Archive for Rants

Brizzly’s bear of a video

I was talking to one of my geek friends the other day about new cool services on the Web. She told me to check out Brizzly because it was this super amazing social network kind of site that I would absolutely love. But…I already have Twitter and Facebook. I deleted my MySpace and Friendster accounts a long time ago. What could she possibly have been talking about!? I went and checked it out. It’s a nice simple homepage design…it might be TOO simple.

I stared at it for a while and never quite figured out what it was about. I’ll have to call my friend for an explanation, I guess. But wouldn’t it be so much easier if they had a short video on the homepage explaining why I can’t live without them? Word-of-mouth got me to their site…but it’s not enough to keep me there if I don’t really know what I’m there for.

Brizzly DOES have a features video that I found through the “About” link on the footer. I almost missed it…but I did watch it and learned a lot about the product. But I didn’t hear anything about ME. What about ME, guys? What’s in it for ME?

WebMD and me

Some would call it “hypochondria.” I like to call it… “knowing what’s what.” I think I might have been a doctor or a scientist in a former life because I am totally fascinated by the human body, disorders and illnesses, and how the body heals itself. I find myself visiting WebMD a lot. Mostly because I love to try and diagnose my friends or myself. I wouldn’t be lying if I said that my doctor hasn’t laughed at me in my face for some of the diagnoses I come up with but I believe it’s important to be informed…”in the know,” if you will…and I will.

One of the things  I really love about WebMD is the left side menu – it lists a bunch of different health conditions and you can click on each one to get more information about it. Things like back pain or hypertension…depression or migraines.

Some of the topics have video sections including information about prevention or treatment. But none of the topics have a concise, visual overview. It would be so helpful if I could click on “Diabetes” and have the choice to see a quick overview of the disease…the different types and causes, symptoms and treatments. One concise video so I can find out what it is I need to know more about. That would be awesome.

Bit.ly bits

I won’t lie…I’m addicted to Twitter. I use it daily to update my “followers” about my thoughts, plans, dreams and inspirations. Yes, I am THAT self-absorbed. But so what? I’m not alone. Anyway, I noticed that a lot of my Twitter friends had found a way to shorten URLs that were really long so that they’d fit into the 140 character space afforded by Twitter.

I started researching different services and decided on one called bit.ly. It seemed to be very popular and I wanted to know more. Do people use these services for things other than Twitter? I would imagine so. I started poking around their site and found bits and pieces scattered all over but no central area that told me “What’s in it for ME?”

But hey…what IS in it for me? Why is it better than the other 3902343204 URL shorteners out there? Wouldn’t it be grand if there was a short, fun video that could tell me everything I needed to know so I could save time and energy and focus more on important things like telling all my Twitter friends what I’m up to!?

DropShots dropped the ball…

While browsing the Web for online photo sharing alternatives, I happened upon DropShots. I saw that they offered premium and free accounts but could not easily find what the difference in features was. I got really excited when I saw the “Live Demo” section, thinking I’d click and see a short video clip explaining this service that everyone seems to love.

Much to my dismay though, I clicked the link and it took me to something more like an example of someone’s account. I had no idea what I was looking at…what the features are…why I should stay there…what to do next. This is something that would be best “demonstrated” in a video. Besides that…adding a video to summarize all the cool features and show us a little bit about the site would eliminate the need for me to scroll on the homepage! Everything I was looking for required me to scroll to it.

Good thing I was curious and had the energy to poke around on the site a bit.

Most people don’t…