Trailer Sharing Test

"Dream" Trailer - Maleficent on Disney Video

test spongebob

Fanhattan Review - It's a Start to Something Cool

A co-worker of mine of mine recently hipped me to this app called Fanhattan that seemingly attempts to aggregate all movies and TV shows in order to provide the user with a variety of on-demand options to digitally access content from, whether it be streamed or downloaded.  Check this article on TechCrunch about it: Fanhattan Promises Better Internet TV Through The Power Of Data 

The problem with this app is that this app doesn't deliver on that promise. It only shows some movies and some TV shows and only access to *EST or **SVOD content providers. Even if it is available for "free" on Hulu, it will only direct you to Hulu Plus, Hulu's paid service. Clearly they want you to spend $ in order to watch. I guess watching ads is not good enough for these stakeholders.

Also all digital streaming services are not available, like Crackle and Flixster. This limitation happens to coincide with their limited catalog as it does not contain TV shows like Seinfeld or movies like Step Brothers. Obviously the folks that are investing in this app have chosen to exclude their competitors. Looks like studio battles are still very much alive and kicking with no end in sight. This is really too bad. By creating apps like this that have so much potential but are yet so limited by the stakeholders they eliminate the entire reason to have an app like this in the first place! If people don't use it, then there's really no point. I only see a need for this type of product is if it makes good on the promise of better Internet TV. 

It needs to actually make finding/consuming content (on the go or in your living room) better through data by actually providing the following: 

1. Include every movie and TV show you can find in the IMDB database. (Be studio agnostic!) 
2. Have an exhaustive list of digital content providers and prioritize those providers by "free"/ad-supported models, then direct to consumer models. Either way the content providers are still getting paid. (Be provider agnostic!)

This app will be doomed for failure unless the business owners can convince the stakeholders of this.

Fanhattan is currently only available as an app on iOS devices but they have web and connected TV app plans in the works. See their vanity website for more details: http://www.fanhattan.com

*EST = Electronic Sell Through aka buy it once and own it "forever"

**SVOD = Subscription Video On Demand aka a service you pay a monthly fee for like Netflix and Hulu Plus.

The Usage of Login, Log-in or Log In?

Part of my job is to write copy and the use of login comes up quite a lot. I have a feeling this comes up for other folks out there so I thought I'd post the rules and help shed some light on this tricky use of proper web grammar.

Here are the rules:

When used as a verb – it’s two words: log in (to log in)

When used as an adjective or a noun – it’s hyphenated: log-in
o (your log-in password) (your log-in)

You should never use of login.

It's Raining eBros! Hallelujah!!

This week I launched two more interactive eBrochures for Lexus. This brings my total to 6 eBrochures using the Zmags tool. Four of them have been completely interactive (with flash and video) and the other two just normal PDFs transformed into an online experience. I plan on writing up an extensive review of the Zmags tool but until them please take a look at my two latest projects: The LS line eBrochure & The GS eBrochure.

The LS Line



The GS

List of Recommended Reading for IA / UX Professionals

When I was working on LStudio.com I had the pleasure of working with Josh Galban, a very accomplished Information Architect. I have not worked with many IA professionals as the IA has usually fallen in my lap to figure out. I can say that after working with him, I wish I had had him on all the projects I have worked on in the past. While my main focus and expertise when building websites is on production. How are we going to build this sucker? What kind of talent do I need? How much money do I have? and How long is this going to take? It's nice to have a person on your team always thinking about... Is this the best way to build this?

I really learned a lot working with him and was very impressed with his documentation and thought process. After the project launched I had to have lunch with him and pick his brain as to how he became such an expert. I asked him for a list of resources I could read to hopefully one day be just as informed as him and this is what he sent me.

"Jody, here's a long list of recommended books that have shaped how I work.  I strongly recommend these to UX professionals.  I don't keep up with many websites or blogs, but I've mentioned the ones I find most helpful:

First, I haven't read this, but it's probably going to be one of the best books around on user experience design.  I will probably read it, love it and recommend it from now on:
Designing for the Digital Age by Kim Goodwin

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
This is one of the pioneering works in UX design.  It's based on Norman's cognitive psychology research.

About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design by Alan Cooper and Richard Reimann
Cooper is another key figure in UX design.  He has laid the groundwork for much of what UX people do.


Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
Very short book on how to get good feedback on the merits of a design before committing lots of money to build something out.

