February 19th, 2013

As you may have guessed from the lack of posts, I’m busy. After leaving Viddler and taking some time to get things in order; I’m busy building Plain, Plain Space, and our first product Barley.

Barley has been a smash hit and it isn’t even publicly available yet. We’ve been overwhelmed by the response. We’ve had interest shown by people and companies in every Internet-connected country on the globe. Literally. Designers and developers are building templates, importers, SDKs and more for Barley already.

We just put out a teaser video, check it out.

My blog will be back in full swing when we convert it to Barley.

December 19th, 2012

If you’re a member of a fairly popular web service you’re probably becoming more and more familiar with feature roll outs.

A feature roll out is when a new feature is added to a service for a certain number of users at a time and, after some duration of time, every user on that service ends up with the new feature. This process could take hours, days, weeks.

There are a lot of reasons a company may need or want to do a feature roll out. There are also reasons a company may want to avoid doing them. Lets first look at why a company may need to roll a feature out.

Some features on these large-scale platforms are incredibly taxing on the technology infrastructure of a service. Say, for instance, that YouTube released a feature that allowed its users to re-encode all of their videos into a higher quality than they previously allowed. YouTube has billions of minutes of video. If every one of their users were allowed to do this all at once they’d bring YouTube’s infrastructure (world-class though it may be) to its knees.

Twitter’s recent roll out of a feature that allows its members to download all of their tweets in an archive is another example. While certainly not as intense as video encoding, gathering up tens-of-thousands of tweets and creating a neat and tidy archive of them does take some horsepower. They’ve decided to roll this feature out.

Another, slightly more technical, reason that a company may need to roll out a feature over time would be that they split their traffic onto many different web nodes. Or, actual web servers or clusters of servers. Each of those web nodes being updated at exactly the same time would bring the service down for a short period of time. High-capacity, “always up”, networks like Twitter can not afford to have downtime across all nodes at once. So they may roll out a feature so that their service remains up and running and they only have to pull down one node at a time, moving the traffic that would normally go to those nodes to other nodes temporarily, to update it with the new feature.

But why would a company want to roll out a new feature even if they didn’t need to? There are many advantages and I think one of the best ones that is often overlooked is hype. Remember when Instagram rolled out web profiles? It took the better part of a week for everyone to get their web profiles.

If you don’t see your profile yet, be assured that you’ll see it in the next few days. We’re rolling out profiles to everyone on Instagram over the course of this week.

A week. Even with 100,000,000 users a week in internet-speak is just about one year and three months. But with a certain number of users getting their web profiles each and every day they got an amazing amount of word-of-mouth for free. “Yay! I got my web profile!!” followed by a link on Twitter from a huge percentage of users. If for no other reason then to have Instagram on everyone’s mind for an entire week it was worth rolling this feature out over time rather than giving it out relatively immediately to everyone.

Another advantage worth noting is that by rolling out a feature the company is able to monitor the progress, effectiveness, and use of the feature and has more of a chance to correct things as the feature rolls out. If a feature has a direct impact on the stability or cost of running the service then rolling it out over time gives you a better idea of how well the feature is doing at attacking that goal. If a feature is brand-new and the company wants to see if users will A) use it and B) figure out how to use it correctly – by rolling it out you can get some sense as to how users interact with the feature. This is very advantageous.

Why would a company want to avoid feature roll outs? Announcing features that users do not have yet is always risky business. It is almost never a good idea. Some of the risk falls on user awareness. If a user learns about a feature and gets excited to use it and can not use it for a week they’re likely to forget about it a week later. You’re also likely to create higher expectations for a feature than you’re able to deliver on. I’m sure the Instagram users that got their web profile a week after they were announced had a slightly less excited response at getting them than the ones that did in the first day or two.

Feature roll outs are sometimes a necessity, sometimes a tool, and sometimes a bad idea. Choose carefully.

Any other advantages or disadvantages? Chime in on Hacker News.

December 18th, 2012

Before I even get started; Flickr can not stop Instagram at this point. Flickr can not beat Instagram in terms of hockey-stick-growth. Even with Instagram’s recent policy changes Instagram is on a trajectory to hit the nearest star and Flickr nor Bruce Willis can stop them now. But, to succeed they do not need to win – they just need to capture as many Instagram-escapees as possible.

Flickr has long since been very good at a few things; sharing, licensing, and interoperability. It is one of the reasons Flickr was included in Anil Dash’s The Web We Lost; Flickr’s API is world-class and the entire Internet can benefit from its rich offerings.

