What is “Internet”?
This is great. Let’s hop back to 1994 when people were just hearing about this thing called “internet” for the first time. Bryant Gumble, Katie Couric, and another host (who I don’t know off the top of my head) are left totally befuddled as to how to pronounce the @ symbol in an email address and then spend a few minutes trying to understand this new invention.
To make myself seem rather old, I remember when I had visited every site on the World Wide Web circa 1992/1993. It was such a rush not to be dealing with Archie any more. That, and you could do it all on a 28k modem…
Enjoy (via my friends over at ConductHQ)
Amazon Associates Links Made Simple
* If you already know about and understand Amazon Associates links, jump here and get the bookmarklet to make your life easier. *
I’m working on a website today and needed to include some product links to Amazon. When including links on my sites I tend to use Amazon Associates links so, if people buy something, I get a little thank you kick-back from Amazon. It doesn’t cost the user anything and it helps puts a few extra shekels in my pocket at the end of the month. If you don’t have an Associates account, go get one now, they’re free and easy to use.
The only problem with Associates links is that the ones that Amazon generates for you suck. They are incredibly long and, to someone who doesn’t know html, hard to understand. First, you have to login to your associates account and then you have to go through a multi-step process to generate the html for a text link. Here’s the code for a typical Amazon-generated associates link:
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014241056X?ie=UTF8&tag=21releas-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014241056X”>Up Over Down Under: Special Double-Length Edition (S.A.S.S.)</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
Let’s take a look at what we have there and then I’m going to show you a way to make it very, very fast and easy.
Let’s first divide this block up into a few key elements:
<a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014241056X?ie=UTF8&tag=21releas-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014241056X“>Up Over Down Under: Special Double-Length Edition (S.A.S.S.)</a><img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
The first thing we have is the actual link:
This has a lot of unnecessary and redundant information in it. For example, the ASIN number (the product ID – in this example: 014241056X) appears twice. Why? I haven’t a clue. You have your associates account tag (in this example “21releas-20″) but the linkCode, camp & creative codes are all irrelevant. Lastly, you have a couple prefixes – “/gp/product”. Those are a bit redundant because “gp” stands for “General Product”. So let’s get rid of everything that we don’t need here. What we are left with is actually just this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/014241056X/?tag=21releas-20
So now we have Amazon’s URL + “dp” (detail product instead of general product) + product ID + our associates tag. And guess what? That’s all Amazon needs. They need to know what the product is and who to credit for the sale. So what’s the rest of it?
Well the green section is the actual linked words that will appear on your page. Go ahead and change that to what you need.
Finally you have this:
<img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=21releas-20&l=as2&o=1&a=014241056X” width=”1″ height=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”" style=”border:none !important; margin:0px !important;” />
What does that do? Well, for you? Absolutely nothing… It’s a hidden tracking beacon for Amazon. It calls a tiny (1px x 1px) invisible image from Amazon every time someone comes to your page. It let’s Amazon know how many times their links are viewed rather than clicked. You don’t need it on your page. Technically it makes your page heavier and a little slower to load. Get rid of it.
So, the problem is, doing all that editing is really a pain in the ass. Fortunately I found this great site which has built a bookmarklet that you can put in your browser’s menu bar and will instantly make a link from any Amazon product page. Check it out here.
Google Changes TV
Google just announced a fantastic product. Google TV.
We’ll see what it looks like when it goes live, but it appears to embody so much of what TV needs to do. It seems like someone out there was annoyed by the same things I highlighted in my post on Mark Cuban. The idea is that no longer will TV be hijacked by the tyranny of your local cable operator’s interface. You can now search for content non-linearly. But there’s more: it appears, from the screen shots, that it connects with Amazon & Hulu & Netflix. Search once, find what you’re looking for on your TV schedule or online. This product, in one fell swoops, takes a swipe at services like Speed Cine, AppleTV, Boxee and more.
I, for one, applaud them.
SNL & Betty White
Last night’s SNL was great. I haven’t watched a full episode in ages. Betty White is amazing and her willingness to jump in and do anything made it so much fun.