Jakob Nielsen's website http://www.useit.com/ and books
I love Jakob Nielsen.  He's done a great service to the discipline by deriving results and insights based on empirical research.  Though, his presentation of those findings can make them a bit hard to stomach.

Bruce Tognazzini's website http://asktog.com/
Great insights from one of the key designers of the original Mac UI.

Edward Tufte's books and his website http://www.edwardtufte.com/
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
Envisioning Information
Visual Explanations
Beautiful Evidence

Jared Spool's company User Interface Engineering and website http://www.uie.com/
I recommend subscribing to his newsletter and Brain Sparks blog.  These days, they're doing a lot of research on how designers work.

The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception by James J. Gibson
Gibson is another pioneer of the UX discipline, but most practitioners have never heard of him.  Gibson pioneered a branch of psychology called "Ecological Psychology" which has nothing to do with the green movement.  His work explores human cognition has evolved and been shaped by the physical environment and the limitations/capabilities of the body.  He coined the term "affordances" which later showed up in Donald Norman's work.  "Affordances" are the indicators that give us an idea of how things work and how we can interact with them.  Underlined Links, for example, have become affordances for interactivity on websites.

Any of Henry Petroski's books
Petroski has several books about the evolution and design of everyday things like toothpicks, pencils, paperclips, books and bookshelves.  Get exploration of the forces that come together to shape an object.


The Paradox of Choice: Why Less Is More by Barry Schwartz
Computers as Theatre by Brenda Laurel
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
Source of Power: How People Make Desicisions by Gary Klein
Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate by Michael Schrage
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
Writing Effective Use Cases by Alexander Cockburn
Why Businesspeople Speak Like Idiots: A Bullfighter's Guide by Fugere, Hardaway and Warshawsky
Crossing the Chasm by Moore
The World Without Us by Weisman"

Since this list is soooo in-depth I had to share it with my readers. Please leave a comment and let me know if you know of any other resources that an aspiring IA should read. Thanks....

eBrochures Using the Zmag Tool #2

Here is the second eBrochure I produced for Team One.

Top 20 Twitter Tips for Tweeps

In this post you will find links to websites that will allow you to become a power user of Twitter. Ever wonder how someone you've never heard of has boat load of followers? Chances are they are utilizing some of the information you'll find here. I have been collecting these little gems as I find them. Some I have put in place, some I have not. I am still experimenting as well. So if you find that I have left something off this list please add to it and leave a comment.

1. The Twitter Guide Book
First things first....You've got to know the basics. Learn about retweets, #hastags, #followfriday and more. This website is the ultimate guide to Twitter.

2. TwitterBackgrounds.com
Customize your background. Don't be boring and lazy. Create something personalized or choose from their vast free library, there is even an option to have a background designed just for you.

3. Search.Twitter.com
Start following people and hopefully they will follow you. Of course the first thing you should do is invite your friends and family to follow you but you should also find people tweeting about topics you're interested in or topics you think you could contribute to. The power of Twitter really is all about the search. Ease drop on potential customer conversations by searching out the keywords of the product or service you sell. Answer their cries in the moment they need you. Do you sell something that solves a problem? Use a keyword from that problem and search for it in Twitter. See all the people that are currently talking about the very problem you solve. @Reply them with your solution. You may have just found a new customer.

4. TwitThis.com
TwitThis lets you easily share links with your friends, and find new followers. This service takes a URL and turns it into a complete tweet. You don't have to think about it, well other than what you want to share. It also suggests other users for you to follow. You can also bookmark the site to your browser's toolbar and anytime you navigate to a site you like, click it!

5. Twhirl.org vs. TweetDeck.com
Twhirl and TweetDeck are social software desktop clients. Twirl is based on the Adobe AIR platform. TweetDeck uses a more classic software platform. These apps allow you to keep track of your Twitter accounts without using your browser. Twhirl is a compressed version of TweetDeck. I prefer it to TweetDeck because it does not take up my entire desktop and sends a Growl-type alert every time someone I am following posts a tweet. TweetDeck is cool if you like to see everything coming in all at once, @replies, DM's, followers and following. It send audio alerts every time someone posts. Of course you can manage the communication of both apps if you don't like being pinged every other second.

