February 24, 2008

Servers Being Moved

We are in the process of moving our servers over to Boston Colocation as part of Server City's transition.  Unfortunately, this means that our service will be unavailable for as long as 24 hours.  We apologize for the inconcenience. 

February 12, 2008

Widget Upgrades

We have made a few changes to the widget in preparation for our advertising partners that should be going live by March. These changes also improve some of the functions of the player and make several features more obvious. 

Information Screen
First, we have made a basic change in how we display channel and video information in the player. The transparency on the old screen made reading the descriptions difficult. We now pause the video while you view this information on a black background. 

Add to Widget/Channel
We have removed the subtract channel button and consolidated all functions into one button. By clicking the ‘+’ sign you are now taken to a menu that allows you to add or subtract a channel from a widget or create a new widget. By consolidating these functions we can remove some clutter from the guide pages and make these buttons bigger. These changes have also been applied to the creation of a channel. 

Save as Favorite
We have moved the favorite button to the bottom of the player and we are now storing the state of the player at the time the favorite is selected. So when you save either a channel or a video as favorite you are saving the channel as it appears in a widget or the video as it appears in a channel. 

Recommend Channel/Video
We have also moved these buttons down to the bottom of the player and we are storing the state of this recommendation. When another person receives this recommendation they will see it load up in the same player and the same channel where you originally sent the e-mail. 

Overlays
Most importantly, we have added 2 separate types of advertising units. The overlay is a simple advertisement that appears over the bottom quarter of whichever video is playing. These overlays can be clicked on to redirect you to a different site or can expand to cover the player area. These ad units can be served by any third party ad network. Expect to start seeing ads appear in select channels over the next month. 

Interstitials
We have inserted an 8 second break between each video clip. We have done this so that the underlying video can begin downloading which minimizes buffer on slower connections and so that we can identify the next video that will be playing. You will see this video identified using the same data as the Information screen described above. At the bottom of this screen is an interactive advertising unit that can scale to fill the entire skin area if a user decides to click on it. Within this advertisement we can play a long form video or promote a specific product. When the user is done interacting with this ad, they can minimize it and continue watching the channel. We think this unit strikes an appropriate balance between user control and advertiser value. These will roll out along with the overlays in select channels over the next month.

We will continue to evolve the player over time, but this represents a major revision and again, we would love the feedback@cozmomedia.com.