Gift Ideas – 30 Bucks – Animoto!

UPDATE: Go to The Thinking Blog and vote for Wordout!
Just click the link above and it will take you to the voting page. It’s free and it will really help me out! No registration, no email required, just your vote for Wordout, Entry #33!
To see the entire RuffPC Video Parade by Wordout, click this link!

Visual Energy

Check out Angela Hayden’s site. I’m a big fan of hers, and I go there nearly every day. On Sunday, she posted an article about Animoto, a nifty little program that combines your pictures with music you choose and then auto-magically creates a music-video styled montage. You can see one of hers right there on her blog. Click on the link above and check it out, it’s only 30 seconds.
(Then hit your Back button and come back here, okay? Read the rest of this…)

So what makes Animoto so professionally slick? The guys at Animoto have the background and the award winning credits to make this happen. From the Animoto site:

“Animoto Productions is a bunch of techies and film/tv producers who decided to lock themselves in a room together and nerd out.

Credits include: The 2003 Video Music Awards (MTV); 2004 Video Music Awards (MTV); Shelter From The Storm: Katrina Benefit (ABC, NBC, CBS); The Showbiz Show with David Spade (Comedy Central); Viva La Bam (MTV); Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn (Comedy Central); Crank Yankers (Comedy Central); Stankervision (MTV2); Worlds Aids Day Concert (MTV); Need For Speed (MTV2); The Big In ’06 Awards (VH1); Dr. Keith Albow (Warner Brothers); The Daytime Emmy Awards Pre-Show (ABC); The Constitution (ABC); Alanis Morissette Concert (Viacom); Peter Jennings: The Kennedy Assassination – Beyond Conspiracy (ABC); Peter Jennings: UFOs – Seeing Is Believing (ABC); Steep: A Documentary of Extreme Skiing (The Documentary Group).

Their first release is Animoto, a web application that automatically generates professionally produced videos using their own patent-pending technology and high-end motion design. Each video is a fully customized orchestration of user-selected images and music. Produced on a widescreen format, Animoto videos have the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.”

Animoto is incredibly easy to use. Everything is done through a simple interface that looks like this:

After you upload your images, you can drag them around and re-arrange them until you have just what you want.Then click “continue” and add your music or choose from some selections they already have.

Here is something I did in about 10 minutes, using photos from the article(go read it!) I posted awhile back on the free laptop giveaway sponsored by The Thinking Blog and RuffPC. They’re giving away a great laptop and all you have to do is write about it! (Maybe now I’ll win that new laptop I’ve been dreaming about. Then I would be in control of the entire galaxy!).


With A RuffPC Laptop, I Could Rule The Galaxy!

Animoto is free, as long as you plan to make only short (30 seconds) videos. But for just 30 bucks you can make videos with no size limit at all, for an entire year. If you know someone who is really into their photos (you know somebody like that?) and has a bit of a creative mind, this will definitely put a smile on their face, over and over. Isn’t that what we all want?

It’s easy to give Animoto. Just click this link, and fill out the form. Then watch for the smiles…

I am Jon, and somebody I know is getting Animoto!(and maybe a free RuffPC!)

.this article edited: added RuffPC video