TalentEd by ReadyDone

Rich Content and Third-Party Services

josh — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:57:12 -0700

Many of the websites we help create include an element of so-called "rich media," this being audio or video. Most people with this type of content can envision how they want it presented to users but the back-end how-to options are still a little fuzzy. Let's clear up our choices for cost, work flow, and distribution. These factors overlap, and remind us that we can't have our cake and eat it too... unless of course you want to pay for two cakes.

Work Flow

One of the most important aspects of creating a solution is that you need to
feel comfortable using it on an ongoing basis. Even before it gets to
users it has to come from you and your team. Should your team upload the content directly to your site? (Meaning you will shoulder the costs of creating an easy to use upload and administration system) Should you rely on a third party to host your content and use you site as a distribution platform? Will your team/users be more likely to upload content to http://www.podcastalley.com or http://www.youtube.com and run the feeds or embeds through your site or do you want all things to be centered on your domain?

Costs

You can see how the issue of cost is directly tied to the work flow. It's definitely cheaper to run though a third party in terms of development costs, but also for ongoing hosting costs. Depending on user base, serving audio and video can climb into the thousands of dollars a month. Sometimes a great hosted solution can have a small monthly fee and take care of your needs until it's time to develop your own custom solution. So, should you host your files? You can also use middle ground third-party options to white label the rich media. You'll pay to appear as the host and platform, but you won't have to deal with the headaches. Should you build a user interface to view, sort, edit and delete your content? Are there services out there that offer exactly what you're looking for?

Distribution

It's easy to forget that 9 times out of ten your site won't be the only method of distribution. If you want a larger foot print your goal should be to expand this as far as possible. That means you become a hub and a marketing control point, but not the end-all-be-all destination for your content. If you have a podcast, you should be on itunes or at least have an itunes compatible feed for your podcast. This will allow a larger portion of the market to tune in. Push your podcast though http://www.odea.com, post your videos to http://www.current.tv, not to mention allowing personal embeds to the vast array of blogs and profiles. If you're using third party solutions, you'll often be included in their directories automatically. So, there's a start. The term used for the internet --web-- reminds us of how to distribute content. It's not the old pipeline model of television. Ask yourself how will my users FIND this content beyond just my site? How can they VIEW my content beyond my site? What are the various platforms for my type of media: software, websites, feeds, devices, etc?

It's nearly impossible to separate these factors in deciding how to implement your online media solution. Keep in mind where you're starting from. If you're leaping online with content for the first time, take the chance to play with your options before diving into totally custom systems.

If you are a CONTENT CREATOR then you should be USING TECHNOLOGY not DEVELOPING it. Leverage the platforms that are out there to your advantage, that's why they were created. If you are a PLATFORM then let's build you a SOLUTION THAT INTEGRATES with the rest of the web. We can give users the tools to distribute their content wider or with more editorial control.

Freelance Rules to Live By

josh — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:59:47 -0700

Some good rules we've found to live by. I'll keep adding more. Comment with your suggestions.

Pass the work to a friend when you don't have time.
Take 5 minutes the day you get working materials to make sure you have everything you'll need to finish the task, regardless of the time line.
Stop discounting so often.
There is an inverse relationship between project size and hassle. Big jobs will be smoother and involve more client trust, smaller tasks will have more client emotional investment.
For portions that need to be perfect, hold out for brilliance. For portions that don't matter much just get them done well.
"No" is one of the most powerful words in business.
Once you take on a client you need to switch to "yes."

A Million Good Ideas

josh — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:22:50 -0700

Do you have a great idea? ... Of course you do; you have at least three. In fact, you probably even have about five good ideas too. Maybe even another few mediocre ones you haven't bothered with. The difficult part of all your genius notions is that fundamentally their awesomeness doesn't matter. Your success will not necessarily depend on the perfection of the idea you choose to run with. What matters is all the work you put in, and of course-- luck.

The very fact that you're having an idea is a good indicator that someone else has it too. The stimulus of society, the environment of media consumption and a common place in history leads to lots of shared thinking, assumptions and creativity. Moreover, the larger point is that there are plenty of mediocre ideas that have grown into empires. As Henry John Heinz put it, "To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success." He created a ketchup fortune. That's all, just a condiment. Not revolutionary. It's the uncommon implementation that matters.

I've watched over and over, people who believe that a good idea will somehow take flight by itself and raise you aloft on its brilliance alone. Wouldn't that be nice? The difficult truth is that a great idea merely makes the work easier. A really open void in an industry means you'll have less competition and an efficient new way of doing business means it will be simple to lower prices and attract clients. But even a great idea comes with the day-to-day hardship of squishing tomatoes into sauce.

I signed off an email the other day with a line wishing a colleague: "Luck and Brute Force." I believe these are two of the only three ways to success. (I'm giving the great idea some credit.) Get lucky and hamburger fast food chains can become the norm boosting sales, but you still have to design the packet filling machine.

