Alan Parsons Project

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Skry Help Center

About Skry

Skry makes it easy to share video

Skry is pinboards for YouTube™. Instead of bookmarking videos in your web browser, you can create a pinboard, add YouTube videos, and watch them anytime, anywhere, on any device. You can also share Skry pinboards on social media.

Skry pinboards are special

Every Skry pinboard has its own customizable icon, background picture, and permanent website address that can be shared on social media. YouTube videos can be organized into custom albums on each pinboard. Skry pinboards also support comments.

Pinboards are different from playlists

Pinboards on Skry are based on the need to create lists of videos with something in common, even though a person may not want to watch all of those videos. A playlist presumes that you want to watch, or listen to, all of the YouTube videos in the playlist.

YouTube playlists also always belong to an individual YouTube user. Pinboards on Skry can be either "reference pinboards" or "user pinboards". Reference pinboards are like a video Wikipedia, where people all over the world can contribute the best videos for a given topic. User pinboards are created by, and belong to, an individual Skry user.

Our Values

Respect is the core of everything we do. We believe everybody deserves to research and share through video. We also believe that respect is more than just saying that everybody is welcome. Respect means providing a service where everybody is represented. Respect means that users of the service interact with people that look like themselves. Respect also means that users of the service feel comfortable interacting with people that do not look like themselves.

Reference Pinboards

Reference pinboards are a reference tool...

Reference pinboards are just that, a reference tool. Think of reference pinboards as a video Wikipedia. People go to Wikipedia for an objectively useful article about a topic. People go to a reference pinboard for objectively useful videos about that topic.

everybody may view and contribute to...

Reference pinboards are viewable by everybody.
Anybody may add relevant videos to reference pinboards.
Videos and comments on reference pinboards are moderated by the Skry community.

with standards for relevance and quality.

Videos on all reference pinboards are subject to standards for relevance and quality.
Standards also apply to every reference pinboard's "elements": name, title, icon, background image, and albums.
Categories may also have their own category-specific standards for pinboard elements and videos.

User Pinboards

Skry.me will soon support user pinboards, which are personal pinboards.

How Do I...

Create a Pinboard

To create a pinboard:

Click/tap 'Explore' to view all potential categories.
Click/tap on the proper category where the pinboard should be created.
Click/tap the green 'New Reference Pinboard' to display the 'Create New Reference Pinboard' form.
Type the name and title for the new pinboard.
Click/tap the green 'Create'.

Add a Video to a Pinboard

To add a video to a pinboard:

Go to the pinboard where the video is to be added.
Click/tap the green 'Add Video' above the video list to add a video to the pinboard's default album, or click the green 'Add Video' underneath the album title to add a video directly to an album.
Type the video title and YouTube ID, both of which are required.
Optionally, if applicable, type the Artist Name, Artist Pinboard, and track/year.
Click/tap the green 'Add'.

Create an Album on a Pinboard

This section is under construction.

View the YouTube Account Associated with a Verified Pinboard

Verified pinboards are associated with a genuine YouTube account that has also been verified as belonging to the person or business. Verified pinboards have a blue circle and white checkmark in the top-left corner. To view the YouTube account associated with a verified pinboard, go to the pinboard and click/press on the Details tab. On the Details tab, click on the link next to "Official YouTube" to view the YouTube account on the YouTube website or in the YouTube app.

Verified YouTube accounts have two forms: "Vanity URL" and "Channel ID". "Vanity URL" YouTube accounts, also called a "custom channel URL", typically have a YouTube website address that looks like "https://www.youtube.com/user/<custom_name>/". To obtain for a vanity URL, YouTube has eligibility requirements and a configuration page. Many verified YouTube accounts use a channel ID instead of a vanity URL. YouTube accounts with a channel ID look like "https://www.youtube.com/channel/", followed by 25 characters that begin with "UC".

Visual Explanation of...

Navigation Toolbar

Skry's navigation toolbar looks different on smartphones and non-smartphones. On non-smartphones, it looks like this when no video has been played:

On non-smartphones, the navigation toolbar looks like this when a video is playing or has been played:

Clicking/pressing the video thumbnail in the navigation bar does three things:

First time it's clicked/pressed, Skry goes to that video's pinboard, if not already browsing it.
Second time it's clicked/pressed, Skry scrolls to the top of the pinboard, if not already scrolled to the top.
Third time it's clicked/pressed, Skry reloads and refreshes the pinboard.

A Pinboard

This section is under construction.

Explore View

This section is under construction.

Timeline View

This section is under construction.

