jeffchin.com

I frequent digg.com fairly often, but just happened to notice that they were going to have a live broadcast via uStream.tv to address users issues and questions. This is something that I have never seen before from any (albeit a startup) company. Before the townhall meeting, they collected comments and questions from users on this Digg story and went through the top 20 questions.

This townhall meeting could be viewed as very successful in my eyes, because it achieved two things:

1. Allowed users to submit issues to the creators of Digg.com about usability and features that are/aren’t working for them – and have them addressed.
2. Allowed the creators of Digg to collect opinions about the site and have them essentially ranked in order of importance by the avid user base.

Now, as a web analyst, one thing pops into my mind about the value of this type of forum. The goal of being a web analyst is not just to to learn what the user is doing, but to understand why the users are at your site and how they are using it. It is rare that you will have a very clear cut survey telling you exactly what users are concerned about. Currently I am working with my main web developer at my new job to create event tags on main functions of one of our sites to find out if they are actually using certain features or not. This requires man-hours, testing, implementation, and this method is not scalable for a massive site (we’re only measuring clicks on the home page) – and that’s just to measure a behavior, not to add a new feature/functionality/content! In the townhall format, they ended up with a much more dynamic and democratic version of a user survey from real users. (extra reading: Kaushik.net – the importance of surveys) They also appear to be more open to the public (in addition to diggnation) which builds trust from the user base that they are actually doing it for “us”.

Anyways, that’s enough nerdy web analytics talk for one post. I also wanted to point out that while having Digg.com CEO Jay Adelson answer some of the questions was good, he comes off as a huge dork, and definitely needs more time on camera before stepping up to another live Town Hall broadcast. Kevin Rose should not let him talk as much as possible. Don’t believe me? Watch the archived live broadcast for yourself on Mashable or Digg.com/Townhall. Jay’s the one on the left.

In web analytics news, I will be attending the Web Managers Roundtable tomorrow in DC…see you there!

On Vimeo

After editing this video together, I realized that I’m not even in it. Think of it as supplementary to Dave’s video – his video proves I was really there!  And as a side-note, I’m kinda disappointed with iMovie 08’s lack of video editing.  Apparently that’s going to be addressed in future updates.

Dave just compiled a video of our trip to San Fran from a few months ago. Beware, it’s random, strange, extreme and contains a lot of slow motion videos! I guess that’s what happens when you get together with your old band from college. I can’t wait to get out there again soon. (on Vimeo)

It has been a while since I’ve posted a video to Vimeo. I still have yet to mess around with iMovie long enough to feel comfortable editing together some videos from San Francisco and ones of my Grandma teaching us how to make some Chinese dumplings and pastries.

This video was taken last Christmas (2006). My grandfather has a tradition of “feeding” my great grandparents whenever there’s a family get together during the holidays. It usually involves chicken, oranges, whiskey and burning incense. In this clip my grandfather on my mom’s side tells us the names of my great grandparents.

Speaking of hilarious original content on Vimeo…I shouldn’t be hogging it all to myself. This is an old one, so check out the rest at JakeandAmir.com.

It’s not my TV anymore. It’s my Macbook laptop. I’ve found recently that it is turning more into what TV executives fear (at least non-forward thinking ones): a world where there is no difference between watching TV on TV or watching TV on your computer. What they need to realize is that the ultimate goal should be, is to gain viewership in any way or fashion. This starts with good television shows, then accessibility. With an innovative business model, you should be able to generously supplement your commercial income from broadcast TV with ad sales from internet broadcasts. Nothing bad can happen from more people watching your show. So, make it more accessible for more people.

My first steps into internet TV started off a little shaky with Joost, and has been rejuvenated (for me), by sites like Hulu.com, or actual network sites that stream full length, high quality shows after they’ve aired for free. Each of these solutions integrate limited commercials into the show, but are still considerably less intrusive than watching it live.