But the thing I noticed which was also awesome was the cavalcade of women from SNL’s past that showed up.
Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch and Molly Shannon.
I think SNL should think about doing this more. The demand on the current cast to carry the show, week-in and week-out, all year long, is huge. You know that tons of former cast members have ideas and a freshness that the show needs – You could see on their faces how much fun it was to be back. So why not bring more cast back as revolving ‘featured’ players? You would still have a host and a standing current cast but the show would also have that quality of “who’s going to be showing this week?” and that would be great. They do this on occasion, but if I had Lorne Michael’s ear, I would tell him to do this more.
In the meantime, go watch Betty White in action.
Why TV Loses
Mark Cuban has another of his rants today about why TV kicks the internet’s ass when it comes to content and why TV is going to be the big winner in the long run. We must remember that this is a man who made his fortune by selling Broadcast.com and has spent much of his fortune buying sports teams and HDNet so he has a clear vested interest in the future of TV. But he misses the point about why people are switching:
Mark Cuban
When you buy that new TV and get it installed on your wall or wherever in your apartment or house, you want to turn that baby on and watch your favorite show, the big fight or concert or put on your favorite video. You want it to look and sound good. It doesn’t matter if you are 20 and living in a dorm or an apartment, or 65 and watching Oprah. It’s a proud moment. You don’t want to have to figure out which 3rd party box or streaming service you can hook up via the internet and then stream to your TV and then find out the video you are streaming looks nothing like the video they had on in the store. You don’t want to tell your buddies not to bump the mouse so it stays full screen. You don’t want to piss off everyone because your screen saver of your dog just came on or have to stop everything and turn your facebook alerts back off because they keep interrupting everything. You dont’ want to scream to your girlfriend/roomie/wife/kids in the other room to stop downloading stuff so you can watch your show without it buffering. You just want it to work.
I guess Mark missed CES is this year.
I bought two TVs this year. I also bought two LG Blu-Ray players, though after CES I could have bought most any TV and skipped the players. I have, built in to the interface, Netflix streaming, Cinema Now, YouTube and room for more services as they get added. One of my TVs even let’s me plug in my iPod and watch all the videos I keep on it. There is no bumping of the mouse – it’s controlled by the TV remote. There isn’t any screensaver. I haven’t had any quality issues with Netflix streaming. I get the sense that Mark hasn’t used true internet video in the last year or two…
Compare these use cases:
Buy TV, plug in TV to cable box, realize that cable box hasn’t been fully upgraded, call cable company, wait four days for service appointment, wait at home for four hours for service appointment, get TV box replaced and up & running, browse channels trying to figure out which one has the movies (this is Time Warner Cable in NYC, no “on demand” button!), find Channel 1000, browse screen after screen (no search function), forget what you wanted to watch (no queue or save functions), then realize there are several other channels of On Demand, browse to Channel 1001, 1002, 1003, repeat this process for each of them, give up, go to DVR, turn on GLEE from this week, discover that the first 3 minutes of the show are missing because American Idol “ran long” and the DVR couldn’t figure that out since it doesn’t record GLEE, it records whatever runs from 9:00pm to 10:00pm on channel 0004, give up on GLEE, think about watching Comedy Central (hell, it’s not 10:56pm and the daily show is coming on soon), remember the three digit channel code for “Comedy Central” (745), and now watch that.
OR
Buy TV, plug in Airport Express to same powerstrip, plug ethernet cable into TV, launch Netflix, manage my Queue from my iPhone, play movie or TV show, wonder whether I’ll be able to get HULU next week or the week after…
If TV wants to stay relevant then the Cable operators need to do a ground-up rethink of the interface design for their systems. Just because something is better quality (which TV is) doesn’t mean it wins the war. (I’m looking at you Beta…) TV, and in particular the cable operators, are their own worst enemy at the moment. When TWC in NYC refused to continue licensing their old operating system and went with a kludgy, poorly implemented system of their own making last year they turned off tens of thousands of users who are happily jumping ship every day.
