I would NEVER buy a screencast, tutorial, or anything on web development without knowing EXACTLY when it was last updated. For example, the paid Ember screencasts claim to go over the Ember router - how do I know whether it was the old beta router, the RC1 router, or the RC6 "Promise-ified" router?
You guys really need a "Date Published" field on each screencast and a "Date Updated" if it has been updated. I was about to buy the Backbone + Rails bundle but I was apprehensive because what if it's really outdated? Lynda.com displays a publish date, it's useful.
We overlooked that but completely agree, and we're adding that ASAP. FYI, the Backbone + Rails videos were produced recently and are very up to date – I went through all of them myself.
Why are people willing to pay for screencasts(of any quality), but NEVER for a well written article over the same thing.
I personally hate trying to learn things from videos. I can't search it. I can't copy and paste code from it. I can't skim over it. Later review and skimming ahead is lousy, at best, impossible at worst.
The only thing screencasts have going for them is that they are (in general) easier to create than a well written article. The difference for readers/viewers though is substantial.
We do pay for well-written articles. They're called books.
Also, video can be a powerful tool. The combination of seeing a thing or a process, hearing a narration about it, and observing another human being interact with it, provides more bandwidth across a wider spectrum of our senses. For some people, it is easier and faster to learn this way, in the same way that it is easier to learn from a tutor than from a textbook.
Earlz, I don't think that people aren't willing to pay for a well written article. Take a look at self-published Amazon Kindle e-books. Some of them are as short as 20 pages and as cheap as 99 cents. And many have been insanely successful.
But that's besides the point. In general, you're right. A lot of screencasts out there suck. And as you clearly exemplify, a lot of people learn better from text than video. Which is precisely why screencasts need their own platform independent from a pure video hosting service like YouTube.
We support full Github-style markdown and code syntax highlighting, and we encourage all content producers to pair their videos with annotations that are sufficient enough to stand alone (similar to what Ryan Bates does with Railscasts/AsciiCasts). And we think that a unified platform which sets that standard will help make it the norm rather than an exception.
Is this done by the people at Treehouse [1]? It looks like the design/layout is very much inspired by them, at the least. If they are not associated to Treehouse, they may need to think about making their design a bit more unique, because some might try to call that out as a rip.
Although we're all big fans of Treehouse, we're definitely not associated with them. I'm sorry you feel that it could be called out as a rip, but our in-house designer develops everything from scratch. I think it's safe to say that both landing pages are pretty typical.
And yes, these are common things in general, but I think they stick out more to me because the products are in the same realm.
Just some food for thought! :)
EDIT: And don't get me wrong, I don't mean this in a bad way. It's just something to be aware of that I noticed. I really like the idea of the product, in general! Good luck with it! :)
Hey Josh, Zach here (one of the co-founders). We personally don't use PHP very much but we're more than open to hosting those screencasts. If you have any recommendations or would like to post some yourself please let us know.
I am still learning my self hence why I would love to see some screencasts. I am about to start a year long placement where PHP is the language of choice so maybe in 6 months I may do something for your site. Great work so far.
I am actively trying to watch some videos on Bitcast at the moment. I love it by the way great concept and great way of setting it all out although I am hitting a wall with a 404 when trying to view a video.
One thing I learned from watching MicroConf presentations online: Make it about them (the users) not you. The title reads "We Love Screencasts". According to the marketing gurus this should instead focus on your audience (because we only care about ourselves, you know).
Oh and it seems the favicon has an odd white background :-?
Other than that, the site looks extremely sleek :)
Stephanos2k, thanks for the feedback! We definitely weren't trying to make it about ourselves but instead demonstrate our passion for screencasts and the screencasting community. That is, after all, why we created Bitcast.
We're always looking to optimize our front page though, so we'll absolutely take your feedback into consideration.
No particular reason - all four of us are web developers, and we quite simply, we each badly wanted a platform for web development screencasts to exist.
