Archive for the ‘Communication’ Category
Smibs launches VideoLobby at the Real-Time CrunchUp!
Friday, November 27th, 2009
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!
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
[Inspired] Animated origami tells a corporate story
Monday, March 9th, 2009This video employs animated origami to tell the corporate story of asics , the sports shoe manufacturer, from its founders viewpoint. It seems like the founder himself is narrating it and the simple, almost black and white animation gives it a back to the basics kind of feel that underlines the message of focusing on what matters, providing athletes with the finest footwear possible. The piece was commissioned by Geraman ad agency Nordpol+Hamburg which seems to be winning tons of awards for their commercials. Interestingly the agency also has one of the most annoying agency websites I’ve ever encountered (the kind with micro font navigation that escapes when you try to click on it). Great work on the video, some work to do on the website. Enjoy the video.
Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.
Tell, Don’t Ask
Friday, February 20th, 2009No, I am not suggesting you turn into a dictator and boss people around.
Warning, ruby specific software developer content ahead.
Back in the old days before my time, computers were programmed with Procedural Languages. Measure 1 cup of pancake mix into a bowl, stir in 1 cup milk, mix. Heat griddle … well, you get the idea. Everything was spelled out in procedural sequence. And programs were long and hard to maintain.
Then along came Smalltalk-80 which introduced the world to Object Oriented programming. Now we can tell the Griddle object to flip the contents. How that happens is entirely up to the griddle. The goal is to split large programs into manageable pieces (objects) that are easier for people to work through.
Tell Don’t Ask refers to a guideline in Object Oriented programming: tell an object to do something, don’t ask it for private data.
Alec Sharp (1) contrasts procedural and object oriented programming in his book Smalltalk by Example by:
Alec Sharp, as quoted in the Pragmatic Bookshelf article “Tell, Don’t Ask”
With procedural languages writing something like this was common:
while scanner.has_links_to_visitlink = scanner.next_link_to_visit
webpage_contents = get(link)
process_webpage(webpage_contents)end
My fingers hurt just typing that in.
Imagine my shock and horror when I realized that example was recently written in my favorite object oriented language: ruby. How could this be? Was I asleep at the keyboard when I typed in the while loop?
How do we know this code is procedural? Simple, it asks the “scanner” is there any work to do and makes a decision based on the answer which violates the “Tell, Don’t Ask” guideline.
We can turn this procedural code into object oriented code by using an iterator. David A. Black covers this topic nicely in his book The Well-Grounded Rubyist. The object oriented version using an iterator turns the while loop into
scanner.each_link_to_visit {|link| process_webpage(get(link)) }
The iterator “each_link_to_visit” quietly hides the details and provides values to the block, one at a time. The big win comes during application maintenance: reading 1 line of clear code is easier to understand than reading 5 lines of code. It’s like reading the Cole’s Notes version of War and Peace versus the reading the original version in Russian.
Iterators are a handy-dandy tool for converting procedural while loops into object oriented loops.
Happy iterating,
Alvin.
Handling Negative Blog Comments
Friday, February 13th, 2009Ok, last week I spoke about the power of comments on online blogging communities. But what about the dark side of blogging, every bloggers worst fear… (Please cue the ominous music.)
The negative comment!
You know what I’m talking about. What a nightmare. You post something you really care about, and that you put spent some time thinking about, and someone shuts you down. It hurts! Well, it hurts me. But the fact is that no blogger can survive without them.
Don't Worry! The negative comment isn't out to get you.
More often than not, negative comments spur more interesting conversation. If you’ve written something provocative, something that you think will not only appeal to your audience but that will get them thinking in a new way, negative comments are testament that you’ve done it right! An interesting blog post will usually get an array of reactions.
The trick is, though, dealing with the negative comment properly.
For this I turn to Charlie Four Whisky’s blog on business communication (which, by the way, is great). He wrote about this very topic in his post A Corporate Blogger’s Worst Nightmare: Negative Comments and How to Handle Them.
I completely agree that negative comments provide a worthy invitation for conversation on your blog. A mature response, perhaps clarifying your position and taking the opportunity to get into the finer points of your opinion, can be helpful not only in response to your negative commenter, but also your general reading community.
He also reminds us that we can’t control what others think of us. Why would we want to? You couldn’t be you anymore if you let other’s opinions dictate your beliefs and actions. Negative comments are sometimes inevitable: not everyone will agree with you.
What do you think about the almighty negative comment? Friend, or foe?
PS. I invite you to check out Whisky’s post linked above. Its swing on this topic is geared towards corporate identity, and is definitely an interesting/useful read.
Dapper Dog, how do you do?
Monday, February 2nd, 2009While the cat’s away (Christy) the mice will play (me). So here is my pick of the week in lieu of Christy’s insight.
Communicating the latest news, events, or just to stay in touch with customers using web based technologies is a challenge. There are many formats publish the news in: RSS feeds, XML, Facebook, email lists, Twitter.
Do you Twitter? If so, your message will never get to me. My first experience with Twitter was reading lines like: I’m throwing up now; time to feed the cat; my dog just pooped [this is the euphemism] on the carpet.
My first impression of Twitter was it’s just garbage so I never signed up. The “signal to noise” ratio was 0 (zero). Nadda.
Enter from stage right: Paul at YellowPencil. Paul introduced me to a new web service: Dapper.
Dapper home page
The Dapper home page is clean and provides clear entry points for more information. Am I lazy? You bet. I’m going to search for existing Dapp feeds first. Let someone else do the grunt work.
Getting started is easy. For those guys that never read manuals, click on the “create a new dapp.” For those rare individuals that actually read (or listen to) manuals first, click on “how it works video.” The small amount of text and images makes finding these links easy.
Once you get into Dapper, you realize it is like a super translation service. You could use Dapper to find news on “Hawaii all-inclusive vacation” or “Caribbean cruise” through a Google search then combine them into one “signal” and get your news as an RSS feed. Or you could choose an XML format. Or add it to NetVibes.
And if hell freezes over and someone convinces me there is useful content on Twitter, I could add that to a Dapp feed: with a very strict filter to remove the crap.
The Dapp creation process is just as easy as the home page suggests. There is a guided 5 step wizard that prompts and nudges you on the right path. Of course, the last step (number 5) is “Please sign up to save your Dapp.” By the time step 5 rolled around I was convinced I could do this. I definitely like the “try before you sign up” concept.
Dapp also provides features for companies: provide your latest news in a Dapp friendly format and users can easily choose which format to receive it in. You reach audiences that like RSS or NetVibes or Google Gadgets but only have to support one interface.
Reduced work equals more play time. Caribbean cruise anyone?
How do you present news to your audience?
