Archive for August, 2008

Seattle newspaper real-estate site leaves much to be desired

August 26, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under usability ·Tagged , , ,

Newspapers have got to get their act together. NWHomes, operated by the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, has got to be the worst real estate site I’ve looked at. Brandon and I are going through our first house-hunting experience and we have been enjoying going through the real-estate sites taking virtual tours, mapping properties, filtering according to square-footage, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, cost, etc. I created a favorites list on Windermere’s site, and I can easily get in contact with one of their agents or the agent selling the house. To put it simply, Windermere offered an enjoyable experience.

Back to NWHomes: You can only select one area to search from the drop-down menu (I can select different cities to search on Windermere’s site). I clicked on open houses and didn’t actually get a list of open houses. What is perhaps the most frustrating is that the listings don’t even tell me what city the house is in. I have to map each property just to find out if it’s anywhere near where I want to live. Is it Seattle, is it Marysville, who knows? Here’s the kicker: When I got frustrated with the NWHomes site I decided to search the John L. Scott site via a banner ad at the top of the page. The link didn’t work!

Newspapers are struggling with declining ad revenue, both from commercial advertisers and from classified advertising. Having a site that doesn’t take into account the needs of the user is not a good way to boost advertising revenue. Newspapers have got to realize that classifieds online are different than classifieds in the paper. You can’t just group them into one category. Users have to be able to filter for a variety of preferences. How ’bout a little bit of usability testing?

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So many formats, so little compatibility

August 13, 2008 at 10:41 pm · Filed under streaming media ·Tagged , , ,

I have an mp3 player that came with a converter to convert videos from wmv to smv for the device. The problem is, most of the videos I want to save are either Flash or mpeg-4. I’ve been very interested in the iTunesU store lately. It allows the University of Washington community to share audio and video content and viewers can download it for free. Some of the videos were fairly long, but I thought would be fun to watch on the bus. For example, the UW Chamber Dance has a video of their dancing, which I would like to watch. I suppose I could probably find somewhere to convert the file. But it seems like so much work to first convert it from mpeg-4 and then convert the wmv to smv.

This isn’t technically DRM. This is more of a standards issue. I usually listen to Internet radio so I don’t download music. While I might consider paying to download a video to watch on the bus, most of the rentals are so restrictive that I wouldn’t be able to finish it in time – assuming the DRM didn’t prevent me from putting the video on my device. So my main experience with DRM is avoiding it.

I understand that companies want to increase their market share and they see proprietary formats as a way to push out competitors. But it’s so frustrating trying to sort out all the different formats and find a way to make this work on this player and that on another player.

I am often faced with a similar situation when students are using the Communication labs and are learning to use Windows Movie Maker to edit video. WMM will import avi files or wmv files. So inevitably students will ask how to make files that will work with Movie Maker. There are a couple web conversion programs that work, but it’s hard to keep track of everything and no site really does everything so it feels like a constant battle to get content to work on the player you need it to work on. Things would be so much simpler with standards.

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That’s Cloud Computing with a capital C – if Dell gets its way

August 11, 2008 at 9:50 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

I found this article interesting after Pete Grondal’s visit and his emphasis on cloud computing. Apparently the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had originally given Dell preliminary notice to trademark “Cloud Computing” after its Cloud Computing Solutions. But now it appears they’re going back on that. Dell would probably have difficulty defending the trademark even if it’s approved, since the term seems to be taking off in popularity.

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National Geographic video using Brightcove

August 6, 2008 at 9:47 pm · Filed under streaming media ·Tagged , ,

To get oriented with the Brightcove video player I watched the webinar that is advertised on the home page. I was impressed with the customization and ease of use of the Brightcove player. I was also impressed with the integration of video with other content such as advertisements and viral distribution. The demonstration of adding content was also impressive. It looks like an incredibly easy UI.

After getting a feel for how Brightcove works, I explored National Geographic Wild. I was surprised that the featured video, Journey Into Amazonia, was 55 minutes long (after the Waste Management ad played of course). It turns out that National Geographic features a full-length “Program of the Week.” The other videos are shorter. Anywhere in the range of a minute to 20 minutes.

I watched about 15 minutes of Amazonia. It would have been more, except the video would just stop about every 5 minutes and I would have to reload the video, watch another ad and then skip to the part where it had left off. The third time I did this, while watching piranhas in a feeding frenzy, I gave up on Amazonia. I’m sure my broadband connection was probably acting up again – but I wish that the video player had handled it better. It didn’t say buffering or anything, it just stopped.

I do wish National Geographic Wild would find a few other advertisers. I got rather tired of watching Waste Management ads. Surely they can find some more sponsors?

The search function also did not work. I tried typing in a few of the animals that I had already watched short pieces on (and whose names were in the titles of the movies) – bears, elephants, lions – none of them returned any hits.

It was easy to browse the videos, but it would probably be difficult to find anything specific. None of the tabs are very specific. I finally realized the “On Air” tab was to show previews of upcoming programs that will appear on National Geographic. It seems like National Geographic would want to promote these programs higher up in its list.

I like that National Geographic has customized its player, though I do think they need to make some changes in how their video content is organized. I enjoyed watching the videos, however, and watched several. The video looks good in full screen too, with just the basic controls for the player. The embedded player on the web page includes the “share” information button.

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