The Addictiveness of YouTube Videos

I got hooked on subscribing to YouTube user videos in the summer of 2007. Today, suffering from a little cold/flu medicine insomnia, I picked up one of my short-time-to-favorite YouTube user series, Etho Plays Minecraft. Believe it or not, I've managed to watch 237 episodes now.

I don't understand half of the engineering and electrical circuitry that Etho, or many similar Minecraft "gurus" that I happen upon (such as Haydz or NoobSniper), work on for their amazing constructions in that little boxy world of Minecraft chunks that we all love to hate or hate to love. But it makes for a great source of ongoing entertainment.

Consider the snappy video tutorials of today versus the ye olde time printed walk-throughs for video games, that took forever to print out on dot matrix paper and cost a fortune in ink cartridges. No contest convenience-wise.

I started watching cosmetics application videos back in 2007, then slowly expanded to beauty gurus. I had my favorites, but a few really wore out their digital welcome mat with their unnecessary drama.

After that, I started adding to my visual collection by looking for magazine and news source channels and reviews of products and services.  I even learned a lot about stick shift driving before taking my first class by watching YouTube videos.

Then started on entertainment series. Anyone remember Chad Vader? What ever happend to him? Was he copyrighted to death? Simon's Cat took over his spot in my subscription queue and has been causing me the occasional spurt of giggles on slow Friday afternoons at work--while I work of course, in another tab.

Some people have a gift for explaining things visually as they themselves go through it. The serendipity of following someone ad-lib or look like they're ad-libbing is slightly addictive, slightly voyeuristic, and slightly sad in our attempt to connect with someone who doesn't know we're riding along with them on their way. It's v-blog-stalking. We all know those of us who blog stalk cause we love a person's style or learn a lot from what they post.

I think YouTube totally trumps reality TV. WAY trumps it. I don't care if many of these YT users are power partners or whatever they call them these days. They basically make a ton of money off views, likes, and subscriptions. They honestly earned it. They should make the money, they do a good job entertaining us from our digital/mobile devices. Kudos.

With time I've curated my subscriptions to a bare minimum of 29 channels. There's been tons more at times, and there's been tons less. Sometimes I don't watch YT for weeks or even months on end. Then need to catch up to my old so-called friends. Sometimes I neglect my old favorites for a brand new channel whose videos I simply must catch up with.

It's been an interesting experience, this effortless sense of entertainment and ability to reach out and touch our entertainers, even if it's just by leaving a comment or a thumbs up on their latest video. I'm liking what I'm seeing.

My Experience With Domains and Websites

I've been paying a hefty sum to GoDaddy over the past 4 years for the domain, space, and Website Tonight management solution for my freelance company's website and for the domain on my personal website. After some thought, I decided to cancel my GoDaddy account this past week.

In the years that I've used the GoDaddy domain and Website Tonight services, I've been frustrated to no end by the user interface. It seems unnecessarily convoluted and incredibly bloated--a la Geocities back when Yahoo! purchased them in late 1998. It offers solid value, but in order to find what you're looking for, you almost need a treasure hunt map and tips on how to survive the deadly booby traps.

Items such as changing DNS and other drill-down management is severely dig click-intensive. However, as a plus, customer service is usually helpful, pleasant, and straight-forward if you're willing put up with moderate wait times on the phone. Also, if you purchase a multi-year renewal, your fee is much lower.

I'm all about simplifying my online presence and not adding complexity--or yet another thing to keep track of for my expenses. So now I'm two domains down, with one business left to promote. I was left to decide what my next step would be.

I decided that I wanted to continue promoting my freelance business online. I have a Facebook page, but I feel this is an ancillary tool, and wasn't really solid enough to stand on its own. I needed to identify some sort of service that could help me provide a home for my business, and the option to add dynamic content on a periodical basis, if I felt like it.

I decided to try Blogger. I've used it since 2005 and have stuck with it through a variety of UI changes, functionality upgrades, and even ownership changes. I felt it was as good a place as any to create a useful space for my freelance business and without racking my brain to figure out how to use the tool.

Blogger's Pages feature has made it an excellent avenue, along with the many customizable options for layouts, color schemes, and background themes. The navigation on the dashboard is very transparent and makes it easy to find things.

I'm not the only one who's noticed that there are benefits to using Blogger as a website creation tool (see here, here, and here as a start).

