Google is in high-speed pursuit now of new functionality for YouTube.  Google has acquired one of my favourites: Omnisio, a US company offering a very smart and nicely designed video service. Omnisio allows you to share compilations of different videos in a simple way, but their most interesting service is a video player with embedded user comments, tagging and a very nice synchronized slide timeline.

See this example, a speech by Paul Graham, entrepreneur and founder of the US incubator Y Combinator, (who backed Omnisio):

I really like the divided video window with the slides to the left and the live video to the right, with the slide timeline at the bottom, it is intuitive that you can navigate by clicking in the time line. This is the best user interface I have seen for speeches!

The Omnisio founders say this about being integrated with YouTube/Google:
“We believe we’ve only scratched the surface in terms of what’s possible with online video, and we are really looking forward to taking the video viewing — and creating — experience to the next level.”

YouTube says this about acquiring Omnisio:
“…having this kind of talent at YouTube should help us further explore ways to enhance your YouTube experience.”

Indeed! As I have said before: we are only at the beginning of a marvellous online video development!

Henrik

PS. Google and I seem to have the same nose for interesting internet-based applications

• In the summer of  2005 I tested the brand new YouTube video service and thought that it was going to become a big hit since it was so easy to use. YouTube was acquired by Google in Nov 2006.
• I started using an online word processor app called Writely in august 2005, they were acquired by Google in March 2006 and turned into Google Documents, which I have been using heavily ever since.
• Jaiku is a Finnish microblogging system that I am fond of since meeting the brilliant co-founder, Jyri Engeström at a conference in Stockholm in Nov 2006. Jaiku was acquired by Google in Oct 2007.
• In May 2008 Omnisio launched their app for synching slides with video presentations, I loved it immediately for its beautiful and intuitive interface and smart annotation tools. Well, Google acquired them on July 30, 2008…