Matt

Good Stuff

2008-10-08T18:04:00.003-06:00

I'm launching Good Collective. This is a company that will foster collaboration on various projects that are ... you guessed it... GOOD. More information to come.

Words of wisdom...

2008-03-05T21:53:00.002-06:00

...from Point Break.

"Fear causes hesitation, and hesitation will cause your worst dreams to come true."
- Bodhi

Phil Collins...

2007-12-19T00:08:00.001-06:00

...is just awesome. Listen to "We Said Hello, Goodbye" and turn it up (Freedom Rock-style). Oh, and then there's "Easy Lover."

"She's the kind of girl you dream of
Dream of keeping hold of
Better forget it
You'll never get it."

My Smallest Online Charge

2007-11-01T21:46:00.000-06:00

I got my bill from Amazon Web Services today. I just wanted to share that I'm about to make my smallest online charge ever. A whopping $0.01. I kinda feel bad paying with my credit card, but I don't have any alternative.

UGM On Current Events

2007-10-24T23:10:00.000-06:00

On October 23, 2007, 14 of the top 100 searches on Google were related to the California wildfires (Google Trends - www.google.com/trends).

How well do user generated media sites (YouTube, Flickr, AOL Video, etc.) keep their visitors up to date on current events? I decided to spend a little time last night analyzing what content, if any, would be available on the California wildfires.

My methodology was simple - search a variety of user generated media sites for the phrase "fire california." I did not use quotes in my query. Though I concentrated on the first page of results, I sometimes looked at the second page. Here's what I found.

Photos
Flickr - Very timely images. Almost all were related to the current event.

SmugMug - A few photo sets of the California fires, but you can find much more on Flickr.

Shutterfly - "Sorry, 0 items found for fire california."

snapfish - "No results found"

Video
YouTube - Most of the videos were old (8-12 months). There were only a few related to the current wildfires. This was surprising since YouTube is the dominant site in video sharing.

Crackle - No videos. I did appreciate the clip of how to make a california roll.

Yahoo Video - Lots of videos. Included clips from Google Video, ABC News, Revver, and others. Heavy on ABC News. Only 1 user submitted video on the first page of results.

AOL Video - Only 10 videos on the first page, but 2 were from the current fires. Almost as much content as YouTube.

Blinkx - Had many videos on the fires. All results were provided by major news sources (CNN, ABC, BBC, CBS, etc.). All links went to the source site.

blip.tv - Only 1 result relevant to the California fires.

Break - No current content but did have user submitted footage from previous fires.

BreakTaker - No current content. The monster potato gun was one of the better videos.

Brightcove.tv - The top 6 results of the first page covered the current fires. They provided a mix of local and national news sources but no user generated videos. Brightcove.tv is a great source for timely reports from news organizations.

Current - Almost all results were relevant to the fires (29 of 30 videos). All were user generated video or text comments. Some of the text comment areas linked to video files hosted at national news source sites (e.g., CNN). Current had a compelling mix of user generated content and provided easy access to professional news sources.

Dabble - Had a few user generated video clips but all were hosted at YouTube. It seems like Dabble may be doing a better job at searching YouTube's videos than YouTube.

Dailymotion - No videos, but they did have a clip of "You Really Got Me" that I really appreciated. I really wish I went to one of the Van Halen shows last week. Ugh!

dalealplay - This site (all spanish) provided one clip about the news story.

Dave.tv - No videos. Don’t be fooled by this site’s domain. It is not affiliated with David Lee Roth. There’s not even anyone named Dave on the company’s leadership team.

eyespot - No videos. “Sorry, no hits for that search.” This site needs to do a better job with providing suggestions if searches return no results. They have videos for “fire” and “california.”

flukiest - No videos. I’d give them the same recommendation as eyespot.

GKKO - No videos.

Google Video - No matches on the first page of results. A little shocking. It also seems odd to me that some people record CNN broadcasts with a video camera... usually with John Lennon's "Imagine" playing in the background. I guess that's just the kind of people they are.

PureVideo - Good meta-search results on the event. Providers include Flixya, ClipSyndicate, Revver, Blip.tv, Rootv, and Reuters. All links fowarded to the content provider's site. In the case of Flixya, the video was hosted with YouTube. It's starting to get complicated in this syndication/meta-search space.

Veoh - They had a good number of relevant results and I was impressed with their mix of professional (CBS) and user generated videos. The first result wasn’t really a match, but I appreciated the Mr. Bungle clip.

Conclusions
Top photo site - Flickr was the best source for information on the California fires. SmugMug was a distant second.

Top video site - Current was the overall best source for user generated media (video and text) and links to traditional news sources. Veoh and Brightcove tied for the second best. Yahoo Video came in third. Again, I'm surprised by the poor results at YouTube and Google Video on this event.

