Gather round kids it's story time ...

Once upon a time in a land not so far away there lived a girl, a girl who loved to create. One day she happened upon a website by the name of Overlay.TV, and her creative skills flourished. She created Overlay after Overlay, adding clipart, widgets and products to every one. Her favorite thing by far though was to find just the right video to use, and create just the right products to add to her Overlays (and maybe make a little money on the side, but I'll save that story for another day). She would search high and low for the perfect video and the perfect products to add to her Overlays, everything from clothing to iTunes, and manually paste in the URLs. But as time went on, the girl who loved to create found that she was so good and so fast at creating Overlays, that to manually add the URLs every time just wasn't fast enough. "There must be an easier way," thought the girl, who loved to create. "If only there was a tool that lived in my browser that I could call upon to harvest products and grab videos quickly and easily, without having to leave the site I'm on every time." What was a damsel in creative distress to do?

One day, while admiring her proverbial garden of Overlays, she found the answer she was looking for right there on her Overlay.TV MY PAGE. It was called a Bookmarklet, and did everything she wanted and more. It lived in her browser, it harvested products quickly and easily, and gave her the ability to start creating Overlays on videos right from their site, with just one click of a button.

Now, the girl who loves to create uses her Bookmarklet whenever she wants and so can you. Install your own Bookmarklet  and use it to create products and grab videos to Overlay. Read ahead to find out how to use the Bookmarklet and live happily ever after ... (more...)

Bookmarklet · Overlay.TV · overlays · Platform · products · tips · tool · tricks · videos

When we launched the first public version of our site what seems like a lifetime ago, we had a clear goal in mind - to create a platform that would allow everyone to create interactive video that could be tied easily to online retailers. After spending most of the winter flying from city to city meeting video producers and podcasters in person, we heard about ways to improve the service, features to add, and new (and sometimes surprising) ways that they wanted to use the service.

It takes a village to raise a child, and a community to build a business. For over a year, we’ve nurtured Overlay.TV, and as CEO, it’s a proud moment to leave the “beta” moniker behind, and send Overlay.TV out into the world with our general public release.

Of course, creating a great experience for our users will always be our core goal - a never ending process of improvement. We have big plans for future releases, but even though we’ve launched 1.0, we’ll continue to listen to the requests and the insights of our users and continue building Overlay.TV into the best interactive video solution available for users and clients alike. In many ways, we will continue to be always in beta.

So, as we keep moving forward, I want to thank the loyal community of videobloggers, musicians, producers and advertisers that helped us get Overlay.TV to where it is today, our users who helped us break the system, only to put it back together and try again, and of course, the amazing team here at the Overlay offices who made this a reality.

As we continue into the future, I’m sure we’ll have many missteps and successes, and I hope that all of you will be a part of the journey.

advertisers · CEO · community · create · features · general public release · launch · Overlay.TV · producers · rob lane · team · videobloggers

"Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"

Okay, that was just an excuse to throw that line in, because that's all I heard, well variations of it anyway, anytime anyone in the office brought up the development of our badge widget. I'm pleased to announce that we actually have badges, and they don't stink. "What is a badge?" you ask. Well, it's a pretty awesome little tool that can be embedded on your blog or website to facilitate easy sharing of Overlays that you like, without having to embed each Overlay individually. Your badge could show your own Overlays, Overlays from a specific user, most recent Overlays, most creative, and so on. Below is my own badge that shows my three most recent Overlays, that will update as I add more. To embed my badge simply click "Get It!" and copy the embed code.

To grab a badge from our site, go to whatever Overlay.TV section or user you would like to feature and click on the "GET BADGE" icon, copy the embed code, and paste it on your own blog or website.

badges · blogs · Overlay.TV · tools · Treasure of the Sierra Madre · widgets

One of the coolest features of Overlay.TV is the ability to use the bookmarklet (grab it from your MyPage) to create Overlays on videos in place and then save it to Overlay.TV and share it right from there to your blog.

What most bloggers don't know is that once you have done that you can actually fine tine or edit the Overlay in place on your blog. Try it using these four easy steps.

1. Go to YouTube and find one of your videos and select the Overlay.TV Bookmarklet
2. When the editor opens add a simple widget like Link and give it some information to work with (URL, title, image)
3. Save the Overlay and then share it to your blog by using the Share button on the lower right of the editor, picking your size and copying/pasting the code into your blog.
4. Preview or view your blog and hit Edit on the Overlay.TV player.

I find this particularly useful because I can quickly assemble the basic Overlay while writing the blog post and then fine tune the Overlay in place on the blog as I work. I did a quick example here on CarpVillage.com, and the entire process from shooting the interview through to editing the Overlay on my blog took about 35 minutes (I did not edit or optimize the video at all).

blog · blogger · edit · Overlay.TV · share · workflow

Overlay.TV has hooked up with GetSatisfaction to provide our users with instant access to members of our team. Start a discussion, fix a problem, show us something interesting, or even help other users.

How can we help you?

bugs · getsatisfaction · issues · Overlay.TV · overlays · problems

Rob Lane, CEO of Overlay.TV explains the story behind Overlay.TV, in an Overlay.

Overlay.TV · rob lane

Since we launched the first Overlay.TV beta back in February this year, we have been working on one key deliverable - the final integration of all our affiliates and the billing and payment system that allows Overlay.TV creators to benefit from affiliate commissions for products they place in Overlays.

While we are still in beta, this feature is now live. If you add products using the product widget, and share that video with your friends, fans and family you can now extract your share of the affiliate commissions from your Overlay.TV Account.

For more information on this feature, go the Learn section, and click on Make Money.

affiliate · learn · money · Overlay.TV · payment · products · widget

You're right. Things have changed around here at Overlay.TV. This blog for example, looks different. And this post marks the first time we have had enough time to post since the end of April. Why, you ask, has it taken so long to post? It has taken this long because our small team has been working heads down to update Overlay.TV - the website, the player, the widgets and more are all updated now, and this is the last phase of our beta - 0.9 - before we launch our GA version soon!

We will definitely be blogging a lot more now. We will also be working pretty hard to get to the final production version ready.

For now take a run through the new site - let us know if you have any issues on our new GetSatisfaction site. And be sure to give us any suggestions, feedback, ideas or kudos in the comments here.

Thanks for sticking with us and enjoy the new site!

0.9 · blog · new site · overlay · Overlay.TV · widgets