Howcast How-To Videos to Teach Yourself Almost Anything
Walter Mossberg recently ran a column in the Wall Street Journal, describing some of the more popular How To video link sites on the Internet. Some of the more popular ones mentioned by Mossberg are Howcast.com, WonderHowTo.com, and eHow.com.
Howcast.com offers its visitors as set of tools for making their own, high-quality how-to videos. At present there are approximate 5000 how-to video links on this site. WonderHowTo.com does not support self-made how-to videos, but instead aggregates 110,000 videos from various sources including Howcast, Youtube, and the Scripps TV networks. eHow, one of the original how-to sites, emphasizes instructional articles submitted by its visitors in a wiki type format. There are currently over 100,000 such articles and a relatively small catalog of videos.
Mossberg preferred Howcast.com, because it provided excellent video capabilities that allows visitors to move through clear steps in the broadcast, with the ability to fast forward and playback those steps.
Howcast was developed by a TV executive who opted to tap into the large catalog of videos already on the Web. There are 35 available categories such as Dating and Relationships, Fitness, Fashion, and Beauty and Style.
I tried out these sites and found them quite useful for quick how-to tips when you are stuck in the rut. All are well worth visiting.
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Comments
WHT.com is nothing more than a content aggregator and actually has the rights to very few of the videos that they show. They have no real checks and balances as they just rip videos from actual producers therefore the caliber of the advice and directions is really not much better than just going to YouTube – at least then you won’t be redirected. WHT.com is just a directory and in no way solves the major problem associated with instructional videos on the Web: is the information legit and is this REALLY the best way to do this???
Sure WHT.com has quantity but when seeking advice or instruction shouldn’t quality be the concern?
@misanthropy today: Actually, you should read the article again. Katie Boehret overall liked Howcast (the screenshot was from Howcast) the best, however, WonderHowTo has more content since they are scraping it from other sites and embedding.
Howcast had better content and a superior user experience, which is what Katie liked.
WonderHowTo.com was the service that mossberg preferred, and it was founded by a television executive, stephen chao, not howcast.
Mossberg liked how howcast had step by step tabs in the video, but preferred wonderhowto overall because of variety and exhaustiveness.