VideoLobby

Hi I’m Peter Urban from Smibs. We are excited to announce that our most recent software product, VideoLobby has just launched. We were one of only ten companies chosen to demo new real-time web products at the Real-Time CrunchUp in San Francisco last Friday. We were gratified to be recognized for the hard work we’ve put into creating our software. I’d like to give a big thanks to our team who really worked hard to make this launch possible.

VideoLobby is the next big step forward in independent video broadcasting!

VideoLobby is for video broadcasting what Blogger is for text-based blogging. VideoLobby allows people and companies to create a professional looking, custom branded, live web tv show and integrate it into their website within a few minutes and without any technical knowledge.

See a video overview of VideoLobby!

Article from TechCrunch

Edmonton Journal Article

In the past, if you wanted to broadcast your own show you needed to use a video streaming service and then get a web development firm to add the video to your site and if you wanted any other kind of features such as live commenting or archiving, you’d have to pay to have them implemented as well.

With VideoLobby, you can present your online TV show, either live or prerecorded in a clean and professionally branded template that integrates seamlessly with your website. You simply sign up for a free Smibs account, set up your show and your first episode and you are ready to roll.

Another major benefit is that VideoLobby offers real-time web integration. Your viewers can now have conversations via twitter and Facebook right on your show page which is great service to your viewers and simultaneously helps to promote your show throughout the social web.

Finally, viewers can ask questions while the episode is running live and the host can answer the questions during the show in real time.

Hope to meet you soon on at www.videolobby.com!

The Smibs Team

This month, journalist Michael Hingston publishes an article about Smibs in the Alberta Venture magazine. We are honoured to be a part of this very popular magazine, particularly with such a nice article written. The interview, which is the basis of the article, is with Peter Urban, the founder of Smibs. It takes you back to Peter’s days as a race car driver in Germany, through his entrepreneurial endeavors to present day as owner and operator of Smibs.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

A few days ago, our code repository server froze. Nothing a restart couldn’t solve, but this was the fourth time this month. The computer has been running continuously for a couple years, with a few developers constantly committing and pulling changes, uploading files, etc., and it had apparently had enough. Seeing this as an opportunity to fix up our development process a bit, I wiped the drives, and re-installed the OS.

The first thing I wanted to change was our code versioning system. Our office has been using Subversion (SVN) as our code repository for a couple years now. It’s done the job well, and has saved our butts on more than one occasion, but there were a few things I didn’t like. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I like moving around when I work; hitting a coffee shop in the morning, or taking my laptop to the local bookstore on a hot day. Subversion forced me to always have an internet connection to commit changes or make new branches. As a result, I would perform larger commits, or have branches pulling double duty, which is far from ideal. Further, setting up and maintaining the permissions with ssh and multiple developers is quite a pain on Subversion.

A few of our developers have used Git for some open-source projects, and we all quite liked it. We’ve been talking about changing for months, but we couldn’t justify the effort until we had to re-install everything anyways. We decided to use Gitosis to manage the Git server, setup the permissions, and manage users (good tutorial here). This proved to be fairly simple. I then imported all of our previous projects with git-svn with some help from this post. Next, our system was configured to send out a summary e-mail every time a developer pushed a change. Finally, I modified our deploy files so the servers read the code from our new Git server rather than our old SVN server. The entire process was completed in under two days.

While many of us had used Git before there was still a learning curve. I found a very useful guide called “Git Magic”. It starts off with the basics that all developers should know, but moves all the way to “Git grandmastery” in chapter 7.

Final thoughts:

Git has more of a learning curve than I expected, and is more complicated than Subversion — but it is so much more flexible, that I think it’s worth it. You can really use it however is best for you. For some developers, it won’t be much different than working with svn, but I’m really appreciating the differences. I read an interesting analogy comparing clones, branches, tags, etc. with multiple desktops, windows and tabs. The more options available, the longer it will take for a person to come up with the best system for them, but once they figure it out, they can really fly.

