Have you heard? Holland America Cruise Lines and Microsoft teamed up to created the “Digital Workshop” aboard the MS Amsterdam and MS Westerdam ships. Pretty cool idea if you ask me and boy would I like to have that job! But something caught my eye at the MS Westerdam Live Space that I thought was interesting…..well, contradictory? In one blog entry, they posted about getting Windows Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery to help with movies and photos. Then, two posts later, they posted a video blog which was hosted by YouTube. Shouldn’t they be using MSN Soapbox for their videos? Doesn’t it make sense since you can upload directly to Soapbox from Live Photo Gallery?
I think that always one of the sticking points of getting people to adopt new practices or technology is ease of use. I call it the “Parent or Grandparent Test.” If my parents or grandparents can’t grasp how to do something online, then it’s too difficult for wide adoption. Although, I still haven’t gotten my parents to blog yet, but I’m working on it! But, always try to make things as simple as possible. In this case, how can we make it as simple as possible to get your home videos to your Live Space?
First, you should have already signed up for your Live Space and downloaded Live Gallery. You’ve done that right?
Next, you’ll want to set up your Soapbox. Go to Soapbox and sign in with your LiveID in the upper right hand corner. You may need to establish your Soapbox username which may or may not be the same as your LiveID. (don’t worry too much, it’s really only your LiveID that matters). If you click the “Upload” button and it doesn’t ask you to establish your Soapbox ID, then you’re set! You don't need to upload anything just yet. You will need to make note of a special string of numbers from your Soapbox profile. Under your profile name will appear your Soapbox user ID as http://video.msn.com/?user=(string of numbers). Make note of this string of numbers, you'll need it in just a bit.
Now, add this web gadget to your Windows Live Space. While in edit mode in your Live Space, select "Settings" on the Soapbox gadget, set the "Show:" setting to "Author's uploaded videos", and set the "Author ID:" to the string of numbers you copied from your Soapbox profile. Don't forget to click SAVE on the Soapbox gadget, then SAVE again to save the edits to your Live Spaces page.
No matter what you use to import or edit your home movies in, save your finished video to your "My Videos" folder under your "My Documents". Windows Live Gallery already includes this folder in its search by default. Be sure to title and tag your video (and photos too), it makes searching for exactly what you want a whole lot easier! Now, from Live Photo Gallery, just find the video you wish to upload to Soapbox, click to highlight and then click "Publish" at the top of Live Gallery and select "Publish to MSN Soapbox." Enter any appropriate and/or required details for your video, then click "Publish" and your home video will be uploaded and processed to your MSN Soapbox.
Once your video has been processed by Soapbox, it will be visible from the Soapbox gadget on your Live Spaces page. It must be noted however, that only videos you mark as "Public" will be displayed. If you mark a video as "Hidden", it will not show up in the Soapbox gadget OR searchable in Soapbox, but it will show up directly on your MSN Soapbox profile page.
With just this initial bit of set up, from now on you can upload your videos directly from Live Gallery to Soapbox and they will appear on your Live Spaces page in the gadget.
For my parents, uploading videos to Soapbox from Live Photo Gallery was a lot easier than uploading to the Soapbox website (or some other video sharing site) directly, trying to find the embed code, then trying to figure out how to embed the video into a blog posting).
Now when they want to share their video, in just a couple clicks from Live Photo Gallery it's uploaded and on their Live Space.
Oh, and Holland America? If you need someone to teach your digital workshops, I’m for hire! ;-) 
