Tag Archives: viddler

Goodbye Viddler

December 17th, 2012

Working at the same company for six years is a privilege that many do not get to enjoy. I’ve been extremely privileged to be able to do just that at Viddler from early 2007 until now.

My relationship with the Viddler team actually began before my first day as a team member. My friend and ex-coworker Mike Stickel and I ran a small company called ChanceCube that did some consulting for Viddler long before I ever thought I’d end up working there full-time. In 2006 the small team at Viddler was focused on creating a Flash-based video player that included comments that popped up along the timeline as you viewed a video. Mike and I helped Viddler conceptualize the UI for that player.

In 2007 when I visited Rob Sandie and Donna DeMarco in what was then a closet-sized office in Jordan Hall at Ben Franklin Tech Ventures near Lehigh University I saw that they had built what Mike and I had helped them design and it was way beyond our own expectations for how good it really could be.

It was during that initial visit that I knew I wanted to be part of the Viddler team.

Since that cold, cold day in January 2007 everyone at Viddler has worked very hard to first build a cool product, then build a viable business, an incredibly good team, a very reliable platform, and ultimately a sustainable company.

At every step in the evolution of Viddler and from every member of the team past and present I’ve been able to learn so much. It was a privilege to serve on the Board of Directors, to help recruit great talent, and to work with Viddler’s largest customers to accomplish their online video goals. Each of the various roles that I tried, and both succeeded and failed at, were challenging, fun, and worth the effort.

I feel it is time to do something different. I’m ready to do something new. I have many interests and the world of web video was only one of them. It will take a few months before my new team and I are ready to share what we’re working on but I’m very excited about what’s next.

Viddler, now with multi-user sign on »

December 11th, 2012

The Viddler Blog:

Decide who can access your dashboard, setup their own Viddler username and password, and choose what they will have access to in your account. Select who can view and/or manage certain videos or playlists, who can edit account or billing settings, and for those customers with sub-accounts, you can set permissions for accessing these accounts as well, which makes managing your content easier and more productive.

This is huge for publishing organizations that need to allow multiple people within one organization to upload, edit, or manage their video library. Even better, if a single organization has more than one Viddler account (say, for different publications or departments) – they can set up access to each of those sub-accounts as well. The importance of this feature can not be overstated.

Any company doing video publishing should take a serious look at using Viddler if they haven’t already.

A short Microsoft Surface review

November 16th, 2012

Me, in June:

Actual judgements about the hardware aside (since, unsurprisingly, these aren’t yet on the market) this looks like the best work to come out of Microsoft since the Xbox 360. This isn’t me grading on a curve either. I’m not giving them extra points for finally making something that looks like it could be good. I’m saying that this device actually looks like it could be a great, viable, product line and could bring Microsoft up-to-speed on many many fronts.

You could say I was optimistic yet skeptical. Like many other product debuts at Microsoft I actually thought the Surface may never see the light of day. But it has. They’re shipping them. They exist. Yesterday, while at Viddler HQ, I was able to play with a Surface for a few minutes.

I could have played with it longer. But I wouldn’t want to. The Surface is terrible. Even if you’ve never picked up an iPad or an Android-powered tablet you would think the Surface is pretty slow, hard to use, and heavy; three things a tablet device should probably never have said about it.

I know, I know, some may think because I’m such an Apple fan boy that I wouldn’t like the Surface even if it was truly great. Remember, I said “this device actually looks like it could be a great, viable, product line” for Microsoft. And I think it still could be. When playing with the Surface yesterday I said that I thought it still belonged in a lab – not being sold to the public.

When I first grabbed the Surface the running joke in the office was “Open Mail.” At least two people told me to open the mail application. I tried. After waiting about a minute for the mail application to launch I gave up.

Then I tried Word. Surely this should be a simple, easy-to-use version of Word where I would launch it and immediately be able to begin typing, right? Wrong. Tapping on Word opened up a version of Windows 8 that looks like Windows Vista and then launches Word just like you would see on your desktop computer. Once the canvas loads where you can begin typing the cursor pops up and sits there, flashing at you, waiting to be used. Only, there is a problem, there is no keyboard.

