Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2008 November 2

# (2) 02 Nov 2008, 09:27AM: Nandini, This Trailer Isn't On Apple's Site Yet: Given that most people who read my site have broadband, I'm experimenting with actually including graphics, video, etc. Basically stuff you couldn't do with a telegraph in 1872.

In that spirit: My sister and I often relax by watching the Apple movie trailers site. We're not alone. Alyson & Dave and Susie & John use trailers for a cheap date. So I got all taste-test when I saw Hulu's new trailers page. Here's an ad for The Other End of the Line, a cross between One Night @ The Call Center and Bride and Prejudice.

The last joke is the funniest.

Filed under: Comedy

# 02 Nov 2008, 08:02PM: Whither: Online video is now a commodity, like content management systems. I'm managing a project right now where we're customizing WordPress for a CMS and using YouTube for nearly all the video. Just as site creators reached the "why don't you just" moment last year with WordPress, we can now use ubiquitous embeddable video from free services rather than write/reuse custom players for everything, thank God.

YouTube has everyone else beat on user base, so the other services thrive to the extent that they capture some niche and provide affordances/user experience uniquely suited to that niche.

Some have clear positioning. Hulu's for commercial entertainment. Vimeo's for artists. Google Video is for academic lectures (since it doesn't have YouTube's ten-minute limit). GoFish is for kids and their parents. FunnyOrDie, CollegeHumor, the new MTV music video site, and so on are obvious.

But what of Revver, Eyespot, Veoh, blip.tv, Metacafe, and the twenty I don't even know about? Each of them started for a reason, but what's the reason now?

I'm remembering the woman from Wordplay and Orson Scott Card's advice on writing: every story you write should have two orthogonal premises. Constraints make things interesting, in business and art. Cage as skeleton.