VidMarkr is a tool for saving references, epiphanies, and flashes of inspiration while consuming information-dense videos and podcasts. Similarly to learning from books, notes, and other visual content, consciously searching for the most informative chunks not only gives you a useful summary for the future, but improves your attention.
The opportunities for {learning, research, oversight} are becoming more democratized. Everything is being streamed or published online, including public lectures, research seminars (or webinars), panel conversations, public health briefings, televised hearings, and much more.
These are all beneficial, but theres a huge volume of it, and perhaps not every moment of content is relevant to you. So the information torrent is both benefit and burden - more nutritious and educational content is out there, but meaningfully consuming or processing even a fraction seems intractable.
Being able to {discern, save, retrieve, link to} the most useful information with minimal friction, is key to forming new insights and knowledge.
VidMarkr targets this problem for audio and video.
VidMarkr is aimed at anyone who is learning, whether in a formal educational environment or otherwise.
By enabling you to mark-up audio and video content on the go (without demanding constant hand-eye involvement if you use a Bluetooth peripheral), VidMarkr helps you make use of your surplus attention during those moments that can nibble away your day, like commuting, exercising, cleaning, dogwalking, or rocking a stubborn infant to sleep.
Now! Currently the browser-app (installable as a progressive web app) is available, as well as an Android app for VidMarking on the gos. We plan to add other platforms in the future, dependent on user feedback.
At the current time, VidMarkr does not save a copy of the media (video/podcast) you consume. Besides being expensive to store, for us to save media from YouTube would raise tricky IP issues.
VidMarkr stores the media location (the URL) only - if the media is taken down by the host, or is otherwise no longer accessible, VidMarkr can not play it.
If however, the same piece of media pops up somewhere else, or you somehow (cough) obtain your own copy, you can repoint your vidmarks and notes at the new URL. In any case, you will still be able to access your vidmarks and notes.
VidMarkr for Android can store video/audio from non-proprietary sources such as podcasts (i.e. regular mp3/mp4 files, not from proprietary platforms like Youtube) for offline VidMarking.
Currently, the VidMarkr app accesses and stores your data using the client-side API of Dropbox Inc.
Hence none of your data is directly accessible by us - all your data is retrieved, handled, and processed by your own device. VidMarkr creates its own App Folder (per the Dropbox permissions model) and only has access to files inside this App Folder - it cannot access any other files inside your Dropbox account (unless they are publicly shared using the Dropbox application itself).
VidMarkr Premium will use a third-party digital infrastructure provider to store your data. When Premium launches, we will notify you where and how your data is being stored, both here and in our Privacy Policy.
People rely on others for certain categories of information: during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021 I relied on others more familiar with life-sciences to explain the most important details about different vaccines, viral variants, or about lockdown rules. The previous year, I had relied on friends professionally involved in physics to explain the methods behind the first direct imaging of a black hole.
Similarly, when reading someone else's copy of a book, their highlights and annotations can incredibly enriching to the raw content. VidMarkr's feeds allow you to do this with video and audio content - by following someone else's feed you can offload onto others (some of) the task of 'filtering' out the important bits.
More importantly, you can see what that particular person found important or salient. If a press conference about reforms to a national healthcare system were announced, its likely that I would want to know what a health economist thought about it rather than a community general practitioner, while a medical student would be more interested in the thoughts of the GP. This is especially important with information-dense material, which may be viewed through different {idealogical,analytical} perspectives.
Conversely, publishing a feed yourself allows you to provide your particular insight regarding what's important about a particular piece of content.