After a private beta launch last December, Assimilate has opened its new Scratch Web, a collaborative cloud-based sharing tool for Scratch timelines, for public use.

Built on Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, the Scratch Web service allows users of Scratch, Scratch Lab, and Scratch Play to pubish Scratch constructs on private or public web channels. "A public channel is basically YouTube," explained Scratch VP of Business Development Lucas Wilson. "If you go to scratchweb.tv, you'll see one big public channel, and you can select from a whole bunch of timelines that people have published. But you have the option to publish to a private channel, which is protected by a password, so that you can invite other people to participate."

Wilson acknowledged that it's not hard to come by ways to share video online, but he noted that Scratch Web allows video pros to publish an actual timeline to the web, with versioning functions, annotation tools, and support for publishing camera-raw file formats. "If you're dealing with, let's say, Dropbox, you have to do all of the transcoding, so there's a lot of work on your end to get the files ready to upload," he said. "With Scratch Web, you can load all your clips into Scratch Play and just hit Publish."

Users of full-fledged Scratch systems can get a free trial of a Scratch Web channel for 30 days, but users of the barebones Scratch Play media player can publish to a Scratch Web channel for free. Coming soon, Wilson tells us, are dedicated apps for iOS, Android, and Windows that will enable greater functionality for Scratch Web playback than a standard web browser interface.