January 28, 2008

Kudos to MSN Video for Mac Accessibility

I'm done my fair share of razzing the good folks at MSN Sympatico over some of their apps either not being compatible on Mac or being released way after the Windows version.

So, I thought it's worth giving some credit where credit is due now that the MSN Video Beta is up and running. It works well on Firefox on my Intel MacBook Pro. It didn't seem to want to go on Safari, but if I was them I'd have looked after Firefox user first. It will be interesting to see if it does eventually run on Safari.

It's a bit surprising to see the use of Flash as the playback technology, given Microsoft's usual loyalty to use their own Windows Media platform as well as their rising star, Silverlight.

Regardless, the MSN video portal content is great, so it's nice to have access.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 16, 2006

Props to MOTU Online Customer Service

Ever email a company and wait...

and wait...
and wait...
and wait...

and WAIT!!!???

I don't know how many time I've made a followup call in to the call centre after not getting a response to an email as quickly I as I think I should be able to expect one.

I don't know if this is the norm or not, but I just emailed MOTU (www.motu.com) - a maker of audio hardware and software and had a response back in less than five minutes!!! More like two minutes!!!!

I was completely blown away!

Brand managers, this kind of thing matters a helluva lot more than getting just the right pantone or font in your ad campaigns. Or making me laugh for that matter with your funny ad...

Brand live and die by how these types of customer interactions go. I think this is the first time I've had my expectations actually exceeded in this type of interaction.

Didn't hurt that the response was helpful either.

So, hats off - this is how it should be done.

(Still can't get over how fast that was.... less than five minutes!!!)

Just goes to show - sometime the best advertising is good customer service.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 5:33 PM

August 9, 2006

Rockstar: Supernova - Boo for Accessibility on Mac OS X

Thanks Microsoft.

I am completely shut out of voting on rockstar.msn.com because the voting screen seems to be made completely unaccessible in both Safari and Firefox for Mac. All I can get access to is a voter info page. When I do try to access what I'm guessing is the actual voting page (rockstar.msn.com/vote) - I get into an odd server-side redirect loop that goes in circles and the page keeps reloading endlessly.

How fantastically irritating...

Well, it's certainly not enough to sway me to go back and use Windows again but it sure makes me resent Microsoft though.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 1:24 AM

August 15, 2005

Google to MSN Search - for awhile anyway . . .

For a lark, I'm going to bail on Google as my primary search engine and try out MSN for the next while. I've noticed that MSN has been much better about tracking my personal activities on this blog than Google. After a few months of publishing, Google has not even taken notice while MSN has.

Google returns on Derek Leverington

MSN returns on Derek Leverington

I've sure become accustomed to a page of Google returns but I'm going to see how it works out.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 1:46 AM | Comments (0)

July 5, 2005

Finding the time to listen to podcasts, mp3's, etc.

Someone commented to me once that they weren't sure when they have the time to listen to podcasts, etc.

In trying to answer that question for myself, I set about taking my Creative Zen Micro mp3 player with me everywhere and see what worked and what didn't.

My commute to work (if I can call it that) last 5 minutes if it hit red lights. So, while it's cool to walk into work with white ear buds hanging from around your neck, I find that I don't get too far with that. Although, a few little 5-10 minutes opportunities stacked together do have a cumulative effect of getting through longer podcasts. And while going to work is a frequent activity, I discovered better ones.

(Another thing with that. I drive a Jeep and have the top down as much of the year as I can living in Canada. Unless the audio production is right on a podcast, I won't even try it with all the ambient noise I have while driving. Amplitude variances are too hard on my ears. Music works best for this application.)

What I discovered is this: while we have all might agree that we have a lot of media exposure, there is a fair amount of time remaining in our lives that can be filled that is empty right now.

Here are a couple of examples:

1. A trip to Walmart or the grocery store.

There's nothing going on but boring store specials announcements and messages to staff. There's really no need to pay attention to any of it. Look at a good 30-60 minute stretch of time here.

