Mark Burstiner (dot) com

The Circuit - E005, 11/26/09

2009-11-26T15:50:30Z

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! No stories this week! Instead, take a look-see behind the scenes of the show and watch me act like an idiot!

Unfortunately, my hard drive also crashed this week, so it looks like you'll have to wait until December to see my editing work flow I'll do another behind the scenes then. :)

Lot's to catch up on next week so be sure to tune in!

Thanks for watching! Be sure to tell me what you're thankful for this Thanksgiving in the comments!

M

The Circuit - E004, 11/19/09

2009-11-19T18:14:34Z

Hello everyone! This will be The Circuit's temporary home until the Circuit's site is finished being built Until then, you can stop here and check out every episode from E004 and forward.
Once the new site is complete, we'll export with Squarespace's sweet import/export features, and bring it in to the new site (another Squarespace) so hopefully, we shouldn't lose all your comments. :)

Contribute to the kickstarter for The Circuit to help The Circuit thrive
and enter to win some awesome prizes:
http://j.mp/circuitlive
Prizes:
http://bundl.it/MjYzNjU

Shownotes after the jump!

I'm looking for an intern.

2009-11-04T18:00:45Z

I'm looking for someone I can bring on as an intern. The video should cover what I'm looking for so I'll just outline everything here.

Criteria:
• College Student
• Must own a laptop
• Proficient in administrative things such as email, scheduling, transcription, etc...
• Comfortable in Photoshop/Illustrator
• Interest in video production
• Reliable and Professional
• Involved in social media, and interested in emerging media

The internship is unpaid, but I can give college credit, so a college student is preferred. This is a great opportunity to rub some elbows and learn some great stuff along the way.

If this sounds like you, please drop me a line you can either email me (click here), or you can click email me on the right column of my site.

Please include:
• Resumé
• Any links that might be helpful
• Cover Video

I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I can't wait to make this an awesome experience for you!

BREAKING: FCC Backs Net Neutrality

2009-09-21T21:34:12Z

This is huge. The FCC announced a few hours ago that it is backing Net Neutrality and has launched a new initiative at OpenInternet.gov. This is such a MASSIVE deal. Check the video and see Free Press' Ben Scott's response to the FCC Chairman's announcement after the jump

Best Practices For Demo Videos

2009-09-16T18:22:02Z

In the last few months, I've had the pleasure of being a part of one startup's acceptance into the event. I work at New Work City in TriBeCa, and I've had the pleasure of working alongside one Darrell Silver. Darrell's Startup, Perpetually.com is one of the most brilliant things I've seen in a long time. But you’ll get to see the product in the finished video.

The amount of time effort and thought you put into creating a watchable yet informative demo video is a make or break factor in the selection process for an event like TC50. Here's a few of the things that I think are key for making a good demo video:

Have a good (finished) product.
Having a good product to begin with is paramount. Just as with anything else you do in life, you must have a solid foundation. If the product or service isn't finished or fully functional, you shouldn't be doing a demo. The last thing we want to see is you fumbling over something that should work just fine. If you're not finished, get back to work. You can do a demo when the product is finished.

Learn to take direction.
I don't mean direction as in knowing where you're going (though that's important, too). I mean make sure that you're being directed and you have someone watching and listneing to you speak to watch for clarity, descriptiveness, crutches (ums, uhs, ands, etc...) and other ticks that will make your 'performance' suffer. The first thing you learn as a director is that the actor can't watch themselves. If you're doing the demo for your product, there's no way for you to watch yourself without losing perspective. Having someone watching you is the best way to safeguard against cringing when you hear yourself say "And so...right here, uh, we have this, like, button here...."

Take your takes.
Make sure that you have enough time to do as many takes as you think you’ll need and then some. If you think you’ve got it and that last one you did was it, then do one more. You never know, you might do something better in the next one than you did in the one just prior. We’ll get to what you can do with good parts in different takes in a little bit.

Screencasts! I want to see what you’re doing.
This might be one of the most important points I’ll mention. Do not, under any circumstance, point the camera at your computer. I don’t want to see it. I won’t watch it. If you’re showing me your program or website, there are plenty of affordable screencasting solutions out there. For the PC you’ve got Camtasia, which until recently was PC only. Now, they’ve got a very powerful Mac version, but for me it’s still Screenflow on the Mac. Screenflow gives you so much conrol over your screencasts. Everything from picture in picture, to canvas manipulation, to callouts, to isolating windows. Screenflow wins it in my book.