I would love to hear your thoughts on Subversion vs. Git (or any other systems you recommend for that matter). Why do you think one is better than the other?

Finally…

Finally after weeks, perhaps even months, I can eat and sleep comfortably once more. Finally I can go throughout my day and not break down into a blubbering mess due to critical levels of mental anguish. Finally I can drive from point A to B without having to pull over on the side of the road and contemplate the meaning of my life. Finally… I know what the “August 5″ campaign in Edmonton signifies.

Metaphysical life-altering experiences aside, Edmonton’s Southgate mall recently finished an interesting marketing campaign to generate some buzz about their grand re-opening after substantial renovations. Featuring new stores, new physical outlay and a “new feel,” Southgate created a marketing plan to gain new shoppers and align itself as a legitimate competitor to the monolith that is West Edmonton Mall. How you ask? By simply posting signs around the city that said no more then “August 5″.

Southgate's re-opening campaign had Edmontonian's wondering: "What the heck is happening on August 5th?"

Teaser marketing campaigns (definitely not something new or indigenous to Edmontonians) play off of and manipulate the innate human characteristic of needing to understand what is going on. By strategically providing only small pieces of information regarding the actual event/product, advertisers hope to stir up the most powerful marketing tool: word of mouth. In this case, mission accomplished. After only weeks of seeing the signs around the city, I heard numerous mentions of the campaign from all kinds of sources, ranging from newspaper and radio to simple banter between friends. People were agitated by knowing absolutely nothing about something they drove past every day and as a result they spread the campaign around the city for Southgate (at no extra cost).

Probably the most documented case of teaser marketing in recent memory was the 2007-2008 campaign for the movie Cloverfield. Movie advertisements featuring only a shaky camera and a single passing glance of a gigantic monster attacking a city caught people’s attention, but by not mentioning a movie title, release date, or any sort of information that would help the viewers figure out what they just saw, the advertisements caused everyone in the theatre look at each other and wonder out loud “what was that?” They added to this fantastic viral campaign with a website that gave out almost less information then the movie previews but featured videos and puzzles alluding to a post-apocalyptic world, creating more hype towards whatever the hell it was that advertisers were planning on releasing.

The catch to teaser marketing is that with added hype comes higher expectations. After toying with their emotions (as my fragile psyche would suggest) the consumer expects to find a light at the end of the tunnel that really blows them away. Anything less than that and the promoter can face anything ranging from apathy to resentment, severely damaging any hype they had created. Cloverfield did amazing out of the gates, but kind of tapered off by leaving some people expecting more explanation from the promoters as the storyline didn’t finish on a solid note. Southgate attempted to add to their re-opening by hiring performers but, from what I’ve gathered, the event left a few people saying “that’s it?” The teaser campaign can be an incredibly effective tool at drumming up publicity, but due to the hightened expecations a promoter needs to sit down and determine if their product is worthy of the hype.

Tease me all you want, but you’d better have something that’s worth my sanity.

Sponsorship strategy? Check.
Customer relationship management? Check.
Social networking initiative? Check.
Fireproof racing suit? Check.

As the dust settles on another “successful” Rexall Edmonton Indy, its attendees are left to nurse hangovers and sunburns while its promoters are left to reflect on the successes and fallbacks of the event. While the race draws annual crowds of well over 150,000 people, the Edmonton portion of the Indy circuit continually reports losses. Why is this? The event is nearly sold out every year, corporate support is strong, thousands flock to the city to attend, yet the race is predicted to lose anywhere between 1-3 million dollars. With low sponsorship numbers and even lower television ratings, what can promoters do to ensure the race continues in Alberta’s capital city? I don’t know the answer (if I did I would have a drastically different job title) but I think a place they could start is by learning from their drivers.

