Monday, September 29, 2008

Kelsey Peterson Gets 6 Years



Late last year in two of the markets I helped produced mircosites and content for Kelsey Peterson abducted a boy from Nebraska (NTV aka KHGI) and drove him to Mexico through another one of our markets in Yuma, AZ (KSWT). So we whipped together a Fact File site to capture all the information surrounding the story.

http://www.factfile.tv/peterson/


In the fact file you can see a time line of the crime, photos, videos, key characters, blog and glossary of relevant terms to the case. Here is the direct link to the video page: http://www.factfile.tv/peterson/petersonvideo/5980

It looks like the webmaster has not been keeping the page up. However, I am happy to find out the resolution to the story. This from the NTV Twitter: "Kelsey Peterson has been sentenced to 6 yrs in federal prison & 5 yrs of supervision after for taking her underage lover to Mexico."

When I asked my contact at NTV, "Whatever happened to the boy?" She said the last she heard from him was that he was still living in Mexico since Kelsey dropped him off there.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Apple's Genius is Genius

No more shuffle shame!

The first song I picked was from The Black Eyed Peas, "Pump It" and it spat out 24 additional songs that went perfectly! (I bounced around my house cooking and cleaning. I'm feeling the domestic goddess today,)

Next I picked "Do Me Good" by Amy Winehouse and Genius said that they could not build a playlist from that one and to choose update from the store menu. I did this 5 times and still it was unable to match poor Amy. I'll try it again in a few days.

Now I am listening to "Guitar Noire" by the Aqua Velvets and created a Genius playlist from that...WOW I am looking forward to the next 2 hours: The While Stripes, Elvis, Nick Cave, The Doors, The CURE! (odd but interesting), Rentals, Still Little Fingers, Violent Femmes, The Who, Patti Smith, Fleetwood, Queen, Iggy, Brian Setzer, Devo, Gen X. Johnny Thunders, Feist and finally Fishbone... I didn't even realize my music collection was so bad ass!

It very similar to Pandora.com but it's better becasue it choose from your own collection instead of some random band you have never heard of. But if you want the random band it offers it up to you on the side from the iTunes store for download.

I can only hope one day to be on a team that invents and depolys something so f'n cool.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Apple Keynote Today



Anybody going to watch?

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Supercharge Your Blog Webinar

I attended a webinar today called "Supercharging Your Blog". This webinar was put on by www.netbizexpert.com and www.clarityofvision.com.It was pretty informative but seemed to unravel a bit towards the end with the hosts bombarding us with various websites to visit. I did not come away with a strategic plan but I did get hip to some sites I was not familiar with yet.

If you are interested in checking it out, you can download it here:
www.netbizexpert.com/video/sept102008.wmv

Some new sites that I got out of this were:
www.feedblitz.com
www.disqus.com
www.quantcast.com
www.hostgator.com

Monday, September 8, 2008

My Project List

While this is not an exhaustive list of all the projects I have been involved in, they are my favorites. They are listed in order of most recent.

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Client: Lexus
Project: www.LStudio.com Build a Web 2.0 site that aligns the Lexus brand with innovation.
Scope: Original video content with social networking functionality. Budget - 2 Million
Team Size: 10 (not including third party vendors)
My Responsibility: Project Manager – Supported Senior PM with all in house tasks (design, layouts and copy), worked with IA, managed page specs, managed asset delivery from third party vendors
Technical Requirements: The site was required to connect with Lexus’ Owner’s database to enable easier registration by Lexus Owners. It also needed to connect with current Lexus CMS for content updates.
Misc: For this project we worked with two third party vendors, one provided all the video content and the other the developing/programming.

