How To Videos from Howcast.com

Howcast is a resource for how-to videos that don't take themselves too seriously. To be sure, some of the topics or instructions are so specific or random that they become slightly tinged with self-parody, but as best I can tell, most of the videos offer practical advice on a variety of topics. At any rate, How To Videos from Howcast.com is an Android app well-designed for viewing these videos.

The app's home screen is divided into four tabs. You can view Featured videos, Recent videos, and Playlists that people have designed, or run your own Search. In addition to these tabs, the menu also lets you view Top Rated videos or a random video, or browse through categories, view favorites, and look at your history.

In video playback, you have options to pause, fast forward, and rewind videos, as well as options to e-mail the videos to people, or to add videos to favorites. The video load speed and quality are both reasonably good.

After you have viewed a video, there is an option to view a transcript. I'm not convinced that this feature is very useful, but others may like it.

The search bar is a bit of a disappointment. If you're looking for a particular video and get too many results, it can be difficult to refine your search. Also, sometimes I had problems when I tried to add videos to my favorites list--they didn't always show up in the list. Luckily, the History option in the menu works well, so this usually isn't a critical problem.

You might also be interested in the TED Mobile video app.

See other recent articles by Paul Jickling.