Caution: you may embarass yourself if you're listening to music and tend to hum and sing a little out loud. That said, if you realize that you are inadvertently looking like an idiot judging from the stares of passers by - stay the course. Better to be confident in whatever level of ability you have than flinch and stop the party just because some strangers notice you. If you're listening to a spoken word podcast, you're in the clear.

2. Mowing the lawn.

And who wants to listen to a lawnmower?

In addition to the ear buds that came with my player, I have a good set of over the ear headphones that do a good job of isolating outside noise. Actual in-ear type buds will work similarly. Normal buds won't isolate the ambient noise as well resulting in having to turn the volume up quite loud. Not so good.

Advice: if using a gas mower pay attention to the RPM of the engine by paying extra attention to the speed of the vibration on the handle. It'll help make up for some of what you miss in listening and you need to know if the engine stumbles or start working harder because the bag needs to be changed.

A good 20-30 minutes here again.

3. Trips to the rest room.

Not much to say here. We all read. Why not listen to something instead?

Time: your call.

4. Household chores.

Emptying the dishwasher. Doing laundry. Working in the yard.

There's nothing of any sonic significance going on here. Why not make it interesing for yourself, especially if the chore is mundane.

These are just a few and there's more out there but even these ones along can get hours a week of listening time without taking time away from anything else.

My biggest challenge in getting through my podcast susbscriptions is that I'd rather listen to music and be entertained than listen to a spoken word podcast, however helpful the information is.

I guess that's why pop-stars make more than university profs.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 1:10 AM | Comments (3)

June 15, 2005

eBay Golf

Being a good part gadget guy, the gear associated with a pursuit is often as interesting as the pursuit itself.

So, when I decided to get back into golf after a long while away from it, naturally the process of research, selection and acquisition of gear required some considerable attention. Nevermind the fact they are not giving this stuff away, but one's golf gear needs to be an highly examined component of the pursuit.

And when looking for gear that is overpriced locally, where does one look but eBay.

I'm not sure about most people, but I really enjoy the experience of buying things off eBay. There's more suspense and drama in the bidding process (bidding war at times ...) than walking to the front counter with my stuff and speaking with a disinterested cashier at a big box store. Even if you are at a retailer with more cache and you have a more professional staff person helping you, I don't like dealing with the saleperson who helped me in my decision process when paying. It cheapens their role as consultant when they collect the money. It's the same reason the airline pilots shouldn't be handing out the cookies and drinks.

With eBay there is none of that. Just pure buying fun for the highest bidder.

So, I have a set of Callaway irons coming from New York for way less than the cost of new (I'm cringing at what UPS is going to soak me for on broker fees). The bag auction closes I'm honed in on closes tonight (I think I can play the second chance offer to my advantage on this one to get one for cheap). I found a good putter within 250 km of here in Canada so I don't need to worry about expensive shipping or broker fees at the border. And I got a really good deal on the driver from the local golf shop to match the irons.

The concept of a sale used to be a bigger deal when there was only one or a handful of places to buy something. On the web, there's always a sale going on somewhere.

I love the internet.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 6:30 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2005

RSS Review

Having been on to this for some time now, I can't say enough about how helpful RSS has been been for me.

I find that now, rather than trying to keep on top of various email newsletters that I use to gather information, I now aggregate various feeds in Bradbury FeedDemon.

Here's what I've noticed:

One good feed leads to another
I find that as I explore one area, I'm introduced and exposed to other related and in some cases more specific information in my field of interest. Very often there is an RSS feed from that site as well.

Better time management
Rather than reading these information gathering at multiple times through the day as they arrive, I'm now doing this at intervals which I find translates to a more efficient use of time. The use of RSS aggregation software also supports better scanning and browsing of information. I think is due in large part to the consistent presentation of information that breaks free from the multiple display attributes that you would encounter when viewing disparate websites and emails.

Overall I find that I am better able to absorb more information in a shorter amount of time. I think some type of RSS aggregator absolutely needs to be part of the toolkit of creative professional or knowledge worker.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 2:54 AM

April 16, 2005

Innovation Needed To Improve Modern Customer Service Experience

It occured to the me the other day that despite multitudes of various advances in technology in the last ten years, I can't say as though the typical customer service experience I have has improved in any measurable fashion.