So we'll see how well the move over to Blogger, rather than a website, works out. If you're interested in seeing what I've done so far, check out http://fourtongues.blogspot.com

Website Navigation Map

I occasionally create a website navigation map using a hierarchical box diagram for the website of the nonprofit association where I work at. My boss says, isn't this something IT should do? And I smartalecky say, tell me about it!

The reason why I create the navigation diagram is because people call me or email me ALL THE TIME (members or coworkers) with questions about where is such and such, or how can I get such and such [insert here product/service/workshop/information], or what programs can you talk to me that will help me send you my money quicker....you get the idea. So I *really* don't have time to get ticked off at our IT/marketing/membership departments for having changed something again and not having told us. Which by the way, happens all the time and it sucks.

So by having a high-level website navigation diagram up on my office wall, and updating it regularly, I don't waste my time when it's down to the wire. Imagine telling someone: I'm sorry, I know you want to send us your money for one of our awesome products/services/education offerings/conference but because I don't know where anything is on the website I can't help you.

That's for suckas my friends, and I ain't one of 'em.

So I was researching on google for some sort of freeware or app that can help with this task. Alas, what I found wasn't anywhere even close to what I wanted--what's free out there is just some sort of link list maker and no graphical depiction. I didn't even bother with what's available for pay.

Today I decided that rather than using PowerPoint to develop the graphic, I'd use MS Word's Smart Art. Halfway through I Realized I hadn't save the file and freaked and saved it. Alas, my doggone settings were set up for saving docs automatically to pre-Office 2007. So the blessed chart I spent 1/2 hour working on thus far...the chart saved as an image rather than an editable chart--I had 1/2 more content to add! I almost had a stroke. I clicked and right clicked and nothing happend. WTF man.

So I tried something. I saved the .doc file into a .docx--the file format it was supposed to be anyway to begin with. It was a true miracle. The graphic became an editable smart art diagram gain. Phew.

I swear, sometimes stuff Office can do to the work I'm painstakingly doing, really shocks the willies outta me. Thank God I tried that before having to restart the whole dang chart over from scratch.

Hope this helps someone out there in a similar predicament.

SEO and Tabs

The company I work at for my day job just recently implemented tabs in their website page design. I found out because I happend to go on the website to look for something. Not a good way for a content manager to find out about a major UI interface.

As one of the staff responsible for a great number of programs with landing pages, I've had to scramble a little to figure out how to correct copy and best make it fit in with the new UI.

Each landing page now has an area of text at the top to provide some brief orienting introduction, then there are a complement of tabs underneath with each tab assigned a particular topic area or subsection of the project/service/product.

Tabs need to be concise for design esthetics and usability to the reader. We don't have yet guidelines for content length nor subhead formatting, etc. Which creates a bit of a pain point for me as I share content revisions with a very busy IT department.

The "about" tab is first, and provides some orientation to the reader about the value proposition and help them decide if they want to keep reading the next tabs. Then depending on the content and information that needs to be shared about the particular program or product, each following tab will have concise information about that pertinent sub-area. This is ideal for intuitive UI that helps the reader help themselves

These sort of changes are best implemented with a little key stakeholder discussion ahead of time, so that the content managers work with IT closely on effecting a smooth transition to the new UI. Something that didn't take place in this case. Make sure this doesn't happen to you.

So as part of my own self-education in regards to optimizing content in this new UI (tabs) environment, I am now reading up about tab navigation best practices and SEO for pages featuring tab navigation. It's not rocket science, I'm sure, but it doesn't hurt to scan the market and read up on it to make sure the bases are covered.

Here are some of the more interesting articles I discovered and a summary of why:

• The Eric Pender Blog, Tabs and SEO: Things You Need to Consider - the importance of focused content, ways to program/present tabs, deep linking content on tabs.
• The Simon Kenyon Shepard Blog, smartTabs: SEO Friendly Ajax Tabs - similar content on a site makes search engines work harder, the ease of sharing tab content, html anchors.
• The Tony Adam Blog, AJAX and Non-JavaScript Experiences for SEO Friendly Websites - importance of indexing tab content.

I will keep reading and if any nitty gritty how-to articles show up I'll post about them. What do you do to help make your tabs the best they can be? What reading do you suggest?