On the heels of David Welsh’s sharp rules for website design, Lost Remote explains why they turn to YouTube for media clips:

I’ve had a few inquiries why Lost Remote is embedding YouTube clips of copyrighted material rather than linking to the video on the originating media site. It’s a legitimate question, but I’m staging a protest. As a blogger, YouTube’s functionality allows me quickly find and embed the player on the site with a simple copy-paste. When I went to ComedyCentral.com, I tried searching for the clip, but no luck. Once I found it, I tried to find the URL to link directly to it. Nothing. And of course, there’s no functionality to embed their player on the site. So YouTube it is.

Overall, there are a few basic rules that I see frequently broken with online video… mistakes that leave me shaking my head when the point of the video seems to generate early word-of-mouth:

1. Find a format that works for the most people. If that’s not possible with one format, offer multiple formats.
2. If corporate relationships require you to offer video only in a format that won’t work for everybody, be sure to offer some kind of input, so that they don’t spend time waiting for video that will never come. If it’s not coming, let them know right away.
3. I get why designers like pop-up windows with no address bar, but when I can’t find a URL to pass around via e-mail and blog posts, I ask myself how badly I want to tell friends about the video, killing any WOM benefit.
4. Along those lines, would it hurt to create a simple link that filters video by show instead of going through all that navigation?
5. If you’re seeking WOM, few first adapters use Internet Explorer nowadays. Don’t link to a plug-in that allows Firefox to work with ActiveX. If I wanted my Firefox to handle ActiveX, I’d still be using IE.

The oddest error I’ve encountered on a video site was the one time I checked out Comedy Central’s Motherload. I had the most current version Firefox at the time (a 1.4 version, I believe) and the site told me that I had to upgrade to Firefox 1.0.4 to view any video.

Today I spent the day embarking on another one of my kitchen adventures. It started with a co-worker saying that looking at Sunday Coupon Inserts was giving her a crazing for Frito Pie… which got me thinking about making chili. Looking at chili recipes online, I kept adding bits and pieces that sounded good until I had a monster page of notes.

I dubbed this one “4-3-2 Chili” since it’s got four kinds of beans, three types of meats and uses two pots. It’s one of those all-day recipes that I always find comforting to make. There are two purposes in cooking the beans and the chili separately — for one thing, I was following advice I encountered saying that beans shouldn’t encounter acidic ingredients like tomatoes until almost cooked. More importantly, it allowed me to give the beans a different mix of flavors. I put all the heat into the beans and in the final product you get a lot of heat that dissipates quickly.

Chili Beans
½ cup dried pinto beans
½ cup dried black beans
½ cup dried small white beans
½ cup dried kidney beans
1 large onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 dried chipolte chilies
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
¼ lb (approx) smoked ham hock
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
6 cups water

1. Rinse and soak the beans in warm water overnight.
2. Drain the beans and rinse. Set aside.
3. Add the onion, garlic, oregano, chipotle, cumin, bay leaf, ham hock and Worcestershire sauce to a medium pot or slow cooker. Bring to a boil and lower the heat to a low simmer. Add the beans.
4. Cook the beans for at least 6 hours until tender.
5. Strain the liquid from the beans and add to chili.

Chili

¾ lb. stew beef, cubed
¾ lb. chorizo sausage
¾ lb. pork shoulder, cubed
2 medium onions, diced
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
1 Tablespoon chipotle chili powder
1 Tablespoon coriander
1 ½ teaspoons smoked sweet paprika
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon dried basil
2 cups chicken broth
1 28-ounce can fire roasted diced tomatoes (regular tomatoes okay, if fire roasted tomatoes aren’t available)
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick

1. Brown the meats in a pot. In this step, the goal is to render as much fat that can be quickly cooked off the meat. Set aside the meat and pour off the fat.
2. Add the onion to the pot (draining the pot will likely leave a little bit of fat, just enough for cooking) and cook until semi-translucent. Add the garlic and the next nine ingredients (up to the basil) and cook for 1-2 minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, chicken broth and the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil and lower the temperature to a low simmer. Add the meat back into the pot and simmer for at least four hours until the meat has become tender.
4. Stir in the drained beans. Serve with cheddar cheese, corn bread or sour cream.

