Creative professionals: put video on your LinkedIn profile

UPDATE: See below for how to put video on your profile with Box.net.

With the launch of the LinkedIn Applications platform, creative professionals can finally embed video on their LinkedIn profiles. Whether you're an artist, graphic designer, 3D animator, producer, filmmaker, telejournalist or actor, you need video to visually illustrate your creative accomplishments. It's one of the most common requests I've received when lecturing on LinkedIn. And now you can do it with Google Presentations or Box.net.

The process is simple: use Google Docs to create a presentation and embed a YouTube video in the presentation. Then install the Google Presentation app on LinkedIn and select that presentation to be displayed on your profile. With this solution, people can watch YouTube videos right on your profile. If you prefer to have a list of video files they can download, or a video not on YouTube, you can use the Box.net application to put a fileshare folder on your profile too.

UPDATE: What the demo below doesn't cover is Box.net's excellent capacity to play Flash video right on your LinkedIn profile. So while Google Presentation requires you to embed YouTube into a presentation, Box.net simply requires you to covert the video into Flash format (.flv) and drop it into your profile folder.
See my LinkedIn profile for an example - when you click on the LinkedIn Apps video, it loads and plays because it is in the .flv format. Whereas if you click on the LinkedIn Cannes video, it downloads, because it's in the .mp4 format. Here's a simple step-by-step:

1. Install the Box.net app on LinkedIn
2. Click on the folder labeled "Profile folder"
3. Click on the blue arrow and select "Upload"
4. Select a .flv/Flash video file from your computer

Once it's uploaded, anyone can view the video from your profile.

LinkedIn's application platform video series

So I've been mighty busy with lots of video editing work, and tonight I can finally showcase what I've been up to. For tonight's release of the LinkedIn Application platform, I produced demo videos for Amazon, Google, Typepad, Wordpress, Huddle, Box.net, Slideshare, TripIt, and two others created by LinkedIn. I also cut a sizzle reel showcasing all of them to entice you into their app-itude:

TechCrunch has aggregated all the demos together on their post, and you can read more from CNet, Newsweek, VentureBeat, Reuters, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Also, the corporate blogs of LinkedIn, Wordpress, Huddle, Slideshare, Box.net, Typepad and TripIt have covered the app launch — expect much more fuss made of it in the next 24 hours and beyond...

And btw, the apps are great. Log on to LinkedIn and start using them. So far, my favorites are Box, TripIt and CompanyBuzz, but I'll be trying out the others soon enough.

Craigslist barter of the day: classic car for cemetery plot

If the economy is literally killing you, Jeff in Whittier, California has a proposition:

AN OFFER TO DIE FOR!!!

I'm looking for a classic car 1959 thru 1973 ... I have cemetery property located at Rose Hills Memorial Park ... Are you starting to get the picture here?

I'll trade twice the valued amount of your classic in cemetery property!

... Hard times render creative times, and would'nt you like to double your money on that classic out in the driveway? I'm not going to be to picky here, but would really prefer a Chevy Corvair ...

Trading the family plot for a Corvair: a new economic low? Defying death with consumer lust? Or maybe this guy actually just wants a Corvair to be buried in. Then again, if you ask Ralph Nader, a Corvair and a cemetery plot are pretty much the same thing.

The Dance Party enforce a groove embargo

My old friends from Washington, DC, The Dance Party, have redesigned their MySpace page and are enforcing the rarely used groove embargo: they've only got one track on their profile. 

"Sasha Don't Sleep" easily proves The Dance Party is the best band of the '80s, despite being a modern act. The adrenaline, the fist-pumping, the synthology. They're hyper-attuned to the mandate to move one's body to the insistent party beat. If you've ever been to their shows, you know that the mandate cannot be rebuffed. The fact that they regularly sell out the nation's best venue, the 9:30 Club, should sum it up. They play New York City this Friday night, followed by Halloween in Baltimore. If ever there were a party in Baltimore, surely it's The Dance Party on Halloween.

Go dig their latest track - hopefully a full album will emerge from this, hopefully on the well-deserved major label, hopefully with a million-dollar advance. If we're throwing back to the '80s, it's only fair.  

I dreamt of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg

A series of ongoing celebrity encounters that happen, literally, in my dreams.

Right about the time Microsoft launched the Seinfeld ads, but before they canceled them, I dreamed that I walked into a diner around lunchtime. There, lunching at the counter were Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. As opposed to my other dreams, where I'm old friends with distinguished leaders, I didn't know either of them. They were just there, having sandwiches at the counter. I planned not to bother them, but as I passed the counter, Zuckerberg excused himself, so I stopped and mentioned to Gates that I loved him in the Seinfeld ads. Moreso than Seinfeld, really. 

Not too long later, I got this on LinkedIn:

 FIN

See also:

I dreamt of Beck and Boris Karloff
I dreamt of Neil Young and Bob Dylan
I dreamt of Chico Marx and Dave Chappelle