meaningful and exciting to have YOUR Academy than just being a Master. Our members can now build their own “teaching institution” and even create their own “brand”.

All people and institutions can set up their Academy at Sclipo. From here they can share their knowledge by uploading their videos and by teaching live with SclipoLive - our pioneer webcam system (SclipoLive is currently in private Beta). Each Academy has its unique profile page and URL, where students will find all videos published by the Academy, communicate with its teacher(s) and meet its students.

Here some of our favorite Academies.
> Learn all about PCs, Windows and more from Virtualtweak.
> Boost your English language skills with ColorfulEnglish.
> Immerse yourself in Tai Chi with Weihong.
> Delight your friends with Spanish homemade cooking from Carme.

Sclipo - jetzt auch auf Deutsch!

Posted on July 1, 2007

Sclipo - ein soziales Netzwerk in dem Wissen, Anleitungen, Tipps, etc. (Skills) in Form von Videos ausgetauscht werden können - gibt es jetzt auch auf Deutsch! Damit ist Sclipo die erste Video-Community dieser Art auf Deutsch. (Es wurde ja auch Zeit, dass man in der deutschen Video-Szene was anderes als nur “lustige” Videos austauschen kann.)

Die Sprache der Sclipo Benutzeroberfläche passt sich automatisch an die Browsersprache an. Benutzer können die Sprache auch im Dashboard unter “Mein Profil” einstellen.

Wir freuen uns schon sehr auf die interessanten Skills-Videos unserer neuen deutschen Mitglieder.

Sclipo kicks-off Wacom Challenge

Posted on June 25, 2007

Today, Sclipo proudly kicks-off its first officially sponsored challenge - the Wacom Challenge - sponsored by Wacom, the global leader in digital pen tablets. This challenge is about creating and sharing a skills-based video that demonstrates the ability to achieve impressive results with a Wacom tablet.

To participate, just create and upload a video tutorial that teaches how to use a Wacom tablet for any number of things, like digital photo editing, digital arts, manga, office work or gaming. The top award is a fantastic Wacom Cintiq21 Interactive Pen Display!

With this challenge, Sclipo takes another step towards building a community where sharing of skills is the reason to be. Quite importantly, Sclipo now allows companies to participate in the community in a win-win kind of way … sponsor a product-award that is relevant to people (as it helps them to improve on and perform the skills they care about) and in turn, get some solid viral marketing and evangelism (as only talented people who submit good videos with high levels of popularity and viewership will be able to win).

Wacom Challenge info, terms and FAQ.

The Sclipo difference

Posted on June 4, 2007

At the European Start-Up 2.0 competition a judge asked me: how is Sclipo better than a how-to video site? I answered — Sclipo is different! not better and not comparable! Here is how and why.

Sclipo is a social network focused on skills where video is the main medium for skills-transfer. How-to sites are generally repositories of videos. Sclipo’s goal is to facilitate the transfer of skills among its members, not to create a video-encyclopedia.

Confused? Here an analogy: in a school, Sclipo would be the campus and a how-to site would be the library. Sclipo members are masters, and each has a profile page from where they share knowledge and connect with their students. To find good knowledge and masters fast, Sclipo offers search, browse and rating features. But — you may ask — doesn’t a how-to site not also offer personal profile pages to members who upload their videos? Yes, many do. And that’s where the confusion comes about. So, what are the differences between our social-network and a repository? I see two key ones:

1) We focus on features to enable economies of skills, or, stuff that makes sharing knowledge easier, cheaper and possible where it has been impossible before. For instance, we built SclipoLive to enable instant & efficient sharing of personalized knowledge through a web-cam system that is not possible in the analog world. For example, SclipoLive enables John from New York to take a flamenco guitar lesson from Pepe in Sevilla. No travel costs! Without SclipoLive, Pepe would not have been able to sell his class to a guy in New York. How-to video repositories, in contrast, focus on features that facilitate video storage, search and viewing. These are important for Sclipo too. But they are a condition rather than a goal for us.