I think the biggest problem is that companies are not taking the kind of active role in measuring and managing the quality of customer experience that they do with other areas of their business i.e. market share, productivity, product quality, brand awareness, etc.

The largest problem is the question of priority.

It's not a priority.

As competition creates downward pricing pressures, businesses tend to focus on matters that equate in very direct terms to the bottom line and are easily measured on the ledger. But things that have a tremendous impact on the bottom line but are not as easily measured are ignored.

How many times a day do companies have loyal customers walk away, never to return because a sales clerk had a bad day and messed up the order or said something rude? And although customer churn and attrition is a well-known phenomenon, companies have not found ways to reach out and even detect this activity in any detail let along discover the reasons why. This leaves them managing customer loyalty in the dark and without the means to extend their hand to the alienated customer and bring them back.

Despite millions of dollars spent and lots of chatter about things like customer relationship management, creating "markets of one" and developing "value-added relationships" with customers, true innovation where the rubber hits the road in the customer relationship is yet to come of age.

Perhaps with the notable exception of the occasional corner grocer and owner/operator entrepreneurs. But if I recall, they had it right in the first place.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 10:33 PM

April 7, 2005

Podcasting - Usability, Technical & Audio Production Suggestions

With every new channel comes the challenge of making it easy to use.

With podcasting being something of a new phenomenon and often being undertaken by those without training or experience in the area of audio production or experience in usability design, I thought it worthwhile to give some thought to some suggestions for making the content as consumable as possible.

Paying attention to some basic considerations can go a long way to improving the audio quality of a spoken word recording.

Appropriate Use of Meta Attributes
(with the common implementation for many being ID3 Tags in the mp3 file format)

Ensure you use the ID3 tag. In the absence of this, the player will only display the file name which may not be particularly communicative of the content of the podcast and may be named around entirely different considerations than its use as an plain-English description.

Recognize the character limitations of the playback devices and avoid unnecessarily long titles. In many players, longer titles will need to scroll like a horizontal marquis to reveal the entire length of the title, and at that, only when selected in the menu. So, as users will likely view several podcasts in a list, ensure the differentiating part of the podcast name (the individual program name) compared to others in the series appears relatively early in the title - saying within 20 or so characters. As a result, users can scroll through the list quickly without having to select a specific podcast name and wait the see the entire title scroll through the display to read the podcast name.

Not to pick on the For Immediate Release podcast produced by Shel Holtz & Nevill Hobson, whose program I enjoy very much and am a faithful listener of, but for the purposes of illustration and accessibility of the example to many, I'll use the For Immediate Release naming conventions as an example.

They typically are titled according to this naming convention:

For Immediate Release -- #19 -- March 28, 2004
For Immediate Release -- #20 -- March 31, 2004
For Immediate Release -- #21 -- April 4, 2004

In my player (Creative Zen Micro 5 GB) the screen cuts off after the '#' character, making it difficult to scroll through the list quickly and differentiate one podcast in the series from the rest.

The recommendation I would make is to choose a succinct podcast name that affords some characters left over to describe the individual program. This is a matter of design for the constraints and realities of the medium.

Ensure Absolute Consistency In Naming
Be sure that your podcast names are consistent to the character from one podcast to the next. As they will appear in a list in the player, any aberrations are quite noticeable and detract from usability and the visceral sense of quality of your production.

Audio Considerations

One of the benefits of mainstream radio is the level of production quality that we've become used to. Between the voice talent, writing (though not always), production proficiency and quality of equipment not to mention experience, the bar is far higher that what I would expect from many podcasters.

I expect that to hold true at this stage in the life of podcasting where the impetus for one to podcast likely has more to do with the desire to communicate than possessing technical proficiency and access to quality audio equipment. With many mp3 players having onboard microphones that can write directly to a digital file that can easily be posted as a podcast, the barrier to the lowest point of entry is quite attainable. That said, achieving a technically satisfying production and desirable content is another matter entirely.