Not to be too negative, there is something actually as rare as we all think our ideas are-- excitement. You need to be passionate about your product, service, idea, project or whatever it is. This is the only other thing that can make the work even easier and more enjoyable. If you're happy making ketchup recipes you won't care if you have to eat a pound a day for two weeks. If you love designing production routing, then you're going to kick your competitions burger topping to the curb!

Just remember if you have a great idea, you're not the new market leader; you're still at the drawing board. You're still just dreaming. The point I'm trying to make is that you're going to need help and that help is going to put hours in. They're going to help with the hard part. Chances are they have a great idea too. If the tables were turned, how would you feel about the work you'd be doing? Would you see your time spent as less valuable than their time spent envisioning the next holy idea? No, work is work. There are a million good ideas. You may have a gem, but you're going to need help.

If you can stay excited, that's what's worth gold. Each moment of passionate work is worth 10 of drudgery. If you can transfer the excitement to your team then you're really creating value. It's not the idea; it's the capacity for enjoyment of the work.

So in summary...
Execution is the hard part. Excitement is the rarity.
The idea alone is worth about 1% equity.
Oh yeah, and luck.

The Business of Happiness

josh — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:54:50 -0700

We're in the business of happiness.

The worst job you've ever had at least helped with the basics of your life. You got a paycheck (occasionally) and you were able to pay the rent, buy food, and sleep knowing you probably had a job tomorrow. Chances are they even provided you with a toilet and a water facet (maybe even coffee) at work. That's ok. You were working for them and yet conceived where you were headed.

Your second worst job almost felt like a career. Finally you were you felt more more financially secure. The work took real skill and was doing something useful for other people. You bought some toys.

Eventually, you were lucky enough to work with people you respect and (for the most part) enjoy. You've been part of a team, and you've had the chance to do projects with the people you know socially. You've even made money doing so (sometimes.) At some point you began to feel like there was direction in your career. You became confident in your skills and know that you can be a valuable part of a team. People compliment you on your work and you can be satisfied by yourself.

This is great. This is the beginning.

[inline:400px-Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs.svg.png]You're ready to
let getting things done well, among people you respect, be the norm. Shouldn't it be? Because you're great. You're smart, you're creative, you're talented. A deep, basic happiness comes when you stand on the foundation of your talents, let yourself exercise creativity regularly, cooperate with co-workers and friends that compliment your skills, and do work that reaches toward your morals.

So let's make some stuff.

What we can build are systems, products, services, and tools that
improve and enhance our lives and others. There are plenty of problems to solve, education to transmit and fun to be had. Let's take on those opportunities.

Each day you are confronted with an array of annoying truths... traffic jams, service charges, corpratism etc. You can grumble, envision your superiority and be miserable in your silence or you can take action and improve your world. Each day you have an idea that you let go. So knock it off.

We're in the business of enabling happiness.

Market Research Overview

josh — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:07:27 -0700

The purpose of market research is to gain insight into your customers, competitors, and the perception of your business in the eyes of others. Today I’m giving our interns an overview of market research, so I thought I’d turn the bullet list into a blog post to share.

Like any research, the scientific method is your guiding light to maintain objectivity and structure in your work. This means we’re going to define a question, assume a hypothesis, test it against real data and review the results. Simple right? Well... often the case is cloudy questions and a desire to find certain results even before you start. So, how to do it right…

Defining the purpose of your study shouldn’t be too hard. Is this about increased sales, company perception or your competitive landscape? Maybe you’re going to tackle several questions at once, just keep your purpose clear. For our example we’ll be asking if a great new “Super Viral Widget 4.0” is going to be a success.

Often it’s important to identify some clear operation definitions within your study. For example we’ll define “success” as the number embeds on blogs and online profiles. Not: sponsorship deals, hits per widget, corporate embed, partnerships, etc.

To conduct our study we'll need to select other widgets to analyze. Just by establishing that we're doing great. We can even draw up a chart now, one axis being the number of viral embeds-- our success factor.

In order to find data we have several choices: some companies will offer data; advanced use of search engines can offer comparisons; or we could define a test region and collect data. We didn’t say market research was easy. It’s good practice to select more than one way to collect and verify your data.

Let's choose to study some primary sources (widget use on sites.) We'll want to define: our path for searching, our method of recording results, and the area of coverage. So, for example we’ll use three search engines to find 18 sample emdedable widgets. Next, we’ll create a spreadsheet to keep track of the success factors for those 18 widgets. Easy right!

In our example we could find embed data by using those three search engines to record the number of results for the 18 widgets. Or, we could define a random sample of personal pages, say 450. Then check for embeds of the widgets we’re studying. Or, we could call upon the published data from widget producers on their products. It’s your study!

We can place this first set of information as data points on our graph.