Over the Indy weekend I had the pleasure to spend some time with Canadian driver Alex Tagliani behind the scenes while he prepared for the race and I was absolutely blown away by how hard these athletes work off the track to make sure they still have a ride on it. The economic downturn has hit auto racing, a sponsorship dependent activity, perhaps the hardest of any North American sport and with less money to go around, drivers that become complacent have found themselves without a team to race for. Tagliani, who drives for a small race team, has had to rethink the way he goes about securing sponsorship and think of new, more cost effective ways of drumming up publicity and funding. So much so, that in a July 20 Edmonton Journal article Tagliani “estimates he’s spending about 90 per cent of his time raising money, and just 10 per cent driving.” Be it utilizing social media to boost attention, tireless work with clients and sponsors, or spending weeks ahead attending local festivals and contests, Tagliani not only increased his chances of finding a full time racing team next season but also created new racing fans, which benefits the entire sport.

Like any business, the Indy’s success depends on the performance of the entire crew. With shrinking sponsorship streams the entire industry must enter the pits, get retuned, and strategize for the laps ahead. On that note, I’ll wave the checkered flag on this string of puns and leave the forum open for discussion. What else can the Indy, or any business for that matter, learn from the way drivers secure their own sponsorship and deal with partners, clients, and supporters?

Over a year ago in a blog post I discussed what makes a great user interface. I questioned Facebook’s big interface switch and I held up Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn to its standard. Looking back, everything I discussed feels relevant but also somehow remarkably out of date.

When I surf the web now I’m not just thinking about interface, I’m conscious of my experience. I think this subtle shift in terminology captures the gradual evolution of the web towards fun, user friendly spaces that encourage collaboration and community.

I found this user experience Honeycomb on Flickr. There are probably a lot of different matrixes to try and explain the new user experience phenomenon, but I think it comes down to one factor: resonances with our daily lives.

The “Machine is us” video taught us that users drive and therefore are the content of the web. If anything has changed its that now the user driven experience of online platforms, tools and methods of communication are fostering change in our real life experiences too. Social media has connected people online in an incredible way – real people, real issues, real-time. What happens on the Internet is a product of our lived experiences, and in turn our activities online ripple outward into the world.

So, what I think about now is what the next generation of user experience innovation will be. Videos, blogs and streams of updates are currently giving websites a tangible, interactive look and feel. Its not just click-ability and interest-factors that are providing value any more, its spaces that foster conversations and that appeal to the relevance of user’s everyday lives.

Now that we, the general public, are more in control of how web giants generate user interface and experience simply through the communication of our wants and needs – where do you think our passion for dialogue and engagement will lead the web?

I want to think about this question and write about websites currently providing unparalleled user experience, and then brainstorm about the kind of experience I’d love to see created online in the future.

Image Courtesy of Flickr user A-dit-ya. I love Creative Commons licensing.

So we couldn’t help following the string of TechCrunch stories over the past couple days releasing confidential Twitter company information and strategy on their blog. TechCrunch was e-mailed the info by a hacker who managed to answer the password safety questions of one of the Twitter founder’s gmail account. Yikes.

TechCrunch’s actions are highly controversial, and everyone is up in arms about whether or not posting the stolen info is wrong. TechCrunch didn’t do any stealing themselves, but many people still contend that chosing to act on the news tip was unethical.

To be honest, right now we are completely undecided. We see arguments for both sides.

We want to know what you think?

During a rare day off work due to getting the flu, I picked up a book I had purchased a couple of months ago that I hadn’t gotten around to reading. The book is called ‘The Dream: How I learned the risks and rewards of entrepreneurship and made millions’ it is basically an autobiography of Indian American entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal. The book is a very easy and pleasant read with a lot of great business tips and inspirational successes. I was surprised by how engaging it was, I actually couldn’t put it down. Gurbaksh or G as he is known to friends, immigrated to the US from India along with his parents, grandmother, two sisters and older brother. He always felt like a misfit and dropped out of school, only to found a multimillion dollar company at the age of 16. The story continues, and he shares business lessons he learned the hard way and highlights how to trust your instincts. His current project is www.gwallet.net which is a website that aggregates online coupons and good deals. I had a look at it and will definitely check it out when I am going to make my next online purchase, some of the deals are quite amazing.

