clearspring - the widget network.

YouTube has recently released a whole slew of new APIs which really moves them from just being an online video destination site to an online video platform. For example, we now have access to customize the YouTube player to make it do new and interesting things.

So… yesterday, our VP of Product Joel Pulliam laid down the challenge to our developers. Steak dinner at Morton’s for the first person who could integrate Launchpad Advanced with the YouTube player user interface.

With the YouTube and Clearspring together, the user has greater power and ease to share the video with family and friends. Videos also have the potential to be seen by a wider audience.

Clay Yount, one of our ninja Flash developers on our studio team, won the challenge. Just click on the asterisk button in the player of the video below and you’ll see the familiar Clearspring share menu. This menu is embeded in the player, so it travels with the player as it’s spread.

Dylan Greene, one of our ninja JavaScript programmers, put together this implementation using Launchpad On-Page. When you press pause or the YouTube button, the share menu is placed on top of the video. This menu stays on the page and doesn’t travel with the player.

PS – Yes, we’re big fans of the video game Portal. smile

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 10:01 am by justin and is filed under clearspring, widgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.