Best Practices

Icon Best Practices

The best icon for a pinboard is whatever option for the icon is going to look the best at 72 pixels width and 72 pixels height.

Background Best Practices

Video Screenshot Best Practices

Community Guidelines

What's Okay (on Reference Pinboards)

Reference pinboards themselves can be about anything that would qualify for a Wikipedia article.

What's Not Okay (on Reference Pinboards)

Videos on reference pinboards should not have un-related content before the actual video or after it ends. Un-related content includes, but is not limited to:

custom title cards or video that describe what the viewer is about to see,
words or video that say things like "Thanks for watching" or "Subscribe to my YouTube channel", and
un-related video (even one frame of video or a fraction of a second) that was not properly cut while editing the video.

Videos on reference pinboards should not have hard-coded watermarks or other hard-coded content over the video. "Hard-coded content" is any content that cannot be removed by disabling YouTube annotations.

Deletion Policy (on Reference Pinboards)

A video may only be deleted by the user that added it.

A custom album may only be deleted by the user that created it and must be empty (no videos). A pinboard's Default album cannot be deleted, will not display if empty and there are videos in a custom album, and is deleted automatically when a pinboard is deleted.

A reference pinboard may only be deleted by the user that created it and must be empty (no custom albums or videos).

Searching Skry

How to Search

Searching Skry is as simple as typing in the search box and pressing Enter. The five most popular pinboards with whatever you type will appear automatically below the search box.

What's on Search Results

Search results contain separate sections for Pinboards, Videos, Albums, Users, and YouTube ID.

Questions & Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: What is a YouTube ID?

Answer: Every video on YouTube has a unique Eleven digit YouTube ID. The YouTube ID is case-sensitive, meaning upper-case is different from lower-case. A YouTube ID can be any eleven-digit combination of letters, numbers, hyphen (-), and underscore (_). When browsing YouTube, the YouTube ID is the 11 characters immediately after "watch?v=" in the YouTube website address.

Question: How does Skry choose the category icons?

Answer: Category icons are always icons of pinboards in that category. If the category has four pinboards or less, the category icon is the icons of those pinboards. If the category has more than four pinboards, Skry randomly selects four pinboard icons to use for the category icon.

Question: When will Skry support playlists and continuous play?

Answer: Soon.

Question: Why do some reference pinboards, like many of the actors and directors, only have just a few videos?

Answer: Bulk adding videos clogs up the public timeline. We're working on making bulk adds easier/better.

Question: Wouldn't it make more sense for some pinboards, like pinboards for actors, to have video clips of the scenes they are in instead of trailers for the entire movie?

Answer: Maybe. Spoilers is one reason we encourage trailers instead of clips of scenes. Respect for the movie directors as artists is another reason. Many directors don't like audiences watching clips of their work out of context instead of the whole movie. We're working on better solutions for the clips-versus-trailers problem.

Question: Are you doing anything to make this "video Wikipedia" more family-friendly?

Answer: Yes. Making Skry family-friendly for people of all ages is a top priority. It's more complicated than you may think. Making Skry family-friendly requires a mix of both technical solutions and site-wide policies. But we're working on it.

Question: Why do some categories, like "Animals" and "Plants", only have a few pinboards?

Answer: Some categories were created as "proof of concept" with the plan to add more pinboards later. Also, some categories would be better with additional features we are currently developing.

Question: How does one decide when to create a new pinboard?

Answer: There is no "right" time to make a specific pinboard. Skry users often make pinboards that correspond to a real-world event, as research for a project, or even because they want to create the pinboard before they forget. There is no rhyme or reason as to when a pinboard should be created.

Privacy Policy

Skry currently does not track any details about our website visitors. We don't track pinboards browsed, videos watched, or search history. However, we may change this policy to provide a better visitor experience. We will post a notice on our website whenever we revise our privacy policy.

Skry uses cookies on our website. Cookies are necessary to remember each website visitor when our visitors do things like login, browse pinboards, and add new videos. We do not share our website cookies with advertisers.

YouTube hosts all the videos and video screenshots on Skry. Visitors to the Skry website are necessarily also browsing YouTube indirectly whenever they watch a YouTube video on Skry. YouTube has its own privacy policy, which may include use of its own cookies. Skry has no access to any of our visitors' YouTube browsing history, YouTube user data, or other YouTube-owned information.

Contact Us

Email
support@skry.me

U.S. Postal Mail
Skry Corporation
855 El Camino Real 13A-327
Palo Alto, CA 94301

Changelog

This is the changelog for the entire Skry platform. If you are looking for the Timeline, click here.