Like the iPad, a physical keyboard does not come standard. The Surface has a few optional keyboards that could be purchased with it but they are pretty expensive and since this is simply a testing unit for Viddler our Head of QA decided we didn’t need the physical keyboard. Arguably, though, the physical keyboard is one of the main reasons why someone would want a Surface.

Anyway, back to Word. So the traditional, desktop version of Word is sitting there – cursor blinking – and there is no keyboard. I’m used to how iOS and Android work so I thought that simply tapping into the area where I’d like to type would be enough for the OS to know that I’d need a virtual keyboard. Only, I’m in the part of the OS (the Windows Vista-looking part) that isn’t smart enough to know this. So, after a few moments of panic, one of my fellow Viddler team members had to run over and show me that there was a button to ask for the virtual keyboard. The entire experience was really quite jarring.

Next, I opened Camera. Camera is one of those applications on Surface that you have to figure out how to use by experimenting. There is no apparent way to do anything. Not even take a photo or record a video. Rather than there being any interface for the application the entire Surface becomes a window to the world around you. Which seems nice in concept but I found it very frustrating. To take a photo you tap the screen. OK, that seems discoverable enough. But, how do I view that photo after I’ve taken it? How do I share it? How do I send that photo to my mother? Well, going into the Photo library application doesn’t show you the photos you’ve taken with the Camera. So that’s not it. Oh, the video I shot with the Camera? That isn’t in the Videos app. This is what you have to do; you have to five-finger pinch within the Camera application to pull up a “slideshow” of your photos/videos that you’ve taken. This is not-so-discoverable.

By this time I was fed up with the Surface. I poked around a bit more and only got more and more frustrated with the device. For instance, I didn’t find a single application that supported portrait-mode. So the device had to be in landscape all the time. Obviously Microsoft intends on you using this thing, kick-stand out, sitting on a desk with the $129 optional physical keyboard attached.

As of today the Microsoft Surface isn’t a tablet. It is a thin PC that still needs a physical keyboard that runs a pretty cool touch OS that should be called Metro and an ancient and terrible OS called Windows. And it is heavy.

My island on this ocean

October 1st, 2012

Me, over four years ago:

As it stands I post what I’m currently doing to Twitter, I am testing out Pownce with mobile blogging, events, links, and files, I post mobile phone photos to Flickr (as well as the occasional screenshot), videos go on Viddler, bookmarks end up on Ma.gnolia, tasting notes end up on Cork’d, and my thoughts on Apple products find their way to TUG.n.

What a difference four years can make! Pownce, Ma.gnolia, Cork’d, TUG.n, all gone. Flickr rarely gets my attention. Twitter is still here but is changing policies more often than I change my shirt. Viddler, I’m very proud to say, is stronger than ever but is certainly a much different service than it was then.

The Internet is like the open ocean and what we publish seems to be on a life raft simply going along for the ride. Yet our personal websites seem to be like small islands in this ocean. Sure, their beaches may change from time-to-time but the island remains – like a beacon to all travelers that we’re still here – somewhere to always come back to as these rafts take on water and eventually sink into the deep.

This environment forces me to rethink, yet again, how and where I publish on the web. This internal debate seems to be one that keeps coming up, over and over, year after year, as the ocean of the Internet ebbs and flows.

Should I simply post everything that I publish directly to this site and nowhere else? Do I cross post things to this site and also onto other services? Do I simply link back to this site from those services? Do I syndicate to those services with their own accounts (like I do now on Twitter and Facebook for this site)? Do I post some content here and some content elsewhere?

Believe it or not, and you may think I’m crazy, but these questions plague me all of the time. I constantly struggle with this. And I never seem to muster the conviction to make a hard choice and so I’ve got content everywhere; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, the brand-new App.net, Flickr, a little on Google+, and so on.

Why does it take conviction to limit myself to only posting on this site? Because there is a pull and a need to share this content with as many people as possible. With nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter, a few hundred on Instagram, friends and family on Flickr, etc. it is hard to limit the exposure of this content. I want people to see what I’m publishing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. This site, as it stands, only has a relatively small audience. Some of my posts get views in the single digits, others, in the hundreds of thousands. So I can never really be sure how many people are paying attention. That is why it takes conviction. I have to be OK with the fact that maybe, just maybe, no one will notice. And maybe, just maybe, no one will care.

