Beyond the Rhetoric

Everyone’s heard of YouTube. We’ve all had our fits of disturbing laughter with a flaming Elmo, our excrutiatingly cute moments with otters holding hands, and our rushes of adrenaline from Top Gear test drives, but what YouTube has been lacking is an easy ability to create custom photo slideshows.

If you have some rudimentary video editing software, you can usually make your own slideshows — that’s what I’ve did with some vacation photos — but when it comes time to sharing your creation, I think you may technically have an issue with copyrights because of the music you use in the background. And I’m guessing that you’re not going to use Bach, opting instead for more contemporary tunes from Christina Aguilera , Linkin Park, or Timbaland.

I stumbled across a relatively new service called FlipTrack that allows you to instantly create your own photo slideshows, complete with licensed music playing in the background. Obviously, their selection of bands isn’t as vast as your MP3 collection, but it’s a good start. They’ve also got cover versions of songs by guys like Jay-Z.

While checking out these slideshows by other people is fun and all, the greatest enjoyment comes from creating your own. I haven’t tried it myself, but it seems like it’d be pretty easy. Just upload your photos, pick your tune, and off it goes.

FlipTrack promises to “put your life to music.” Sounds like an interesting proposition.

The preceding post was graciously sponsored by FlipTrack

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