But I want to see your face, too.
Don’t think that just a screencast is enough, though. While it’s certainly the most important component in your demo, there’s something to be said for the personal touch. I don’t want to listen to a disembodied voice for 4-5 minutes. I want to know who is speaking to me and what their involvement is in the product. I want to trust you and believe that what you’re showing me is real. Always start off on your presenter and then make the transition into the screencast demonstrating the product. Screenflow even allows you to leave the iSight video in the corner as a picture in picture. Very helpful, indeed.

Editing is your friend.
If you do this right, you’ll have a few opportunities in which you’ll be able to cut out some things from the final product. Keep in mind that when you’re editing, you’ll be able to cut from take to take between the shot on the presenter and the screencast. Use that to your advantage by doing takes for each section so you can have distinct cuts and so that you don’t have to memorize everything all together. Just don’t let it get too sterile. Much of what showing your face and letting your audience get to know you can be lost if the final product has but cut to kingdom come. Try and keep it genuine and conversational, and you’ll be just fine.

If you don’t know, get someone who does.
Now, I have a background in film. So, I have a professional camera and a mic and some quite a bit of know how in Final Cut Pro. But you may not have these things. If this is the case, and you don’t feel comfortable with the tools you have available to you, it may be worth your while to hire someone to shoot and cut the video for you. You’ll have to spend some money, but hey, anything worth doing is worth doing right, eh?

So now you’ve got everything you need to know to make yourself a sweet demo video for your product. I’m embedding the video that I did for Perpetually.com here so you can take a look. I did it very quickly as we were on a deadline, so there are a few things I’d change if I had had the time. But, either way, the Perpetually boys made it into the finals and gave their presentation a few days ago on the 15th! So, congrats to Perpetually and happy demoing!

Set up Gmail for IMAP.

2009-09-01T20:58:33Z

Everyone is freaking out over Gmail being down. I don't use Gmail's webapp. It's a nice interface, but Mail.app does everything I need it to do and more. Gmail is just too watered down for me. I use it when I'm not at my computer, but that's it. Not to mention that when Gmail's interface goes down, I'd be stranded. Lucky for me I use IMAP with Gmail so I'm still working as usual. IMAP keeps copies of my mail on the server AND on my computer and keeps them synced up and Gmail offers it for free. Here's a solution for you if you're email-less right now. Though it's worth noting that it'll only work if you had IMAP enabled before Gmail went down (obviously). You're welcome!

CoOrganizing CoSructure

2009-08-27T19:17:08Z

So, Greg Palmer, Whitney Hess and the affable Tony Bacigalupo and I have joined forces to attempt to organize our lives. As independent professionals, it's difficult doing everything for yourself. Doing all the bookkeeping, data entry, scheduling, and the actual work all yourself can be a daunting task. We're all facing similar issues with our lives, so when Tony approached me on the idea of CoStructure, I was intrigued. CoSutructure, Tony explained, is the notion of working together towards one single goal so that we can all achieve a higher level of productivity.

For example, I have STACKS of business cards (we're talking embarrassing quantities) that I have yet to put into my address book. Many other people have this same problem, so our first idea was to bring ourselves all together and input this data all together all at once during a time set aside specifically for it. But this doesn't quite cover everything. We spiraled into talking about the root of the problem. We boiled it down to two things:

Time Management (Maker/Manager)
Task Completion

In diving into the task management issue, Whitney brought up the notion of Maker and Manager schedules that Paul Graham talked about (link below). Essentially, what this entails is separating your tasks into specific times in which you're making your product (developing, prototyping, putting your head down and executing), and others for managing your business (prospective clients, meetings, calls, etc...).

All of this sounded great, but we still needed something to drive us to stick with it. We need a way to incentivize this lifestyle, other than our own well-being. Whitney chimed in at one point and mentioned how easy it is to cancel on herself, and I think that is the key. We need to stop cancelling on ourselves through putting the responsibility for our actions on each other, more specifically, people we trust. We need to have stake in one another so that we can create positive and negative incentives to motivate our productivity, and more importantly, our sanity.

Now, we're just getting started with this whole idea, but we hope to share our respective thoughts throught the process. We're really excited to start getting things done in a way that allows us to be productive and have time for ourself to keep ourselves healthy and running at peak condition. Keep it here and on the CoStructure Posterous for all of our input.

Customer Service Is SO 1998.

