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Introducing Make My Logo Bigger Cream.

If you design, watch this video. If you buy design, watch it twice.

An actionable note on awesome videos

If you make an awesome video that you’d like to have passed around and blogged (Make it relevant. No Viral for Viral’s sake.), offer an embed option so people can watch it right in the blog post where they may well have heard about it first. Run your URL modestly at the end of the spot to tie it back to you if you’d like, but if the rest of your site offers other content, it will most likely get linked back to anyway.

In this case, had an embed option been available, I still would have linked it and directed you to visit the actual site to see it in context.

However, embed tags or not, this video is truth. So, watch it, or watch it twice according to the prescription above.

I just received this email from Apple:

Apple TV is here, and podcasts are making a big move into the living room. We want all of them to look as good as possible, so we have three video formatting recommendations for you…

Recommendations for Formatting Video Podcasts

1. If you’re encoding your video podcast at 320×240, please increase the resolution to either 640×480 or 640×360 (depending on the aspect ratio of your source files). Why? Because video podcasts at this resolution look great on Apple TV and still port to video iPods. Lower resolution podcasts might also work on both platforms, but they don’t look nearly as good on a widescreen TV. As always, make sure to test any encoding changes you make to ensure device compatibility. QuickTime 7.1’s “Export to iPod” function will ensure that a video file is encoded at a width of 640 and is iPod-compatible.

2. It’s best not to create two different podcast feeds for different resolutions. By doing so, you dilute the popularity of your podcast and reduce exposure in our charts. It’s better to have one feed high in the charts than two that are lower.

3. If your source files are 16:9, stick with that aspect ratio. Don’t add letterboxing to make them 4:3. By doing so, you prevent the video from expanding to fill a 16:9 widescreen TV and instead end up with black space on all four sides. Also, your original source files should be at least 640 pixels wide.

Of course these are just recommendations. We understand that there are good reasons for 320×240 (bandwidth bills) and 720p (looks fantastic). Do whatever makes the most sense for your show. For more information on formatting video, see the recently updated spec:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html

Podcasts are no longer handcuffed to computer screens and ipods. Now anyone with a camera, a computer, and a great idea can be broadcast on TV sets in living rooms globally.

If you’re considering getting into video podcasting, keep these specs in mind as you produce your show. Television-accessibility opens up a lot of doors for podcasting, and will help bring it even more into the media big leagues.

What’s more, online communities are creating entertainment together. Check out this fantastic piece of kids’ programming that Charlie is working on with the Vimeo community:

We live in a time where you can create your own TV show with people thousands of miles away that you’ve never met and distribute it to audiences across the globe. Heck. Yes.

Skinnycorp, the brains behind Threadless, has the best business model on the planet.

Last month, Brian Oberkirch wrote about their presentation at CommunityNext:

Here’s a metric I can get behind: this slide clearly tracks the growth of SkinnyCorp over the last 7 years as they moved the needle from sorta awesome to crazy awesome.

He also makes sure to address the ROI-monkeys who only think in decimals and dollar signs:

If you think they were just the feelgood entertaining crazy kids with the tats and the rock and roll, they were probably the only presenters whose businesses are self-funded and doing upwards of $20 million a year in revenue.

Today, ExperienceCurve linked to their CommunityNext presentation on How to Create Online Awesomeness:

Maybe I’m a hippy, but business needs more love. And Awesomeness.

Well, Brent and I have been trying to find time to write a little post-love for Picnik. So, in a busy moving week, we are brute-forcing it.

Picnik is a new, free, Flash-based web app for editing and sharing your photos. It lets you have the simpler features of Photoshop and/or Photoshop Elements, what you might use for a quick crop or color adjust, without having to open that pig of an app. Don’t get me wrong, I use PS to make a living, but it’s a pig and I only open it when I have to. Thanks to Picnik, for little things, I don’t have to. Blamn.

The editing options available are: Auto-fix, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen and Red-eye. And under a tab called Creative Tools there are a few fun Special Effects available: B&W, Sepia, Boost, Matte, Vignette and Soften. Now, they don’t offer layers, or paint brushes, or vector masks, but most people who buy Photoshop Elements just want to kill some red-eye, crop a bad framing or correct the colors and contrast. Picnik delivers with ease. Besides, there are only about 10% of Photoshop’s stock filters that can be used tastefully anyway. Most folks don’t need them and most family photo-albums will fare better without their creators being made dangerous with too-cheesy filters. ::coughs “Watercolor” into fist::

Now for the sharing.

Picnik is gorgeously, seamlessly integrated with Flickr. Take these few steps with me.

*Take a photo and download it to your computer *Login to Picnik and grab the photo from your computer *Edit it *Upload it to Flickr from within Picnik with all the usual Flickr options like adding it to a photo set, tagging, title, description *Done

Additionally, you can use Picnik to edit a photo you have already uploaded to Flickr and either create an edited duplicate or replace the old photo. You can also email the edited photos from Picnik to a host of popular photo sharing and printing sites like Wal-Mart, PhotoBucket, Kodak EasyShare to name a few.

Picnik can also access your web cam (if you give it permission) and you can take a shot of yourself, edit it and upload it to Flickr. All right in your browser.

OK, the cover my Trapper Keeper is covered with “Charlie Hearts Picnik 4EVR.” It’s time to show you its handy-work. Here are three shots I edited in Picnik:

Please do enjoy. We are. Please also feel free to download the photos of me to decorate to your office, home, gym locker, that visor thing in your car. At least I’m wearing a shirt.

Hopefully I haven’t already lost half of you creative-types by uttering the word “programming.” Stay with me – this is a chat for right-brained folks. I’m convinced that the business and marketing worlds need to be listening to nerds more often.

Like the Open Source Movement (of which we’ve already sang the praises), Agile Development is more philosophy than technical practice. It spotlights people, communication, and action over bureaucracy and red-tape.

The Agile Manifesto emphasizes:

Individuals and interactions (over processes and tools)

People are more important than processes. Marketing will always work better if it is build around people instead of a product.

Create more people-centric campaigns by

• Listening closely (mine CGM such as blogs, comments and forums, and use Google Alerts to stay on top of keywords).
• Asking the right questions (with tools like the Net Promoter Score).
• Acting on what you learn. And
• Making your message accessible across the media people are using.

Working software (over comprehensive documentation)

Do more and speculate less. Gaggles of would-be great campaigns have been maimed beyond recognition because of focus-group-choke.

Why do you see so many web apps in beta? Because Agile Programming says “Put it out there, let them play with it, listen, and tweak based on what the users say.”

Customer collaboration (over contract negotiation)

It’s not uncommon for a developer and a non-techie customer to sit in a room and co-create a product together. What an incredibly frightening and awesome idea.

South African winery Stormhoek joined the blogging community and let consumer bloggers carry their brand with them. As a result, they’re about to hit a five-fold sales increase in two years.

Denise Wymore once said that if a credit union wants to appeal to Gen-Y, they need to elect one to their board of directors. I couldn’t agree more.

Responding to change (over following a plan)

If you create a plan that cannot shift down the line, you’ll end up hitting a dead-end. Digital and interactive marketing are the best plays here because they allow you to react in real-time to the people you’re speaking with.