Note: I’m getting word that people with Hotmail accounts are having a hard time registering with PikSpot. It appears to be a problem with Hotmail not delivering the mail. There is not much I can do about that, except suggest you get a Gmail account. 
I am very pleased to unveil a new astronomy community: AstronomyBuzz!
AstronomyBuzz is a little bit different than any other astronomy community before. For example, the BA blog is a community– I post something, and folks can comment. The BAUT forum is a community– people can post, start new topics, attach pictures, and so on. Even YouTube is a community for astronomy, if you search on astronomy videos (though that’s clunky).
AstronomyBuzz is all these things, and more. If you join (it’s free), you can post something like it’s your own blog– did you see a bright meteor, or read a cool bit of space news? Post about it! But this is more than text: it’s multimedia. You can upload a video (like I have with Q and BA), a picture, or an audio clip. So this is like a combination of a blog, board, and YouTube. Pretty cool.
Here’s a guy who can introduce you (click the green play button on the lower left):
I’ll be posting here pretty often (at the moment I put up copies of some recent blog posts from here, just to get it rolling), but I need you! It’s a community, see?
AstronomyBuzz is one community out of many powered by new software called PikSpot. It allows you to do a lot more than just give feedback, or comment on someone’s blog. If someone posts something you like, you can embed that content on your own site, blog, or whatever! That’s what I did with my intro video above, and for another example, a video news podcast called Netscoop has an excellent introduction to UnDoTV, another PikSpot group (created by my friend Chris Pirillo and tech guru Leo Laporte). I can embed it here (the part about UnDoTV starts at 4 minutes in):
The whole player gets embedded, and the video is a bit small, but by going to the UnDoTV site you can see it bigger (in the embedded player, there is a link where it says "Click here to visit website" that’ll take you there) but if you click the red icon in the lower right corner of the player the video will go fullscreen inside the player. Take a look at the embedded player– it has lots of features that allow you to vote on the clip (or text or whatever), or look at other things submitted by that person, or leave your own comment.
I think of this as a useful version of YouTube — their player is awful, and this one is pretty slick. You can actually scroll around the video, go to specific clips, and much more.
I think this is a pretty amazing setup, and I hope you’ll agree. I know that new things can seem daunting, but the best thing to do is simply go to AstronomyBuzz and play around. I have a few posts there. If you want to see another community with a lot more posts, try UnDoTV (I’ve posted there many times, and I even have something in the Top Ten!).
AstronomyBuzz and the other PikSpot groups are in public beta, which means they work but we want people to check them out and let us know what you think. The software developers are very eager to improve this product, so get in there and take a look!
April 26th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
And I thought you wanted to spend all your time on writing the new book.
Cool place, looks promising.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Ouch, if only “pik” wasn’t a rude word in danish.. Means the same as the rude word starting with “d” it rhymes with in english..
April 27th, 2007 at 4:34 am
I made an account, but it’s not letting me log in. I used the lost password thing, but the e-mail hasn’t come, so I think it may have sent some confirmation e-mail when I registered, and for some reason my e-mail server is dropping it.
April 27th, 2007 at 6:44 am
OOOooOOooOOoohhh!! interesting!
BA:”The whole player gets embedded, and the video is a bit small, but by going to the UnDoTV site you can see it bigger (in the embedded player, there is a link where it says “Click here to visit website” that’ll take you there).”
That was my only issue with this, but actually, you can click the red square with the white arrow in it on the bottom right hand side, and it makes the video as big as it is in the website. I think it’s great.
April 27th, 2007 at 7:37 am
MKR: I had problems with Safari, but not with Firefox. Try again.
About AstronomyBuzz. It’s a good initiative, but IMHO the interface of PikSpot is somewhat ugly, a bit complex and heavy (i.e. heavily-dependent of Flash). It’s like Digg but with all the content hosted. The good thing about Digg-like system is the openness: the contents are always in external services (YouTube, Flickr, Blogger, MySpace or whatever site). I’m not sure if this self-referenced site is a better solution for communities, but I think Digg is a tested model. BTW, there are a number of free (open source) Digg clones out there that could be used. Anyway, it’s refereshing to finally see some Web 2.0 astronomy projects. Congrats.
April 27th, 2007 at 8:27 am
To erlando: You beat me to it…
Instead I will then tell you of a lotto game in Australia called “slikpik” (”slik” means “lick” or “candy” in Danish).
April 27th, 2007 at 11:38 am
Wow, unfortunate name. Phil, with all due respect, can I suggest a more professional backdrop for your video? Maybe a big space poster on a screen behin you? Cheers for all your work.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
[...] The Bad Astronomer has just launched a really cool new community website called AstronomyBuzz. Designed as a new community for astronomy enthusiasts, it offers members a way to publish, share and embed content related to astronomy. [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I really liked the name. It describles perfectly what the site is about, it’s easy to say and spell, and it’s spelled close to my domain name. What’s not to like?
Nice work Phil, I hope this site really takes off, I know I intend to become a big contributor. YouTube is just too clunky. I thought about using UndoTV instead, but I’d much rather contribute to a community designed for astronomy.
Now, if I can just finish the three videos on my iMovie folder…
April 27th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
[...] The Bad Astronomer has just launched a really cool new community website called AstronomyBuzz. Designed as a new community for astronomy enthusiasts, it offers members a way to publish, share and embed content related to astronomy. [...]
April 27th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Cool. I registered and was checking it out. I took a brief pause to comment here.
Thanks, BA.