2) Sclipo is all about user-generated skills. We do not edit or interfere at all with the user’s content, as long as it complies with our terms of use. For instance, videos can have any duration and we do not review or approve content. We only “police” videos to enforce our terms of use. In addition, we do not approach companies — as some how-to sites do — offering to produce videos of i.e. their knowledge bases or product manuals. At Sclipo, anybody can upload their videos, private persons and companies. Both are treated equally.

These differences have a strong impact on how we run and measure our business. A repository looks towards accumulating as many videos as possible. Sclipo’s measure of success is the number of skills-related interactions among users: the more interaction, the more knowledge creation and transfer.

Conclusion: The web & video opens a large array of new possibilities to share knowledge. We chose the path of a social - network, others that of a repository. Sclipo is a campus (with a library) and how-to sites are a library (some with a cafeteria). It is not about judging which approach is better. Both are inherently different. Both are needed, and will make a difference to the way people learn.

Sclipo wins European StartUp 2.0 award

Posted on May 28, 2007

It is a great feeling, I must say. We started something out of the blue, just believing that a social skills-network makes sense. Now, by winning the first place prize of the European StartUp 2.0 award, we are quite a step closer to knowing that a our social skills-network makes a lot of sense.

Thanks, above all, to our users. Without them, there would be no award.

Thanks to our team - Edwin, Dani, Luis, Otto, Rafi, Sebas, Sergi, Xevi and myself (Gregor) - without them, there would be no Sclipo.

Thanks to the organizers - Alianzo, Spri, La Caixa, First Tuesday, MADRI+D - without them, there would have been no competition and no extra boost of energy and buzz, which a start-up needs like oxygen.

Thanks to all participants - without them, winning would have been … hmm … boring. (Can’t list them here, there were close to 300 hundred).

A special thanks goes to Carlos from nvivo.es - also a finalist in the StartUp 2.0 competition and a wonderful site to find the best concerts in Spain - without his help, connecting with the Basque audience in such an incredible venue like the Bilbao Guggenheim would have been much harder: Eskerrik asko Carlos.

Sclipo announces SclipoLive in Blogak / StartUp 2.0 at Guggenheim in Bilbao

Posted on May 24, 2007

We are proud to announce, SclipoLive which we will be officially launched in its BIO (By Invitation Only) version on Monday, May 28, 2007. With this, Sclipo is the world’s first, user-generated skills-network offering a web-cam for live teaching.

SclipoLive will make a significant impact on non-academic learning: With SclipoLive, a Master can instruct one or many students anytime and anywhere in the world. Masters can charge students for the class, if they want, at the price they want. All classes are recorded.

Now, Hans from Hamburg can learn Flamenco-guitar from Pepe in Sevilla and Weihong can practice English with Jennifer from Seattle. SclipoLive also allows Students and Masters to chat during the class, to take notes and to exchange supporting documents. These are time-stamped and deep-tagged into the recorded class. Students can now review their classes much more efficiently then before: they just go to their notes and comments they made during any live class. Reviewing classes will easier and more productive than ever before.

For now, SclipoLive will only be accessible for selected users by invitation. If you want to be a beta-user, create an account on Sclipo and send us an email with your username to SclipoLiveBeta@Sclipo.com. If you want to be notified when SclipoLive goes live, please send an email to SclipoLiveNotification@Sclipo.com.

Thanks!

Sclipo launches new Master’s page

Posted on May 23, 2007

Today we launched a new Master’s page. We re-designed the layout so Masters can better communicate and promote their skills. We added a blackboard, where anybody can post a public message for a Master, like asking her/him to create a special skills-video. The new Master’s page also allows users to network around the skills of the Master: you can see and click through to all Students (= subscribers) of the Master and you can see who the Master is learning from in the myFavorite Masters box.

Also: each Master has now a unique, easy URL. So, Master Amanda’s URL is sclipo/user/amanda. So, open your Sclipo account fast to make sure to get your name on Sclipo.

We hope you like our new Master’s page.

Sclipo selected a top 5 EU web 2.0 startup

Posted on May 19, 2007

StartUp2.0 - a memorable happening! A great event to meet interesting companies and people, including ourselves (we took the opportunity and made the competition our first off-site).

