ShowMeDo Blog

Digg.com, the hugely popular social news site, has just released a screencast which demonstrates Digg’s latest features (original blog link).

Strangely they have chosen to use Flash version 8 which isn’t available on many Linux machines (losing them a portion of their audience) though the screencast works fine on Windows and Mac machines.

In 3 minutes they cover a range of new features at Digg which educate the viewer on how to share and favourite the news stories and shows them how to customise their user profile.

Add Streaming Video To Your Company Website?

We help you to add streaming video and screencasts to your company website.

For 2 years our public ShowMeDo.com has streamed a Terabyte of high-quality tutorial videos every month to a global audience. During that time we have been providing a managed service for companies who wish to demonstrate their products and services to their users.

Contact us to learn how streaming video can generate sales leads and reduce your technical-support burden.

Jeff’s second new series is Keeping in Touch.

“The Python community is a busy community, with people activities and coding developments everywhere. This series surveys techniques and resources to help you stay current and find what you need to make the best use of Python.”

View Watching the RSS Feeds to learn about RSS resources:

“Come along as we take a look at the variety of Python-related RSS feeds available to help you stay up to date, and how you can easily click-to-add them to your browser as live bookmarks by visiting www.python.org.”

Discover Searching the Python World and OpenSearch:

“A 7-minute screencast introducing the available search filters, based on the OpenSearch standard, on the Python website, and how you can simply click to add them to your browser, either Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. We then examine briefly the seven filters and what kind of information each is useful for.”

About ShowMeDo:

Learn python programming with our many tutorial videos. See our commercial videos to learn more about Python - the two series cover Programming with Python and Learning Python.

Topics include python’s IDLE and PyDev development environments, debugging with PyDev, python unit-testing with nosetests, the csv module, easygui for user interfaces, Wingware’s Wing IDE, unit-tests and test-driven development.

Jeff Rush has started work on an excellent new ShowMeDo series - in Python Source Walkthroughs Jeff talks you through existing Python code to show you how and why the code has been written this way.

This is a great way to learn Python from an experienced coder (Jeff is also a member of the Python Software Foundation), you can learn more on Jeff’s author page.

First you get Walkthru of a Simple Text Line Matcher (grep):

“Let’s start with a simple program, one that reads lines of text from one or more files and prints out those lines that match a regular-expression pattern. We’ll give it command-line options and then in successive reworkings in this talk have it underline the matches and accept multiple patterns any of which can match.”

Second, for networking-types, you get Walkthru of a Twisted Webserver:

“A guided walkthrough of a website served using the Twisted framework. The site illustrates the STAN document object model, iterative construction of page content and how to hook an RSS feed of news into a side pane of the site.”

Do leave a Thank-You Comment for Jeff if you benefit from these videos and let him know what you learned. Feedback is fuel for our authors.

About ShowMeDo:

Learn python programming with our many tutorial videos. See our commercial videos to learn more about Python - the two series cover Programming with Python and Learning Python.

Topics include python’s IDLE and PyDev development environments, debugging with PyDev, python unit-testing with nosetests, the csv module, easygui for user interfaces, Wingware’s Wing IDE, unit-tests and test-driven development.

Doug Napoleone adds a 5th video to his PyCon-Tech: The Python behind PyCon series and this time talks about the switch to a 100% Django wiki for PyCon 2008:

“As organization for the next PyCon2008 US ramps up, we decided to move off of PMWiki (a PHP based system) and go 100% Django, or 100% python at least. We still wanted a way to edit content online, including the site navigation, but found the existing Django flatpages to be lacking. We also wanted to use ReStructuredText. The end result is a new Wiki system in Django based on flatpages and ReStructuredText.”

About ShowMeDo:

Learn python programming with our many tutorial videos. See our commercial videos to learn more about Python - the two series cover Programming with Python and Learning Python.

Topics include python’s IDLE and PyDev development environments, debugging with PyDev, python unit-testing with nosetests, the csv module, easygui for user interfaces, Wingware’s Wing IDE, unit-tests and test-driven development.

This comScore study (June 2007) discusses the rise in use of streaming video in the UK:

“The report shows that 80% of Internet users in the UK stream video, and that the average Briton initiated 80 streams in the month of April”

This study also stated that 76% of US users watched video online. This statement is backed up by a more recent survey (September 2007) by MacWorld:

“In July, almost 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos online, up from 71.4 percent in March, according to comScore Networks.”

The second study is further discussed on Slashdot.

Add Streaming Video To Your Company Website?

We help you to add streaming video and screencasts to your company website.

For 2 years our public ShowMeDo.com has streamed a Terabyte of high-quality tutorial videos every month to a global audience. During that time we have been providing a managed service for companies who wish to demonstrate their products and services to their users.

Contact us to learn how streaming video can generate sales leads and reduce your technical-support burden.

[Update - Amazon adds video of products]

eXpansys sells mobile phone and wireless devices in the UK, I’ve been using them for years and can’t recommend them enough. I noticed last week that they link to YouTube videos which show their products in-use by a ‘normal person’.