I think this part is key. Why do I need to memorize three digit numbers to find the content I want? 745 is Comedy Central. 750 is the Food Network. 714 is MSNBC. 744 is Fox News. 710 used to be CNN but they moved it to a different number a few months ago and now I don’t watch it anymore because I don’t know where it went.
The linearity of TV is insane. It runs counter to how we understand content in the modern world. Channels become ghettos based on their neighborhoods. I’ll watch a lot of stuff in the 740′s, 750′s and 760′s but I watch almost nothing in the 720′s or 730′s. Heck, I won’t even go to anything between 733 and 737 because I know there is public access around there and you never know when Robyn Byrd is on. Her presence at 735 makes that neighborhood an unwelcoming place for me at night.
If TV wants to be relevant then companies like Time Warner need to rethink their interface. Here are a few rules:
- Let us browse by channel name.
- Let us find shows by genre or channel, not just by hen-pecking out letters in their title with the remote.
- And while we’re at it, give us a remote with some form of keyboard.
- Make your DVR record a show, not a time slot. If a show is being pushed back, you have the ability to let the DVRs know, do it.
- Allow us to browse movies like Netflix does. Not by going screen-by-screen through an alphabetical list. HTML has been around for nearly 20 years – why do you not have a single hyperlink in your navigational system? Why can’t I see every Paul Rudd movie available On Demand right now?
- Don’t give us separate sets of channels for SD & HD. Why do I need to memorize that 045 is Comedy Central but 745 is Comedy Central HD? Why can’t I just set a preference on my TV that says “Choose the HD version of a channel whenever available”? Do you think that there are some shows that I want to watch in SD? Why does my DVR record some shows SD and others HD?
Fix these things and I’ll believe in TV’s future.
Don’t fix them and you’ll be relegated to the Betamax dustbin of history.
The Hammies
I love infomercials. I love the ridiculousness of them. Especially the incredibly hammy performances by actors of what life was like before some magical invention changed their lives. Take a look:
(HT: Jim Babb)
Thorough Packaging – Stationery of Horror
NBC Universal owns a European TV Channel called 13th Street which specializes in action, suspense & horror. Recently they started using new “Zombie Stationery”. I love what they’ve done. Incredibly creative use of positioning to create something that leaps off the page and gets tons of attention. I’m not sure it is truly transmedia but it is definitely a brilliant example of cross-platform marketing. Take a look (via Behance):
How To Report The News
In case you were wondering how to become a TV journalist, here’s how it’s done:
TV’s Financial Salvation: Freedom Of The Press?
Last week, in a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States may have just saved the TV industry – at least for a few more election cycles.
The case was Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and concerned a documentary that Citizens United produced and aired that was against Hillary Clinton. A provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law said that corporations could not air political political ads within a given period of an upcoming election. It is likely that this ruling would also overturn a similar prohibition on Union-financed political ads as well.
This is a win for free speech.
This is probably a loss for the clarity of election campaigns.
This is an enormous win for TV networks. This probably keeps many of them in business for a long time to come. Why? Follow the money…
Even before this ruling, analysts were predicting that 2010 would become a near record-setting year for ad spending at close to $3.3 billion, and over $2.2 billion of that going to TV. But with the floodgates removed from corporations, that number could surge massively. The gloomy forecast for TV ad revenues just got a tiny bit brighter.
That being said, it might just send more people to their DVRs because the only thing worse than car ads are political ads.
My name is Noah Harlan, and I endorse this message.
Putting Things In Perspective
There’s been tons and tons of chatter, much of it very entertaining, about the situation going on between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno over at NBC. It definitely seems like Jeff Zucker got himself into a situation, entirely of his own making, and now is flailing trying to find a way out and it’s going to cost NBC and GE a lot of money to sort out. I mean A LOT of money. For what it’s worth, I agree with Conan & David Letterman that if you move “The Tonight Show” back to 12:05AM that it is no longer “The Tonight Show”.
That being said, I think the most under appreciated host on late night, the hysterically funny and wonderfully charming Craig Ferguson, put things into real perspective. Take a look:
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