Creating Easy Video Interviews Using Oovoo Software Tool

Video is all the rage at the moment in the blog world so it shouldn’t really surprise me when someone asks to do a video interview. The surprising thing though is unlike a normal video interview where someone points a camera at your face, this video interview took place hundreds of miles apart using a tool I had not seen before, Oovoo.

Oovoo is meant to be a video conferencing tool. You can also send contacts video messages, like an email but in video. Pretty neat.

But why is this newsworthy or different? Yes it has a strange name, but most startups these days seem to go for odd names don’t they?

What the software does have to set it apart, as well as the standard video conferencing features that you would expect, is have a built in recording feature. Perfect for no-brainer interviews.

Installing on Windows or Mac is easy. On my Mac it detected my Macbook webcam right away. It only took a few seconds to work out how to enable my headset rather than the internal speaker.

Only speed-bump was I had to reboot to get it to realize my webcam wasn’t in use. It thought some other application had hold of it and would not release it. Bug or my machine? Who knows.

It did work very well after that. You can see the result here. Please ignore my communication skills and admire the software, heh. You might learn something about using social media for tourist industry I guess too.

As you can see, both participants are displayed side by side, and apparently you can have up to 6 people on the call at once.

That’s pretty good taking into account the bandwidth use and considering how much some audio-only conference lines cost. For a free service it is absolutely wonderful.

Try it out, it is very cool.

Really Oovoo makes it all very easy. Only challenge is remembering to dress up and get your hair right so you are ready for your close up ;)

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Create an Online Survey for Free With Google Docs

In the past if you wanted to put together a quick survey you have either had to cobble together complicated tools, used an online service that was expensive or incomplete, or paid an external body to get the job done for you.

Now Google is going after yet another slice of the online tool pie with Google Docs. Is there a market they don’t want to own?

I’m not complaining, this is pretty cool.

To create a survey you simply add a new form.

You can add any number of fields, from multiple choice to essay style text boxes. When you are happy with your form you can either enter the data your self or share with others. It’s even possible to share as a web page that you embed in your own site.

As answers come in you can see the whole detail in spreadsheet format. Of course you can save and export this data for use in your own Excel or Database work if you so wish. I expect stats nuts will want to use true statistic applications, but for my purposes the best is …

… yup, it even summarizes the survey for you with pie charts and everything. For the math-challenged like me, this is a dream.

Not a dollar spent, and takes all of 5 minutes to do. Wonderful. I even might have to start taking back all the bad things I have said about Google lately ….. nah ;)