I’m done with blogging, at least for now. There are a few reasons for it, but the main one is how much I enjoyed being away from a computer this past weekend. I’ll probably still put some guitar/banjo/ukulele chords occasionally, but that’ll be about it.
It’s been very cool/weird to see all the people who have read/commented on the blog–thanks for reading! If you’d like to chat about anything, send me an email to my first name at my full name dot com.
Photo source: Tv, eh?.
A commenter named D let me know about Save jPod!. The CBC cancelled the TV show, based on the Douglas Coupland book of the same name, on March 7, 2008 after only one season. Save jPod! has been set up to hopefully get the show back on the air, offering a wealth of information about the cancellation and ways to potentially reverse that decision.
Save jPod! offers links to a couple of online petitions, which are (unfortunately) mostly useless. Online petitions are the equivalent of a comments section and have absolutely no impact on old media. They offer a ridiculously easy way for people to feel like they’re supporting something, and then give them a reason to feel self-righteous when the petitioned show is eventually cancelled. I would argue that they’re actually detrimental to the cause because they remove the small fraction who would go beyond “signing” the online petition from doing something meaningful.
Luckily, there is also an excellent What You Can Do section that is based in reality. It provides contact mailing addresses, a well-written form letter (trés important), and even a way to connect via telephone from Raugi Yu (Kam Fong from the show) himself. These are excellent ways to get an old media company like CBC (no matter how much they put online, they are still run like old media) to take notice. It shouldn’t be a shock that viewers who are willing to take the time to mail a letter are more important to a corporation than those who can click “submit”.
When I first heard about jPod’s cancellation, I was amazed. I thought the show was the perfect way for CBC to start experimenting with the web as a way to distribute their content. The website, however, is awash with problems that could (did?) prevent that success.
The website is a bit absurd. They’ve obviously tried to recreate the quirkiness of the show, but a website is not a television show. When you need to put an “instructions” button, it might be time to step back and rethink quirky VS accessible. There is superfluous background music that plays automatically. Since some scroll bars done in Flash, you can’t use scroll wheels/trackpads to navigate without severe frustration.
However, the site definitely fits into the “cool” category. If I was using it as media, instead of using it to find media (i.e.: the full episodes), I’d love it. They even have a playable version of Defendoid.
You can watch full episodes online. Excellent idea, poor implementation. They’ve decided to use an awful lightbox-style overlay to house their Flash-based video player that you can’t full screen. During an episode, I had to move the mouse/hit a key to stop my screensaver from coming on and inadvertently stopped the episode three times because of their overlay (clicking anywhere on the page that isn’t video causes the window to close.)
There are a number of things I would do differently to make the jPod website work better. Obviously, the first step would be to redo the site without Flash as it’s backbone; they can keep the quirkiness without sacrificing the accessibility. Practically everything on the site could be recreated without Flash. It would work faster, increase usability, and allow the CBC to make it more dynamic. It shouldn’t be challenge to find out information about the show.
The full episodes should be full-screen; that’s easy. If there’s anything your video application can’t do, but YouTube can, it’s time to get back to the drawing board. Sites like Vimeo even offer streaming HD; there’s no reason for these tiny pixelated videos anymore.
They could make “trailers” for each episode, consisting of a particularly good scene, that are easily embeddable. Why? So people like me can post them on their blogs and send readers off to the CBC site to watch the rest of the episode. The audience for jPod probably isn’t going to be watching the CBC Friday nights at nine, but they’re reading blogs.
The thing about the CBC is that it’s publicly funded, through grants. Yes, they advertise too, but the majority is from the government. It’s out national TV station and has a mandate to promote Canadian culture. They might be old media, but they aren’t stupid or completely unaware of how the Internet works. About eight years ago, they launched New Music Canada as a Canadian alternative to sites like the old mp3.com. If you signed up as a musician and promoted the site on yours, you got a free t-shirt (I still wear mine) and other great swag. For 2000, that was a very forward-thinking idea. Sure, the site was a bit of a disaster, but they used their experience and constantly redeveloped until they ended up with something good.
So where is the problem in using jPod as their vehicle to understand video on the web? The show is going to have a more international audience than most of their shows because of the content (drug, sex, and video games); it seems perfect for online distribution. It’s already techy (the characters work at “Neotronic Arts”; an allusion to Electronic Arts) and would probably be embraced by the geek community.
If you’ve never seen the show, head on over to the website and watch a couple of episodes. If you like it, please check out some of the options at Save jPod! and do what you can to keep it on the air/Internet.