We are very happy that we have been selected for the final to be held on May 24 at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, where we — together with the other 4 finalists — will have another opportunity to present Sclipo. You can register here for the event, which will be part of Blogak 2.0.

Thanks to the organizers of StartUp 2.0, its jury and all the people who are helping to make such events happen. These are important for start-ups like us. They create energy and enthusiasm among the team, they foster culture, they create a buzz, the reinforce your vision and motivate you that we are doing the right thing.

The Sclipo Team

Sclipo - a top 15 web 2.0 start-up

Posted on May 8, 2007

We are very excited that we were selected a top 15 EU web 2.0 company in the StartUp 2.0 contest. StartUp 2.0 is a competition of European web 2.0 sites. The selection was made based upon votes from Internet Users and a jury of prominent web experts, including Martín Varsavsky and Loic Le Meur.

Congratulations to all other selected web 2.0 firms. We are looking very much forward to meeting you in Madrid. We are excited about the exchange of ideas, in special about highly innovative smart flash players and other breath-taking technologies to delight the social network community.

We would like to thank the organizers Spri, Alianzo and La Caixa. We very much welcome your initiative!

A very special “thank you” to our Masters and users!

Your Sclipo Team

Welcome Sclipo, farewell Visuarios … a little history of our young firm

Posted on April 16, 2007

We love the name Visuarios. Visuarios stands for visual user in Spanish (usuarios visuales). Since our launch, Visuarios has become the world’s leading community for user-generated skills-videos. Millions have visited and used our site, and we received lots of great feedback. One was that the name Visuarios was hard to pronounce and remember internationally. So we decided to find a better one. We decided for SCLIPO: Skills + CLIP + a Spanish touch with the “O“. We hope you like our new name.

Well, and a change of name kind of demands a little about the history and vision of our young company:

Visuarios was the name selected for a project back in June 2006, not a public web. The project was to explore how visual or video web applications would change and benefit the life of Internet users. At that point, video-web was all about entertainment, yet we thought it had a much larger potential.

A finding of said project was that our life is - in many ways - all about skills: we all depend on the skills we can acquire and promote. Everybody has an inherent need to learn skills and to show the world that we are damn good at these to achieve recognition, respect, a job and - if our skills are really outstanding - fame. Kids dream of joining a celebrated soccer team, teenagers of becoming a rock star and college students of winning the Nobel Prize (well, some of them).

Ok, but how does Internet video change the way we handle our skills? Well, it makes learning, sharing and promoting skills much easier, faster and cheaper than before. Before, anybody could video-tape skills, but sharing them with an audience larger than the one that fits a living- or class-room was practically impossible. To share your skills with a wide audience - for teaching or promotion - you had to convince experts of some kind to invest a lot of money into the production, distribution and promotion of your skills-video. Now, you can upload any skills-video and promote it yourself at no cost … for example by posting it to your blog and social-bookmarking sites, or just emailing its URL. Now you can also build a network related to your skills beyond the boundaries of your local friends, family, club or school: you can create a community with people from anywhere on the globe with whom you share those skills that define - in one way or another - your life.

So we decided to build and launch Visuarios, as of now Sclipo, a social web utility that helps you share, improve and promote your skills through video.

Your Sclipo Team!

new Visuarios

Posted on April 5, 2007

We are happy to present our new home … and ourselves. We boosted our homepage - from just showing 5 videos to present a large selection of interesting skills-videos. Members will also be able to see their skills-status right on the home page. We also updated the profile page.

We — Otto, Gregor, Pawel, Dani, Sergi & Xevi — hope you like the improvements. More are on the way …

Imagine …

Posted on February 8, 2007

… if only a fraction of the value created by millions of user-generated videos and views could be channeled towards social issues, such as world hunger, a lot of money could be raised! So, we decided to challenge the Internet community to create content that can serve as a trigger, platform, channel … for donations.

Visuarios’ first challenge - Cook for the World - is about helping solve world hunger. Users upload a cooking video, then they promote it to friends and ask them to make a donation. The more videos, the more donations, the more help for needed children: we will give all donations generated by all videos to the charity Save the Children.

Here one of the first challenge videos. We encourage … hmm … we challenge everybody to participate. Start to Cook for the world!