________________________________________________________________________

Client: KP Fashion Company
Project: www.kiraplastinina.us
Scope: Build the USA version of teen fashion designer Kira Plastinia that features her collections, press, videos, VIP/goodie section, 2 games and 2 widgets. Budget - $70,000 (The site I produced has since been removed. The one they have up now I did not work on.)
Team Size: 5 – myself, flash developer, php developer, and two designers
My Responsibility: I was the producer, project manager and copywriter. I managed the scope, calendars, budget and build. I also conceptualized and wrote the two games
Technical Requirements: This site had to build completely in flash as well as have a CMS. We also worked with a third party vendor that built the eCommerce section of the website. The user’s log-in credentials had to function seamlessly in the VIP section of the site as well as the eCom site.

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While I was with Pappas Telecasting, we cranked out about one microsite a month as well managed 28 station site re-designs and full blown websites. Almost all of the sites we created or managed had a text messaging or mobile publishing feature incorporated. For all of these projects, I managed the calendars, the team as well as produced content. On occasion I interviewed celebrities and news subjects, shot and edited video and did my own post-production. Since there are too many sites to list, I have called out my two favorites below.

Client: Pappas Telecasting
Project: Community Correspondent www.communitycorrespondent.com
My favorite version: http://communitycorrespondent.com/ntv/
Scope: Build a social networking website that encouraged the viewers of our news and entertainment stations across the country to contribute content. This content would then be incorporated into the nightly newscasts (if available) or onto the main station website.
Team Size: 3 – myself, backend developer and a designer
My Responsibility: I was the project manager. I managed the calendar and page specs. I also trained the producers of new media at each station. We produced about 10 of these sites for our various stations. Once the initial site was done, it was just a matter of cloning them for each station. The real work came in when I was tasked with training the producers at each station with content production (writing for the web and consistency), marketing and out-reach to support the site. For many of the people in those positions, it was their first job dealing with the web.
Technical Requirements: Create an intuitive user generated content website that also allowed for mobile publishing. The site incorporated videos (utilizing On2’s codec technology) photos, galleries and stories published by its users. We also had to incorporate an anonymous “whistleblower” feature as well as a section where the station reporters could give assignments to their community journalists. This site has a full CMS for the reporters to police and maintain their users and content.

Client: Pappas Telecasting
Projects: Fact File www.factfile.tv (my favorite: http://www.factfile.tv/schuster)
Scope: The Fact File was created to be an empty “bucket” that stations could deploy at a moments notice for big stories that would go on for months or years at a time. This microsite was meant to be iFramed into the stations main website.
Team Size: 3 - myself, backend developer and a designer
My Responsibility: I was the project manager. I managed the calendar and page specs. For the Schuster case, I also edited and posted all the video content.
Technical Requirements: Create a microsite that could easily be cloned, updated and contain content from any type of long-term news story. The site needed to be a small enough dimension in order to be iFramed into the stations main website but large enough to contain all the information necessary for a large news story. This microsite also has a full CMS.

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Client: Discovery Channel
Project: Interactive Television Component for Discovery Channel’s “Walking with Dinosaurs”
Scope: Create four hours of original synchronous content to compliment Discovery Channel’s show “Walking with Dinosaurs”. We employed a “two screen” approach to interactive television to this project, which was one of the first of its kind.
Team Size: 15
My Responsibility: I was the Associate Producer. I wrote all of the scripts, conceptualized and planned the games, as well as managed the design team.
Technical Requirements: Since this had not really been done before, we had to invent the medium as we went along. The content had to fun and engaging, enhance the show without being too distracting and was manually deployed as the show unfolded to the viewers. This was before broadband was prevalent, so everything had to be crunched down to the smallest size without loosing too much of the integrity.
Misc: My team was nominated for an Interactive Television Emmy Award the first year this award was offered by the Academy.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Posts Below...

All of the posts below I have moved over from another blog I have been working on. In an effort to organize my thoughts I now have a series of blogs...

So the dates and times that are mentioned in the posts will not correlate to the dates they were posted.

All the posts from here on out will be current.

Taking the Twit out of Twitter

I joined Twitter a year or more ago but never really grasped the concept or how to use it beyond telling seemingly random people what I am doing. I just didn't "get" it.

