Hodge-podge of things I am pondering….

1-

Ever noticed that socially we often divide by race/lifestyle/income?  Well, it appears that this tendency is making the leap to the new online social networking.  While the decline of MySpace has been the topic of many a report/comment/blog, it may more accurately be called the divide.  While there are many reasons that this is interesting, one is that marketers may be completely overlooking MySpace as an advertising venue as their own social circles are not on MySpace.  Listen to the story.

2-

Did you know that those quizzes that you take on Facebook could be snagging your private information?  That Private setting on Facebook seems to make people feel safe.  Yet, the Facebook quiz is actually a program.  This program can be designed to scrape your profile while you are filling out the quiz.  Sneaky huh?  Well, Facebook does act to prevent and then undo damage done.  The article that informed me of this also debates whether or not this information is used for good or evil…..but I am suspicious of anything that needs to be done so surreptitiously. 

3-

So, on the topic of information floating out there…..have you heard of a site called nextmark.com?  You can buy pretty darn specific information there about oh-things-like-medical-problems-of-specific-people-and-their-e-mail-addresses.  Granted this wasn’t provided by doctors or hospitals.  It is information that people were either comfortable sharing or misguided into sharing through other sources.  But there it is for sale.  It makes me ponder my own leniencies in info sharing.  If you would like to listen to someone else ponder those tendencies, check this out.

Best Practices for Producing and Distributing Video

Rebecca Osborne, India Kee, Patrice Myers
MIST 7500: Internet Technology
G2 – Video Best Practices

Even though the capability to embed videos in web pages has been around since the inception of Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) in 1996, the widespread use of video online has only become truly mainstream during the past few years. Therefore, the guidelines and best practices for Internet videos have still not been completely codified yet. However, in 2005, Adobe posted some best practices for delivering video content:

Stream. There are three ways to deliver video content: downloading, progressive downloading, and streaming. If a user has to download a video file to play, he or she has to wait until the entire file downloads in order to watch it. In the case of large files (TV shows or movies, for example), this can take over an hour. Progressive downloading stores the meta information necessary for playback at the front of the file instead of the back, allowing the user to start playing the file before it finishes downloading. Streaming does not download the file to the user's computer at all. Not only does this let users view live events, it also protects the creator's copyright, since the data is never stored anywhere but the server.
Pause. If the video loads with the first frame displayed and the video paused, the user can a) get a cursory idea of the video's content and b) decide if and when they want the video to start. YouTube is a high-profile offender: if you search for a video, then open multiple videos in new windows or tabs in your browser, all of them start playing at once and you have to manually pause each one.
Preview. This does not seem to be widely implemented, but Adobe suggests playing a five-second clip on mouseover. This would give a better impression of the video's content than just showing the first frame.
Detect. Some users simply do not have Internet connections that can handle large downloads. If at all possible, a lower-quality version of the video should be available. If working with Flash Media Interactive Server, the Server auto-detects the user's connection speed and serves up the video with the optimal quality for that connection.
Standardize. There are common naming conventions to be observed. If a movie called "filename" is encoded at 600 Kbps, the Flash movie file should be named "filename_600". This allows the Flash Media Interactive Server to more easily deliver the proper file according to the connection speed it detected.
Trace. Trace statements aid in identifying server side errors by following the application access activity on the server. It allows you to debug before the page even reaches the user.
Optimize. The most annoying facet of streaming video is rebuffering. Make sure that you calculate the buffer time accurately. Adobe provides a tutorial on how to calculate this.
Define. Who are you trying to reach? What are their connection limitations? Is the majority of your audience on dial-up? Answering these questions will help you determine what video content you can provide.
Encode. The only way to distribute high-quality video is if it is encoded properly.

Other sites add a few more things to think about:

• Arun Chaudhary suggests that when shooting video initially, you should find a location that will enable you to get good sound. Visuals are not nearly as informative if there are no discernible sounds to accompany them. Also, choose descriptive video titles to aid in searching.
• Eric Carlsen suggests that companies should invest in hiring a video professional instead of displaying "user-generated" content. This avoids the amateur feel that pervades many YouTube videos.

In short, the basic underpinnings of video distribution best practices are similar to those of search engine optimization: Create good-quality content that is relevant and easy to find and view, and the visitors will come.

Midterm

Ok - So I feel like a bit of a doof.  I just took a quick look at a couple of other midterms out there and realized that papers written for classes typically are not single spaced.  Oops.  It has been a few years since I was a student.  So I would like to publicly apologize to Dr. Peircy for the extra reading.  While I truly enjoyed this assignment, it occured to me last night when I had no interest in re-reading what I had written.  Well, Dr. Peircy has to read about, what?, 30 or so of these.  And then I have the nerve to go all single space on everybody.  Not cool.  Not cool.

7500 Midterm Exam RO

Software as a Service

If I have something that works well I don’t really have any interest in learning something new. It is not that I don’t like to learn. It is just that it took me years to become an efficient user of Word and Excel. I am that person that knows all of their obscure features and uses them. In a business plan that some friends and I just wrote up, I put together the spreadsheets for the financial plan. It was full of detailed formulas that allowed us to change the retail or wholesale price of our product in one place and have the information propagate through the entire five year mock up. It allowed us to adjust our assumptions for the amount of product sold in January while the spreadsheet formulas automatically amended the production hours worked, cost of raw materials, and income made. It was pretty nifty, if I do say so myself.


The point of this is that I come into this wanting everything I have had in the past with the additional capability of sharing these documents more efficiently and any cool new toys that they want to throw in. While I am excited about great new ways of doing things, I am realistic about what it takes to make me a true convert.

Using the tools that I know
After playing with Google Docs and Zoho, the majority of things match up with Excel and Word. One notable exception for me is both are missing the formula feature that uses color to match cells up to the formulas. It is not something that I am willing to be without if I am seriously putting together a spreadsheet.

But then there are some things that are more convenient than my ol’ MS Office Suite 2003. In Zoho, there is very little searching for capabilities like center align or date formatting. Everything is there and super easy to use. In Google Docs, they provide the ability to sort your columns at the column headers without having to add in the capability. Also, they have a section called “gadgets” which seems fun…there isn’t anything in there that looks immediately essential…but there is entertaining stuff like an image that is linked to a field that shows an image of a stack of money associated with the field or gauges that show the red, yellow, and green zones along with a needle pointing to the appropriate value. There is also a Form feature that I think has the potential to be very handy.

Sharing these tools with others
So, I haven’t tested this as much as I would like…..but I do like that my friends, one of which has a Mac can look at the spreadsheet. Also, if I had thought of this a little earlier it would have saved on copies galore of the business plan floating around.

Cool new stuff
I’d like to go into this more…but I have already been entirely too wordy (as usual). So, I am just going to point out that I may be a convert to the day planner and task lists on Google. They link to my iPhone and I don’t have to populate my iPhone with all of the contacts and Outlook items associated with work as that would just be too much. . I love lists. I love my iPhone. I do believe that this is a match made in heaven.