The idea of software as a service (SAAS) isn’t really new these days as more and more applications and services are delivered via the web and via a subscription model. Wikipedia defines SAAS as the following:

Software as a Service (SaaS, typically pronounced ’sass’) is a model of software deployment whereby a provider licenses an application to customers for use as a service on demand. SaaS software vendors may host the application on their own web servers or download the application to the consumer device, disabling it after use or after the on-demand contract expires.

The examples I illustrate above in the graphic (Dropbox, Vimeo, Skype, Evernote, Pandora, flickr) are just some of the services that I’m currently a happy user of, but have not upgraded to the premium versions of each across the board.

If I upgraded to the non-free subscription for each of the services above, I’d be looking at enough of an expense that I’d need to really start paying attention to it on the monthly budget. However, with all of these services, the value could be very well worth the expense over the long-run.

How many SAAS options are you currently subscribed to with this type of service?

Post from: EveryJoe

Software Can Be An Expensive Service

Image: TheFlip.com

It’s absolutely perfect for this kind of stuff and came in really handy today. I was able to quickly get clips of each of his team members batting that I’m sure their families will enjoy seeing once I get them posted to Vimeo, my preferred online sharing location for video. The quality is just so much better than what you get on YouTube.

The Flip is just handy for pulling out of your pocket and grabbing a quick video of something you’d like to remember or share with others. In my opinion it’s even handier than my digital camera most of the time. It’s almost single button operation allows you to quickly pull it out, turn it on and almost immediately start recording.

One area I think it could be improved on though is the ability to choose more locations to upload your video from the Flip software you use to manage the files. Vimeo isn’t one of the locations currently specified, so I have to do stuff a bit manually.

Post from: EveryJoe

Sunny Days, Baseball and The Flip Camera

In addition to HD content, Vimeo is trying to get in on the social networking market: it’s trying to put the “sharing” in “video sharing”. For example, you can subscribe to other people’s HD content, much like you might subscribe to people’s blogs on RSS. It imports your contact information to assist you in finding content you might like, and has various other community interaction options. If you want social abilities beyond other video sharing sites’ “Others are also viewing …” kind of features, check it out.

Putting back on my HD junkie hat: overall, the video quality on there is pretty great. I was getting download rates at 10 Mbps downloading from the site, which is probably due to the fact that they use Amazon S3 for their back-end.

However, I was a bit disappointed with their site’s responsiveness: moving from page to page was sluggish, and really dragged down my experience. With the fresh Web 2.0 interface, I typically expect snappiness and quick responses. This is a bit disappointing considering the high-quality video streaming. Another small gripe is that there never seemed to be more than a handful of videos on any page: looking for videos seemed to involve lots of browsing between pages. Normally, this wouldn’t be so bad, but the site being sluggish made this a bit much.

Overall, I think anyone who wants to share HD video on the Internet, or is interested in a more social video experience, should take a look at what Vimeo has to offer.

Post from: EveryJoe

Vimeo: Free HD Video Sharing