I realize that some of these sites might perform better or worse depending on the type of news event. I assume that YouTube would perform better if I were analyzing one of the many Britney Spears train wrecks. I should note that I just checked YouTube and their top Feature Video is about the fires.

Here are two opportunities that I believe might help all of the sites grow their current events content.

Improve the search results algorithm. Try to avoid null result sets. If no results come back for a multiple word query, then parse out each individual word.
There's a difference between informing visitors of top viewed videos and top visitor searches. There may be an opportunity to encourage UGM producers to create content that is lacking on your network by informing them of what people are searching for. It could also help educate your producers on better keywords to assign to their content. Think Google Trends but for your own site.

And a final conclusion... Making a video of California wildfire footage with "Hotel California" in the background is lame.

Please share any opinions on my test or the results.

iTunes find as you type

2007-10-08T21:50:00.002-06:00

I just discovered a feature in iTunes. If you select an item in a list (artist, album, etc.) and then type the name of an item in the list, iTunes will scroll up or down to that item. If you don't type fairly quickly it will jump to the first selection of each letter.

I also tested this with typing the first letters of items in Finder. It exhibits the same behavior.

Chicago River Cruise

2007-09-10T06:08:00.000-06:00

We had a great blue sky weekend in Chicago. My wife and I took the Chicago Architecture River Cruise. If you've visiting (or live here) I recommend it. Here are my pics on Flickr.

No play for mister gray

2007-09-07T18:26:00.000-06:00

I can't help it... Each time I see a news story about the new bin Laden video, I keep thinking about the quote "No play for mister gray" from the Just For Men commercials. Oh well...

Wrong build/buy/partner decision

2007-09-05T12:47:00.000-06:00

The Sun-Sentinel reports of Palm Beach County tourism officials canceling their project to build an online travel agency. At least they stopped the project now.... But why did any of these people think that they could build a profitable online travel business around a single destination. All the major OTAs are investing millions into new platforms, and these guys thought they could do it on the cheap.

Besides building their travel site, I'm curious to know how they planned to run this business. These things just don't run themselves. In addition to keeping the technology alive, operations/fulfillment running (online and offline tasks), and the site functionality relevant, you need resources to acquire supply and market products to customers. Selling properties in one destination would never overcome the high initial investment and continued operating costs.

The only way that I can see this build decision working is if they were planning on reselling this platform as an affiliate solution to other municipalities, but I don't see any sign of this goal. They should have just partnered with an OTA (like Expedia, Orbitz, or Travelocity) and immediately started taking bookings. Some of these advanced platforms support unique functionality "out-of-the-box" that I believe would be close to their needs.

Odd Item: Amazon.com's Old Timer Junior 3 Blade

2007-02-20T12:17:00.000-06:00

Take a trip over to Amazon.com and pick up a new knife. The Old Timer Junior 3 Blade is priced to move at $895,200. You can even save $30 by signup for the Amazon.com Visa. Yeah... seems like a silly offer considering the sale price. It's been this way since at least 2.16.07.

Super Bowl XLI - The Good And The Bad

2007-02-05T17:38:00.000-06:00

GOOD

Prince - Great performance. Best half-time show I've ever seen.
TV @ Wilson's - The food and beer were good too.
Emerald Nuts spot - You can't go wrong with Robert Goulet. Can't stop thinking about Will Farrell's impersonation.

BAD

The Bears losing - I've become a big fan of Chicago over the last few years. It's a great town. You should go visit.
Most of the commercials - How much did King Pharma/American Heart pay for that spot? At least Sales Genie had a low production budget. I would have liked to see another of the new Blockbuster ads from their current Total Access campaign instead of a re-purposed spot from the past.

Read SuperAdFreak for more reviews.

I love brownies

2007-01-23T22:02:00.000-06:00

First of all... I love sweets. Brownies are at the top of that list (along with chocolate chip cookies and ice cream). Daily Candy (yes... I subscribe) covered an incredible new brownie tin today. You can make a batch of regular brownies, all edges, or all centers. I'm writing about this fantastic product because for both its goodness and the fact that it was invented by a smart guy (yet another... ;-) named Matt Griffin. Isn't that cool. I've never been so proud to have my name.

Great Private Equity News

2007-01-18T09:36:00.000-06:00

If you interested in knowing what companies/concepts are getting funding, check out private equity HUB. They have a great investments newsletter (daily) that gives you the latest info on VC deals, buyouts, IPOs, M&A, as well as their opinions on current topics. Check it out at www.pehub.com.

Thank you Blogger Custom Domains

2007-01-16T23:28:00.000-06:00

I'm glad that Blogger now offers custom domains. This is a great feature that ties very well with the Google Apps for Your Domain product offering. What this essentially gives you is the ability to have mail, calendar, web site, and blog services for free. All you have to pay for is the domain name. Subdomains can be configured easily with your registrar to support all of these services. I don't think there's much of a way to get around that.