Designed and conceptualized by just one person, Buffer.me is the epitome of what can happen when a talented designer tries to do something to improve an experience that seems less appealing by the day.
Buffer.me uses the YouTube API to populate the site with videos, but it totally changes the way you view them. As the company’s founder explained, Buffer.me aims at “giving the user a better experience, faster results and a more intuitive design.” And although it isn’t as fast as I would have liked, it performs extremely well on the other two counts.
The first thing that will strike you about Buffer.me is its unique design. Unlike practically every other video site on the Web, it doesn’t show blocks of videos anywhere you look. Instead, it sports a simple design that’s dominated by a black backdrop and videos placed prominently in the middle, which you can scroll through with the help of arrows on either side. Once you click to watch a video, the border and related videos box disappears and the only component left on the page is the video itself. It may be simple, but it’s a nice feature that actually improves the quality of the service.
Buffer.me is still in its infancy — it hasn’t even reached private beta yet — so it’s tough to fault the company with some buggy performance and slow results. That said, it suffers from both and it did detract from an otherwise rewarding experience.
Running on YouTube’s API means Buffer.me is facing stiff competition and won’t allow users to upload videos and make it a destination away from the auspices of Google’s monster. And although considerable work needs to be done to get Buffer.me to a place where a high number of people would want to use it, the site looks like it’s well on its way.
l/p: demo / bufferme
says invalid password
This looks really nice as it does away with the YouTube clutter. For a one man shop, this is really really nice.
Do you have any invitation codes?
I agree…It’s good for a change to watch video in an unusual way…so buffer.me will definitely be a site to browse upon..
yawn…….
Don, why do you say it will not allow users to upload videos? I am new to YouTube API, but it says one can use it to do the uploads?
From http://code.goo...d.html#data_api
The Data API allows a program to perform many of the operations available on the YouTube website. It is possible to search for videos, retrieve standard feeds, and see related content. A program can also authenticate as a user to upload videos, modify user playlists, and more.
Looks great. But I’m not really impressed with the design.
May be you are talking about the member area.
There a firefox extension which does roughly the same thing. It doesn’t fill in all the extra youtube information. But for searching and scrolling through videos its great. http://www.cooliris.com/
Looks good, I think I’ve seen something like this before tho.
Anyone with an invitation code
Buffer.me is on development. We will have invitation codes for out private beta around Octuber.
*out = our
*Octuber = October
You could just log in with the username and password in the first comment.
Looks Cool.
ANy one has Invitation Code
Someone get me a telescope. If there site wasn’t so hard to read, maybe I would have spent a minute to see what the fuck it is.
Is this the first .me to ever be featured on Techcrunch ??
just type “techcrunch” into the invite box and it lets you register
^^^^^^^^ Not working for me ….
You provided an invalid invite code.
PicLens from Cooliris provides the best viewing experience I’ve seen, and they dynamically integrate with YT, Flickr, Google, etc. once you install the FF plugin.
One of the best web products I’ve used this year. Check them out: http://www.cooliris.com
P.S. I’m in now way affiliated with Cooliris (but I’d love to be!)
Thanks,
Jaafer
Official video presentation.
http://www.yout...h?v=I1W-YlCDiBE
Reviews of a pre-beta product? …inspiring further comments fm users expecting something real there? Are things going that slow at TechCrunch these days?
Whats so cool about it
Why not go to youtube and watch there
down with youtube.
SUCKS!!!!
No Voice on the Video What a Fukin Moron!!!
Love 1938Media.Com
For another nice example of the youtube API – by myself – see yvoschaap.com/youtube/