The folks at Mojo are looking for ideas on making the Web work better for journalism. Mojo is a partnership between the Knight Foundation and Mozilla to help come up with said ideas. For you math majors, Mojo = Mozilla + journalism.

Mojo's current focus is on making news video more engaging.  I have some ideas on that.  Here is my view of how video should work on the Web for journalism sites:

Video should be embedded in web pages, but in a way that is familiar to the user.  Users know by convention that when they see hyperlink text, like hey, there a guy in a chicken suit, it is a link that they can click on that will take them to... well, a guy in a chicken suit.

In the same way, video links - links embedded in text that the user can click to play short videos - are a better option than the seemingly random placement of videos on many web pages today.

In the future you will see video links embedded in text, and they will be formatted in a way that differentiates them from regular links. This will give readers a visual cue that if they click the link, a video will play.  It will provide a predictable, comfortable experience for the user.

It will also provide a superior user experience because the user won't need to hunt all over the screen to find the relevant video(s).  The pertinent video link will be embedded right within the text, and the user can choose to click it or not.

Currently, many news sites have pages that have an article as well as a video on the same page.  The video is pretty much the same story as the text, but in video format.  In the future, you will see news sites that use video links with very short videos that add texture to the specific text being displayed.

When I say "very short videos", I mean in the neighborhood of 10 - 15 seconds.  In 10 - 15 seconds, a meteorologist can give a quick forecast for the next two days. He doesn't have time to describe the high pressure system that is developing over Beaver Lick, Kentucky - and that's a good thing.  Most users on the 'net want their information in bite-size chunks.

When the reader clicks a video link, a video panel will be opened in such a way that the original screen will stay up in the background and will still be visible. HTML Gurus know this today as "TARGET = _blank".  Instead of sending the user to an entirely new screen to see a video, a new smaller panel will open so the user can see the video yet still see the original screen.

The newly-opened video panel will appear just below the video link that the user clicked.  This will maintain the continuity of the text.  In other words, the video panel will not eclipse the text that the user was reading.  The reader will not "lose his spot".

The video will play immediately after the video link has been clicked.  The reader will not have to click "play".

I have created a video link image that could serve as the new universal visual represention for a video link.  The symbol looks similar to a rectangle surrounding the text, but it has been slightly modified to look like a video camera.  The user will see text surrounded by the video camera rectangle and instinctively say, "ah, this is a video link".

This new video link symbol will lead users to video in much the same way that (Go ahead... click on the video link).

When the video has ended, the video panel will automatically close itself down and the video link that was clicked will be highlighted, allowing the reader to pick up reading right where he left off.  (That has not been implemented in my example).  If the user wants to see the short video again, he can simply click the video link again.

The HTML for this will be: <video src="/shortcandyvid" autoplay autoclose>children follow candy</video>

Firefox will automagically surround the text "children follow candy" with the video link indicator that I created (the rectangle that looks like a camera - ).  The visual placement of the video panel will also be handled by Firefox.

Before the user clicks on the video link, he should optionally be able to see a frame of the video as a thumbnail image by hovering over the video link. That option should be configurable as a checkbox in Firefox under Tools / Options / Content.

This approach will lead to a superior user experience where video and story are truly integrated and are at the user's control.