Making its debut on the web today is Splashcast.
We mentioned the service a couple of months ago when noted writer and blogger, Marshall Kirkpatrick, joined their team.
What is SplashCast?
In a few words, SplashCast, a free service, makes it easy to syndicate and share content from disparate sources across the web on your site, blog, just about anywhere. Another plus is that SplashCast can offer a great deal of content in a small amount of space.
+ Just about any type of content can be published and syndicated. Blogs, podcasts, vlogs, text, slides, etc.
+ Registration takes about 20 seconds.
+ SplashCast terminology:
++ Each “player” displays “channel(s)” (collections).
++ View what a channel offers via a “guide.”
++ Subscribe to a channel and have it displayed where you want it (for example on your blog). When new material is added to the channel, it’s automatically updated on your page.
+ Share your own content and/or grab material from Flickr, YouTube and other sites. Easy to use interface makes getting this done a breeze.
+ Quickly and easily place your “channels” on your web site, your blog, your MySpace page. The code to place the content on other sites is dynamically generated and direct links for WordPress blogs and PageFlakes are also available.
+ Users can also subscribe to channels and be notified when updated take place.
+ Stats are also available. For example, most viewed channel, where are viewers coming, and more.
Perhaps the fastest and easiest way of getting to know SplashCast is by watching this brief overview video tour led by Marshall K. Of course, it’s also a good idea to spend some time reviewing the site on your own
It’s likely that most of the attention SplashCast gets today will be focused on the commercial aspects of the service. Viral marketing is one major example. However, because of its ease of use, SplashCast might be beneficial to the educator, student and/or librarian.
Examples:
+ An educator can gather various types of media (not only text) and place it on a page. Updating as the semester goes along.
+ A group of students (numerous distance ed possibilities too) can build multimedia pages focusing on current awareness about a topic or use SplashCast as a place to gather and share materials for a class project.
+ Librarians could use the service both internally (one page, aggregating content from various departments on a single page) or externally (perhaps to promote an upcoming speaker) or as a current awareness tool using multimedia and text.
+ One feature we would be happy to see is a “select group” viewing option. For example,
a History 101 teacher has built and is maintaining a “channel” for their students and they only want students in the current class to have access to the page.
This is not possible as of today.
Just an idea. If only students in a specific class could get access to content, then content licensed for classroom/educational might be also eligible for SplashCast posting.
Btw, a content owner CAN select to not have their content NOT reused on another channel.
Again, what we find most impressive about SplashCast is its ease of use. Yes, of course, there is a learning curve. But, the good news is that you’ll be up and running in minutes and learning as you go.
See Also: SplashCast Blog
