Welcome to the new and improved Overlay.TV. Over the past couple of weeks our team has been diligently working away to give our site a new facelift. Our goal for the re-design, based in part on community feedback, was to make information more accessible for people with business and development interests, while still maintaining the UGC aspects of our site.

The hompage now has three options to choose from: Creators, Business and Developers with each of these sections providing more information specific to your needs, including features and benefits, demos, downloadable PDFs and contact info.  There is also a promo video explaining what we do and showcases how clickable video can enhance your audience's viewing pleasure.  As always we welcome your thoughts and feedback regarding our site changes and encourage you to leave them here or on our official Twitter page @OverlayTV.

Ahhhh ... now that's refreshing!

Special Thanks to The Anybody for graciously allowing Overlay.TV to use their music for our promo video.

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As Shannon had posted last week, the gang here at Overlay.TV is headed off to SXSW in Austin, Texas today. Shannon also encouraged y'all (Texas style!) to drop by our Platinum Booth during Interactive for a visit, and that we'll have tons of freebies and give-aways and, on the final day, the best thing of all - FREE BEER! What Shannon forgot to mention was that if you do swing by our booth (located at station 317/416 by the way ) you'll also have the opportunity to get laid ... *ahem* I mean get Overlayed. What does this mean exactly? Well I think that y'all will just have to c'mon down to our booth and find out for yourselves We'll be posting more once were down Austin way, so stay tuned for updates. Soon you’ll be able to tell all your friends - I GOT OVERLAYED @ SXSW!
For now, please sit back and enjoy the Overlay below:

beer · I Got Overlayed @ SXSW · Interactive · overlays · SXSW

Overlay.TV partner Kidz Bop is ready to let it rock! Kidz Bop users can now create their very own karaoke version of their favorite songs, including Kidz Bop's version of Let it Rock and Selena Gomez's pop hit Tell Me Something I Don't Know from the soundtrack to her movie 'Another Cinderella Story.' KidzBop had been thinking of implementing an interactive karaoke widget for some time, and when they saw the massive popularity of Jonas Brothers Overlay Vocal Booth, they were convinced. Like the JB booth, kids sing along to lyrics Overlayed in the music video, but this time their sing along will appear right inside the video itself.

And like all things Kidz Bop it's super simple for kids to create. Just head over to the Kidz Bop Karaoke Video Maker become a Kidz Bop member, if you haven't already done so, agree to the rules of play, pick your song and get ready to ROCK! Videos are moderated daily and kids can share them with their friends and family. And super awesome submissions have the chance to become the Featured Karaoke Video of the day. Get Rockin'!

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Contribution. Sharing. Interests. Passion. Talent

The new faces of social media are sharing their passion and talent in forums that make the seemingly impossible possible. How do you go beyond words to express your love of something? How do you connect your contributions to those from people in over 100 countries simultaneously? How do we obfuscate technology and deliver community experiences that create engagement levels never before seen and at the same time give people a reason to stay up late, practice their potential and ultimately share this with the world?

We do it by delivering an experience that resists the urge to describe itself, and instead offer a single point of entry and action (similar to the iPod 'wheel' or the Google Search button) that allows for a common and shared experience that is immediately accessible - in this case "Create Your Own".

I give you first exhibit A - the new faces of social media - and if you click on any one of them (below) you will see what they shared just minutes or hours ago at the Jonas Brothers Vocal Booth. Forget the technology for a minute and focus on what was going through the minds of these very passionate community members from all around the world as they sang along with their favorite boy band, crush in, and hearts out.

Consider a few things as you ponder this - this wall of faces represents a very small 1-2% of the actual tens of thousands of participants who engaged in the experience. Beyond the bravery to share their version of a song sung by their heroes with their heroes and thousands of fans who are tuning in to watch the versions (many visitors now watch as many as 20 or more of the videos) they also overcame network, technology, bandwidth and hardware issues that would daunt most of the leaders in this space that are more than twice the age of our contributors here. It is one thing to soapbox, but it is indeed quite another level of sharing to sing when you are up on it.

These days we too often focus on the why or the how and not the what of social media. And when we think about the who, it would be great to focus on who really benefits from all the work, theory, technology and effort that goes into building great experiences.

These are a few of the new faces of social media. As a parent we can be proud of our children safely sharing their talent and passion with the world at large, and in my very humbled opinion they are worthy of nothing less than a standing ovation of heartfelt applause for their considerable effort and passion.

(reposted from http://bitpakkit.com )

experiences · faces · Jonas Brothers · Overlay.TV · sing · social media · technology · Video · youth

No, but a player can. We have made some slight, yet significant changes to our player recently, and I thought I'd take a moment to share with you all exactly what is new and different.

1. We have branded our player. It's a subtle inclusion, but an important one. It means not only do people know it's our player, it is also a way back to our site just by clicking on it, no matter where it is embedded.

2. We have put our chat tool right in the player. Our previous version of the chat tool was as a widget that you had to add to your Overlay, until some bright idealist said "hey why not just always have it as an option in the player?" Now you can chat in any Overlay you watch, or create. Smart.

3. The player is now a study in grey. We had splashed some red in the previous version, but felt that shades of grey would make it that much more complimentary to any site it's embedded on.

4. What was previously know as the EDIT tab, is now a CREATE tab. Why? Because we want you to use your imagination and create stuff, not just edit it. And the tab to turn off the targets in an Overlay is now known as HIDE.

Et voilà! Our new and improved player. Oh and there's some stuff inside the player that ain't so bad either ...

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MTV2's self described "best in alternative and indie music" site Subterranean, kicked off it's live blogging from the CMJ Music Marathon, by writing a bit about their booth neighbours Overlay.TV. They talked with our CMJ booth babes, Keith and Faisal, about our tool and even got them to dish on few secrets ... [MORE]

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I will let the video below do the talking. Feel free to turn the Overlay off using the second button on the top left, but I propose that if product placement is going to be integrated into the storyline of a video then the advertiser should be able to assert that the video/product be clickable.

I love Black Eyed Peas, and I love this video - so I added a few links to the various CDs that I could find with Overlay.TV affiliate partners. Feel free to edit this video, share it, or add the products yourself so you can collect a commission when someone clicks on the products.

After all, RIM probably didn't know we were going to do this - we all might as well cash in!Neilsen has recently released their Product Placement stats. Here are the top dogs:

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