Between Joost and Hulu.com, I prefer Hulu. Joost for some reason went with mandatory downloadable application that you need to run to access the programming, where Hulu, very wisely, just has a web interface with no install. The interface for Joost is not very user friendly. I realize that they’re trying to emulate old-school TV with their gimmicky TV fade out when you “shut off” Joost, and auto-play when you start it up, but I find that annoying. Just play what I want, when I want – please. Hulu.com is much more simple, requires no install and in my non-technical eyeball tests, has better video quality than Joost. Not to mention available programming. Hulu has real TV shows, while Joost has some real shows that I want to watch, but is mostly made up of a bunch of fake channels. This is definitely where Internet TV should be moving, but I just haven’t found the quality of the shows to be very high.  [Edit, don't have an invite to Hulu?  Go to OpenHulu.com]

Finally, there is Vimeo. I post videos there semi-regularly whenever I have time to edit, but there is a bevy of original, entertaining, and high quality (production & video) videos posted there regularly. It is YouTube, but done with class. Vimeo was the first major video sharing site that streams your videos in full HD. If you have been stuck hurting your eyes watching YouTube, Vimeo will feel like freakin’ Lasik for your eyes.

So there you have it, you can see why I’ve been watching my Macbook more often that I’ve been watching my 40″ LCD TV. The convenience, quality, accessibility and availability have really been stepped up in the Internet video arena. Have any of you started to make the switch to Internet broadcast TV?

Vimeo

It’s old, but I stumbled on it again today. Love the piano.

Vimeo | YouTube

So…it’s really late here (1am) and I’ve finally finished mixing the India video that I’ve been promising. It’s my first crack at splicing together video and music, and by no means is it a masterpiece. I worked in a few still pictures (because I didn’t take as many videos as I should have) which leads to the slight discontinuity between some sections of the video. For some odd reason, there’s an audio snafu around 1:45 that’s not in the original file before I uploaded it to Vimeo.

The video is pretty much about traveling by car in Bangalore and traffic, but that’s probably not too disproportionate to how much of the time it felt like we were sitting in it. The final scene is Chris and I braving our lives while crossing the street. I wish I had taken more videos of the food that we ate, and some of the random side streets that we explored. Oh well, I’ll know what to do next time. It was fun, onto the next video. Enjoy…

Music: “Maru-Bihag” by Ravi Shankar

I have been working on compiling all my short video clips from my India trip, but it’s not quite ready yet. I’m not really one to get all creative with movies, but it goes to show how hard it can be to make an entertaining and engaging short video. Dave just uploaded this one, and it’s just about bluebirds, but I can’t stop watching it.

Speaking of uploading, I’m considering converting BACK to Vimeo. About two years ago, I was looking for a place to upload my videos, and it came down to Vimeo or YouTube. Vimeo won somehow, but now compared to YouTube, the quality is better (but what isn’t?), the player controls are less intrusive, unique integration with Flickr, and you get that small niche community feeling of using Vimeo. If you have a Vimeo account, add me as a contact – my profile page is here.

The one problem with using WordPress.com to host my site, is that their security is pretty strict. One restriction is that you can only embed videos from YouTube or Google Video, until recently. If you’re a WordPress.com blogger – you can now use VodPod to embed video from just about any service (as long as it finds the <embed> tags – nerdy)

Hopefully I’ll be finishing up the India video by this weekend, and I’ll post it here and on Vimeo. Until then, enjoy me beating Don in Mariokart with a “Valet”.

Vimeo

I finally got a co-worker to rip my skydiving video from the DVD and give it to me in .avi format so i could upload it to YouTube. My sister and I went to Skydive Orange for our first skydive. The free fall was for about 50 seconds, in which I fell about 1.5 miles, and then the floating down was about 5-6 minutes. For some reason I wasn’t that scared, but only because I didn’t really think about what I was doing at the time. Maybe I should have, considering I was jumping out of a plane from 13,000 ft, falling at a rate of 120 mph, and then pulling a parachute at 5,500 ft. Definitely worth the video, and I definitely would want to do it again soon if it were a little cheaper. I highly recommend anyone to go skydiving, even if you’re scared of heights.

I picked out the music for the video as well, Tool & Soundgarden…enjoy!

Vimeo | YouTube

watch this second video for another view of my jump [@ 4:28]