Attention, earthlings! The Howcast application for Android has landed. With much of the same functionality as our popular iPhone application, Howcast for Android allows you to browse, search and play Howcast videos straight from your Android-powered mobile phone. You can also give your Android device a shake to play a random video.
One of the best parts of Howcast Android app is that we’ve modified the video player—you can now navigate within the video step-by-step just like you can on Howcast.com. Want to watch a specific step or happened to miss something? Simply move your track ball to the relevant point in the timeline and jump throughout the video.
With 9 phones currently available across carriers in the US and internationally and many more on the way in the upcoming months, the Android platform is simply exploding.
To learn more about the innovative features of the Howcast Android application, visit http://info.howcast.com/android. To get Howcast for your Android-powered phone, open Android Market from your phone and search for “Howcast.”
We had a chance to demo our new Android app last month at the Motorola Booth at the CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment Convention in San Diego (alongside two other cool apps— CardStar and Superpages.) Complete With Howcast juggling balls, hula hoops, and an Android robot, people used our Android app on the Motorola CLIQ to learn How To Juggle Tree Balls, How To Hula-Hoop, and do just about anything. Everyone loved the app and got into the act!
The Motorola “Android” at the CTIA booth.
Co-founder Sanjay demoing our app at the convention.
Howcast juggling balls on the ready!
Participants at the convention learn how to juggle by using Howcast.
The leaves have changed colors, the apples have been picked, the coats have been dragged out of storage, and with the changing of the clocks this weekend, now’s the time to thoroughly enjoying the final weeks of fall (and that extra hour of sleep on Sunday!), in all of their brisk, blue-sky glory.
Visit Howcast for ideas on how to celebrate this great season: Get away from it all in the country by organizing an old-fashioned hayride by checking out How To Set Up A Hayride, keep birds from gobbling up the last of the veggies in your garden with How to Make a Scarecrow, or make a chilly camping trip a little warmer with How to Make a Bonfire, then use it to roast perfect marshmallows. Now bundle up and get out there!
We’ve got one shopping weekend left before Halloween—take advantage of it, as well as these great Howcast Halloween vids to make sure you have the best costume on the block!
Want to channel little Max and his amazing adventure? Check out How To Make a Where the Wild Things Are Children’s Halloween Costume, and bring this classic children’s book to life.
Need guts? Who doesn’t? How To Make Fake Intestines will give your costume some disgusting looking and enjoy flaunting your gory guts all over the place.
Feel like howling at the moon terrifying the local folk? With a little determination and elbow grease, How To Make A Werewolf Costume Part 1, and Part 2 will turn you in a blood-thirsty denizen of the night in no time.
Need some more inspiration? Check out our full playlist here!
It was an exquisitely quiet afternoon here in our Manhattan office this past Friday—the hum of the refrigerator and the quiet tapping of computer keys were the only sounds filling the air… that is until a double-decker bus pulled up in front of our building, populated with people dressed in Mardi Gras spirit, and armed with an array of brass instruments and drums.
Curious and excited to have our Friday afternoon punctuated by such a outlandish occurrence, we all filed to the window to witness the funk frenzy this bus crew was laying down.
Never to be left out of a good party, the Howcast crew seamlessly infiltrated the fun. It took all of 30 seconds for Rob and Matt, two of our Post Production superstars, to locate the infamous Pizza costume, and hand it off to Meg, Howcast’s brilliant Audio Engineer/Assistant Producer, threw on the Pizza costume, and danced around outside to delight and terror of those passing by.
With our videos and player featured prominently on the home page, we think that this is a great case study for how a site can seamlessly integrate instructional videos to demonstrate a new product to users. Additionally, we are showing how engaging, informative instructional videos are a great tool for companies to get their story out to a broader audience. For example, both Tech Crunch, Read Write Web and Search Engine Land leveraged our videos in their coverage of the launch to show their readers the benefits of Factual.
Another weekend’s here (yay!), and if you’re like some of us, you’ll be going out to dance the stress of your week away. But you may not know that before you step out, you can brush up on your skills by heading to Howcast.com, where you’ll find tons of videos with the moves to transform you into a dancing queen (or king) by Saturday night.
You’ll also see our funny, yet helpful, favorites: How to Dirty Dance and–if you’re feeling adventurous–How to Pole Dance.
Check them all out at Howcast.com, and have out there fun this weekend
Update: So the piece has been pushed to Monday evening. Stay tuned!!
Even though Friday Monday nights are traditionally reserved for going out, tonight, and tonight only, we’re asking you to stay in. Nightline, who covered our How to Turn Your Backyard into a Beer Garden shoot, will be broadcasting their profile of Howcast. That’s right, the lovely crew from ABC:
Shot tons of video of funny people dressed up as a polka band:
And of funny people who also work at Howcast.
These funny people contributed to making of this fantastic video:
And the results will be aired on Nightline, tonight Monday on ABC at 11:35 p.m ET/ 10:35 p.m. CT. Check it out! Call your friends, maybe even cook up a little bratwurst, pour yourself a glass of pilsner, and sit back for at look behind the scenes of Howcast.
Today is the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, so we thought it’d be cool to show everyone how to blow a shofar. The blowing of the shofar, which is a ram’s horn, is an ancient tradition in Judaism that signifies the new year. It’s an interesting sound, and it takes quite a pair of lungs to make it! Check out the video to learn more about it!
Howcast teamed up with Talk About Curing Autism (TACA) to deliver this informative video, “How To Help A Child With Autism.”
The video teaches viewers how early intervention is the key to improving the outlook for a child with autism, a neurological disorder that impairs communication and social skills.
TACA provides information, resources, and support to families affected by autism, thus strengthening the autism community in the U.S. We’re very pleased to have worked with TACA on their cause. Check out the video below!
Jack Mullan here, providing a few last musings on my time as a Howcast summer intern. Let me start by saying — it was a busy one! I sent tons of e-mails, wrote blog posts, watched and commented on dozens of videos, and completed any office task that came my way. And through all that hard work, I now have irrefutable evidence for any skeptics that I did do something while at Howcast. I’m talking, of course, about the intern video: How To Stand Up for Yourself.
That’s me, as the protagonist/confidence-builder. If you dare doubt my abilities as an actor, I’ll have to stand up for myself in person and exhibit my true bullying qualities. Seriously, I had a great time shooting the video. We encountered numerous obstacles along the way, but we managed to deal with every ordeal we faced (including keeping ice cream cold on a hot summer day in Washington Square Park). Acting without words was a personal challenge, especially when you’re playing a character undergoing a transformation. I definitely have more respect for the robots in Transformers now.
As for our friends by the Bay, the San Francisco interns produced How To Play Twister. On top of the challenges of video production, Twister can present it’s own unsettling positions, but the interns managed to turn it into an easy way to have fun. Check it out!
I’m so thankful we got to produce these videos. They’re not only a testament to the great work we put in as Howcast interns, but also to the opportunity and challenges that our internships offered us! It was truly a great experience being part of the Howcast team!
