Squrl Blog

A New Year - A New Search

drlaserfalcon — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:12:44 -0500

For you video seekers, we’ve just released an important enhancement to video search. Now, Squrl will now offer up suggestions of video searches when you start typing in the search box.

While some of the auto-completes are very straightforward (the phrase ‘Ga’ goes straight to a run down of Gangnam style remixes and parodies), others can inspire video hunting that you may not have thought of. A search for ‘How to’ yields such auto-completes as how to save a life, how to make a paper ninja star, and how to love lil’ Wayne.

Read more about our last update in this AppAdvice article.

Live Streaming Channels Launch Today

drlaserfalcon — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:28:00 -0500

We’re very excited to announce the release of a lineup of live streaming video today that users can watch alongside their favorite short form videos. The lineup includes Huffington Post Live, PressTV and This Week in Tech and can be found in the ‘Live’ tab in the Squrl main menu. Bloomberg TV and Russia Today also reside in Squrl’s live video channel along with France 24, Home Shopping Network, NASA TV, The Young Turks Live Stream, Fashion TV Direct!, HMall Korea, and Al Jazeera.

The Live channel will be hand-curated to include web coverage of breaking events in news and tech. While in beta, Squrl hosted live streams of News 4 NY’s Hurricane Sandy coverage as well as ABC, CBS, and the Wall Street Journal’s streams of the 2012 presidential election. Future streams will include live concerts, sports and other events available through Pay-Per-View.

New Squrl — Version 2.5 now in App Store

danhighbrown — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:10:00 -0400

Squrl, the one place to discover and watch videos from the most popular content sources available on mobile, has launched a new version with powerful new discovery tools, including personalized recommendations and search capability. Alongside a redesigned user interface, these new features are now available for your iPhone and iPad.

Our new features include:

Innovative Search Engine

You can now search for specific movies, TV shows, or videos using the industry’s only mobile video search to integrate both free and premium video providers including YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Ted, Vimeo, AOL, and Blip.tv. Results also include curated video links from social channels including Twitter and Facebook.

Personalized Recommendations

You will now receive tailored recommendations based on their specific interests and viewing behaviors. Modeled after its “What’s Hot” algorithm that monitors hundreds of video sources and curators form across the Web to find trending videos, Squrl is the first mobile service to provide video recommendations on a mobile device.

Improved Design

Squrl is now faster and simpler with a redesigned user interface displaying video thumbnails and titles that are larger and easier to read. A streamlined side navigation menu makes it easy for you to access their favorite or recommended videos in a single one tap, while the updated “Activity” tab feeds a video timeline to see what others are watching (those they follow or not).

Make sure to visit the app store and download it today! (Don’t worry, the new version is iOS 6 and iPhone 5 compatible)

AirPlay Tutorial for Squrl's iPhone App

martinatsqurl — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 14:16:00 -0400

Hey everyone, we wanted to cover one of our most important and prized features AirPlay compatibility.

Although AirPlay has been supported by our iPad and iPhone versions since our launch last year, the new design introduced in our latest version gives you the same great AirPlay experience whether you’re on your iPhone or iPad. Now, wherever you go with your iPhone you are packing hours worth of prime video content that can be easily played on any Apple TV.

Here are a few prerequisites before AirPlay is possible:

iOS 4.2
An iPhone 3GS or higher
A second generation Apple TV or newer
Squrl 2.3 or higher

Once you’ve made sure you have everything listed above you’re ready to start watching Squrl on your TV, just follow these easy steps.

Download the latest version of Squrl
Launch Squrl and sign in. You can do this via Facebook, Twitter, or by creating a Squrl account.
Make sure your Apple TV is on, up-to-date, and connected properly to your TV.
Select a video from your favorite playlist, Fresh, or What’s Hot. Once the video starts to play, select the AirPlay button and this will send the video from your iPad or iPhone to your TV.
Don’t touch a thing! Thanks to Squrl’s playlisting feature, once the video you initially played is done the next video in the playlist will automatically begin. Enjoy a constant stream of video without having to spend time navigating from one video to the next.

Sincerely,
-Squrl Team

Playlisting Steve Jobs

martinatsqurl — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:54:00 -0400

Yesterday All Things D released their archive of onstage conversations with Steve Jobs through the years at the D: All Things Digital conference. It’s an awesome wealth of video that tracks Apple’s innovation over the last decade as Jobs candidly discusses the company and his philosophy on the digital world and it’s future.

We’re huge fans of Jobs, Apple and all things iOS here at Squrl and have added a playlist with all the videos to celebrate. You can grab the playlist from the Technology section of our Channel Guide in the App on the iPad and iPhone or view the playlist right now in your browser.

Note: The videos require a Quicktime player and as a result there may be a long load time in Chrome .

New Squrl for iPhone in App Store

martinatsqurl — Thu, 10 May 2012 14:50:00 -0400

Here at Squrl we’re obsessed with making video easy at every step— discovery, watching, sharing. So it makes sense that we’re pumped to see our latest version now available for download in the Apple App Store.

