Rounds adds Screenr recording

Yesterday Rounds announced the ability to screencast utilizing Screenr Business for its popular Facebook Application. Now Rounds allows it’s 1,000,000+ users to screencast their video chats all from the comfort of the Rounds application.

What is Rounds?

Rounds is an interactive video chat application that is integrated with Facebook. It allows Facebook users to host video chats with their friends and networks. Check out this video for more info on Rounds:

Where does Screenr fit in?

Rounds integrated a Screenr Business recorder directly in their application, allowing users to do one-click screencasting of their video chats, desktops, or anything on their system.  Now rounds users can use the Screenr Business recorder in a variety of creative ways, from holding and recording a chapter meeting at sister fraternities, to conducting live video chat shows with the platform’s random rounds feature.

Check here for step-by-step instructions on recording directly from Rounds.

How can I integrate Screenr Business in my app?

Interested in integrating the Screenr recorder directly in your application or website? Check out Screenr Business and sign up for a Free Trial.

More screencast embedding options

A couple of weeks ago, we released our new universal player feature that allows your screencasts to play back on nearly any device when embedded on your site or blog. Thanks for your great feedback on this feature. We are loving it too!

Today we’ve updated our embed code to add two more new features:

1) You can now choose the embed code you want. Use our new universal player that works on computers, iPads, iPhones and Android devices. Or, choose our old Flash-based embed code if your site doesn’t support embedding iframes.

2) We also added the ability to easily set the size of the Screenr embed so you no longer have to manually calculate dimensions or edit the embed code.

Check out the screencast below for the details:

5 major new Screenr features and why they make Screenr even awesomer

What started as a side-project for Articulate has turned into a hugely popular service. More than a million people have enjoyed Screenr so far and today we launch five major new features that will open Screenr to an even wider audience. Check ‘em out:

Sign in with Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and more

Before today, you signed into Screenr with your Twitter account. That was great, but some users needed to sign in with other accounts. So now, you can sign into Screenr with a wide choice of accounts including: Twitter, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn or Windows Live accounts. Just remember, once you choose an account to sign in with, you’ll need to sign in with the same account in the future. (So if you were already a Screenr user before today’s update, you’ll want to continue signing in with Twitter.)

Better screencast commenting

Previously, comments on Screenr were tied to your Twitter account and forced you to tweet your comments. Users told us they often wanted to make comments without tweeting them. Now, Screenr has bulit-in commenting so your comments stay just on Screenr. And don’t worry, there’s also a separate Tweet button if you still want to tweet your comments.

Improved mobile playback with iOS and Android support

We’ve had screencast playback on iOS devices like iPhones and iPads for a long time, and now we’ve added playback on Android-based devices too. With improved mobile support, now it’s even easier to watch screencasts on the go.

Smart screencast embedding with our universal player

We’ve got this cool new universal player that’s perfect for embedding. When you embed a screencast on your site or blog, the universal player intelligently plays the right kind of video for the device viewing it. For example, if someone views your site from a phone, the universal player will serve up a phone-optimized video. If they view your site from a desktop, the universal player plays a desktop-optimized video. Just use our new embed code and you’re all set.

Several user interface and workflow refinements

Sometimes it’s the little things that make a big difference. So we’ve also improved several user interface items that make for a slicker and smoother experience. For example, now you can edit the title of one of your screencasts just by clicking the title. You can also edit your profile and avatar right on Screenr and don’t have to go to Twitter to do so. And finally, we’ve made it easier to browse long lists of screencasts with a cool feature called infinite scroll. Infinitely scroll lets you browse a long list of screencasts with no clicking, just scrolling. Give it a whirl on the public stream right now.

So that wraps up the new features in this Screenr release. We’ve loved using this version during testing and hope you enjoy it as much as we do. Can’t wait to see what you do on the new Screenr.

How @mattbrailsford is using the Screenr oEmbed

Our friend @mattbrailsford is a developer and a fan of Umbraco the Open Source CMS and Screenr. He is such a big fan of Screenr that he added support in his Umbraco Universal Media Picker for Screenr.

What is Umbraco

Umbraco is a Content Management System built on Microsoft platforms, kinda like Wordpress for Windows Servers. If you want to find out more about it, check out the Umbraco website at http://umbraco.org.

What is the Universal Media Picker

It is a package installed to Umbraco that allows users to easily embed content from a variety of different providers like Scribd, Facebook, and of course Screenr.

How he did it

Getting the users screencasts
Matt uses the RSS feed for the specified user to get a list of their recent screencasts:
http://screenr.com/User/mattbrailsford/rss

Getting the embed code automatically
Once Matt get’s the list of the screencasts for the user, he uses the Screenr oEmbed API to get the embed code fore each screencast. Find out more about Screenr’s oEmbed here.

Using all this information, Matt is able to present users a list of their Screenr screencasts so that they can quickly and easily embed them in their Umbraco sites without copying any embed code. All a user needs to do is select select their Screenr screencast in the Universal Media Picker and it gets automatically posted to their site.

The Umbraco Universal Media Picker




How to install the Umbraco Universal Media Picker

1. Download the Universal Media Picker here.
2. Watch Matt’s screencast that shows you how you can install the media picker:



View this screencast on Screenr


Got a cool use of the Screenr API

Cool, we would love to see it. Let us know about it by giving us a shout on Twitter to @Screenr.

Screenr now supports oEmbed

Screenr just made it even easier for 3rd party sites and apps to include Screenr screencasts. Today we officially announce Screenr oEmbed support!

What is Screenr oEmbed all about?

The Screenr oEmbed allows developers to programatically get the Screenr embed code for any Screenr screencast. If you have the URL to a Screenr screencast you can use it to get the embed code without copying and pasting anything, you simply provide a Screenr URL to our oEmbed API and in return you’ll get the proper embed code.

oEmbed Endpoints

Our oEmbed provides responses in both JSON and XML and can be found at the following URLs.

http://www.screenr.com/api/oembed.json?url=http://www.screenr.com/oXs

http://www.screenr.com/api/oembed.xml?url=http://www.screenr.com/oXs

All you need to do is substitute in the URL of the screencast you need the embed code for.

We also provide discovery of these URLs by providing them on each screencast page, so for example, if your app supports oEmbed it can automatically get the Screenr embed code just by knowing the screencast URL.

Example Response

JSON

{
    "type": "video",
    "version": "1.0",
    "provider_name": "Screenr",
    "provider_url": ""http://screenr.com",
    "title": "Here’s what your Screenr screencasts look like on an iPhone.",
    "author_name": "GetAdam",
    "html": "<embed src=...>"
    "width": "560",
    "height": "345"
}

XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <oembed>
    <type>video</type>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <provider_name>Screenr</provider_name>
    <provider_url>http://Screenr.com/</provider_url>
    <title>Here’s what your Screenr screencasts look like on an iPhone.</title>
    <author_name>GetAdam</author_name>  
  <html><embed src=”...></html>
    <width>560</width>
    <height>345</height>
  </oembed>

It’s as simple as that! If you have any questions about the Screenr oEmbed support, or if you got a cool app or website that uses the Screenr oEmbed we would love to hear about it, so why not let us know about it by shouting at us on Twitter at @Screenr or posting a question on community.screenr.com.

To learn more about oEmbed, check out the spec at http://www.oembed.com/