With the first serving, I tried making a sort-of pot pie where I put some chili in a glass bowl, poured some corn bread batter over the chili and baked it as I would the pot pie. Very nice.

Seeing David Taylor’s reaction to the new Tokyopop website got me thinking back to some thoughts I had about Tokyopop and it’s competition, Viz after my last trip to San Diego.

David writes:

Tokyopop doesn’t know what it is or what it wants to be. At one point it was a publisher of Manga, pushing the boundaries and setting the standards for what we take for granted nowadays. Then it tried to become the de-rigour provider of home-grown manga talent so much so that we’ve had OGM, OEL, Global or World and people don’t know whether they are coming or going and really are beginning to not care one way or the other. Now we’ve got this weird hybrid multi-media company with the Tokyopop Music label which would be fine if there was anything good being released. Then to top it all off we have a myspace clone sitting and not quite getting the hint that it’s not wanted.

A year ago I said:

At the moment, the manga market is saturated and competition for shelf space if pretty fierce. Viz hopes it can combat this problem by bringing in new readers, seeing girls as a market that hasn’t been fully realized. Throughout the Shojo Beat panel, shojo’s potential for growth was discussed and that the magazine aspires to reach someone who doesn’t read manga. One comment that I found interesting came when Shojo Beat managing editor Jennifer Morgan said that her goal was to fill Shojo Beat with articles that could draw readers outside of manga consumers. I hadn’t thought of evaluating the magazine that way, it might be an interesting project for another time.

Morgan explained that she was trying to bridge the challenges a new manga reader may encounter in Shojo Beat’s non-manga content. The cover is meant to draw the attention of fashion magazine readers and, hopefully, get them to browse the magazine long enough to find the manga selections intriguing. Similarly, Morgan hopes that the music section (profiling the fabulous Puffy AmiYumi in the debut issue) may draw J-pop and J-rock fans to check out the magazine and be drawn into the manga. The magazine will also include articles focusing on Japanese culture, like the article that explained how Japanese homes are arranged that preceded the first chapter of Baby & Me, to help bridge any cultural gaps…

While Viz sees the potential to grow a market where manga has done well, Tokyopop seems to want to take advantage of untapped genres. Their Original English Language Manga titles got a lot of talk, including Svetlana Chmakova’s upcoming serial in CosmoGIRL! magazine. Panel attendees were also encouraged to submit their proposals to Tokyopop. The success of the Warcraft OEL in Germany was mentioned (along with another title that I realize I did not note), seemingly to counter any thoughts that manga buyers won’t accept anything that’s not “pure” manga. Chuck Austin’s title brought on a few talking points about the established comic creators working on Tokyopop’s OEL titles that emphasized the enthusiasm they had for manga and the way it is paced differently from American comics.

Rereading my observations from last July, it’s interesting to see where the two companies have gone since then. Shojo Beat’s voice has gotten clearer and it’s become a solid magazine for young Japanophiles — who, if they aren’t reading manga are the most likely to be pulled into the artform by Shojo Beat’s articles. Viz has also made gains on the bookshelf thanks to their anime titles getting exposure on a national outlet, basic cabel channel The Cartoon Network. Meanwhile, the publisher has also managed to slowly increase the range of ages encompassed within their “hit” titles when Death Note, a title that skews older than most Viz hit series, became another frequent sighting in top sales lists.

In the meantime, Tokyopop has been… well, they’ve been reminding me of CrossGen in its last days, rolling out all sorts of product, usually moving on before the previously big thing can develop a following with customers. Originally, their OEL Manga line and BLU imprint seemed like a smart way to take advantage of areas of manga fandom that wasn’t getting adequately served by Tokyopop’s competitors. Now, the company is looking unfocused and the signal-to-noise ratio is getting worse.

One of the few discoveries I had time to make at my single day at San Diego was the graphic adventure game that John Green is developing. Nearly Departed is currently available only as a game demo (you can download the demo for free from the game’s website) with a full game promised for the near future.

In Nearly Departed, you take the role of a teen who wakes up at an open greave with a craving for the taste of fresh brains — you’ve been turned into a zombie. From there, your goal is to figure out who you were how you became a zombie.