So... I signed up for a webinar today hosted by Paul Colligan called "Twittering Your Business Without Twittering Away Your Life" to educate myself. You can check out the recorded webinar for yourself here: Here's the archive:

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=KZaPN&m=1eQAoDiCFEY3N9&b=tSy49dlwUwQfrjxFd5Hh0A

PASSWORD - "webinars"

If you'd like to check out his other webinars go here: http://snipurl.com/twitterwebinar

This webinar got me thinking... although I don't currently have a business of my own right now to market using Twitter it gave me a lot of ideas for uses on the current account I am working on (lexus).

If you have never heard of Twitter before check out this video: http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1460879066/bctid1612511173

With my new found understanding of this web app I plan on integrating it more into my projects and life.

Oh! And don't forget to follow me: http://twitter.com/joughdee

Portfolio: www.KiraPlastinina.us



I promised I would post my latest project when it was complete so you all could critique it and give me some feedback.

Well... I finished www.KiraPlastinina.us last Friday. On this project I was the Interactive Producer. I was given a screen shot of the home page, a very loose scope and a due date. The front end, what the user sees, is done entirely in flash and the back end, the content management system, was done using php. This is the first dynamic flash site I have ever produced. There were some challenges and compromises that had to be made to get it done but overall I am happy with the final product. I think the music player is probably the coolest feature and it was the biggest hurdle as well in terms of licensing and programming.

I also had to produce a MySpace page that went along with this site. You can find that page here: www.myspace.com/kirausa

The MySpace page was very challenging to create because the design we came up with (and got sign off on) did not jive completely with the way the MySpace tool is set up. I was lucky enough to work with a programmer that actually works for MySpace so we were able to accomplish most of our design by using his admin access. Whew! (Although we could only optimize it for IE 7, Safari and FireFox.)

So dear readers... please take a look and if you have any questions or feedback please leave a comment or send me an email and I'd be happy to get back to you.

How Web Design Impacts Effectiveness

This is a pretty good webinar. If you are planning on building a shopping cart for your site, this is a must see.

Kira Plastinina Collection Widget



I had the opportunity to produce 2 widgets on the KiraPlastinina.us project. This is the one showcases her collections and the one below showcases a video. Both are controlled by the CMS that was built to manage the website.

If you'd like to get your own Kira widgets, sign up as a VIP club member on her site (It's free) then navigate to the widget section, then copy and paste the code to wherever you'd like it to live.

Kira Plastinina Video Widget

SplashCast - The Next Wave in Integrated Online Marketing

Everyone knows that banner ads are so yesterday. Whether interactive sales teams are ready to admit it or not, they just are not effective and usually annoy people more than anything. Banner or display ads are the TV commercials of the internet. You may pay attention to a few of the über creative ones but the rest you just tune out.

So where should advertisers be spending their budgets? If you check out this graph below, you'll see where the interest, eyeballs and dollars are going:



How do you integrate your brand into those social networking and user generated content sites without hitting people over the head? Even better than that... how do you get your consumers to distribute your content for you and have it be totally natural?

I think SplashCast is one company that has cracked the online marketing nut and they have been doing it since December 2006. They make it possible for a brand to be a part of an online community in a totally organic way.

Add Learn More on Web Site to your page


If I had a brand that needed to reach a teen, young adult or web savvy market creating a SplashCast seems like a total no brainer.

The Secret Strategies Behind Many “Viral” Videos

My friend Sara sent me a link to this article. Very interesting food for thought.

Watch Cable on your PSP or iPhone





Sling Media goes "Solo"

The new Slingbox Solo lets users view their cable programming on the go using any device that can connect to the Internet. The new model is smaller and less expensive than its "Pro" predecessor, and it is expected to appeal to consumers looking for simple setups. Sling Media also is gearing up to launch new software that will enable users to pause, rewind and then fast-forward transmissions.


Check out the site by going clicking HERE