Posts tagged Direct
How To Direct Your Business Videos Like Wes Anderson
Aug 19th
One of my favorite film directors is Wes Anderson, who has made some very quirky movies over his career, including Rushmore, Hotel Chevalier and The Royal Tenenbaums (from which our opening icon is taken).
This week, the video hosting site Wistia posted a piece here that points out some of his trademark directing moves that you too can implement with the most basic of skills and equipment, and you don’t even have to see if Bill Murray is available to appear in your corporate video.
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So what are these screen gems? (Sorry, I just had to say that.) Things like:
- Pick minimal sets and color schemes to make your point.
- Style is everything. Anderson uses some signature stylistic pieces: endings in slo mo, particular title cards (Woody Allen is another adherent of this for his opening and closing credits) and other movie tricks. While you don’t have to invest in a lot of fancy special gear, think about your opening and closing pieces and keep them consistent with your brand, logos and typography so that your videos are easily identifiable.
- Cast the same cast. People like Murray, Owen Wilson and others are often seen in many of his movies. You should use the same folks to increase consistency too.
- Give good sound. Find that teenager of one of your staffers who can provide the right soundtracks and background audio, and bring your soundtrack to life. For my screencast videos that I independently produce for my private clients, I record the audio track first to get the timing right for the visuals, which is the reverse of how most big-league movie directors do it (well, it works for me).
Good luck with your video, and feel free to share some of your own tips here.
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Twitter Taking Direct Photo Uploads, Will Create User Media Galleries
Aug 9th
Twitter says it’s planning to create “user media galleries” that will house all of the media a user shares on the service — including items uploaded and shared via other services. The news comes at the same time that Twitter has begun accepting direct photo uploads via the…
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Why You Need to Understand WAN Optimization With AWS Direct Connect
Aug 8th
With Amazon’s Direct Connect announcement last week, it seems we are going back to the past, when dedicated WAN lines connected our computing resources. Way back, like to when IBM’s SNA, was around in the late 1970s and 1980s and when corporations purchased communication lines at the whopping speed of 19 kbps. Now Amazon can connect 1 and 10 Gbps networks to their cloud.
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There is a catch, of course. Your racks of servers have to connected via one three initial providers supporting Direct Connect, and if you don’t have this equipment in one of their points of presence, you will have to buy connectivity to get your packets there. Remember, we are talking communicating outside of the Internet on a private network.
One of these providers is Equinix, who operate 90 high-performance data centers around the world. In their announcement, they provide a selection of use cases including:
- High performance integration with core-internal applications – This allows customers to treat AWS instances as part of the data center LAN and integrate cloud strategy into more applications.
- High volume data processing – This allows customers to efficiently move much larger data volumes into and out of AWS.
- Direct storage connectivity – This allows for more regular migration/replication of data from AWS into customer-managed storage solutions.
- Custom hardware integration – This allows for better integration of custom hardware solutions into the AWS workflow, with real-time streaming of data from/to AWS.
“Cloud access doesn’t necessarily equal the Internet, and in many cases the Internet isn’t appropriate,” says Joe Skorupa, a Gartner research VP on data center issues who has been arguing the need for dedicated links for several years. “First, performance is variable and there are times when a business critical app can be at risk. Second, you don’t have control over QoS if you are running multiple services. And service level agreements around a dedicated point-to-point link will be more expensive but there are guarantees around restore times which should be faster. If latency is a problem, then WAN optimization may be very appropriate.”
So if you are interested in Direct Connect, your first step is going to be to examine what kind of WAN optimization technology to use to move your data across these private networks. This is because your are charged for every packet, so if you can cache and avoid sending some data over your WAN link, you can save some cash, and up your performance too.
There are many vendors in this space, including:
- Riverbend’s Steelhead, long considered the market leader in this space,
- BlueCoat MACH5, a general purpose WAN optimizer that has an interesting twist on the cloud,
- Aspera, which offers a cloud-based subscription service that is billed directly through Amazon,
- Silver Peak Systems, who have both physical and virtual appliances,
- Infineta Systems Data Mobility Switch is the newest entry in this field with specialized hardware-based accelerators.
David Greenfield’s Network Computing column earlier this spring talks about some of the issues with actually getting the kind of performance improvements promised by these vendors. He says, “With the ability to save real dollars by improving WAN connections, WAN optimization vendors are encouraged to tout ever greater levels of performance. But those numbers may have little bearing on your reality.”
WAN optimizers work in a variety of methods to speed up data transfers: by acting as proxy caches to deliver frequent-asked content, by putting in place application-specific techniques to handle Web and database transactions, and by looking at improving overall quality of service performance.
Typically, WAN optimizers have to occur in matched pairs, one at either end of your data link, to ensure the best performance. Blue Coat has figured out a way to only require a single appliance at your end of the link, which comes in handy if you are trying to up your throughput to the cloud.
You can read more of our coverage of Amazon’s announcements from last week here.
Note: I have done some occasional consulting work for Blue Coat, including most recently a video on their MACH5 product.
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Amazon Introduces Direct Connections and New Identity Services
Aug 8th
Amazon continues to roll out new AWS features at breakneck speed. The latest in a slew of announcements is Amazon bringing its Virtual Private Cloud out of beta, Amazon Direct Connect, which lets customers establish a dedicated network connection from the customer site to AWS. Amazon has also added a new feature to AWS Identity and Access Management that gives the ability to perform “identity federation” to grant access to AWS to corporate users without having to create new AWS identities. Companies can now wire up directly to AWS without passing data over the public Internet, and avoid saturating their Internet connection with application data.