2009-07-29T05:16:54Z

There's a widespread problem with consumer brands today. It's dying out, but not quickly enough. How long will it take for brands to take action online and follow in the footsteps of major brands with excellent customer relations. Zappos, JetBlue and smaller brands like Atebits are utlilizing the social space to communicate with their consumer base effectively and with great return. Brands, regardless of size, must be proactive in communicating with their customers.

Not only are brands not communicating with their customers, but some are still implementing incredibly archaic and ineffective methods of interacting with consumers. Last Friday, my red Etymotic Research HF2 noise isolating earbuds shorted out in the right ear. I've been headphone-less since then. HF2's are not cheap devices. As soon as I got to the office on Friday morning, I researched Etymotic Research's warranty policy. To my delight, the headphones were still covered under a two-year warranty. I emailed them posthaste, and waited for a response. A response finally came on Monday in the form of an email with canned instructions on how to send them my HF2's on my dime for them to make a diagnosis. Preposterous.

I am expected to pay for packaging and shipping to Illinois so that I can be left without a product that I've already payed for? Let me also say, I take excellent care of my gadgets. I never wind my headphones too tightly to prevent exactly what occurred. I also made it explicitly clear that I had had one previous pair of HF2's and got a second pair in May. The first pair was 11 months old and I had never had a problem with them. The second pair is well within a year of purchase, but since they were purchased from my employer at the time, the receipt was sent to my corporate email address which I no longer have access to. Okay, I understand they'll need proof that it's within two years from purchase. Oh, right, I forgot to mention one thing: RED HF2's haven't even been out for a year yet! So, I think they could take me at my word that I didn't paint an older pair red for argument's sake.

I replied to the email right away requesting that they send me a new pair with a return label so that I could send back the defective pair.

I still haven't heard back.

Now, on Monday of this week I decided to also contact Mophie support to finally take care of the passthrough port on my Juice Pack Air. The passthrough doesn't work properly and won't maintain a connection. Imagine my surprise when I got nearly the same response, with one exception: they emailed me a shipping label. The rest was up to me. Again, I am expected to ship you a defective product you sold me so that you can make sure that you messed up and not me? I don't think so.

Trust your customers.
We trust you enough to give you our money in the first place.

The reason this is absurd is because more brands are doing it right every which way you turn. When I needed my 17" MacBook Pro battery replaced, Apple sent me a new one 3-day air and had me send the old one back. If they didn't receive it within 10 days, they charge me for the new one. Fair and square.

Not to mention, I've been tweeting about my Mophie Juice Pack Air malfunctioning for a few weeks now. Why didn't anyone reach out to me? Do they not have a digital strategy team? A good digital strategy team is a marriage of Public Relations and Customer Service working in harmony to deliver an exemplary experience to customers, thus creating good PR.

My dad contacted Logitech last week, and spoke to a tech concerning a grievance with the scroll wheel on his 4-year old MX Revolution. It seemed that in order to scroll the wheel, it needed to be pressed so hard that it actually triggered the button function. Logitech immediately sent him another one. In fact, while I was visiting my parents today, he got a package in the mail:

Etymotic Research, you have a perfect example. Mophie, you have no excuse. The game is changing, and if you don't want to step it up right now, that's fine. You'll have to sooner or later if you want to survive. If you don't that's fine, too, because you will be crushed. Listen to your users. Listen to your customers. Trust isn't hard to earn. It's hard to earn back. Give your users the benefit of the doubt, or soon you'll be struggling to fend off comparisons to AT&T. Meanwhile, if you need any help, feel free to drop me a line.

My iPhone 3.0 Love and Hate: One Day Later

2009-06-18T15:50:59Z

Yesterday, the iPhone 3.0 update went live. As with previous updates, I was planning on waiting until the jailbreak was out in order to upgrade. While at the 140 Characters Conference, I realized I wasn't going to be able to wait. In the hours leading up to the launch, I was eagerly awaiting the glory of spotlight search and the archaic additions of MMS and Copy/Paste. I couldn't bring myself to wait until friday, so I installed the update as soon as it went live. Long story short: I miss my jailbreak apps. So dearly.

Catch the rundown after the jump.

Found: iPhone 3.0 Tweaks

2009-06-18T00:40:00Z

Apple is touting a bunch of great new features, and it's true. There's a lot of great stuff in the new OS 3.0 update. There's also a lot of stuff missing for 3G owners like myself like Voice Control, and Video capabilities. But Apple didn't, and can't really be expected to, make any mention of the smaller tweaks that have been stealthily slipped into the system.

Catch all the photos and descriptions after the jump.