But with the help of their ad agency, New York’s BBDO, Lowe’s has embraced the new 6-second video medium in a totally unique way. The home improvement chain has turned the short videos into fast-paced but informative how-to videos concerning everything from removing a stripped screw with the help of a rubber band, to cleaning your rusty knives in a lemon juice bath.

“Historically the category can be thought of as incredibly complicated. We sell products but those products are components to a project, and a consumer needs all the information on how to complete the project,” Tom Lamb, CMO at Lowe’s told AdAge. “What consumer behavior is forcing us to do is learn to be incredibly concise. We’re making an effort to demonstrate that we know a little bit, so [consumers think] it’s worth seeing what else we know on our site and in store.”

Not only are they well-executed and informative, but it’s a great way to not only provide an actual service, but to promote the brand and make something worth sharing too.

Here are some of Lowe’s awesome home improvement Vines, aptly titled #lowesfixinsix:

When shooting your Vine, all you have to do is tap a new button on the bottom-left=hand corner to toggle between using the front-facing and regular camera on your device. Naturally, this will help Vine auteurs who fancy including selfies in their videos.

Vine finally supports @mentions as well.

“Vine now supports mentions, so you can tag people in your post. Users who are mentioned will receive a notification in Activity. To mention a user, type @username and select the name among the suggestions you’ll see. See the screenshot below for an example — when I type @chris, I see suggestions for Chris Fry, Chris Hardwick and Christofer Drew. When I select Chris Hardwick, his Vine profile will automatically link in my post’s caption,” says Vine engineer Kristian Bauer.

Vine’s last iOS app update added trending hashtags to help users surface more content. Vine also recently made videos embeddable via both the web and on mobile.

Last week, Vine co-founder Dom Hofmann confirmed that Vine is coming to Android soon.

You can grab the update for Vine for iOS over at the App Store.

Vine was also the inspiration for a recent competition put on by the Tribeca Film Festival. #6SecFilms asked aspiring Vine-makers to submit their best work to be judged for a chance to win a little pocket change and, well, internet glory. Tribeca says that there were over 400 entries, and that their panel whittled it down to 4 winners.

“We’re ready to announce the winners of Tribeca’s #6SECFILMS Vine Competition! After TFF’s Programmer Genna Terranova created the shortlist, our illustrious jury members pored over it and came up with their choices. The winners will receive $600 each (a Benjamin for each second), and the honor of knowing their Vines were the best.”

Without further ado, here are your Tribeca Vine winners:

@KevyPizza, There Is No Sunny-Side to This Story (In the Auteur category):

@Matt Swinsky, LazerAndDonald Close Shave (In the Genre category):

@Jethro Ames, How to Clear Your Garage From a Scary Ghost (In the Animate category):

Chris Donlon, The Book Beetle trilogy (In the Series category):

Vine, Twitter’s new 6-second video app, is on the way to Android “soon.”

Speaking to The Verge, Vine Co-founder Dom Hofmann confirmed the “soon” timeframe. Nothing more, nothing less. Just “soon.” We always knew that an Android version of the popular app must be in the works, but this is the first time that we’ve heard that it is indeed on the horizon. Back in February, Vine began looking for a lead Android engineer.

He also said that a new feature is coming to the iOS version – friend tagging. But it’s currently waiting for final Apple approval.

Vine has seen quite a bit of success after its rocky start. Vine launched back in January and immediately found itself in the middle of a porn controversy. Users were shocked to find that people were using the service to post 6-second porn clips. Vine doesn’t specifically ban nudity in their terms, but they did mess up handily when they accidentally promoted an explicit video as one of their editor’s picks.

With poor user feedback and the threat of a ban in Apple’s notoriously conservative App Store, Vine made some changes to bury NSFW content deep down in the app.

But soon, we saw Vine being used in a variety of ways: for promotion and for politics. For comedy and for game teasers. Vine even played a pretty big role in raw footage from the Boston Marathon bombings.

When Vine finally comes to Android, you can expect its presence to rise significantly. It’ll probably look a lot like the moment when Instagram finally launched on Android – but this time I don’t expect iOS users to get all pissy about their favorite app opening up to the masses.

Over the past two days, Bethesda has posted two more Vine teasers on its Twitter feed:

vine.co/v/bFldAQgTIr6

— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) April 17, 2013

mystery revealed tomorrow @ign vine.co/v/bUqveJ2uFeZ

— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) April 18, 2013

As you can see, both of the above teasers look nothing like Fallout. If anything, it’s looking more and more like Bethesda is finally ready to reveal Zwei, a game from horror mastermind Shinji Mikami.

