Recession-proof Web Publishing: 7 handy tools

So, you dodged the last round of layoffs. The company that employees you still exists. Great! You still need a bitchin’, modern Website, whether or not there’s a budget for such a thing.

Don’t worry, you needn’t sell a lung to buy a shiny new enterprise CMS or dip into the kids’ college fund to pay a developer to code something from scratch. There are plenty of free (sometimes “freemium”) tools, plug-ins and products out there.

In this series, we’ll look at seven of the most useful and easy-to-use.

As with any Web-publishing technology, knowing your way around code (or having access to a front-end developer) will enable you to take the fullest advantage of each of them, but none of them require it.

So let’s get started…

»Part One: Publishing video with Blip.tv

»Part Two: Stupid-easy Web forms with Wufoo

»Part Three: Turn your PDF’s into interactive Flash books with Issuu

…

Recession-proof Web publishing, pt. 3: Issuu

The Issuu.com dashboard

Issuu

For print publications trying to adapt their content for digital audiences, the debate never ends: How best to optimize our content for Web users without bastardizing our core product (ie, the print edition)? It’s simple: Publish both online.

There are a number of tools out there to make interactive Flash/PDF books, but Issuu is the first hosted one I’ve seen that doesn’t cost anything (they do have a freemium model: Pay extra for a white-label version).

Issuu comes equipped with a customizable embed wizard (with even more customization possible through the developer API), allowing you to pick your color scheme, dimensions and configure a few other options.

In addition to publishing interactive flip-books and documents, Issuu also has a social side: the site is itself a social network, on which you can friend others, exchange comments and, along the way, find new and interesting publications.

Coolest features:

• Ease-of-use: Upload your PDF. Copy and paste the embed code. Done.
• Bonus: Attract new readers. By uploading your publication to Issuu (and hopefully adding some basic metadata when you do), you’re sprucing up your site *and* putting your content and brand in front of a growing user community outside your existing readership.

Limitations: The ability to embed hyperlinks into the document would be an added bonus for print advertisers (and, perhaps, provide an additional revenue stream for ailing newspapers and magazines).

To get started: Go to www.issuu.com, sign up, and start uploading.

Example: Philadelphia Weekly

Sidenote: Okay, maybe it is time for Facebook to add a “Dislike this” button.

Just sayin’.

Recession-proof Web publishing, pt. 2: Wufoo

Drag-and-drop form fields, make up some questions and hit 'save'. That's all.

2. Wufoo

http://www.wufoo.com

Wufoo is old news for some, but still one of the most handy Web publishing services I’ve come across in the last few years. HTML forms can be a hassle for even the most skilled Web designers and developers. With Wufoo, you can create attractive, extremely customizable HTML forms in a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG interface that even John McCain could use, I bet.

In addition to creating and publishing Web forms, Wufoo also serves as a management console for all your forms, providing rich statistics on usage and collecting all the data for you. Even the most stealthy of Web Ninjas will benefit from Wufoo’s timesaving form creation.

Coolest features:

• Endlessly customizable: From questions and field types to the CSS that styles it all, practically every pixel can be adjusted to suit your needs.
• Easy (or advanced, if you prefer) integration: Link to the Wufoo-hosted form directly, or embed it into any Webpage at the drop of a code snippet. Or download the form’s source files and upload it to your own Web server (server-side programming required)
• SMS & email: in addition to storing responses in Wufoo’s web-based database, you can have it emailed or sent to you via SMS text message. (Hint: this is an easy way to make a clean, usable contact form with no programming required)

Limitations: Won’t make a turkey sandwich for you? Honestly, I can’t think of any.

How to get started: Head over to Wufoo.com and sign-up (free).

For more information: Check out this brief video tutorial on using Wufoo by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks.com.

Recession-proof Web publishing, pt. 1: Blip.tv

Blip.tv is a highly capable - and free - video delivery service that lets you cross-post to other media-sharing sites as well.

1. Blip.tv

http://blip.tv

For a free Web video delivery service, Blip.tv’s offering can’t be beat; It even rivals some paid platforms. Sure, you could upload your videos to YouTube, but Blip’s player has no mandatory branding (it’s effectively white-label) and gives you more options.

Coolest features:

• Developer API to let your Web geeks build a fancy custom player (see MobLogic).
• Cross-post everything you upload to MySpace, Flickr, Facebook and other media sharing sites automatically.
• Upload videos via your Web browser, FTP, desktop application or mobile device.
• Blip automatically publishes standard RSS feeds and feeds optimized for iTunes (among other services). So, all you have to do is upload an iPod-compatible video format to your Blip account and – wa-la! – you’re a video podcaster.
• Viewership stats: How many people are watching?
• Basic advertising options: third-party pre-rolls, post-rolls and overlay ads. Blip gives you 50% of the revenue.

Limitations: Advertising is delivered through third-party networks and, of course, you split the cash with Blip. If your organization sells advertising and/or wants to keep 100% of the advertising revenue, you’ll have to look to a paid platform like Brightcove or Twistage.

How to get started: Shoot and edit your video(s). Go to www.blip.tv and sign up. Developers, check out the Blip API developer documentation for more info on how to customize Blip.