Instagram being bought by Facebook was the first step in the wrong direction in the eyes of many web veterans. And there are more and more web veterans every single day as the web gets older. Web veterans are people that know better. Web veterans know that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram aren’t the Internet. In fact, they are the antithesis of the Internet. These companies do whatever they possibily can to pigeon hole people onto their websites for as many hours throughout the day as possible. The rest of the web, the real web, tries to solve a problem for people while playing nicely with every other service out there.

Flickr made the first big step in capitalizing on Instagram’s move to Facebook last week when they debuted a brand-new iOS application that has gotten rave reviews from web newb and veteran alike.

However, Flickr is too expensive for people casually sharing a filtered photo from their mobile cameras now and then. Yes, you can use Flickr for free for up to 200 photos but I think just about anyone with a Flickr account would much prefer to have all of their photos available all of the time.

If Flickr were to change their model just slightly – one from a pro backup and catalog solution to one of sharing – they could easily win a ton of accounts that are falling off of the Facebook/Instagram table on a daily basis. Perhaps creating a cheaper account-type that costs, say $5 or $7 per year, would be enough for the web veterans (again, there are a lot of us) to completely jump ship from Instagram and pony up. This way, we would never have to worry about advertisements, creepy data collection, or wondering if our data will ever be trapped on someone else’s servers. And believe me, this isn’t something that is terrible difficult for Flickr to give a shot. They have everything they could possibly need already in place to do this.

Flickr, you’ve already made one step. Take the next step and bring us all back home again.

[discuss on Hacker News]

December 17th, 2012

Working at the same company for six years is a privilege that many do not get to enjoy. I’ve been extremely privileged to be able to do just that at Viddler from early 2007 until now.

My relationship with the Viddler team actually began before my first day as a team member. My friend and ex-coworker Mike Stickel and I ran a small company called ChanceCube that did some consulting for Viddler long before I ever thought I’d end up working there full-time. In 2006 the small team at Viddler was focused on creating a Flash-based video player that included comments that popped up along the timeline as you viewed a video. Mike and I helped Viddler conceptualize the UI for that player.

In 2007 when I visited Rob Sandie and Donna DeMarco in what was then a closet-sized office in Jordan Hall at Ben Franklin Tech Ventures near Lehigh University I saw that they had built what Mike and I had helped them design and it was way beyond our own expectations for how good it really could be.

It was during that initial visit that I knew I wanted to be part of the Viddler team.

Since that cold, cold day in January 2007 everyone at Viddler has worked very hard to first build a cool product, then build a viable business, an incredibly good team, a very reliable platform, and ultimately a sustainable company.

At every step in the evolution of Viddler and from every member of the team past and present I’ve been able to learn so much. It was a privilege to serve on the Board of Directors, to help recruit great talent, and to work with Viddler’s largest customers to accomplish their online video goals. Each of the various roles that I tried, and both succeeded and failed at, were challenging, fun, and worth the effort.

I feel it is time to do something different. I’m ready to do something new. I have many interests and the world of web video was only one of them. It will take a few months before my new team and I are ready to share what we’re working on but I’m very excited about what’s next.

December 12th, 2012

Nilai began as a labor of love for me. For a few months I’d spend an evening or so per week tapping out some code while watching a basketball game in my home pub. It was a lot of fun to work on and experiment with.

While the day job got in the way of me being able to make Nilai as truly great as I wanted it to be I ended up finding Nilai incredibly useful. I used it every day. But then, some really great new services began popping up such as Pocket and Kippt.

Fast-forward to today. I have little or no time to make the updates that I’d like to make to Nilai so I’ve decide to shut it down. If you go back to why I built Nilai in the first place, it was because I wanted a bookmarking service that would be around forever. So I’m going to keep the service running for a long time (because I still tend to use it every day and I know quite a few other users do too) but the service will no longer accept new sign ups and existing users will no longer be required to pay for their account.

Since Nilai’s users pay per-month I’ve already begun canceling the next scheduled payment from all users. If any users would like a refund I’ll gladly provide a full refund for every month you’ve already paid for whether you’ve used the service or not. If you want to continue using Nilai every day you may do so for as long as I keep it running. If you want a refund or an export of your data simply send me an email. Thanks so much for trying out this hobby with me. I had a lot of fun doing it.

If you’re looking to fill the void that Nilai did, I suggest using Kippt. Recently I’ve begun using this service and the team there really seems to care a lot about making the product truly valuable.