Now that we have a foundation we can to create some hypotheses to test in order to answer some explicit questions. What causes success with users? How well our Super Viral Widget 4.0 align with those success factors? This will be the guide to the data we collect or the sample questions we’ll ask real people.

However, before we move on it's wise to take note of some variables that might skew our findings. For example: hosting service outages, spam or malicious content overloads, technology choices, internal company situations, your method of finding widgets, embed platform privacy rules, etc. These tools can let you double check your results later to improve your understanind of the results.

So let’s write our questions!

For our example we’ll drill down potential factors that may have caused success. With a viral widget we can analyze: (1) the platforms/sites where it could be embedded, (2) the demographics of target users, (3) uniqueness of functionality, (4) advertising presence, etc. These specific questions will help us determine factors in the success (remember our definition) of the widgets we're studying. Then we can analyze how our Supser Viral Widget 4.0 aligns with these factors to gauge our potential success. With regard to the above questions, we could choose either to research data by looking at widget activity on the web or stage a survey of internet users. If it were my project, I’d do a little of both to check my assumptions.

Beginning with question one (platform embeds,) we’ll record the platforms/sites those widgets are available on. Let’s choose eight major platforms by viewing widget homepages, browsing industry media and using our own web savvy. Now to survey embed-ability we'll visit the home page of each widget provider double-checking the data and filling in platform to widget compatibility gaps ourself. Bam, now we have sample data for one question. We could even update our chart to include a second axis representing the platforms available for the widget embed.

The last step in this example would be to add our own Super Viral Widget 4.0 to the chart and compare it with our newly found industry standards. Exciting!

So far we’ve tested one question, have two axis established and the sample data to generate a comparison. We did so based on an initial purpose and the specific questions and operational definitions. Be careful not to draw conclusions beyond these boundaries! The more comprehensive our study the more confident we can be in our market research.

Let’s do one.

News: High gas prices promote 'digital nomad' lifestyle

Joel Christian Ballezza — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:48:24 -0700

ATHENS, GREECE -- Evolutionary biology teaches us that evolution happens not by constant, steady change, but in sudden leaps...
READ MORE

SIFF opening night, Battle in Seattle

josh — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:45:44 -0700

[inline:IMG_0928.JPG] Check out the release poster for Battle in Seattle, a docudrama by Stuart Townsend. This film kicked-off the Seattle International Film Festival for 2008. ReadyDone designed the poster... the night before.

And we got two free tickets to the opening gala. Awesome.

Armageddon Roll-Out Strategies

josh — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:49:41 -0700

Hey look the web is participatory and you're planning a site upgrade to use some of these new 2.0 features. In fact, you're so smart you're using a CMS/platform to harness some collective wisdom. But now how do you pick your features set? Let me guess, you told your developer "Everything," right? Maybe you looked at a list of about 45 potential features and checked
off 39 of them. That's what I'd do.

The blessings of a great CMS or plug-in feature (like addthis, sharethis, wimpy player, flicker badges, etc.) are also a curse. Functionality needs to be relevant. Simply put: diverting your focus will dilute the value of your site. It's tough to get excited about improving your core and perfecting user experience. But that's your bread and butter.

It's hard not to jump on board when each feature can just take a "few hours" to add on. But these hours aren't cheap, being that development work ranges from $40-$130 and hour. Tie your user accounts to Twitter for just $1200! Useful? Depends.

[inline:hindenburg.jpg] Sometimes your feature list changes from a nice little red balloon gently filled with loving breaths of inspiration into a Hindenburg load of bloated, keep-up-with-the-Jones, explosion ready and disaster. A site filled with non-relevant features is bad for several reasons... First, development efforts will be diverted costing money and quality. Second, users will see the site not as a tool perfect for their interests but as vapor ware looking for their email address. Third, becoming feature obsessed means that you're most likely losing sight of your passion. You're creating the site to connect a community, generate revenue from something you love and empower your: peers, customers or even friends!

So here's the quintessential tip to remedy yourself from this common blunder. Stand in your bomb shelter, your basement, your mountain top or yard and pretend... It's the end of the world and this site is the only way these people can communicate within this niche community. Transportation is all horse-drawn, cell phone batteries only last 5 minutes, TV still sucks, radio only has 19 bands, etc. What to do!?

Which features will allow them to engage and still have time to sheer a sheep, hunt for food, and repair the barn. What are your passions as a founder? What are the community's favorite ways of interacting? What media do they love to create and consume?

[inline:scope-quality-time-cost.jpg] This notion came to mind partially because the internet was actually designed robust enough to survive a nuclear attack. It can always reroute itself. But before such a gruesome event, your site better be well prepared. Apply the end-time scenario like a judicial test when making a judgment about your web project. Look down at the list or the email and imagine your site when users are hunkered down in their basement waiting 6-20 years for the radiation to clear.

If you can answer development questions like the world depends on it you'll be able to save time and money and keep users the happiest. Ultimately your site's success depends on being useful and getting used.