I’ve released a minor upgrade to my Simple URL Shortener WordPress plugin.

I’ve now added v.gd as a service and removed bit.ly (this is bit.ly without an API key – you can still shorten with bit.ly using a username and key).

All details are on on the dedicated plugin page.

Version 1.4 of my Simple PayPal Donate WordPress plugin has been released. It introduces a shortcode and a direct link option, the latter returning a URL to link directly to your donation page rather than displaying the PayPal supplied image.

All details are on the dedicated plugin page.

Yesterday I announced that my YouTube Embed WordPress plugin would include EmbedPlus. But what exactly is it?

First of all, let me explain YouTube embedding.

If you have your own website or blog chances are that you’ve uploaded or seen a video that you’d really like to add to your site.

Well, YouTube, via an “Embed” button next to the video, provide the code you need to do this. You can also switch on and off different options to configure exactly how you’d like it to appear.

What you end up with is a video on your site that offers the same options as it would have on the YouTube site.

Step forward EmbedPlus – they provide alternative embedding code that will add extra functionality to the resulting video. To achieve this the YouTube video is converted to Flash and delivered via EmbedPlus themselves – if the viewers device doesn’t support Flash then EmbedPlus will fall back to the standard YouTube embed code.

The additional options that EmbedPlus adds includes…

• Instant Replay – replay an event soon after it happens.
• Slow Motion – instantly watch videos at a slower rate to more clearly see what happens.
• Movable Zoom – added accessibility. Dynamically magnifies the area you point over. Use it to get a close look at objects, writing, and things like moving athletes.
• Crop – cut/splice/chop only the particularly interesting part of a video to show during playback.
• Scene Skipping – like DVD chapter buttons, click these to skip to marked times.
• Real-time Reactions – enable this button to show viewers the latest Internet reactions, right inside the player

If all of this wasn’t enough they now have a great new feature named Sweet Spot Marking. If you don’t use the Scene Skipping function this will create markers in the video based on social references. In other words they automatically analyse discussions about the video and mark positions in the video that people are talking about.

To demonstrate this functionality, below are 2 videos. The first uses the standard YouTube embedding and the latter uses EmbedPlus.

EmbedPlus is still a “work in progress” however, and they are promising further features soon. They’d be really interested in feedback so please feel free to contact them.