Nearly Departed’s game play recalls classics of the genre like King’s Quest, Day of the Tenacle or Gabriel Knight. The puzzles are challenging but never sacrifice the story — as in the best graphic adventure games, Nearly Departed’s puzzles has the ring of real-world problem solving. The graphics, meanwhile, remind me of Day of the Tenacle with its vivid colors and strong lines. Playing the demo of Nearly Departed, really charms you to the game.

Tired of being bored by the Emmy committee’s idea of the best in television? The smart folks at Television without Pity are now putting together the Tubey Awards for 2005.

Right now the massive list of nominations is being voted on to pare them down to ten shows per category, with final voting beginning on Saturday, July 29 and ending on Wednesday August 1.

Okay, I couldn’t wait any longer. The Runway Tallies are back. As I did last season, I plan on checking out the what kind of bids this season’s designers get as another way of measuring the audience’s reaction.

Overall, I’d say it’s a bit early to be spotting trends, except to note that there are a few designers that the audience seems to have quickly noticed Michael Knight, even though he hasn’t gotten much attention on the show so far. Meanwhile, speculation of plagarism hasn’t dampened the interest in Keith Michael’s entries. It’s also interesting to note that the derided dress that got Malan Breton eliminated from the show, recieved some of the highest bids that week.

The tallies can be found after the jump:

(more…)

The failed Aquaman TV pilot is available to buy on iTunes. I don’t think I’m going out on a limb if I predict that this will sell very well — there’s plenty of curiosity about the series and $2 isn’t asking a lot to get some satisfaction. I similarly would have predicted that, had the show gone to series, it would have debuted well.

I’m wondering what happens after that. Based on the reviews, it doesn’t sound like this show would have kept the audience that checked out the premiere, but I wonder if studio bean counters will decide that there’s an opportunity…

This’ll probably be my first iTunes video purchase, so I’m wondering if there’s anything cool that can be done with the video… does iTunes provide a way to convert the video file into something that can be watched on a regular TV set? If so, those Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes suddenly look tempting.

In case you haven’t read the latest Lying in the Gutters yet, here’s the important part:

Now, San Diego gossip usually takes a few days to filter across the pond, so look for the real dirt next week. But until then, here are a few snippets that have zipped along the express gossip vine…

Look for an “Amethyst” project, with John Ney Reiber and James Owen.

I’m mixed on this prospect. I mean, “Yea!” to the Purple Princess but I’ve never been more than mildy amused by John Ney Reiber’s work. I’d sigh and say “It’s better than nothing.” but then I remember “Convergence”.

On a related note, Lea Hernandez says she pitched a manga Amethyst a year ago. I could see that.

Television without Pity looks at the current writers’ strike at America’s Next Top Model, by having TWOP’s ANTM recapper interview one of the show’s writers (himself a former TWOP ANTM recapper):

Show Producer is the name of my job and my department is made up of fourteen people. There are six Show Producers and six Associate Show Producers, and each Show Producer works with an Associate Show Producer. And then there’s the head of our department and an assistant, as well….

We are the writers of America’s Next Top Model. What we do is take all of the hundreds of hours of basic raw footage of the show — of girls getting ready in the morning, of them eating cereal, of them talking on the phone to their boyfriends, and going to challenges, and all of the things that they do — and turn it into 42 minutes of compelling television. Two Show Producers [per episode] work with an editor and take all of that raw material and turn it into one hour of compelling television. So we are the ones who submit treatments, which are story outlines, where we pick usually four girls per episode and give an A, B, C, and D story of what we’re going to be concentrating on that week. We submit a treatment of what each of the story arcs is going to be. Then we submit an actual script, which is a line-by-line beat of what each girl is going to be doing that takes them from when they wake up in the house in the morning to when they go to their challenges and their photo shoots, and then ends in judging with one of the girls being eliminated. It is primarily a post-production job, that being we write everything after the fact, though we also do spend some time on set during the time that they’re shooting our episodes, writing pick-ups for some of the talent, and that kind of thing. What we don’t do — and I want to make this very clear because I’ve seen this around — we don’t feed lines to the girls. When we say reality show, it is definitely reality. The fights that they’re having, the things that they’re doing — they’re actually having conversations with one other. But that doesn’t stop the fact that we are doing an actual form of writing, as well.

