This morning, Google announced a collaboration with the band Arcade Fire and writer/director Chris Milk. Sounds weird, right? Well, the result of their work together is truly cool: a personalized, interactive music video experience constructed in HTML5.
You’ll do better to skip my description and check it out yourself. The gist is that, using Chrome or other HTML5-compliant browser, you enter the address of your childhood home and hope that it has some Google Street View imagery associated with it (sadly, none among my three childhood homes did!). Then you launch the experience, and sit back to watch.
A few months ago, I stumbled upon a post that discussed how some A/B testing of narrative, “Mad Libs” style web forms showed a 25-40% increase in conversion. That’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider that — from a purely “visual” standpoint — the narrative format seems a bit more cluttered and confusing than a traditional, nicely delineated web form.
When checking out Automattic’s new VaultPress service today, I noticed that they are experimenting with this same type of sign-up flow (pictured). This was the first time I had stumbled across this style “in the wild,” and it immediately grabbed my attention.
DeWitt Clinton (a fellow Googler) wrote up an excellent analysis of URL shorteners on Buzz. In short, they suck for users, they suck for publishers, and they suck for the web. My recent Tropophilia post on links got me thinking on this subject a little, and I was thinking about posting something, but nothing I write would approach DeWitt’s level of expertise and insight. A highly recommended read. (Note: Taylor wrote about URL shorteners briefly here).
Side note: Although I find DeWitt’s post a little long for Buzz, it does show off some of the service’s rich editing capabilities. Scoble and Cutts have been talking recently about how nicely Buzz fills the niche between microblogging and regular blogging (what is that, pseudoblogging I guess?). I agree, and I have come to see Buzz more like a social version of Tumblr than I do a new Twitter or a Blogger. Hoping more of my friends will jump back on the Buzz train in the future to check it out.
As mentioned in my recent post at Tropophilia, I’m experimenting with a service called Apture that aims to give publishers tools to add rich content to their site without losing their visitors. It also provides a handy way for readers to easily evaluate a link and decide if it’s worth navigating to (or opening in a new background tab).
Let’s put it to the test on my bio to see some of the available options. (Update: I would never use Apture for all or even many of my links. I would be much for selective in real use, trying only to implement it when I think readers would appreciate it or find it useful.)
Note: All opinions expressed here, on Twitter, or elsewhere are entirely personal. They do not necessarily represent the opinions of any organizations with which I am or have been affiliated.
My parents surprised me with an iPad for my birthday, and since the device arrived last week I’ve been spending a lot of time putting it through its paces. I’ve posted my thoughts on the tablet itself, as well as some free and paid apps, on my personal site. Similar Posts:Kindled Real-Time Change Who Are […]
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