Avoid Problematic Locations To Record
The key to being effective in this endeavour from a technical standpoint is clear and intelligible audio. Anything other than the sound of your voice works against clarity and ease of listening(unless in some instances the ambient noise of your surrounding is an important element of the content or creates a mood).

Avoid locations where there are surfaces nearby that will reflect sound back to the microphone. Flat, painted or shiny surfaces are the worst offenders for this. They will reflect sound back and give a few-millisecond echo throughout the whole recording. The use of soft materials can dramatically improve the acoustic characteristics of a space, so don't discount using bedding or blankets to improve the acoustic qualities of where you record. I may not be typical of every user, but I find a close-reflection echo quite annoying and distracting and it's a tell-tale sign of amateur production.

What's worse is that audio compression (discussed further down) which normally has an enhancing effect on a production only accentuates the presence of this type of audio problem.

Use Headphones When Recording
If you using discrete audio components i.e. not simply speaking into an mp3 player, consider wearing headphones so you can monitor what you record. You will inherently tend to speak in a manner that is more pleasing to the microphone and you will become aware of any obvious technical problem like the aforementioned slap-back echo and hopefully correct it.

Invest the Time To Experiment
Experiment with recording locations, equalization, microphone position, pace of the dialogue and your own technique for projecting your voice. A few minutes invested in this will absolutely make a difference in the quality of your recording. A few cumulative improvements will add up to a better overall production.

Maintain a consistent volume
Dramatic changes in the level of amplitude is something to be cautious of as many people listen to podcasts in their headphones. As such, dramatic amplitude changes are exaggerated and can be quite jarring for the listener.

If there is more than one person speaking, attempt for a balanced audio level between the two. Also, try the match as closely as possible the tone or tambre between the people speaking through equalization as recorded to tape or in post-production. If there are dramatic differences in tone or volume that result in one voice being louder or more easily heard, the user has to make a compromise when setting the volume of their player. If a user has to have the volume set higher due to the presence of ambient noise in their own surroundings, the level that they have to set it at to hear the quieter of the two people speaking may make the louder voice uncomfortably loud or annoying.

Compression
These days, almost all recordings have a appreciable amount of audio compression applied to them to. Among other considerations, this is done to enhance the recording to make it sound a rich and loud as possible on playback. FM stations also dramatically compress when broadcasting.

For those not familiar with audio compression, it's the process of reducing the amplitude (volume) of the peak levels in a recording. As a result, the overall level can be boosted resulting in the average volume of the recording being louder. If you listen to a compressed and an uncompressed piece of audio, even though the peak levels may be the same, the compressed audio can sound much louder than the uncompressed audio.

One of the benefits of this as a listener is that is provides a consistent volume level with no spikes or drops in volume.

If you have access to audio editing software, look and see if you can find a compressor to apply to your recording. I would suggest no more than 2 - 3db of gain reduction in most cases. After a certain point the voice no longer sounds natural.

A note of caution: using compression will elevate the level of background noise, mouth sounds and other ambient nosies that are not always desirable.

Other Potentially Useful Audio Processes
De-esser - to reduce sibilance - those ripping 's' sounds that again can be quite dramatic in ear buds
High-pass filter - this will filter out low frequencies - try a setting of 120 Hz to start to reduce popping p's (a pop filter or wind screen will also help with reducing popping on more explosive consonants . . . as does practise speaking on-mic)

And of course, it never hurts to have something worth listening to - this just makes it easier.

This is by no means comprehensive as I expect to add to this as I give this further consideration(although I didn't expect it would be this long to begin with on a first draft). I believe if these things were followed and podcasters were armed with some basic knowledge of audio production, we would be able to see the technical quality of podcast improved quite dramatically.

Many of these things listed are not difficult to accommodate. Where software is required to audio processing, it is not particularly expensive either. Any modern audio editor comes with standard audio tools to accomplish equalization, compression, de-essing, etc.

Posted by Derek Leverington at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)