ShowMeDo Blog

The most downloaded screencast since we went live on New Year’s Eve is Developing Python In IPython with 1,189 downloads over 7 weeks.

The other SPE and IPython videos have between 469 and 861 downloads over the same time period, and Kyran’s latest wxPython videos, launched just last week, have a whopping 273 to 404 downloads each (Adding Event Handlers being the most popular).

Our first ever video, the venerable Perfect Cup of Coffee, has been downloaded 319 times, and several people have been asking for the Great Tea video I mentioned…all in good time!

The addition of New Video Notifications and Comments last week has proved to be a good move, currently we’ve had 24 requests for new video notifications and 9 very positive comments, aside from emails to our enquiries@showmedo.com address.

Now, how do we go about encouraging you, our users, to add your own knowledge to this collection?

We’re pleased to announce five new video screencasts showing beginners to wxPython how to build a simple GUI application, attatch menubars and statusbars and deal with simple event-handling. These five videos are the first in an on-going series hoping to introduce Python programmers to the wonderful world of wxPython and quickly get them building useful applications.

First this weekend we had a link from Swaroop, and then Sean McGrath, and these were picked up by the good folks at Daily Python. That’s driven traffic up from 30 people per day to closer to 80. We’re also seeing a number of del.icio.us links, our first Squidoo lens link from Herb Lainchbury and a few interesting characters like Guido van Rossum sending us great feedback. Many thanks to all for helping to spread the word about our training videos.

What we really need now is to increase our content, and for that we need people like you to submit your own videos.

Have you got a topic you’d like to share? Some hard-won knowledge that could save someone else hours of frustration? We’re concentrating on Python topics, but we’ll take anything that could help someone else learn. Just drop us a line (enquiries@showmedo.com) and we’ll get the ball rolling.

Kyran and I are pleased to announce an update to the server, now we have two new features:

• Feedback - you can leave us feedback when you’ve seen a video (we’ll post the comments to the site later)
• Notification - if you’d like to be notified about new videos similar to the ones you’re looking at, just put your email into the ‘Notify Me’ box (it is brightly coloured, you can’t miss it!) and Submit and we’ll let you know when related material is available

You can see both of these features on the video pages, e.g. here at our most popular video - Developing Python using IPython.

Our popularity is increasing thanks to more in-bound links, we’re receiving 16-27 human visitors per day now. We’re very happy with our growing popularity given that we’re only a few weeks old. Please help us spread the word, we’d really appreciate in-bound links to your favourite videos.

Do you have a request you’d like to make? See what’s currently requested and drop us a line with suggestions. Soon we’ll be adding voting so you can see the most popular requests, should you wish to make your own video.

Coming very soon - Kyran will be uploading a set of wxPython tutorials, the first of a longer running series!

We’ve got a solid 15-20 visitors (not bots!) per day now, thanks to Mustafa (win32.com), David (Szdavid’s blog), Dimitri (Serpia tutorials), Fernando (IPython) and a new del.icio.us Python/IPython link. We’re glad that the word is spreading and that feedback is so positive!

Coming shortly - wxPython and matplotlib video introductions.

I’ve uploaded two new SPE tutorials - one for Python Development and Navigation with SPE, the second for Using the WinPDB Python Debugger with SPE.

Kyran and I would love to hear your feedback, feel free to drop us a line or comment. If you’d like to demonstrate your knowledge to a Python audience, we’d be very happy to host your video here.

Next up we’ll have Kyran demonstrating the wxPython GUI toolkit, and soon after we’ll be covering matplotlib (pylab), PythonWin and the venerable IDLE.