If you’re a PortalPanel user, you probably noticed that we took a little break from this blog and social media. No, we didn’t make a million off of the free web bookmarking application and retire to Florida or Hawaii. Instead, we spent entire April planning and coding. Hope you like what you see.

We’ll talk about all the features and additions in the coming posts. Today, I’d like to kick off the series of posts with the most exciting, most useful and arguably coolest feature to date: video bookmarking.

This feature is part of smart link recognition, which is a fancy term of saying that PortalPanel can now distinguish between a link to your favorite news website and a link to your favorite band’s video on YouTube or Vimeo.

What’s so smart about it and why we call it a revolution? Because we’re crazy enough to believe that we’re on to something that might as well revolutionize (in our little two cent way) how people consume and share videos. And here’s why (a hint: it has something to do with bookmarking).

Our users are now able to bookmark and play YouTube and Vimeo videos on their PortalPanel account. In addition, they can share the videos on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn directly from the same window without having to go back to YouTube or Vimeo. This is huge!

Let’s say you found a video of your favorite band playing in a live show. You know very well that no live performance is the same and that you like some more than others. Also, the video quality usually differs dramatically. The same song recorded by a drunken kind with his cell phone is not the same as the entire concert recorded with multiple professional cameras. Once you find the rendition you enjoy the most, you’d like to watch it at a later time, wouldn’t you? You would like to bookmark it… Here you go. Bookmark it. Save it. Share it.

Once you save the link to a YouTube or Vimeo video, click on its thumbnail. This will open a longer, redesigned window. On the left-hand side, you’ll see your video with the magical ‘play’ symbol. Voila! You can play the video, read your notes about it, and share it with your friends on social media websites. You can even go to a full screen mode without having to visit YouTube or Vimeo first.

Next time you want to watch the same video, you don’t have to go fishing on YouTube or Vimeo in order to find your favorite version of your favorite song; or a concert; or a stand-up performance. Go straight to your PortalPanel account and enjoy your video bookmarks.

The coolest thing about it… all your bookmarks are in one place. Your favorite news websites, the links to your study or work-related stuff, occasional web finds that are hard to categorize, and, of course, the never-ending playlist of funny cats, cute babies, and awesome bands, courtesy of YouTube, Vimeo, and PortalPanel.  

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An update: 04/27/2013

There's another benefit of bookmarking your videos on PortalPanel: you can play them ads free. There are no guarantees this will last forever, but at the time of this post, all videos that we tested played ads free on PortalPanel even though they contained ads when played back on YouTube. Consider it a bonus and enjoy it while it lasts.

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