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According to Amazon, Direct Connect is compatible with all AWS resources, so customers can hook up directly from their office, data center, or other locations to Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Simple Storage Service (S3), and so on.
We’ve covered VPC previously, which allows companies to set up a private space within the AWS cloud that’s only available via a VPN connection. However, until introducing its Direct Connect feature, companies had to access the private cloud over their public connection. The company is pitching this as a way for organizations to hook into Amazon Web Services for applications that require “large and frequent data transfers,” without inducing data congestion.
Amazon’s Tera Randall gives the example of bio-pharmaceutical companies and film studios that are looking to extend their current data center into Amazon’s cloud. “Many also want to use an isolated and controlled network space so they can simply extend their current data center into the cloud and use the same IP addressing scheme – as if it’s in their datacenter. Organizations do just that with Amazon VPC, which allows you to provision a private, isolated section of the AWS cloud.”
Roll this up with Amazon’s new identity features, and the company is providing a fairly compelling set of features for companies that want to hook their private network or cloud into Amazon’s services almost seamlessly.
Direct connect is being rolled out first from Amazon’s US-East region (via the Equinix facility in Ashburn, VA), with more rollouts planned over the next few months in San Jose, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Singapore.
Pricing for Direct Connect is $0.30 an hour for a 1Gbps port, and $2.25 an hour for a 10Gbps port – so a company utilizing a 10Gbps port for 30 days, all day, would be looking at about $1,620 a month for the service. Data transfer into AWS is free, and transfer out is $0.02 per GB. Amazon’s Identity and Access Management is a free feature of AWS, so companies won’t pay extra for tapping into the new identity features – just the additional services they’ll be using.
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New: Direct Google’s Crawl To Your New and Updated Pages
Aug 3rd
Today, Google launched a new way for site owners to request that specific web pages be crawled. How is this different from the other ways available to let Google know about your pages and when should you use this feature vs. the others? Read on for more. This new method for submitting URLs to…
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Direct Google’s Crawl To Your New and Updated Pages
Aug 3rd
Today, Google launched a new way for site owners to request that specific web pages be crawled. How is this different from the other ways available to let Google know about your pages and when should you use this feature vs. the others? Read on for more. This new method for submitting URLs to…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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HostPapa Expands Free Attracta SEO Offering To All Direct & Reseller Customers – Tophosts
Aug 3rd
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HostPapa Expands Free Attracta SEO Offering To All Direct & Reseller Customers
Tophosts HostPapa.com) announced the expanded availability of Attracta's industry-leading Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service to its reseller customers. Through their cPanel Web Host Management (WHM) website control panels, Hostpapa will now deliver … HostDime Announces Strategic Partnership to Provide Attracta SEO Tools at No Cost |
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Internet Marketing Direct Discovers SEO Cyber Pirates – PR Web (press release)
Jul 16th
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Internet Marketing Direct Discovers SEO Cyber Pirates
PR Web (press release) As of July 15th 2011, John Mu founder, one of Australia's fastest growing Internet Marketing and SEO companies, have discovered white collar 'SEO Cyber Pirates' preditorially targeting helpless businesses big and small and sending them dead broke. … |
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But Wait, There’s More! 3 SEM Lessons From Infomercials & Direct Response Media
Jul 7th
The $150 billion infomercial industry uses lines such as, “but wait, there’s more” and “if operators are busy, please call again” to create a sense of urgency and boost response rates. Given marketers’ success advertising on television, what lessons can you apply to your online…
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Twitter Direct Messages vs. Thank You For Your Comment Emails
Jul 7th
Posted by admin in Uncategorized
1 comment
There’s always a huge debate going on about the value vs. authenticity of automation in Internet marketing, but some strategies are considered ok when others are considered an absolute evil. But are they really that different?
A few weeks ago, I asked fans on my fanpage (mostly bloggers) about automated messages, particularly Twitter direct messages and thank you emails for comments, and now I want to see if I can get some more opinions about it from online marketers.
Here are two particular automations that have similar goals but are treated differently.
Automated Twitter Direct Messages
A lot of people are generally up in arms about automated Twitter direct messages. There are many ways people utilize direct messages when people follow them, including (but not limited to):
I have used automated direct messages in the past, where I ask a question or just let people know I am open to helping them with blogging and social media. As it was hard to make time for the number of questions I was getting, I ended up turning it off altogether. Probably to the joy of those who adamantly hate auto-DMs.
Automated Thank You for Commenting Emails
Since I have been commenting a lot more lately, I have noticed an influx of emails thanking me for my comment. One or two have been personalized, but the rest have been automated by various WordPress plugins.
These emails generally include:
What is the Difference?
Now, I want you to keep in mind I have nothing against either Twitter direct messages or thank you for commenting emails that are automated. Everyone has to manage their time as they see fit, and has the right to choose how to communicate with others online.
But I’d just like to know why the double standard. Why is one ok (the emails) and the other so evil (the direct messages)? Is it just because the emails are from bloggers and the DMs are (assumed) from Internet marketers? Also, have you found any success using either of these techniques?
Any thoughts, opinions, or discussions are welcome and encouraged!
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Twitter Direct Messages vs. Thank You For Your Comment Emails
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