This update has some big ones… The new Squrl UI now for iPhone. More video content from great sources. Facebook Timeline integration. And of course we couldn’t help ourselves from dropping in a few cool tricks like a press and hold menu to access actions you might want to take on videos and people. Try it out for collecting videos, sharing, following users and getting more info on video. Head over to the App Store to get the latest on your iPhone and iPad. Enjoy! - The Squrl Team

New Squrl Chrome Extension

martinatsqurl — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:45:00 -0500

There is now a Squrl extension available in the Chrome store!

Get it here.

If you’re a Chrome user you no longer need to have the bookmarks bar showing or worry about 500 errors with new browser updates. Just head to the Chrome store, add the Squrl extension and start squrling! The Squrl extension works just like the Squrl It bookmarklet. Whenever you’re on a page with video from YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu, Netflix or any other of our supported providers just click the Squrl icon and the video will be added to your queue.

Quick Fix for Chrome Bookmarklet Bug

martinatsqurl — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:02:00 -0500

A few users have reported that the Squrl bookmarklet is returning an error message when they use it in Chrome. This issue is tied to a bug in the most recent release of Chrome where certain Chrome Applications prevent Javascript bookmarklets from working. While this bug is being addressed on the Chrome side we’ve put together steps to a quick fix to let you start Squrling again! 1. Open a new tab or window in Chrome. 2. Right click the YouTube Application icon, select ‘Remove from Chrome’ and confirm.

Squrl 2.0 Now Available

martinatsqurl — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:37:00 -0500

The whole team here is excited to announce the release of Squrl 2.0. With 2.0 we’ve made some big changes and added new features to help you discover and consume great video content. We want to ensure you don’t miss out on videos you care about, without having to do the work of finding them.

Personalized Channel Guide

Tell Squrl what topics you are interested in, and we create a personalized channel guide for you.

New and Trending Video

Our “Fresh” section brings the most recent content from across all of these channels to the forefront. Be first to see what video is trending on social networks and across all the providers supported by Squrl in the new “What’s Hot” section.

Sign-in Not Required

Try our free application before signing in— simply select what you are interested in and start watching videos without having to create an account.

More Social

When you are ready, sign in with your favorite services like Facebook, Twitter and connect to Netflix and YouTube, they all become part of your channel lineup. Squrl presents you with all the videos posted to your social networks by friends and people you follow. Squrl transforms your tablet video experience into a social one, with a list of your friends and people you follow always available in a sidebar. What friends and the Squrl community are watching is simply one touch away. You can just as easily add friends from Facebook, Twitter, and your contact list. Sharing videos with people on Squrl or posting them to a Twitter timeline and a Facebook wall is now easier than ever.

Redesigned Interface with Gestures

The new interface and player controls are now gesture-based, meaning the opening and closing of navigation panels is done with natural swiping motions, opening video to full screen and closing video players with a simple pinching motion.

New Release Available in App Store

martinatsqurl — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 16:38:00 -0400

From the beginning Squrl has been about building a place where you can discover, experience and curate online video. Over the past few months here at Squrl we’ve been brainstorming, experimenting and talking to users about ways to improve Squrl, realize these goals further and bring you great video every day. We are now feverishly working on our 2.0 version. In the meantime, we wanted to get an update into the store that improves the existing Squrl experience and will be critical to making our 2.0 a success!

Download the new update in the App Store and you’ll find:

New Viewing Experience on the iPad

Play a video in the updated iPad app and you’ll access a new and improved viewing experience. The new player has smooth, consistent controls across all the video in Squrl.

More Providers

We’ve added two of the most requested video sources, TechCrunch TV and CollegeHumor, to our list of supported providers. Check out their channels to discover, watch and collect video.

Blog Playlists

Ever since Squrl began to take shape our team has talked about how cool it would be to turn your favorite video-heavy blog in to a playlist on Squrl. With this release we’ve made it happen—check them out here. Are there any blogs you want to see as Squrl playlists?

Switch from Galleries and Collections to Channels and Playlists

Squrl is a tool for discovering new video and in an effort to make our language reflect this we’ve updated our organization labels. The Channel has replaced the Gallery and the Playlist has replaced the Collection.

Finally we have fixed lots of little issues to generally improve Squrl.

Head to the app store and download the new release!

Welcome to the Squrl Blog!

martinatsqurl — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:31:00 -0400

If you are reading this post right now, you’ve either already used Squrl (and loved it!), or have no idea what Squrl is and would like to learn more. Whatever category you fall into, we hope that you use Squrl and become an active part of our community!

For those who are new, Squrl is a Watch It Later service for online video, allowing you to save video you watch from all over the web to one central location. However Squrl is not simply a feature that goes into your bookmarks bar. Squrl is a platform that allows you to curate and collect video while engaging with friends and others in a community.

The Squrl blog is an extension of that community. We’ll post information that you should be aware of including new features and cool content on Squrl.

We’ve also created a Get Satisfaction page where you can view FAQs, ask questions, raise issues, and receive a timely response. If you click on the Support tab at the top of the page you will be taken to the Squrl Get Satisfaction page.

Make sure to Like us on Facebook and Follow us on Twitter!

Now what are you waiting for? Start squrling!