Life gets a little more in perspective when you see it through Walter's eyes... a highly recommended show
Stephen Ross Scott.com™
Untangling the Interweb...
Web Geek™, Senior Manager, Digital @RMIT, a social media maven, Google-aholic, simplicity, UX and customer experience advocate, and a bit of a Star Wars nut. Hit my Google + profile below for more info. Kthnxbai! 
Links
TwitterFacebookBuzzFriendfeedJaikuFlickrPicasaYoutubeVimeoDeliciousTumblrBloggermetaweblogScribd
Jennifer Aniston does a Smart Water sex tape. Really! Safe for work-relax...
via youtube.com
Don't worry not spam, but an excellent take on viral vids, done as an ad for Smart Water. Nice job!
'Texter' by Amber Mac. An Awesome Dexter mashup.
via youtube.com
I'm recently a huge Dexter fan and also a looong time fan of AmberMac, the host of Net @ Night, Command N, TWiT broadcater and friend of Podfather Leo Laporte and much more.
Ambers a real media pop culture fan too, and so for her recent book launch she decided to make a pastich of the Dexter show's opening sequence by sending it up in her own style called 'Texter'. Find out more about the book and Amber here: http://www.ambermac.com/
Lost? Never seen Dexter? Yer homework is here:
Dexter, A 'serial' You dont want to miss.
via amazon.com
Okay lame title I know.
I'm waaay behind on this one though and only just managed to catch up and 'kill' the first season. (Just checking your reading with these bad puns)
Now in filming it's fifth season, it sounds like it will take forever to catch up, but thankfully only twelve (long) shows per season, instead of the normal twenty two or four, making it much more likely I'll be up to speed soon.
Not for the squeamish or those with a blood aversion, but Michael C Hall as Dexter, a serial killer (with a heart?) and the cast do a great job of keeping this highly entertaining, and one I definitely recommend you 'cut' out some time to watch. (End of the painful puns)
fixplay.com.au; Oh dear. Basic user experience=nil.
At the movies the other night and treated with this pretty cheese-tasticly awful ad:
Yep, someone, somewhere, got paid for that. Anyway, lured by a glimmer of hope that someone had actually tried to do a hulu.com for Australia I headed over to www.fixplay.com.au Sadly I was disappointed immediately. Each and every programme is fairly old, but some good new-ish shows are there, so some kudos to them. I tried to watch and was greeted by, on every single video;
We're sorry, this video is not available at this time.
I changed browsers and tried again, same thing. Refreshed, nothing. Every single video, all=FAIL! At this point a massive amount of traffic would leave, wouldn't you? I nearly did, but then in frustration at this failure, I eventually noticed a small link way below underneath...
Well that's clear then, eh?
What fixplay have disastrously done wrong, is not put the users experience of the site first. Kinda shocking really, but then most sites don't. And especially after paying for an ad, and the cost of cinema advertising. If me, and in charge? I'd be kicking some bum riiiight about now.
In a world where the flash player for video rules, and is cross platform, and where YouTube is king, Queen and the royal family of online video. Even with HTML 5 video steaming ahead, fixplay have bet badly on the bespoke browser plugin horse.The plugin at fault? Namely, Silverlight. Microsoft's waste of time and not very cross platform answer to the Adobe flash player. Then again fixplay has investment by Microsoft , who also have stakes in channel seven and nine who supply the content. Poor buggers have no choice but to try to flog the plugin.
(Silverlight is frankly, more crap you and your browser do not need.)
So ironically given it's called fixplay, and it doesn't play for many of us, someone does need to 'fix' it. Even updating the message to 'You need to install Silverlight' would be the lazy but more workable option. Although for many, too late, and I for one wont be back. So before you can make an ad and spend money and state your product is 'exciting' and 'change peoples life's', make sure a little ten minute basic user experience testing outside of the office or online with some geeks or beta testers gets done? Please?
It might not change your life, but will change your customers first basic expectations of your site.
Books vs. E-books... Finish him!
via techcrunch.com
It really is now war for this media market (and shortly TV programs) especially with the launch of the Android http://cruzreader.com/
Questions is are we going to have an ebook reader/table mountain like we do today for old unwanted mobiles? Apple, Android and more don't really seem to be paying too much attention to recycling all this. I guess it's hard to compete when a book is made of paper : )
Best ending on a TV show I can recall...True Blood (NSFW)
via youtube.com
Okay so those of you with a boob aversion (and apparently we do have some out there...seriously what's wrong with you?) you'd best look away.
And those with blood aversion (that I can understand) not one for you, move along.
So for those now left, if you watch True Blood (which I have covered many times before) and have not seen this episode this could be a spoiler of sorts so you may want to avoid watching.
Okay anyone left? All-righty, possibly the best ending I have seen to a TV episode in a long time, watch to the very end for well...just watch.
An amazing show and one very worth getting.
» Buy Season 1 of True Blood now.
True Blood marketing gets it right...again; Snoop Dogg "Oh Sookie".
via videostatic.com
So True Blood if you weren't aware, is an American TV show about Vampires.
There's a lot more to it than that, but I'll let you do your own catching up.
What has made this show incredibly interesting, is it's marketing of the show online (and off-line for that matter). With plenty of fake adds for substitute blood, commercials aimed at Vampires and much more. As a result fans are even more passionate about True Blood. HBO, the US channel behind the show really are catering and listening to those passions of the fans. In effect, making their customers experience of the show even more enjoyable.
The above Snoop Dogg video is again an example of the money and quality spent just in the promos alone for the show. With plenty of in show jokes for fans, the marketing team behind this show has once again proved itself to be truly fang-tastic!
Bad pun I know, but couldn't resist : )
The Walking Dead, begins to walk...
via au.tv.ign.com
One of the most mature and well crated comic books I have ever read is coming to TV screens. The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, has been going for around seventy issues, and I'm surprised it took this long to get any real zombie show on TV, given the genre's popularity amongst geek's.
Produced by Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator) and written and directed by Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption).This should appear later this year on US screens at least, and at your choice of Interweb download emporium, until someone can sort the whole TV show country delay nonsense.
Find out more about the great comic book series
Braiiiiinnnnnssss!
A nice swipe at old media...
Lets face it, old media, in particular TV news has only themselves to blame, selling your soul for ratings, stockholders and advertising, doth not earn you respect from your customers. (Well not from those who can think for themselves anyway.) Last week saw this utter shocker exposed by the ABC, and how TV news twisted journalism into a real bottom feeding spectacular. An eye opening five minutes.
TV news has become so bad, it's now a rich source for satire as Charlie Brookers Newswipe pointed out. So I have to take a 'sense' of news from a variety of places, mostly online, to avoid most of the dirge and get some sense of the truth. Half the reason why most countries want to apply filters to the web.
TV news isn't likely to change quickly, so we'll all have to put up with exactly the below for some time yet. (short ad before vid starts)
0 Comments