As the latest teaser reveals, we’ll find out more about the publisher’s next game tomorrow on IGN. It would be kind of hilarious if Zwei was Fallout 4 in disguise. That’s not to say Fallout fans should expect anything though. We’re probably still at least a year off from an announcement.

Bethesda posted the following Vine teaser on its Twitter account today:

vine.co/v/bFPjjheVnau

— Bethesda Softworks (@Bethblog) April 16, 2013

As you can see, there’s no explanation. Many are assuming it’s a teaser for Bethesda’s next game which many first assumed was an impending announcement for Fallout 4 or whatever Bethesda Game Studios is working on next. For Fallout fans, that’s unfortunately not the case as Bethesda’s Pete Hines put that assumption to rest:

@aegies You talking about the Vine thing? Guess again

— Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) April 16, 2013

Of course, it’s easy to forget that Bethesda is also a publisher, and the publisher has two games on the horizon. One is codenamed Zwei, a new survival horror game from Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. The other is an unnamed project from MachineGames, a developer made up of ex-Starbreeze staff. Some are saying that their title is a new entry in id’s celebrated Wolfenstein series.

The funny thing is that the Vine teaser could fit both scenarios. The record is playing Bach’s music, and Bach was German. Zwei is a German term and the creepy mood of the Vine teaser fits a horror-themed game quite well. On the other hand, Wolfenstein traditionally takes place during World War II and has the player fighting nazis in Germany.

Bestheda hasn’t said anything else since the Vine teaser, but we’ll probably learn what the mystery game is soon enough. Besthesda generally doesn’t keep fans guessing for long so we should be seeing a proper announcement before the end of the month.

The “explore” tab lets you surface content via Editor’s Picks, “Popular Now,” and now trending hashtags.

The “Popular Now” section also features hashtags, but they are picked using a different metric. The new trending hashtags show those that are the fastest-rising, but not necessarily those containing the most posts.

“We launched Vine with an Explore section to make it easier for you to find great content, like popular posts and hashtags, from accounts you may not follow. Since launch, there have been a ton of awesome, creative posts that don’t always make it to the popular sections. In many cases, these posts include a hashtag that the community is using,” says Vine.

Hopefully, this will help Vine users get into the action.

Last week, Vine finally made videos embeddable via web and mobile. You can can embed your own Vines anywhere on the web, as well as other users’ Vines – as long as they’ve already shared them on Twitter first.

“When we launched Vine, we described posts as ‘little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.’ With today’s update, you can display them almost anywhere,” says Vine.

When you reach the embed screen, you can choose your size as well as two modes – simple mode and postcard mode.

Simple embeds simply show the Vine, with the pertinent information like user, description, hashtags, etc. shown when you hover.

Postcard mode shows all of that info in a white frame around the Vine video:

In order to embed a Vine via the iOS app, tap on the “…” button within any Vine video. Click “share this post” and then finally “embed.” you’ll get an email with the code, which will take you to the embed page. Make your size and mode selections and there you go. Copy the code and put it up on your site. It’s not exactly without its annoyances, but it’s about as easy as embedding on through an app could be.

You can embed your own Vines, or anyone else’s Vine as long as they’ve already shared it on Facebook or Twitter.

But one thing that it is definitely for is lemon videos. Yeah, lemon videos. Will Sasso is making a lot of them, and here’s a handy compilation of them all. Make sure to follow Sasso on Twitter for more fun Vine videos. They’re not all about lemons, by damnit if they aren’t brilliant.

[via reddit]

Freshman Representative Mark Takano (D, CA) has just submitted his very first bill, and he’s just posted a Vine video of the process:

Submitting my first bill! vine.co/v/bgVTnHx6rLi

— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) February 26, 2013

The bill Rep. Takano just submitted is called the VetSuccess Enhancement Act. It looks to extend the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ Rehabilitation & Education VetSuccess program eligibility period by 5 years.

“Nearly every veterans group I’ve talked to, including the Disabled American Veterans, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, all said that the 12 year eligibility period for the VetSuccess program was a significant road block for our heroes. The VetSuccess Enhancement Act removes that road block by extending that eligibility by five years. I’m proud to make it the first bill I will introduce in Congress and look forward to it becoming law,” said Takano.

The VetSuccess program helps injured veterans find and maintain employment.