SRC ID

Dusties PT 1

Over this past weekend I found myself sifting through the dark dirty corners of my external hard drive, which amongst other things, seems to contain an archive of random dj mixes from my years previous running Subsystence web broadcasts out of my apartment (perhaps defined as a precursor to podcasts) and the Subsystence radio program (broadcast from Northwestern Universities WNUR studios).

Below is a complete broadcast from the later. This is part test of a new Wordpress Plugin (found here). The mix is fairly distorted and well, sloppy, but that’s how I like it.

track length: 1:02:48

Side note

For those with a quizical look on your face (for the one, maybe two people who read this blog currently), I used to DJ, and for a while tried my hand at web broadcasting from my Chicago apartment. That site was called Subsystence, for which you can find some information here.

The Twitter addiction

Twitter, the Ruby on Rails bastard child, and focus of much debate about Ruby’s potential scale issues, is a site I’ve used in for the better part of a year that has been on my mind of late. The site is loved by many and misunderstood by the masses. For those of you who love it, you’re likely addicted, and it’s this addiction that I’m mildly interested in talking about here.

I recently took a family vacation to South Korea, where my iPhone doesn’t work (blessing in disguise). As such, I was essentially cut off from updating my Twitter profile. Sure I could have done my updates through the website, but come on, after a full day of running around bowing, eating, bowing, and faking my way through Korean with extended family, the very last thing I wanted to do was boot up the laptop and log onto twitter to summarize my day in TXT sized bites. No thank you. So I essentially went without Twitter for two weeks.

And now, as I’ve been sitting here for the better part of two weeks, I’ve totaled two or three Twitter updates, and am finding it rather hard to think of a reason to update my profile. Let alone allocate the time or attention to follow along with other peoples banter, and engage in conversation. Did I loose my interest, or perhaps I’m just not fully back into the swing of my old daily routine. In either case, it seems, at least for the immediate moment, my addiction is broken, and hopefully, for the sake of my family and my business, it’s a good thing.

Ultimately, what I’m curious about in the longer term, is how much Twitter hype & activity is sustainable. Is Twitter ultimately a fad that will eventually morph into the next coolest gadget in online web crack? I suppose only time will tell. Until then, you can follow me on Twitter and see if I eventually come out of hibernation.

The experience of free

I recently signed on to a relatively new site called Beatport, an online retailer of electronic dance music. To be honest, one of the best designed dance music sites out there in terms of providing a smooth music shopping experience. And their catalog is definitely impressive to someone like me who is used to scouring the globe looking for hard to find techno records.

But with all of this, I was recently disappointed and seemingly suckered by a small amount of extremely powerful copy. The e-mail subject line (see below via Gmail)

Wow! Amazing. I was up ’till the wee hours of the evening the night before sifting through droves of tracks, adding artists to my favorite artists bin, record labels to my favorite labels bin, and even adding tracks to my shopping cart to consider for purchase (oddly enough I couldn’t seem to add tracks or releases to a favorites bin).

I open the email and the story gets richer. I’m asked to confirm my email by “clicking the link below”, which I promptly do. No problem there. Back to the e-mail, scroll down looking for the notice about my awaiting free downloads. Ten of them apparently. Woohoo. I’m psyched. And the story continues as I find the following information:

VIP! Wow I’m in.

Now obviously we know this is not leading to a positive review of this particular experience that I’m depicting. But I do need to say a few things in their benefit. First a good number of my friends support Beatport by buying records there and influencing my habits by word of mouth. My use of Beatport to download digital is likely not going to change, meaning I will likely buy those records in my cart, but that said, pay attention. The story will continue. There is room for improvement.

Know your customer

So there’s no need for drumrolling at this point as I’ve likely blown the cover on what happens next, but to say the least I was sorely disappointed. I click the link, the page loads, I log in. What am I presented with next was a bit of a shock. Ten, pre-selected tracks that scatter the globe from techno to house, trance to breaks. None of which I’m entirely psyched about. As a matter of fact, after a second or two I’m pretty much pissed.

As I said, I spent an excited and kid-like evening clicking and listening, clicking and adding to my hearts content. Essentially telling Beatport the style of music that I live for. That I love. And instead I get a pre-sorted, full-spectrum, wide-girth bin of bullocks that honestly, I don’t want cluttering my already beefy iTunes library. I want more signal and less noise.

My overarching point here is they missed an amazing opportunity. I’m sure there are economical, and perhaps legal constraints they are working within, but ultimately, my experience was a flop. This will be a story I tell my friends and foe when talking about Beatport. Of course I’ll still recommend Beatport, but this story is rich in User Experience chatter.

Managing expectations

Set my expectation, or don’t. But if you don’t fully set my expectations up-front, beware the consequences. With this recent interaction with Beatport my expectations were only set as far as being promised ten free downloads. What this translated to in my mind was an opportunity to download the five or so tracks I had selected the previous night, plus a few more of my liking. So I filled in the gap myself, with what I wanted. What I was hoping for.

