An opportunity to try the new Vimeo

Open Your Eyes to the New Vimeo from Vimeo Staff on Vimeo.

Vimeo recently announced their new site. It's is not currently live, but if you go to the new Vimeo page you can log in and request to test out the new Vimeo site. If you do not currently have a Vimeo account, you will be prompted to create one in order to request to test out the site.

The Vimeo's site redesign proudly claims to have "zillions of improvements", many of which seem quite cool. The coolest improvement might be the full width video player. This enables you to view videos at nearly the entire width of your browser, while still maintaining more navigation and overall control than you would have with the regular full screen option. In order to make this possible, Vimeo has reorganized some of the tools and has included keyboard shortcuts.

There's now a follow option so users can follow people, channels, or tags. Updates to items you follow end up in your inbox, which has been renamed your feed.

Uploading video is now more convenient because (according to Vimeo) you can easily upload multiple videos at one time without things freezing on you or taking forever. There are also thumbnail previews on the upload screen, which appear to be moving images of your video as it's uploading.

Advanced searching is now available so you can do a search, click advanced and select options to further narrow your search.

There are more privacy options which allow you to block users from contacting you; you can hide videos, which will be clearly marked as private so you know which ones are public and which ones aren't; and you can hide the stats of your video.

There's also a newly created Creative Commons aspect to Vimeo. This means you can more easily browse videos with Creative Commons licenses.

Finally, they've enabled non-member downloading and more interconnectivity options with Facebook, Twitter, and Google's photo organizing software, Picasa.

These are just some of the new features. For the full scoop and to register to be a tester, go to the new Vimeo page.