We differentiate ourself from YT in a few big ways. The first is our focus on developers. A YT Partner can post videos exclusively on development, but it's obviously impossible to include code markdown or have meaningful software-related tags. We also feature the ability to offer both free and paid videos; it takes a lot of time to make quality screencasts, and many of the developers we've spoken to have found YT insufficient for monetizing their content.
I think this is an excellent idea and will do really well. If you have developers who can walk us through real projects that can go live in the wild it will do really well. This can be like the Themeforest for screencasts. This will supplement nicely with Treehouse/Code School/Net Tuts videos because it looks like you guys will show how to do some of the rarer or less widespread tips and tricks that the big guys usually don't cover. Good luck!
Thanks Joseph, having developers release screencasts where they work on actual projects is definitely a big goal of ours. People often underestimate how much you can learn by watching someone who's an expert in something.
Off the top of my head, I see screencasts that are available elsewhere. They are merely aggregating, which is great - in a world filled with app stores and iTunes, discovery of a given horizontal should be more than a Google search or a retweet.
Thanks! Right now we've done a lot of aggregating, and we've partnered up with some great screencasters to share their content on our platform. That being said, we have a lot of exclusive content in our pipeline, so look forward to seeing a lot of new stuff soon.
Izztmzzt, I'll admit, we do love Rails :). Naturally, a good percentage of our initial content turned out to be Rails centered, but the large majority of our content library is not.
We're looking to expand into all of the areas that our users are interested in, which topics would you most like to see?
(This is a joke patterned off the "Patches welcome!" response common in the OSS community, but it's also very serious: high quality web development tutorials do not spring into existence from the ether. You can either write them, pay directly for them, or hope that someone subsidizes their creation. Hoping for subsidy will tend to result in less tutorials being written than the market would prefer to exist.)
Why? There's plenty of successful pro screencasters: RailsCasts, PeepCode, Destroy all Software, etc. Some have free content, like RailsCasts and Ruby Tapas.
Producing a decent 15 minute screencast takes hours of preparation. At decent billable rates, that means hundreds of dollars per episode. Plus these are videos with real value, that if they do their job, allowing the watcher to earn tens of thousands of dollars more per year.
As for free tutorials, you're a Google search away an essentially limitless library (many of which were written by some of the screencasters that make you sick). I've learned from free material, but I also feel that that an on-point screencast is worth a few dollars. That's why I'm more than happy to pay for RailsCast, Tapas, CodeSchool, and more, every month.
As for "should be free", I really don't know where you get this. In a world where information is a scarce resource, perhaps. That's not the world we live in, and I hope all that can add value all the best in selling their expertise.
Thanks bdcraven, we completely agree. Even before the rise in screencast popularity, writing a good book on programming took just as much effort, if not more. Authors certainly didn't give those away for free either.
Epa, thanks for the feedback. We are in full support of the fact that web development tutorials need to be open and easily accessible to all. And around half of the content on our site is completely free. Most quality content, however, takes a very big time investment to produce properly, and it is often impossible to recuperate that investment through advertising revenue alone. The process is anything but easy, quick, or cheap (http://www.backbonerails.com/blog/how-to-create-compelling-t...).
Take Ryan Bates for example, I would be hard-pressed to find a good Rails developer who hasn't picked up a thing or two from Railscasts. And $9/month is nothing compared to the wealth of knowledge one can get for that price. We simply want to enable more developers like Ryan to produce quality educational content and monetize it, if they so wish, on Bitcast.
When I was a kid learning to code, there were no screencasts. There was documentation and tutorials. All of which still exists, and honestly, is much better than when I started learning. There are also lots of "teach kids to code for free" sites, and places to find mentors or groups. Again, non existent when I started.
I would NEVER buy a screencast, tutorial, or anything on web development without knowing EXACTLY when it was last updated. For example, the paid Ember screencasts claim to go over the Ember router - how do I know whether it was the old beta router, the RC1 router, or the RC6 "Promise-ified" router?