Shufflr is an Adobe AIR application that makes it easy to watch videos from your desktop. That alone doesn’t make it special, but what sets it apart is in helping you figure out what to watch. Videos are separated into three categories:
- Recommendations – These videos have been hand-picked for you based on your tastes.
- Friends Activity – these are the videos your friends are watching. Friends email us videos all the time, but Shufflr provides a better experience for dealing with them.
- Buzz – These are all the hottest videos around the web. Stay ahead of the curve and see which videos are hot now and which are about to be.
Shufflr needs at least Adobe AIR version 1.5, but you might want to make sure you have AIR 2 since Adobe has managed to decrease resource usage by about 30%. This will make Shufflr and other AIR apps much more responsive. Before you get started with Shufflr, you will need to sign up for an account. While Facebook connect is available as an option, you will still need to provide your email and other information. It looks like Facebook connect is mostly for sharing videos and to give Shufflr a way to see what you already like.
Once you sign in, you’re presented with your home screen. This shows you 3 strips of videos separated into the Recommendations, Friends Activity, and Buzz categories. Hover over any video to see its length, rating, site of origin, and how much activity it has. To the right of each strip is a button that will let you view that category as a 3-D scrolling wall of videos.
Along the right side of the home screen, you can connect to Facebook (if you haven’t already), send feedback, and invite your friends. That last option is important in building out your network and getting access to more relevant videos and recommendations. Viewing videos will help Shufflr learn more about you, but it’s easier to figure out what you want to watch when you can see what your friends are watching.
The menu across the top has a few of the same options you’ll find elsewhere. The two that are most interest are Browse and Discover People. Browse (mouse icon) lets you pick individual video sources by Channel, Tags, or Genre. This is great if you already know what type of stuff you’re looking for. Discover People makes it easy to see who is most active, who you might already know, and who has similar tastes to yours.
Shufflr provides a simple and beautiful interface for watching videos. The social features are what may drive users to Shufflr, so they need to do a good job of integrating into other social platforms to attract users. I would also recommend that they clean up the sign-up process and others recommend Netflix integration, which would be awesome. What do you think about Shufflr?