Month: May 2011

Youtube is coming Home

A continuing series on better design interfaces for my favorite music channel – You Tube

Some things I like.

The shrink- expand button.

The wasted space for advertisement – to the left of the video that is hugely static in terms of changes. It should be rotated more often.

The non existing average time of play- does everyone watch the whole video . or is the whole video watched 56 million times.

the inability to scroll and zoom into the video analytics.

the completely outdated comments button- which can be better used to create a SOCIAL community. but all it shows is top ranked comment, and click before dropping down. I liked the NYT approach to segmented comments including Editors Picks, Most Recommended, Highlights.

The video response feature that can be easily gamed to ensure video views /phishes.

The comments page numbers at the bottom instead of being at the top for the casual scanner of comments.

              Next

Facebook is the first button rather than second button in the minimum shared view list. Is that true? Can these buttons be self learning to my preferred social network instead of a default. (hint- use Google prediction API)

There is no provision to replay a video, unless you put into a playlist- which fortunately has been quite changed, even though the urls for playlists should have a separate url shortener than you.tube

A much better recommended playlist of related videos- they should be customized to the eclectic taste of the signed in user than the actual content. Maybe Try something like iTunes Genius feature.

No provision for a paid , premium channel even for countries that are blocked en masse from watching certain videos, hence depend on illegal video responses.

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The Dilemma

Temptation and sorrow

Have marred many a talented tomorrow

Life s Paradox is that to truly enjoy it

you have to abstain from its pleasures

Touch but don’t grab

Sniff but don’t smell

Taste but don’t swallow

Bite but don’t eat

Be excited only with the boundaries

Of your cubicle, your ears, your fingers

It is a game and we don’t know who is playing us

But we play on, soldier on, shoulder on

Accept our limitations and our weakness with grace

Our bias our prejudices our preoccupation with taste

Instant gratification leads to distant falls

Nature burns for adequately thermo-stated halls

And we burn for our illusions

Preoccupied as we are with silly delusions

Of our own unique irreplacability

Look Ma, Ah can now manipulate my DNA

Mother laughs, still a child.

Will blunder and fall, before it learns to walk for a while.

#Rstats gets into Enterprise Cloud Software

Defense Agencies of the United States Departme...
Image via Wikipedia

Here is an excellent example of how websites should help rather than hinder new customers take a demo of the software without being overwhelmed by sweet talking marketing guys who dont know the difference between heteroskedasticity, probability, odds and likelihood.

It is made by Zementis (Dr Michael Zeller has been a frequent guest here) and Revolution Analytics is still the best shot in Enterprise software for #Rstats

Now if only Revo could get into the lucrative Department of Energy or Department of Defense business- they could change the world AND earn some more revenue than they have been doing. But seriously.

Check out http://deployr.revolutionanalytics.com/zementis/ and play with it. or better still mash it with some data viz and ROC curves.- or extend it with some APIS 😉

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Fast Five -The Review

This is probably the best 5th in an action series sequel I have seen ( though Rocky Number 6 comes close, but Star Wars 5/6 dont)

The sheer chemistry between cars, action, big beef, beautiful iconic imagery, and nice music. This is XXX meets Ocean Eleven meets Welcome to the Jungle. Dwayne the rock Johnson continues to impress with his iconic imagery and so does Vin Diesel. The remaining actors are used tastefully and with much better direction than in some other Fast and Furious movies.

The interactions and interplays between sets, scene and people are clever, the actors know how to act, and fight . and drive.

When it comes to Car movies, you have to give to the Damn Yankees (though the French did come close with Taxi -, but not the fifth element Taxi)

Watch. It. Now. with a beer and chips. and all your homies.

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Movie Review -Source Code

Jake Gyllenhaal has always been a dear chap from his Donny Darko days. So when you mash some quantum physics (parabolic calculus as per movie), with science fiction to capture terrorists (a very topical topic)- you get Source Code– an investigative and recursive logical thriller. Lead actress Vera Farmiga from the Departed (remember the scene of making love to Comfortably Numb) seems a bit bored today and the tension never crackles. This is a movie for science fiction or action thrillers not geeks- and the name source code is a bit of a misleading title- as it should probably be called Complex Event Processing. It is also a terrible name to search for in Google Image Search- you dont get movie images at all.

The movie is very watchable, but it wont be winning any Hugo awards yet.

Also stars Michelle Monaghan of MI3 ,

with the cute upturned nose made famous by

Nicole not Kid(ding)man

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