Watch it: Us Now documentary looks at the social Web and ponders future of gov’t

Us Now is a film about the Internet, social organization and the potential future of government, now available to view online

The concepts aren’t new, but somehow watching these ideas in documentary film format drives the point home in a new way: The folks that invented democracy had no way of conceiving of the means of spreading information, eliciting feedback and organizing people that are now emerging. When the barriers to acquiring information and public participation have dwindled to literally zero for the first time in human history, what will government look like?

Interesting stuff.

You can watch the full-length movie here.

Disruptive technology: Are historical tour guides next?

Three reasons why it’s a mistake for Hulu to pull content from Boxee

In full disclosure, I am a total Boxee fanboy, which for anybody who hasn’t heard the buzz, is a slick, open source media center application that lets you watch online video (Hulu, YouTube, Joost, Netflix, ABC.com, CNN, etc.) from one clean, seamless interface. You can also plug in RSS feeds for just about any video site you can find an RSS feed for.

Boxee is TV without the cable bill, with a way more diverse selection of content.

A few weeks back, Hulu reluctantly announced on its blog that its being forced to pull its player from the Boxee application, due to complaints from the content providers (meaning the networks).

The move, quite expectedly, sent Boxee users – and many Hulu users – into a furor over what appeared to be another attempt by “old media” to forestall the Internet’s inevitable destruction of its business model.

Boxee and Hulu have been going back and forth ever since, while resourceful users have begun figuring out hacks to restore Hulu’s content to Boxee.

And that is just one reason out of many that this move is going to prove to be a huge mistake for the content providers:

–

1) Technology first adopters and Web geeks are resourceful. If they want your content, they’re going to get your content. The fact that you think you can stop them proves that you haven’t accepted the reality of the Internet and what it means for the future of your business.

2) Even if you succeed in building an impenetrable wall around your garden of content, guess what: Your competition is not. So, while the NBC and Fox shows are not available on Boxee, content from ABC, CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, BBC, MTV, Netflix, Revision3, YouTube, and literally any RSS-based video feed on the entire Internet are.

3) The advertisements on Hulu videos still play when the videos are consumed through Boxee. So in addition to agitating users and looking stodgy, the content providers are actually denying ad impressions and click-throughs, and, in the process, revenue.

 

And you thought your iPhone was neat.

From the MIT Media Lab, via TED, comes a look into the (near) future: Smart phones meet Microsoft Surface meets Mozilla’s Ubiquity. Project media and information onto any surface and interact with it. Absolutely insane.

Hey WordPress users: Check out WordPress.tv

Looks like this just launched late last night. WordPress.tv is a one-stop video resource for WordPress users and developers.

Hopefully, the future will bring more WordPress custom theme development tutorials to this site, but in the mean time anybody hoping to get started can check out Chris Coyier’s series on creating WordPress themesover at CSS-Tricks.com.

done

New media project “Alive in Gaza” launches

The founders of the popular video blog Alive in Baghdad recently launched a new project, Alive in Gaza, providing on-the-ground coverage of the current crisis in the Gaza Strip. I am helping with their theme design and content strategy.

Check out this noteworthy work-in-progress here.

Eliminating the cable bill, part deux: Boxee!

After a harrowing two-week wait, I was recently approved to try the alpha version of a new open source media center and social networking app called Boxee.

If you’re like me and use the Internet to consume most of what we used to call “TV”, but wish there was a single user interface from which to watch it all (rather than watching some stuff in iTunes/Front Row and then surfing over to Hulu, Joost and Netflix for other stuff), Boxee is precisely what you’ve been waiting for.

I wrote a few months ago about how when I bought a 42″ HDTV earlier this year, I never even considered subscribing to cable, but instead opted for a $10 VGA cable (and DVI adapter) to hook my Macbook directly up to the TV. One commenter, who agreed in concept, nonetheless was forced to pay top dollar for cable, “because no one has developed a good enough ‘10-foot’ interface for online video.”

Well, it may be only be in alpha (as in, not yet beta software), but such an interface is now available.

Finally, a way to watch video from across the Web without opening a browser.

Boxee is a desktop application much like Windows Media Center or Apple’s Front Row, but without all the constraints on content that one expects to find in software released by Microsoft of Apple. Indeed, Boxee is a free, open source app that plays any media (photos, music, video, etc.) stored locally on your computer, allows you to subscribe to any video feed available via RSS (essentially, video podcasts and video blogs) and aggregates content from other Web media services like Flickr, Netflix, Last.fm, CBS, YouTube and Hulu.com.

There’s also a social media component, which shows you what your friends are watching and listening to, makes recommendations and, if you want, posts your recently viewed media to Facebook and Twitter.

Boxee works with the Apple Remote (or any other PC compatible remote control) so you can sit back on the couch and be all lazy about it. There are currently versions of Boxee available for Mac, Linux, and Apple TV, with a version for Windows on the way.

The only downsides are the few, relatively minor, glitches and crashes that come along with testing out alpha-version software. I have to imagine that once Boxee reaches beta status and then ultimately leaves beta, it will be considerably more stable. .

Subscribe to RSS feeds and watch video podcasts.

Also, not all RSS video feeds are compatible, but most of mine worked fine. Some Feedburner-based feeds or feed URL’s that otherwise redirect to the actual XML file may have trouble being read by Boxee. Other than that, it’s a great way to watch all your online video and multimedia content from one place.

To get in line for the alpha version, go sign up at boxee.tv.