Archive for August, 2009
Monday Links – Entrepreneurs
With the current recession, there are a lot of people dipping their toe into the entrepreneurial arena. Along with the growing number of people contemplating starting their own business is a new generation of websites that help people vet their ideas and attract funding. In addition, people are using existing tools such as LinkedIn and Facebook to make connections
The following list shows just a few of the available resources:
- Kickstarter – a website that helps people fund their ideas and get feedback
- Sprouter – a website that enables global collaboration between entrepreneurs
- Entrepreneurship = Recovery – this LinkedIn group is powered by the Kauffman Foundation and their Entrepreneurship.org initiative to inspire more entrepreneurs in the US
- IdeaBlob.com – the idea with the most votes wins $10k
- Bulbstorm.com – get feedback on your idea or browse other ideas
It seems that Bulbstorm has integrated with Facebook, and looks like the first one to utilized the powerful Facebook Connect API.
Getting Feedback on Concepts
There are information architects and designers who know their work is brilliant. While it might be true that they are brilliant (and generally ridiculously hard to work with) this group of people is missing out on great feedback that can really take a design project to the next level.
If you work at an agency or are part of a large team, you have an embedded group of people to offer an opinion. What if you are flying solo and consulting? Getting feedback is not quite as easy.
As much as I would like to believe my dad would be engaged in a women’s clothing website, sometimes the people you have on hand are not a great fit for feedback.
If the ‘go ask your father?’ method is not working, Concept Feedback is a great online tool to check out.
You can post your concepts and let others review them. From looking at the tool, it is a pretty active community. The feedback from users is very honest.
The following is from a recent web design review:
Focus on one style of design and design with purpose. Don’t just throw different elements together.I have to agree that I like the color scheme and I really like the gradient effect at the top of the design, it reminds me of the aurora borealis. The biggest problem I see is that your design doesn’t seem to have very good unity.
Aside from getting reviewed, it is a great site to get some inspiration yourself. There are a lot of users doing that, and the concepts have a lot more ‘views’ and ‘reviews’ at times.
Online Video Consumption and Players
It goes without saying the online video is the new channel. People watch television shows on Hulu, the Tour de France on Versus and a mammoth amount of stupid human behavior on YouTube.
In recent metrics for online video consumption, Nielsen Online reports that all aspects of video streaming are seeing increased numbers. According to the Nielsen report comparing February and March 2009 figures, the number of Unique Viewers is up 1.9%, and total streams has increased by 8.7%. Viewers are also staying tuned for longer periods of time with 207 minutes in the month of April.
With all of the eyeballs on these online videos, making it a better interactive experience will help brands take it to the next level. While watching the Tour de Ireland on Versus, I noticed their video player was very cool.
After some online snooping, I figured out the player was developed by Entriq. When I found their website, I saw that they have been absorbed back into the company who originally spawned them Irdeto.
They have been sucked into the land of a company with this message on their About Page Iredto empowers companies to protect and monetize their digital assets and maximize return on content with innovative and reliable software technologies, content management and distribution solutions and end-to-end solutions and services
Should I set the alarm because that was so boring. It is unfortunate because the Entriq video player is a slick online tool. I am glad to see companies are still thinking of ways to make the online video experience better. However, I am a bit disheartened when the innovative technologies are being swept back into companies and not putting that technology front and center.