One of the designers at work, Kelly, introduced me to a new web application for locating, organizing, storing and sharing video content.

It’s called uvLayer, and it’s very easy to use. I just spent 20 minutes playing around with it, and managed to set up an account, sourced several videos, shared one with a friend and mucked around with the user interface.

So you can punch in your search term, say, “Laurie Anderson”; and your results will be presented in an attractive visual format, in a box with tiles sorted by popularity. uvLayer searches youtube and Truveo. Results are focused and effective.  As you roll over the thumbnail, the title of the video appears. All you need to do is drag and drop it onto your ‘video canvas’.

 The interface is similar to photo sharing apps that are used to showcase the Microsoft Surface. You can stack pictures, ‘throw’ them around your desktop, rearrange the order, organize them to play consecutively, and share multiple videos with friends. Most of the content is represented visually, with thumbnails, and menus can be separated from the global navigation and contained in a stand-alone box, which would make them easier to manipulate by hand instead of a mouse.

You can also import your contacts from gtalk, Facebook and AIM into the environment, and then sharing video content is as simple as dragging a video thumbnail onto your friends profile pic, located down the left hand side of the screen.

The application is still in beta, and there seem to be a few minor issues to iron out, and I’m not so sure about the lavender graphics, but the interface is simple enough to learn pretty quickly.

It’s a good example of an app that is making the transition from a point-and-click/keyboard environment to a sensory "touch and feel" environment which isn’t restricted to a personal computer.