You can see it here for this Dell Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard - they have linked to two user-generated YouTube videos.

The first is 3 minutes long and shows the user connecting a Nokia n95 to the keyboard and typing. The second is almost 10 minutes long and has a different user unpacking his new N800 along with the Dell keyboard. He walks through unpacking his freshly-delivered box and talks about each item.

How could they improve?

Really eXpansys should comment on what’s shown in the video (who wants to watch 10 minutes of irrelevant content?) - the first is useful, the second is pretty weak.

eXpansys have made a great start by showing user-generated content which they have filtered. This content however needs to be more relevant to the viewer - a proper guide to connecting and using the keyboard would be invaluable.

If a prospective purchaser could see how easy it is to get started with this keyboard then one of their mental barriers to purchasing the item would be removed.

When talking with a prospective client about adding video to their site this is exactly the sort of conversation we encourage - it is essential to consider the needs of the user when talking about video.

Amazon has added video to their product page for Fifa 08 on a Wii, the video shows elements of the game in-action. I’ll guess that they’re adding video to give you an idea of the experience to back-up their text-only descriptions and user-reviews.

Add Streaming Video To Your Company Website?

We help you to add streaming video and screencasts to your company website.

For 2 years our public ShowMeDo.com has streamed a Terabyte of high-quality tutorial videos every month to a global audience. During that time we have been providing a managed service for companies who wish to demonstrate their products and services to their users.

Contact us to learn how streaming video can generate sales leads and reduce your technical-support burden.

IBM are now using streaming video to show you how to install a memory upgrade inside your laptop. The video is for the Thinkpad X40 or X41.

Memory installation on a laptop is often a difficult job - it is nice to see IBM take the time to show a video (along with a text description for the partially-sighted or deaf) of the process. I’d have thought that anyone who is comfortable using a screwdriver will be able to follow this video and install their upgrade with confidence.

The video is crisp but has rather small dimensions (5cm * 4cm on my screen) - it does however show you all that you need. The author shows you how to insert the DIMM at the correct angle, pressing it gently into place, and then re-attaching the cover to the laptop’s case.

Add Streaming Video To Your Company Website?

We help you to add streaming video and screencasts to your company website.

For 2 years our public ShowMeDo.com has streamed a Terabyte of high-quality tutorial videos every month to a global audience. During that time we have been providing a managed service for companies who wish to demonstrate their products and services to their users.

Contact us to learn how streaming video can generate sales leads and reduce your technical-support burden.

Under our new ShowMeDo Services arm I’m working with Cliff of eAdvantage to help him build and host videos which demonstrate their software.  Today Cliff made and published his first video (it’ll go live next week).

Cliff suggested I use GoToMeeting to remotely configure his PC - it took 5 minutes from accepting his invite (on my Windows XP machine) to seeing his desktop in a window on my laptop.  I configured his CamStudio, walked through his script and showed him how to record his first video.

Cliff went on to record his video and an hour later we spoke again.  I took control of his desktop and showed him  how to use our Uploader program and 10 minuts later we had his freshly-recorded videos on-line in a webpage.  Lovely!

I’ll be featuring Cliff’s videos inside our Services website shortly (hopefully next week).

Siddhi continues his Django tutorial series and adds another 30 minute tutorial, this time he adds wikiwords and search to his Django wiki:

“We are going to add support for a menu and auto linking of wikiwords. In the process we will look at template inheritance, filters and custom filter libraries.
Finally, we’ll see how to implement a search feature in under 20 lines of code using Django’s newforms library and database query API.”

Siddhi recently won a prize at ShowMeDo for having the most popular tutorial video during all of August.

About ShowMeDo:

Learn python programming with our many tutorial videos. See our commercial videos to learn more about Python - the two series cover Programming with Python and Learning Python.

Topics include python’s IDLE and PyDev development environments, debugging with PyDev, python unit-testing with nosetests, the csv module, easygui for user interfaces, Wingware’s Wing IDE, unit-tests and test-driven development.

Our search-engine-optimisation efforts continue to pay dividends.  In my last post on SEO we had climbed Google’s ranks quickly.

This week we continue to climb and several of our terms are now on the first page of google’s results.  We still have more work to do and the results so far are very encouraging.

Below I list our current and (last recorded) positions in Google for these terms:

• “learning python” rank: 17 (18)
• “programming python” rank: 85 (83)
• “python tutorial” rank: 42 (49)
• “python videos” rank: 2 (2)
• “wxpython” rank: 15 (37)
• “python wing” rank: 14 (31)
• “python idle” rank: 19 (32)
• “python ide” rank: 30 (242)
• “pydev” rank: 11 (11)
• “wing ide” rank: 6 (7)
• “ipython” rank: 5 (5)
• “blender videos” rank: 5 (21)
• “blender tutorial” rank: 33 (242)
• “blender video tutorials” rank: 3 (13)
• “django tutorial” rank: 3 (11)
• “python(145)” rank: (1)
• “python portal” rank: 29 (20)
• “python collection” rank: 37 (53)