I think I’ve gotten to that point. Even as I write this I’m coming around to the idea that I don’t really need anyone to read this post. And if they do read it I’d much rather them read it here than on Facebook or Google+. Whether or not I choose to publish here on my site or elsewhere doesn’t really matter at all to anyone but me. And I want to publish to my site. So I should publish in a way that makes me happy, right?

There is an upside to making this a hard, line-in-the-sand choice. If anything I post is shared around the web it will point back to my website. My island. Some have built up enormous followings on Twitter and Instagram. What happens when they go away or change? I’d much rather people remember me for my website than for my Instagram stream.

So what does this mean? Well, I’ve thought about it. And I’m still going to tweet. Though probably far less. Twenty-five thousand plus tweets so far and counting. My entire family and most of my close friends are on Twitter. And, using Twitter Lists, I’m able to get a lot of value from this service. Far more than any other. However, I’m done with Facebook, Google+, Flickr, ADN and Instagram (even though I love Instagram). Everything that I publish is going to be on this site. Follow, don’t follow, it is up to you.

 

Do you deal with this struggle? I’d love to read about how you’re dealing with it on Hacker News.

 

Some have asked if they’ll be able to stay subscribed to this site via Twitter and Facebook. Yes, you will. As long as their policies allow for it. And also RSS if you’re a nerd like me.

Viddler helps Foreigner to create an innovative online video contest

April 17th, 2012

There have been some pretty interesting milestones in the history of Viddler for the last 5+ years I’ve been on the team. This is one of them. We’re working with Foreigner of Waiting for a Girl Like You fame to help them bring a video contest online in a way that no other company could have.

I just unbuttoned the top two buttons on my shirt.

Nilai: Introducing Previews

March 30th, 2012

See also: Introducing Smart Labels.

Nilai has quickly morphed from being a simple list of links to many lists of links each with their own purpose. Using Smart Labels, which are getting smarter with each release, members of Nilai can save links into these lists with a single click.

Sometimes the purpose of saving these links is to watch a video, listen to a bit of audio, or save a link to do something with at a later time. Starting today it is easier than ever to accomplish some of these tasks without ever having to leave Nilai. Previews make it simple to preview links to video, audio, photos, products, or even code. By simply saving a bookmark to the more than 12 supported services Nilai will automatically identify what the link is to and prepare a preview for you.

Let me give you some examples. The most obvious example is video. If you’re like me you don’t have time during your work day to watch YouTube videos that are being circulated throughout the web via Twitter or from my friends via instant messages. So I save these bookmarks to Nilai to watch later. Now, with Previews, Nilai will let me watch the video on my iPad, iPhone, or my Mac without needing to open the YouTube application or website. It looks like this.

For me audio works much the same way. Sometimes I have time to listen to a bit of audio – like on my 90-mile drive to work. For those occasions I prefer to subscribe to a podcast powered by Huffduffer. But, what if I want to listen to a bit of audio in a few hours on my computer or perhaps on my iPad at night in bed? Using Previews Nilai makes it possible to listen to audio from services like Huffduffer and others without needing to subscribe to a podcast or sync with iTunes. Quick, simple.

Video, audio, and photos is just the beginning. Here is a list of the services that Previews supports today: YouTube, Viddler, Flickr, Vimeo, Speaker Deck, Dribbble, Instagram, Twitpic, Skitch, Github’s Gists, Huffduffer. With many, many more on the way. In fact, I’ll tell you straight away that all of the popular recipe sites are next.

I hope you enjoy the new site and Previews.

“Progress isn’t always additive.”

November 28th, 2011

John Gruber on the progression of web technologies.

“Sometimes the next thing does less, and is better for it — not in every way, but overall. If we never let go of old technology, we’d be buried in complexity and crushed by outdated crap.”

Keep this quote in mind when the next version of Viddler is released. Sometimes you just have to get rid of things for the sake of making progress. It isn’t easy. But progress rarely is.