Simple Twists

Want me to buy more tracks from Beatport? Then, give me a sample that I’d like. As I pointed out, I already began to identify genres, styles, labels, and specific artists I am interested in. Use what’s known. Leverage the information that the consumer has provided to influence future engagement. It’s certainly simple enough to pull that insight and deliver the consumer a more customized, enjoyable experience. Ultimately, the ten songs wouldn’t have made me buy more, but it certainly might have impacted me in the long term, knowing that they’re investing their time & efforts into features that actually relate to me.

The bottom line is, expectations abound, and online, when the consumer is not led to water by person, but instead by their own twists and turns, extra care has to be taken in setting those expectations, or designing with our consumers potential expectations in mind.

Now, off to Beatport to pick me up some good music!

Pitchfork buries MTV online

On March 5th Pitchfork Media launched their newest web venture, Pitchfork.tv. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. They done a pretty extraordinary job with the detailed interaction on the site.

Right off the bat

At first load, the user is immediately immersed in video numero uno. Following the spirit of YouTubes successful auto-play feature, Pitchfork, I believe, is also providing the “Turn on the TV and watch moving pictures”. MTV? Hello? Are you watching? You should be. You’ve lost the beat ages ago.

Interaction gone wild

From an interaction design standpoint, the cats at Pitchfork have done some extremely simple, but extremely fluid and effective execution of the video experience. A simple display for the video itself, with little clutter. The only options the user is provided with is to navigation through the various site sections (again, kept to a simple number of six), and two components to the right of the video window. One provides details of the video being played, while just below they provide a YouTube style i-framed navigation mode to flip to another video.

Slide, don’t jump

My absolute favorite aspect to the interaction design and user experience provided in the site is the fact that as the user navigates through the various sections of the site (the six options at the top), they never loose a beat with the video playing. Essentially the user can navigate and search for content without losing their location. Did someone say RIA? I think this is bloody hot, and something to inspire and learn from for application.

Ultimately, they’ve done a great job keeping true to the natural video watching experience. Beyond MTV, YouTube & Flickr could learn something from these cats.

Nourish Organics goes live

One of our personal projects, Nourish Organics, recently went live as an early release, and we’re very proud to see this one run free in the wilds of the web. Nourish Organics is a small organic smoothie & juice retailer located on the east coast that specializes in cleansing drinks as well as personal holistic healthcare counseling.

A labor of love that involved photo shoots, brand development, identity design, copywriting, hand sculpted code, and multiple iterations of design. But as with many labors of love, it’s never quite perfect, never quite complete, but there comes a time when your children need to head out into the vast open prairie alone.

We expect to see and hear some great feedback from current clients, as well as new ones and passers by. Take a look, tell us what you think, and expect us to take it to heart and update as we learn.

And if your thristy and looking to clear your body of yucky toxins, drop the team of juicers a note and they’ll be sure to respond quickly and get you going.

SXSW wrap up

So it’s Wednesday morning, the day after the closing of the Interactive portion of SXSW. As everyone likely knows by now, this years event (being my 2nd attendance) was highly energetic. Personally, both positive and negative.

Again, record crowds flooded this years event. Lots of first timers, and lots of old timers. This, I tend to think, is a good thing. More insight, perspective, and experiences to share with one another. But perhaps this massive influx is burning a hole in the side of this community focused event.

The first big issue that arose, and the one flare up that just about everyone heard about (even not geek types), was the Mark Zuckerberg Keynote interview conducted by Sarah Lacy (Businessweek). I was there, in the main room, and man, you could cut the tension with a knife. Plenty of people have posted about this, so quite honestly I don’t want to dwell on the negative. You can read about the various takes by Dave McClure, Michael Arrington (who by the way, was not in attendance), Wired, and many more (just google Zuckerberg Lacy interview). You can even follow the sporadic comments from Twitter: Robert Scoble, Jason Pontin. So I don’t really need to say too much more.

This same audience uprising theme seemed to bleed over into other sessions as well. During the “Social Marketing Strategies Metrics, Where Are They?” book reading, Jeremiah Owyang highlights that the audience revolt was far more aggressive (though passive via meebo). And there’s more. During a panel I attended which discussed the future of music distribution, again, a heck of a lot of tension.

Overall, though some think of these “outbursts” as negative, perhaps it’s actually quite healthy. Debate provides an opportunity for those empassioned around a specific topic to truly get to the heart of the issue, hopefully progressing the conversation to a perspective that leads to change and evolution. Wishful thinking? nah. Ultimately the interactive community is just that, a community. It’s a rare thing in my opinion.

As for the rest of the experience of the 2008 SXSW. It was fantastic. Met up with old friends, was introduced to a number of new faces, learned some new tactics & strategies, but ultimately was able to escape the daily grind and use my brain on an intellectual level and open my horizons based on other peoples experiences. And ultimately, this is why I love SXSW. It’s ultimately not a learning experience (although it can be), and it’s not a networking event (although it is), but it’s a chance for everyone to share what they’ve learned through their experiments, failures, and successes over the years.

I’ll follow up with a few more detailed notes on panels I attended, what I learned, and some new companies / products / websites I’m curious about.

Drama or not, I definitely plan to attend again next year.

Now, off too catch some films before I jump on a plane out of here.