Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Hi Yaro;

I’m one of the producers of 60 Second Ideas and first off, congratulations on your selection…we really enjoy your blog.
You raise some interesting points about our blog’s format. First, why do we use screen fades as opposed to a “live” talking head? In the case of this blog and its subject, new ideas for e-commerce, we felt that screen captures of relevant information was most important for getting the idea(s) across.
A “talking head” is appropriate and in some cases desirable if its an attractive talking head (which I can assure you, ours aren’t). In our case, we took our lead from Ken Burns and his use of still images and fades…a great deal can be accomplished more effectively by using screen captures that help amplify the narrative…looking at the idea, hearing the idea, concentrating on the idea. This isn’t to say that this way is at all times superior to a stream. In fact, we will be incorporating streams where applicable and efficient.
As to the reiteration of our copy in the video, this is simply a product of how many of our subscribers come from RSS / Feedburner where they only have the video itself and are not looking at the blog page when listening. Some do, of course, but we’ve found that so far the majority of folks are downloading and watching on their Ipods….and since we try to fashion each podcast in “60 Second” chunks (the Top 10 is the exception), this doesn’t leave much room for commentary; something we leave to the blog itself, believing that if the video’s done its work, then the viewer will visit the blog for more information.
In any case, like podcasting itself, we’re a work in progress.
Thanks so much for the post and TB and keep up the great work.

Best,
Michael

Great article. I also recently blogged about the recent surge in popularity for online videos. I think that as is often the case, the popularity of this technology often causes people to use it where it is not necessarily appropriate.

A public speaker should have video examples of his work. But should a programmer have a video on his site? Probably not. And even in some cases where it could be useful, people aren’t doing it right, like the specific video you mentioned, Yaro.

I do think that as various technologies grow and fade in popularity, the good webmaster will evaluate each of them individually and see if their website will benefit from their use.

Yaro,
I have been lurking around your blogs and the podcasts you have been doing for a long time.Congratulations on a great resource. You raise some interesting points about video, personally I think that this flash media, medium is ideal for niche marketers in the “how to” areas. How hard is it to explain some things in words when a video demo would just nail it. I have been putting together a web project over the last few months (www.readmestories.com) and it would benefit from a video componant, can you imagine writing instructions on how to change a babies nappy(diaper. Take flap A and fold over tab B making sure the subject doesn’t wriggle etc etc. A video would say it all.
I guess I now have a new project phase.
Alex

Small Business Blogs - A Top 10 List…

Always on the lookout for excellent examples of small business blogs, I ran across this post on 60 Second Ideas with their top 10 list of small business blogs. Their list includes some of our blogging colleagues: Yaro Starak of…

Always on the lookout for excellent examples of small business blogs, I ran across this post on 60 Second Ideas with their top 10 list of small business blogs.