November 16th, 2012

Me, in June:

Actual judgements about the hardware aside (since, unsurprisingly, these aren’t yet on the market) this looks like the best work to come out of Microsoft since the Xbox 360. This isn’t me grading on a curve either. I’m not giving them extra points for finally making something that looks like it could be good. I’m saying that this device actually looks like it could be a great, viable, product line and could bring Microsoft up-to-speed on many many fronts.

You could say I was optimistic yet skeptical. Like many other product debuts at Microsoft I actually thought the Surface may never see the light of day. But it has. They’re shipping them. They exist. Yesterday, while at Viddler HQ, I was able to play with a Surface for a few minutes.

I could have played with it longer. But I wouldn’t want to. The Surface is terrible. Even if you’ve never picked up an iPad or an Android-powered tablet you would think the Surface is pretty slow, hard to use, and heavy; three things a tablet device should probably never have said about it.

I know, I know, some may think because I’m such an Apple fan boy that I wouldn’t like the Surface even if it was truly great. Remember, I said “this device actually looks like it could be a great, viable, product line” for Microsoft. And I think it still could be. When playing with the Surface yesterday I said that I thought it still belonged in a lab – not being sold to the public.

When I first grabbed the Surface the running joke in the office was “Open Mail.” At least two people told me to open the mail application. I tried. After waiting about a minute for the mail application to launch I gave up.

Then I tried Word. Surely this should be a simple, easy-to-use version of Word where I would launch it and immediately be able to begin typing, right? Wrong. Tapping on Word opened up a version of Windows 8 that looks like Windows Vista and then launches Word just like you would see on your desktop computer. Once the canvas loads where you can begin typing the cursor pops up and sits there, flashing at you, waiting to be used. Only, there is a problem, there is no keyboard.

Like the iPad, a physical keyboard does not come standard. The Surface has a few optional keyboards that could be purchased with it but they are pretty expensive and since this is simply a testing unit for Viddler our Head of QA decided we didn’t need the physical keyboard. Arguably, though, the physical keyboard is one of the main reasons why someone would want a Surface.

Anyway, back to Word. So the traditional, desktop version of Word is sitting there – cursor blinking – and there is no keyboard. I’m used to how iOS and Android work so I thought that simply tapping into the area where I’d like to type would be enough for the OS to know that I’d need a virtual keyboard. Only, I’m in the part of the OS (the Windows Vista-looking part) that isn’t smart enough to know this. So, after a few moments of panic, one of my fellow Viddler team members had to run over and show me that there was a button to ask for the virtual keyboard. The entire experience was really quite jarring.

Next, I opened Camera. Camera is one of those applications on Surface that you have to figure out how to use by experimenting. There is no apparent way to do anything. Not even take a photo or record a video. Rather than there being any interface for the application the entire Surface becomes a window to the world around you. Which seems nice in concept but I found it very frustrating. To take a photo you tap the screen. OK, that seems discoverable enough. But, how do I view that photo after I’ve taken it? How do I share it? How do I send that photo to my mother? Well, going into the Photo library application doesn’t show you the photos you’ve taken with the Camera. So that’s not it. Oh, the video I shot with the Camera? That isn’t in the Videos app. This is what you have to do; you have to five-finger pinch within the Camera application to pull up a “slideshow” of your photos/videos that you’ve taken. This is not-so-discoverable.

By this time I was fed up with the Surface. I poked around a bit more and only got more and more frustrated with the device. For instance, I didn’t find a single application that supported portrait-mode. So the device had to be in landscape all the time. Obviously Microsoft intends on you using this thing, kick-stand out, sitting on a desk with the $129 optional physical keyboard attached.

As of today the Microsoft Surface isn’t a tablet. It is a thin PC that still needs a physical keyboard that runs a pretty cool touch OS that should be called Metro and an ancient and terrible OS called Windows. And it is heavy.

November 9th, 2012

Instagram recently released web profiles for all users. Of course, your Twitter stream has probably been full of people linking to theirs recently*. Oh, here is mine. You may have seen so many people mention their Instagram web profile that you’re sick of it.

But don’t underestimate the importance of this feature to Instagram’s growth. Think about how many times you’ve seen people say, on Twitter or Facebook or their blogs, “Follow me on Instagram, I’m cdevroe.” Celebrities, with tens of millions of Twitter followers, had to ask their audience to launch Instagram, go to the search users pane, and type in their usernames there. And some usernames aren’t so typing friendly. Obviously some did that, but some didn’t.