UPDATE: A comment from Firefly (thanks!) led me over to her site which has some great commentary on jPod’s cancellation and the state of Canadian content on TV.
I just saw a TV commercial for Maxwell House’s Brew Some Good campaign (cannot find a video online). It was a really simple cup of coffee with captions reading (paraphrased, especially the numbers):
The average TV commercial costs $27, 000. This one cost $18, 000. What should we do with the difference? Nominate a charity at www.brewsomegood.ca
There’s also another that says “[I]nstead of making an expensive TV commercial, we funded an inner-city youth music program” with two kids playing music in the background. It also invites you to visit the website to nominate a charity.
I absolutely love this. Even if it’s only a blatant PR move with no benevolent meaning, I still think it’s great. The TV commercials, because they’re so simple, make you appreciate the break and pay attention. They’re being open about money and spending, they’ve got cute kids; everything makes you feel good about Maxwell House. Nominating isn’t just an easy way to feel like you’re contributing to a good cause, you’re actually giving to a good cause. With all the fighting between Starbucks and McCafés, Maxwell House is now a way to buy good feelings at the grocery store.
And coming down to it, they really are doing a good thing.
The one unfortunate thing I can say about the campaign is that the website is a pretty bad idea. It’s all in Flash, loader and all. It doesn’t work at all on Safari for Mac OS. I first thought maybe it was a connection issue, but it didn’t matter since there was no alternative anyway. It did work in Firefox, but the main part of the site doesn’t have content. The Nominate option does work.
I’m sure the content issue is just bad timing, but it would have been a better idea to follow the simplicity of their TV commercials and create a website that was equally effective.
Aside from the website, I really hope that this campaign works and other companies take notice. It seems like the perfect trade-off for being “forced” to see ads.
Bob Papper, chair of Hofstra University’s department of journalism, media studies and public relations, talks about whether or not you should link to a competitor’s website. Short answer: “yes, people aren’t idiots.”
Via Masthead.
I found out what was wrong with my “Random Post” widget: Wordpress changed the main post table name from wp_posts to wp_b1caxo_posts (at least it did in my database; I can’t find any info on the net about that). So things are back to normal from that perspective, but it looks like the stats program I’m using is also grabbing from wp_posts. There is no way Real Life Mario is getting that much attention.
It looks like some of the post ID numbers aren’t matching up with their correct posts since upgrading to Wordpress 2.5. I’m not sure if this is affecting Google searches too, but I’m hoping it will someone sort itself out.
I’m going to be updating to Wordpress 2.5 so things might go wonky for a bit.
I’ve recently made the switch from Firefox to Safari. Ever since Safari 3 was released, I’ve found it harder and harder to justify the speed issues with Firefox on Mac OS, and as someone who doesn’t really surf the web anymore, I have little use for the extensions outside of a development (Web Developer and Firebug are essential for me) environment.
Overall, I’m very satisfied. Safari is the fastest browser I’ve ever used, it’s find/search function is beyond reproach, and it has that sexy look of Mac OS. The only problem? Viewing source code is awful. Compare this, from Safari:
WIth this, from Firefox:
It’s not hard to figure out which one is easier to read (it’s Firefox!).
As a website designer, I look at source code A LOT; even during casual browsing. It’s part learning (new techniques), part respect (you’d be surprised how much work goes into a really great website), and part horror (I’m an elitist; bad code makes me shudder). But, also as a designer, I like things to look and work great; Safari’s view source ironically does neither.
The best analogy I can come up with is x-ray specs. Imagine having the ability to see through anyones clothes and check out what’s going on underneath. For the sake of this analogy, you can’t see full nudity (that would require access to server-side languages), but you can see underwear.
Underwear’s important. Even though other people don’t usually see it, you know it’s there. A guy on a date will be more confident wearing nice boxer-briefs than tighty whities that same way a woman with a sexy matching set feels more confident than someone in granny panties. There’s something about nice underwear that shows a real control of style and everyone knows that the most appreciated things are those that usually go unappreciated.
So viewing a website’s source is like checking out a hot girl’s underwear. But when you’re using Safari, they’re all wearing unmatching granny panties. I don’t want to look at that. I don’t even understand why that happens. Why would I continue to look at Ms. Granny Pants when Ms. Black Lace is standing next to her?
Safari Source is a plugin that adds syntax highlighting. It’s like Safari goes to a lingerie store and comes back looking like this:
And that’s just awesome.