6. Tweepler.com
This site is really cool. It provides you with a super easy way to sift through your followers and decide if you want to follow them back or not. Get rid of the spammers, scammers and prostitutes with one simple click of an arrow. It's also a great way to review the people you are following. I started following some folks over two years ago when I was still figuring out what the hell Twitter was. Now some of those profiles are dead and others are talking about topics I have no interest in.

7. TwitterFeed.com
TwitterFeed allows you to hook up RSS feeds to your Twitter account so you are always posting updates. You can program a Google news alert, your blog posts and RSS feed you like! This has got to be one of the most useful and effortless sites out there for keeping your account relevant and fresh.

8. Trendistic.com
Earlier in this post I told you about search.twitter.com... Trendistic.com leverages the same idea but gives you analytics as well. You enter a search term and this site will show you tweets with that keyword in it from 24 hours ago, the past 7 days, the past 30 days and for a nominal fee show you the past 90 and 180 days. This is a very useful tool for searching out niche markets.

9. TweetLater.com aka SocialOomph.com
Social Oomph is a site that allows you to schedule your tweets thereby boosting your productivity. Free and Professional versions are available. The free version is very robust allowing you to do the following:

    * Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget!  

    * Track keywords on Twitter — Empower yourself!

    * Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing!

    * Send welcome DMs to new followers — Automate!

    * Bit.ly URL shortening — Track those clicks!

    * Follow those who follow you — Automate!

    * Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate!

    * Vet new followers — Semi-automation!

    * View @Mentions & Retweets — Multi-account efficiency!

    * Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy!

    * Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine!

    * Unlimited Twitter accounts — No charge!

10. TwitterCounter.com
Do you wanna know how you rank up against Ashton Kutcher? Or how about how you rank up against other people in your field? Check out TwitterCounter.com. The stat details include the date it first started tracking you (tracking starts when you go to the site and enter your Twitter user name), the growth of your followers and even gives you a prediction of what your follower growth may be. It shows the number of visits to your page and where you rank in the vast pool of Tweeters. They also offer a pay for service which gets you a lot of visibility and followers and can provide an easier way to grow your online popularity.

11. Twellow.com
Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you. Registration is free.

12. TweetBeep.com
TweetBeep is like Google news alerts but for Twitter. This site is great for online reputation management, catching all your @replies and @mentions, finding job/networking opportunities, keeping up on your favorite hobby, and more!

13. Twitpic.com
There are a few sites that offer the same service of photo sharing via Twitter. I think most people use Twitpic. I use this site the most when I publish images to Twitter that were taken on my phone. You can also post pictures via the site itself as well.

14. FriendOrFollow.com
Who are you following that's not following you back? Who's following you that you're not following back? Find out!

15. FlashTweet.com
This is a very powerful site. It combines several of the sites listed here capabilities into one enabling you to acquire for targeted followers. ou can add multiple Twitter accounts to your profile, discover who you are following that is following you back, mass follow users based on search terms and location, unfollow multiple friends at once, schedule tweets in advance to run throughout the week, insert RSS feeds that will automatically tweet the title and link of your blog or another site. The catch is that this site is not free. They give you a 14-day trial and then it is $6.95 a month.

16. TwitterHolic.com
With TwitterHolic you can find out who the most popular twitter users are. They list the top people on Twitter up to 1000. You can also type in your username and see the date you first joined, you pic/bio, your rank on TwitterHolic as well as your rank in your location. I can never get enough stats!

17. Your Twitter Karma aka dossy.org/twitter/karma
This is another site like FriendorFollow and FlashTweet where you can see who's following you, who's not following you back as well as do bulk un-follow or follow. I have heard that is you get over 5000 followers the site begins to not be able to process your request as easily. But it's free so who's complaining?

18. ComLuv.com
Comment Luv has a new plugin which is activated across all the blogs at ComLuv.com called TwitterLink Comments. It allows people that comment on your posts to add their Twitter username to the form and once their comment is submitted, every comment from them over your whole site will show a link to their twitter page so other readers can easily follow them.
This is a great way to help your blog readers grow their following and also encourage them to comment. The better the comment, the more likely someone will be to click their link and follow them.
Try it out, let me know how it works out for you.

19. TweetMeme.com
Their tagline really says it all....here you can find the hottest links on Twitter. TweetMeme is a service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter to determine which links are popular. TweetMeme categorizes these links into Categories, Subcategories and Channels, making it easy to filter out the noise to find what you're interested in. They make it easy for you to subscribe to each category and the most popular through our RSS feeds and Twitter accounts.