Now, though, anyone can link to their Instagram profile. And rather than only a small percentage of people from Twitter following them on Instagram they will probably get a much larger portion of their audience to do so. This is big. And it isn’t just about follows either. People can like and comment on photos from these profiles too. So interactivity on Instagram is skyrocketing.

I think Instagram’s growth rate will increase with these web profiles in place.

* Instagram, like many other wildly popular social networks, released this new feature to all users over the course of about a week. There are many reasons for doing this not the least of which is the computational power you’d need to generate 100 million web profiles. However, I also see this as a sly way of having your users trumpet a new feature for you. It is free marketing. If everyone got their shiny new web profiles on the same day Instagram would have gotten one days worth of press about it. By releasing them over the course of a week they got a full week’s worth.

November 1st, 2012

When I first read the news that Disney was acquiring Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound all in one deal I tweeted that I didn’t understand how all of these companies – along with the rights to Star Wars, partial rights to Indiana Jones, Lucas Arts and much, much more – were only worth $4 billion. But I may have figured it out; George Lucas knows they are worth more but wants Disney, and only Disney, to takeover the reigns. And, Lucas will make boatloads of dough on this deal too.

I’m not alone in wondering though. Jason Kottke:

Crazy. A non-Lucas non-prequel Star Wars film will hopefully be pretty great, but the purchase price is puzzling. Only $4 billion?

According to my research Lucasfilm, ILM, and Skywalker Sound have a combined team of thousands of employees. No doubt some of these will not be making the transition to Disney. But this is a solid workforce.

Take a look at ILM’s Wikipedia page. That is some filmography. At my count I see at least three if not five blockbuster releases per year. Depending on how those deals were structured, I’d be surprised if ILM didn’t get some sort of royalties for some of those films long after they’ve debuted. Not to mention the work done on Bluray/DVD releases.

And ILM’s pipe seems pretty full too. They have nine deals in the bag all of which are pretty high-budget projects.

And, even though Skywalker Sound is relatively small, they own the IP for THX and work on arguably the best films released each year. Perhaps they too can structure sweetheart deals.

So Disney, without a doubt, got a steal of a deal. But, we have to look at this transaction a little differently than just looking at the face value because Lucas took half of the money in Disney stock.

The $4 billion was split; half cash, half stock. Disney is promising to make Star Wars a much more international hit. As it stands, a huge percentage of the revenue from Star Wars comes from toys bought in the US. Disney can bring Star Wars to China, Japan and other nations where toys are a huge hit. Just not Star Wars toys. And, presumably, they can do something special in all of their parks worldwide to bring people into the parks. They can also fund, manage, and distribute new Star Wars releases, movies, games, toys – and George Lucas doesn’t have to lift a finger.

Brian Warner:

The fact that Lucas is taking half the deal in stock is a sign that he sees this transaction as an investment for the future, instead of just a quick way to cash out. Considering the fact that Disney’s stock is up more than 32% this year, from a low of $38 to a recent 52 week high of $53 per share, Lucas’ payday could increase by hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars.

So Lucas now owns 40 million shares of Disney. Effectively doubling his personal net-worth with a single signature. Some analysts project they will bank more than $30B on this sale in short order. Their stock is already up two points (that’s $1.8B in market cap) and it isn’t even lunch yet. To Lucas that’s $40M more than he expected. So I guess Lucas knows exactly what he’s doing.

October 1st, 2012

Me, over four years ago:

As it stands I post what I’m currently doing to Twitter, I am testing out Pownce with mobile blogging, events, links, and files, I post mobile phone photos to Flickr (as well as the occasional screenshot), videos go on Viddler, bookmarks end up on Ma.gnolia, tasting notes end up on Cork’d, and my thoughts on Apple products find their way to TUG.n.

What a difference four years can make! Pownce, Ma.gnolia, Cork’d, TUG.n, all gone. Flickr rarely gets my attention. Twitter is still here but is changing policies more often than I change my shirt. Viddler, I’m very proud to say, is stronger than ever but is certainly a much different service than it was then.

The Internet is like the open ocean and what we publish seems to be on a life raft simply going along for the ride. Yet our personal websites seem to be like small islands in this ocean. Sure, their beaches may change from time-to-time but the island remains – like a beacon to all travelers that we’re still here – somewhere to always come back to as these rafts take on water and eventually sink into the deep.

This environment forces me to rethink, yet again, how and where I publish on the web. This internal debate seems to be one that keeps coming up, over and over, year after year, as the ocean of the Internet ebbs and flows.

