First of all I want to write about using video as it is related to ministry. This is a great place where I wish I could video about video, but these pages are about writing. So hang with me. Video online can and is being used for every industry you can imagine but if you know of a ministry who is looking for a safe and easy system please read on.

Let's cover a little bit about the history of video online. Video online is nothing new to the internet. It has been around for about 10 plus years now, but not until about the last 5 years has it started to move into the mainstream for the average person or small business owner.

My first introduction to video was through Helloworld back in early 2005. It was about January of 2005 that YouTube also took off. Since then Video is everywhere online. Many social video network sites like YouTube allow users to create a free account and upload and share. Currently there is about 30-50 free places online to create a free account and upload video. I am not of the free persuasion as I know that nothing is ultimately free. Free for social network sites is usually driver by paid advertisers and a percentage of the end user will click and buy and that is the world of internet marketing.

My perception on free as it related to social networks and video social networks is that eventually people will get their fill and want non intrusive places to socialize and share without offensive content users and without advertising forced in their eyes. That is the original vision of HelloWorld and other such subscription services. Oh one more thing, Content loaded onto free sight usually becomes the property of the site offering it for free. So like YouTube once you load it up, it is technically not your video anymore even if you delete it. (Just keep that in mind as it pertains to what you do or want to do with video.) Let's proceed!

So let's shift to tools. Here is what you can do online for free or fee as your budget and desire prefers.

Video e-mail: HelloWorld for fee verses Google for free: Most people do not know Google has video email, but they do. You can create a video and send it through a Google email address as a video email. The difference between HelloWorld and Google is fee and simplicity, but also Google has more steps and when the end users finally clicks to go watch your video it goes to a Google page where other videos are around or near it to click on. HelloWorld or other paid for fee v-mails like Talk Fusion charge and are easier and customized graphics around it while also going just to that one video.

Video Instant Messenger: There are a number of free services for IM with Video. AOL, MSN, Skype, Yahoo and the list goes on. But again all the free stuff has it entrapments around them and since those companies offering the services are not streaming video experts the quality is usually inferior to others. Skype maybe be the exception to the rule. However, in the last year Skype moved to a payment model for services after EBay acquired them. The One on One video chat is still free, but in general Skype now has a revenue model without advertisers. HelloWorld is one of the few that has good quality and allows has up to 5 people able to live video chat as the same time. It's easy and fun, but the audio is the weakest link and wearing a head set assures quality.

Live Broadcasting: JustinTv is free and HelloWorld is not. JustinTv is paid and allows stuff I would not allow my kids to see and the language on the system from some of the users is not what I want my family hearing. So here is where free comes with a cost. There are a few other free sites as well and they all have the advertisers or they have no boundaries for content allowed by end users. HelloWorld again is commercial free and has a public station called HelloTV. Plus you can customize banners and links and it has chat, polling and slides function with adding multiple broadcasters from other locations to your broadcast. It also allows Paid Per View and Private password protected live presentations. They also have immediate archived files. This live broadcast that HelloWorld provides also allows a link that you can integrate to any website independent of HelloWorld onto other websites. Live with HelloWorld is my favorite.

Video Blogging. There are a lot of free blogging services now including blogger, WordPress and many others. Also, HelloWorld provides all of the above mentioned in one account as well as a Blog with RSS feeds. The difference here is the video for HW is connected with the same video vault as the video email and all the rest. So it is drag and drop with video into the blog or record in it as you write. The Blog section of a all encompassing digital account with HW is not the best in blogging features out there, but it is good enough and comes with all features mentioned above. On Blogger and WordPress, you have to login into other accounts to create, upload and grab code to place into the blog. I like WordPress better than others as far as structure is concerned.

Now let's talk about placing video on websites: When you want to have a video on any website it can seem overwhelmed, but really it is easy. YouTube gives a nice easy to paste code as well as Google. They are both Google properties, even thought they are separate. The good about Google or YouTube on your website might be the higher ranking, but then you are branding Google or YouTube on your website. As well, if you are not careful you could end up with content you might not prefer as it surrounds your video. Myspace now also has video upload for free. HW provides codes with each video uploaded tat can be used as video that plays on a website or pops up when clicked on and plays or you can be provided a code that could be a download link for the video. Also HelloWorld is the only system that has about 122 codecs and several transcoding of video into formats used all over the web with just a click of a mouse. There are a few free services that you can download online that trans codes video into formats from Flash to other or vice versa.

All the tools noted above using video are all available with HelloWorld within 1 retail account and alot more features I did not even mention in this lenses.