20. TwiTip.com
Last on my list is a blog all about Twitter called TwiTip.com. TwiTip is about capturing some of the lessons that the author, Darren Rowse, and others have been learning about Twitter and how to use it more effectively. This blog covers Twitter Tips of all varieties including Writing for Twitter, Branding, Growing a Following, Corporate Tweeting and a lot more.

Which One Doesn't Look Like the Other Ones?

 

I love this image. Once upon a time Macs were the odd ball computers.

Pro-Bono Website for the OVFF

This summer I took on a free project for the Other Venice Film Festival. The budget for this site was ZERO. Luckily I have some great friends that helped me take the site from this old site:

To the image we have below. Feel free to check out the live site here.

Pro-bono projects are fun for me because I get to have total control. For this site I had help from a graphic designer who did the logo and a developer that helped with the backend, everything else was ALL me. I designed the site, did all the graphics, wrote all the copy, set up all the social networking and banner hosting. Since the budget was nothing I pulled in all the free resources I could find making for a very web 2.0 website. While there are still a few things I'd like to change, I think this is worlds better than what they had. This site is built on the Word Press platform so it is totally dynamic and will grow with the festival as needed.

eBrochures Using the Zmag Tool

I have been working on this hybrid print/interactive project since May. It is finally live. This project was challenging because I had to work with a print AD, print Account person and print Clients on this interactive project. Getting everyone up to speed on the technology, maintaining print quality standards and making sure expectations on all sides were understood were the most difficult aspects of producing this piece.

In the end, I think it turned out beautifully. Please click on the image above, take a look at the actual ebrochure and leave your feedback below. I'd be happy to answer any questions about working with the Zmag tool.

Lisa Kudrow & Dan Bucatinsky @ The Webby Awards for Web Therapy on LStudio.com

Lisa and Dan being interviewed on the red carpet at the 2009 Webby Awards for her win as Best Comedic Performance on www.LStudio.com.





Here Alan Cumming introduces Lisa, plays a clip from Web Therapy and she gives her 5 word speech.

IPhone OS 3.0 Coming on June 17

IPhone OS 3.0 Coming on June 17

Posted using ShareThis

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

I can't wait to test this new way of communicating out!

I think I am most excited about the instant push to a blog site.

What excites you the most about Google Wave?

"No Parking" by Jeremy Brunjes

Testing the embed player from LStudio.com.

We are running a little film festival on the site this summer. The films are very good. Be sure to check them out!

L Studio Before and After

BEFORE

LOADING (The user would stare at this for about 30 seconds before any videos would finally appear.)


HOME


VIDEO PLAYER


AFTER

HOME


VIDEO PLAYER


Please check the new site out and leave any feedback in the comment section below.

The New L Studio is LIVE!!!

This is the newest series of content "Films on L" just released TODAY, minutes ago...on the new and improved L Studio.com.

Here I am testing the embed code. It works! Check out the new L Studio site today.

L Studio Content Gets Nominated for a Webby!

Wow! Two of L Studio's series have been nominated for the same category of Best Writing in the Online Film & Video category! Web Therapy and Puppy Love will go head to head against each other for the title!

Since there are only 5 nominees and L Studio has 2 of 5... those odds are pretty good. The best part is, YOU can help us win.

Sign up for the People's Voice and cast your vote for Web Therapy or Puppy Love! (We do have some stiff competition with Prop 8 The Musical...which is why we need your help!)

Facebook Fiasco - how to turn negative into positive

Facebook Fiasco - how to turn negative into positive

Posted using ShareThis

YouTube flirting with Sony Pictures

See the original post of this story here.

YouTube’s quest for real Hollywood content continues. Ongoing talks with Sony Pictures could result in full-length streaming movies for the site — a big improvement over the watery content deal reached the other day for short-form content from Disney/ABC/ESPN.

Of course, Sony won’t be giving up its latest boxoffice hits. The studio’s film showcase crackle.com serves up fare such as “Groundhog Day,” “Shakes the Clown” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” While we wouldn’t mind revisiting “Shakes” or “Neighbors,” there’s little but moldy catalog stuff on the Sony site. That’s what would come to YouTube, probably in limited numbers and perhaps unspooled on a branded Sony player.

Read the rest of this story here.