Refresh

2020/August/17
* Fixed "curvedUnderline" darkmode color on homepage

2020/August/16
* Finished updates to "newest_chans" section of category caching function
* Revised category-specific "Explore" browsing functions to display six newest pinboards

2020/August/10
* Continued work on "newest_chans" section of category caching function

2020/August/1
* Implemented scrolling "affix" for Explore categories, similar to affix on Help Center

2020/July/15
* Refactoring of caching functions for meta-categories, categories, and pinboards

2020/July/14
* Modified category cache files to include pinboard creation time
* Changes to backend catschans table to implement category-specific features like "Newest Pinboards"
* Modified admin script that cleans category database to also verify pinboard creation times 

2020/July/12
* Replaced "Timeline" link with Skry.me link on desktop interface
* Resized category browser to add room for links/modules like category-specific timeline
* Added category-specific "Newest Pinboards" module on category browser

2020/July/10
* Fixed pinboard tabs mouse-hover color on darkmode

2020/June/29
* Rewrite of YouTube error notices to users, which were almost useless
* YouTube error notices now include a link to open the video on YouTube in a new window/tab
* YouTube error notices will soon have video-specific details (thumbnail, title, pinboard)

2020/May/25
* Increased search result limit to 100 for videos

2020/May/23
* Removed "Stastics" label and links from pinboard details tab

2020/May/7
* Added "Statistics" label on pinboard details tab
* "Statistics" label has (non-functioning) links for videos, albums, comments, 'see also' 

2020/May/1
* Fixed ipad-only css viewport height issue for pinboard "See Also"/Comments content
* CSS from main pinboard layout needs to be moved to css files

2020/April/26
* Changed some text labels to use help-block css class

2020/April/25
* Changed progressbar colors to be neutral for both lightmode/darkmode

2020/April/23
* Created database table for customizable "See Also" on pinboards
* Added "Verified" checkmark on verified "See Also" pinboards
* Fixed code to display some text when pinboard has no "See Also" pinboards

2020/April/19
* Changes to some icon colors for darkmode

2020/April/13
* Introducing "See Also", a tab underneath the pinboard labels
* "See also" is intended to fill the unused "Comments" screen space
* "See also" auto-propagates from the artist_name/artist_chan on the video list
* Modified pinboard cache functions to cache the "See also" section

2020/April/9
* Revised Timeline footer (Help/Privacy/About)
* Added new set of tabs underneath pinboard labels (title/name/updated)
* Moved pinboard comments section to new tabs underneath pinboard labels
* Revisions to pinboard labels tabs css height calc()
* Revisions to pinboard labels tabs css darkmode

2020/April/7
* Revised pinboard-changing code to use javascript window.matchMedia for darkmode support

2020/April/5
* Fixed background-size contain issue on smartphone screensize caused by lightmode/darkmode implementation
* Added overscroll-behavior to body css

2020/March/31
* Fixed iphone-only web browser darkmode issue that didn't refresh pinboard video list when scrolling 

2020/March/30
* Revisions to css and pinboard-changing code to support background-color on darkmode
* Revisions to darkmode css for buttons (border-color and text color instead of background-color)

2020/March/28
* Revisions to darkmode
* Worked on revising background-color/background-image for darkmode support

2020/March/27
* Revisions to darkmode
* Revisions to lightmode to support darkmode
* Changes to Explore interface to support new layout

2020/March/26
* Revisions to darkmode on smaller screensizes
* Fixed video list scrolling refresh bug on darkmode

2020/March/25
* Fixed issue with footer on Home interface on smartphones (xs screensize)
* Worked on fixing issue (missing buttons) with Tour pop-over navigation
* Added automatic darkmode color scheme for systems that support darkmode 

2020/March/24
* Revised navbar-fixed-top link order
* Worked on fixing issue with Tour pop-over navigation

2020/March/14
* Fixed issue preventing fullscreen/picture-in-picture on iPad that resulted from some recent change in YouTube's API
* Modified YouTube embed HTML from 'allow="autoplay; fullscreen">' to 'allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen>'

2020/February/23
* Added "explicit" tinyint field on pinboards database table
* Modified pinboard caching function to cache "explicit" setting
* Added "explicit" html/css to pinboard icon in category browser

2020/February/12
* Modified video add/edit modals to increase track number limit to 999

2020/February/5
* Modified search functions to include pinboard categories ("Categories") on search results

2020/January/27
* Modified search functions to display verified symbol on pinboard search results

2020/January/25
* Modified video edit modal to include number-select for day-of-month for video
* Modified pinboard video list to include day-of-month on video thumbnail