With all of this said, I googled Chahal and it seems he has a kind of playboy, ego, consumption-addict image which was a bit of a disappointment…who knows what he is really like…and honestly, I could care less really. The book was a good read, especially if you are like us here at Smibs, a tech start-up.

Some other reviewer comments:

“While success like his is often attributed to luck, Chahal’s story, like that of many immigrants, is more one of sacrifice … it was years of hard work, persistence and faith, along with the support of his family, that brought his financial rewards–not chance.”–San Francisco Chronicle

“Chahal is a prodigy, a successful entrepreneur, and a writer. His story is remarkable and we think it is a prime example of what can be accomplished with a little motivation and ingenuity. Young Hollywood wants to know what this young man can’t do!”–Young Hollywood

Book image courtesy of Amazon

Last Friday I flew down to San Francisco to attend the TechCrunch CrunchUp conference. This year the conference topic was ‘The Real Time Stream’. The conference was aimed to capture the opportunities and latest developments arising from the the rapidly growing amount of real-time data that is generated on micro-blogging services like twitter, friendfeed and soon facebook.

The conference was an excellent event for me. It gave me real insight about where the web is going next and on the seriousness and progress rate of the current developments. In the opening panel (video below) Ron Conway describes the real-time web as having multiple multi-billion dollar opportunities. He goes so far as to compare the current development with the early days at Google, when they still hadn’t figured out a business model and could only imagine what an impact Google would have on how we use the web today. Watch the video below for the full opening panel on ‘The Realtime Opportunity’ …

The day was packed with interesting panels and presentations and after getting an idea of how far people and companies are along in developing new platforms, tools and services, I have to say I am once again astonished. The world might be in a recession but Silicon Valley is bursting from the mass of innovation it’s producing, and its buzzing with people who will eventually turn that innovation into striving businesses.

I keep repeating myself but every time I am in the Valley I notice its biggest advantage in the tech sector: A huge amount of people who want to try new stuff – not just entrepreneurs but also consumers and businesses of all sizes. This results in new ideas getting traction early on. By the time the rest of the world notices a new idea like twitter already has a couple of million users, and the rest of the world watches as they reach critical mass.

TechCrunch put on a nice after party and I met a lot of people from last year and some people I have only met online so far. All in all it was a great trip that opened my eyes with regards to the next big wave of innovation. I look forward to taking the opportunities that come with it .

Oh, at the conference someone noticed that I didn’t wear socks in my business shoes so I had to explain my reasons on camera. Watch the third video under the ‘Channel’ button in the embedded video box below!

I think every software developer should read AntiPatterns: Refactoring Software, Architectures, and Projects in Crisis. It’s not the most engaging read (it could be much worse), but it’s well worth it. Knowing software design antipatterns is just as important as knowing the Gang of Four patterns. Not all of the patterns are perfectly applicable, but at some point as a developer, you’ll run into one or more of the antipatterns. Being able to identify them and find ways to refactor or work around them is crucial.

Some of the reviews on Amazon are critical of this title for using CORBA as the basis for some examples, being old (published in 1998) or using obscure analogies (The Grand Old Duke). I did not find those issues impacted the relevance of the material. The languages and technologies used for examples are old, however the same mistakes, in new languages and technologies, continue to be made.

In my experience I’ve seen lots of these “problem patterns” used. I’ve done some of them myself. The project I’m working with at Smibs is fairly new, but some antipatterns have already appeared. I’ve seen the Yo-yo problem (A structure which is hard to understand because of excessive fragmentation), Input Kludge (not validating user input properly) and Error Hiding (not informing the user of errors). None of these are of a crippling nature, but they all need to be addressed to provide a quality, usable product.

I’d also suggest checking out the Wikipedia article on antipatterns. It expands on the material by detailing additional antipatterns and giving more contemporary examples.