Online Video Article in HBJ by Katie Laird

Katie Laird has an article in this weeks Houston Business Journal!

Online video packs huge punch as part of marketing strategy

It’s probably already happened. A colleague, relative or friend sends a "This is so cool!" e-mail with a link to an online video on YouTube or another Web site. It may be a news clip, silly home video or a heart-warming snippet from a family gathering.

The mass appeal and growing availability of online videos is changing the way people consume information on the Web, and savvy businesses are trying to keep up.

Cross posted here. Congrats Katie!

The GE Equation: “What we can imagine, we can make happen”

"What we can imagine, we can make happen" – GE Equation

Working on our vision and values statements. Well, I side with Jack Welch that I am accountable for the vision and the team must generate the values. And they did. And they are awesome!

So awesome in fact, that I now need to be sure the vision statement is big enough to handle the scope of what we are doing. Only time will tell.

The photo is from the American Advertising Federation Annual Conference last year. It is the GE Equation. Click through to all sizes to see the whole formula. I apologize for the resolution, but content is there.

Creating Passionate Users Guru Cancels Due to Attacks

Kathy Sierra, a usability guru and phenomenal communicator, was forced to cancel her presentations at eTech because of threats against her personally in the blogosphere.

First and foremost – our thoughts and prayers are with you Kathy on a quick and just resolution.

From Kathy’s blog post (please click through and read the whole thing)

Death threats against bloggers are NOT "protected speech" (why I cancelled my ETech presentations)

As I type this, I am supposed to be in San Diego, delivering a workshop
at the ETech conference. But I’m not. I’m at home, with the doors
locked, terrified. For the last four weeks, I’ve been getting death
threat comments on this blog. But that’s not what pushed me over the
edge. What finally did it was some disturbing threats of violence and
sex posted on two other blogs… blogs authored and/or owned by a group that includes prominent bloggers.

These are not your normal attacks, there are actual death threats. It is one thing for someone to do a nasty blog post, it is another for a human to tip the scales to the really insane side. In this case, the attackers are certifiable. And unfortunately they are hurting Kathy. And the community.

I do not have the skills to articulate a next set of steps. And the Tech community rallying trying to find Jim Gray was not successful. Hopefully this time with log files and research, we will be able to nail the bastards with criminal charges. Some things are definitely not free speech. And this is one of those times.

Now lets see if those blogs, most of which are now shut down, cooperate turning over their log files. Please may common sense rule the day.

I am at eTech as I type this so I’ll update if I hear anything. This is beyond crisis comm, this is criminal activity that must be stopped.

On the Growing Accessibility of Screencasting

From Beth’s blog, I liked the following excerpt from her Screencasting Primer. It gets to the heart of the matter on tools to use for video demonstrations of software or web sites:

I started off using the free video editing software that came with my PC and Camstudio and a $10 microphone. Later, as my skills improved I invested in Camtasia (approximately $300) which is considered the gold standard for screencasting and a decent USB microphone. Other PC users have told me they use SnagIt ($40) which captures screen and audio and an entry level video editing programs like Adobe Preimere Elements or Sony Vegas which retail for approximately $100. Many people who work on the MAC platform use Snapz for screen capture and pull it into Final Cut Pro for editing. A new MAC tool called "IshowU" is gaining popularity.

We use Camstudio at our shop. However we found that we could NOT use youTube
or any of the other hosted services and keep the screen resolution
acceptable. And it gets old really fast to look at fuzzy screens
zooming in and out. So our videos are a combination of video and flash
and are self hosted.

Example video here on adding an article to Tendenci. And on that note, here are the Tendenci help videos and the Tendenci software update blog.

Submission to JPG magazine

Yes I remain off topic. This photo titled "running with the seagulls" is my submission to JPG magazine – hey, I would appreciate a vote!

The original version is here. Use the icon above to vote for "running with the seagulls" on JPG here.