2020/January/24
* Modified video edit modal to include drop-down with selectable month name
* Modified pinboard caching function to include video month/day in sorting videos
* Modified pinboard video list to include 3-character month with 4-digit year on video thumbnail

2020/January/23
* Revised pinboard caching function to include video month/day attributes

2020/January/22
* Updated copyright statement to the current year
* Added tentative support for month and day to video details interface and vids database table
* HTML forms still need modification for video month/day

2020/January/8
* Fixed formatting issue on pinboard changes table

2020/January/6
* Revised formatting on pinboard Changes tab
* Changes tab now uses an html table and displays each revision as a table row using alternate row colors
* Implemented negative track #'s, for videos that should always be at the bottom of a pinboard's video list

2019/December/10
* Added "User Pinboards" section to "Help Center"
* Considered "Featured Video" on pinboard table (featured_title, featured_ytid)
* "Featured Video" would be optional and for movie trailer (soundtrack pinboards), new music video (musicians), etc.
* Concluded that "Featured Video" is unnecessary b/c its easier to just make an album and use that

2019/December/9
* Drafted pseudo-code for category-specific Timelines

2019/December/8
* Created admin page to compare pinboard icon with official youtube icon (where applicable)

2019/November/26
* Revised pinboard Changes tab
* Revised pinboard changelog format
* Pinboard admin cache function now also creates new pinboard changelog
* Added "Last Import" on pinboard details (for official pinboards)

2019/November/20
* Completed initial version of fn_cache_changes to generate pinboard revision history
* Created admin function to generate pinboard revision history
* Generated pinboard revision history for all pinboards
* Modified pinboard loader files to display pinboard revision history on Changes tab
* Modified functions for "new pinboard"/"add video" to update pinboard revision history

2019/November/19
* Implemented Changes tab on pinboards for revision history
* Worked on function to generate pinboard revision history

2019/November/16
* Tested displaying more random categories at top of category browser
* Added "Best Practices" section to Help Center
* Second attempt at resizing pinboard tabs
* Implemented resized pinboard tabs, with work-around using padding-top/padding-bottom for non-smartphone bug
* Resized pinboard tabs may have introduced a smartphone formatting bug, but screensize is too small to test
* Briefly tested new pinboard tab
* Considered different sized pinboard tabs based on screensize

2019/November/11
* Changed formatting on search result subheadings

2019/November/10
* Made "Add Video" / "New Album" buttons smaller (button-sm)
* Attempted to resize pinboard tabs (Videos,Albums,Details) to 12px from 14px
* Attempt to resize pinboard tabs introduced a formatting bug on non-smartphones
* Pinboard tabs will need to be resized to add new tabs for new features
* Modified search functions to display total result count next to result type

2019/November/7
* Updated Album Details modal (dlgChanAlbumEdit) to use responsive grid system
* All modals likely need a css review

2019/November/6
* Fixed catTitle font size bug on Random categories
* catTitle font size still needs its own function
* Added imported_time unsigned int field to pinboards database table
* Added a privacy policy to the Help Center
* Added a privavy policy link on the Skry mobile homepage

2019/November/3
* Added panel with some links on Timeline ("md" screensize and above)
* Fixed links on Timeline panel (added "hidden-xs" to "hidden-sm")

2019/November/2
* Added two random categories at top of category browser
* Tested additions to new two-column Timeline layout

2019/November/1
* Fixed double Add/New button bug on pinboard grid view for vids/albums

2019/October/31
* Removed big "Add Video"/"New Album" buttons on smartphone ("xs" screensize)
* Enabled "Add Video"/"New Album" buttons on tabs on smartphones
* Add/New buttons on smartphones hide the "Video"/"Album" labels

2019/October/29
* More site-wide changes to margins and padding (to make room for new features)
* Implemented family-friendly back-end feature to hide a reference pinboard's icon when exploring a category (hide_explore).

2019/October/28
* Implented changelog
* Changelog created to document new features and bug fixes
* Added new site section to display changelog
* Added a changelog link on Help section table-of-contents
* Revised margin and padding on some html elements to make interface more lean

About Skry

Our mission is to enable people to find, organize, and share video, in ways that are enriching and enjoyable.

Skry makes it easy to share video

Skry pinboards are special

Pinboards are different from playlists

YouTube had a problem loading this video.

This is usually because:
This video can only be played directly from YouTube.com. Or,
This video was removed from YouTube.

Alan Parsons Project

skry.me/alan_parsons_project

Last Updated 23/Mar/2018

See also
Comments

This pinboard does not yet have any see also.

Comments are presently not allowed on reference pinboards.