The interview turns out to be a revealing look behind the curtain at reality shows. There have been a few attempts in the past to get reality show writers put on a similar level as the writers of scripted shows, but this looks like the best shot because the team is so close, the striking writers have a lot of experience on the show (meaning that they are better connected) and the show is one of the network’s few reliable performers (some of their scripted shows do better, but they are hitting a worrisome age and slowing down in a way ANTM has resisted). I’m hoping that these writers see some measure of success.

The discussion of the interview gets a little further into the details of labor struggles and writing for reality TV.

Supplemental tags: America’s Next Top Model

Firday night, I was thinking how funny it was that the only major bits I had to say about my day at the San Diego Comic-Con were about TV. And, today, the Washington Post notes the growing presence of television at the comic-con:

For several years now, Comic-Con has been the go-to hot spot for the marketing arms of the Hollywood film studios, which come to offer sneak peeks of coming attractions. This past weekend was no different, with Sony showing “Monster House” (in 3D) and Lionsgate doing “Saw III” (the fiends go dental). Warner Bros. brought freshly divorced Hilary Swank to town to sell “The Reaping,” and New Line Cinema escorted Samuel L. Jackson to his first Con for “Snakes on a Plane” (huge line).

But what was new was the omnipresence of television show touts. Jorge “Hurley” Garcia from ABC’s “Lost” came, and so did David Boreanaz from Fox’s “Bones.” There was product from the Nickelodeon pipeline, the Sci-Fi channel, Cartoon Network, IFC-TV, and a world premiere of CBS’s new series “Jericho,”…

Why are the TV people here?

Two reasons pop to mind. First, the paranormal is the new normal. Giving the crime procedurals (the “CSIs” and “Law & Orders” and their imitators) a run for their money are the shows about otherworldly weirdness. “Medium” and “The 4400″ and “Lost” and “Psychic Detectives” and “Dead Zone” and “Ghost Whisperer,” etc. We leave it to future pop-cultural archaeologists to ponder the implications of a society obsessed by forensic pathology and alien abductions.

The second reason is that the demographic represented by the Con — the genre fans of horror, Middle-earth, comic book heroes, Gotham, deep space, first-person shooter games and angels — grows ever more red-hot. A popular T-shirt at the Con: “Talk Nerd to Me.” (You know this: The appellation is now a badge of honor.)

“The Comic-Con has evolved from a narrow comic book fest into this mainstream, opinion-forming, entertainment event,” says Dave Howe, general manager of the Sci-Fi Channel. “It is now a huge buzz fest. We go and everyone else goes. Because it is the beating heart of buzz generation.”

Howe guesstimates that for every consumer a network tout “hits” at Comic-Con, another 30 people become infected with buzz via e-mail, blogosphere, text message, cellphone photo or Internet site — and actual talking through the traditional mouth-portals of 14-year-olds.

“We live in a world of over-saturated media. It’s hard to cut through the clutter,” says Eric Coleman, vice president of animation development and production at Nickelodeon. Going to Comic-Con, he says, not only gives a company a forum to peddle product, but buys them feedback. “You can feel in your gut what is cutting through.”

In short, San Diego has become the spot to sell your product to the digerati who can set the noise level of pop culture discussion. It’s kinda like The Death March with Cocktails gone amateur night. (Perhaps we should conduct our own awards ceremony there, too?)

One nitpick:

Several TV executives predicted that there will be more television at next year’s Con, and that it may well become — for the right kind of shows (meaning you might not take “Desperate Housewives” to Comic-Con, but then again, you might bring Eva Longoria) — an obligatory stop on the marketing circuit…

Considering the number of shoujo manga readers that show up to San Diego (as well as the number of comics bloggers I saw talking about Desperate Housewives in its first season) I disagree with that asessment. If the comics industry continues some of its current trends, I think it could be ground zero for fanning buzz on almost any quality program with a bit of edge. (So, I could see Oxygen putting up a booth, but not Lifetime.)