Should I simply post everything that I publish directly to this site and nowhere else? Do I cross post things to this site and also onto other services? Do I simply link back to this site from those services? Do I syndicate to those services with their own accounts (like I do now on Twitter and Facebook for this site)? Do I post some content here and some content elsewhere?

Believe it or not, and you may think I’m crazy, but these questions plague me all of the time. I constantly struggle with this. And I never seem to muster the conviction to make a hard choice and so I’ve got content everywhere; Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, the brand-new App.net, Flickr, a little on Google+, and so on.

Why does it take conviction to limit myself to only posting on this site? Because there is a pull and a need to share this content with as many people as possible. With nearly 2,000 followers on Twitter, a few hundred on Instagram, friends and family on Flickr, etc. it is hard to limit the exposure of this content. I want people to see what I’m publishing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. This site, as it stands, only has a relatively small audience. Some of my posts get views in the single digits, others, in the hundreds of thousands. So I can never really be sure how many people are paying attention. That is why it takes conviction. I have to be OK with the fact that maybe, just maybe, no one will notice. And maybe, just maybe, no one will care.

I think I’ve gotten to that point. Even as I write this I’m coming around to the idea that I don’t really need anyone to read this post. And if they do read it I’d much rather them read it here than on Facebook or Google+. Whether or not I choose to publish here on my site or elsewhere doesn’t really matter at all to anyone but me. And I want to publish to my site. So I should publish in a way that makes me happy, right?

There is an upside to making this a hard, line-in-the-sand choice. If anything I post is shared around the web it will point back to my website. My island. Some have built up enormous followings on Twitter and Instagram. What happens when they go away or change? I’d much rather people remember me for my website than for my Instagram stream.

So what does this mean? Well, I’ve thought about it. And I’m still going to tweet. Though probably far less. Twenty-five thousand plus tweets so far and counting. My entire family and most of my close friends are on Twitter. And, using Twitter Lists, I’m able to get a lot of value from this service. Far more than any other. However, I’m done with Facebook, Google+, Flickr, ADN and Instagram (even though I love Instagram). Everything that I publish is going to be on this site. Follow, don’t follow, it is up to you.

Do you deal with this struggle? I’d love to read about how you’re dealing with it on Hacker News.

Some have asked if they’ll be able to stay subscribed to this site via Twitter and Facebook. Yes, you will. As long as their policies allow for it. And also RSS if you’re a nerd like me.

September 25th, 2012

People make budgets for everything. Vacations, new cars, gas, a new home, gym memberships, etc. Some even budget in a morning coffee from their favorite barista everyday before work. Why is it, then, that some still have an issue with paying for an album on iTunes?

Most applications on the App Store are only a few dollars. The most expensive application I’ve ever purchased for the iPad or iPhone was somewhere around $10. There are more expensive apps, sure, but the median cost of an application is even lower than $10. So why is it that some would rather put up with free applications that don’t work well (or not having any applications at all) rather then to pay for a good one?

Going to the movies with your loved one today costs anywhere from $16 – $30 (depending on where you live in the US). And that is just the ticket price. And you don’t own anything when you leave. The big screen experience is certainly worth it for some movies but, if you’re like me, you probably have a decently-sized high-definition television hanging on the wall in your living room. Imagine taking that money, spending it on a movie in iTunes, through Amazon, or on Netflix or YouTube, and having a few friends over.

Again, I ask, why is it so hard for people to part with a few dollars for these things? I think, among other factors, it is because of how easy it is to pay for them. People are afraid to tap a button and spend $2.99 no matter how good the app is. Or $10 no matter the Rotten Tomatoes rating of the movie they haven’t seen. They’re afraid of losing track of how much money they’ve spent on applications, games, movies, and music only to turn around and realize they’ve spent their lunch money.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Just make a budget. Like you do for other things. Set aside a few dollars per month – I’d recommend $10 – and use that to buy the apps, games, movie rentals, and music you want. Well-made apps are worth their sticker price. Watching movies at home (without worrying about getting letters in the mail from the MPAA) is a fantastic experience. Buying music is quick, easy, and supports the artists. These innovations (and the hard work of the people behind them) help make your life more productive, easier, and even more fun.

Stop being so afraid of spending a few dollars. You’ll be happier.

September 21st, 2012

Today I’m receiving an iPhone 5 that is Verizon-ready. I’ll be upgrading from an iPhone 4 on AT&T. Below are my live notes, as they happen, during this experience. It should be fun!

Notes, in order. (the page will refresh automatically when I publish new notes)