I’ve since messed around with Handbrake and found the proper settings for ease of use, and smallest file sizes, for quicker uploads.  Under presets, I leave it as normal, although you may want to save these settings as a Youtube preset.  I use no video filters, or anything typically, unless I have a particularly troublesome video.

The settings used are an mp4 file for the container, MPEG-4(FFmpeg) under Video, as seen in this screenshot:

Next, for audio settings, you want to ensure you’re using AAC(faac) under the audio tab.  This should be the default.  And the one final trick, that kept causing me trouble, is ensure the filename ends in mp4, rather than m4v, which handbrake defaults to.

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Starting Wednesday – June 23rd (10 to 11am)

Tune in to our new weekly webinar and learn about the practical, everyday realities of creating, managing, and progressively enhancing a web site for your business.

Our mission is to share the best of what we know in a fun, casual format similar to our in-person locals classes, but available over the web for our many clients and friends that don’t have the good fortune to live in Central Oregon.

So tune in every Wednesday at 10am and from the comfort of your desk, join the discussion. Learn, ask questions, chat and even video conference in for some virtual facetime (or screentime) with our audience.

See a preview of the show, watch it live (Wed @10am), or sign up for reminder emails.

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 hr  {
      display: list-item;
      list-style: url(/path/to/hr.png) inside;
      filter: alpha (opacity=0);
     }

And with that code inserted into an IE only stylesheet, my hr tags are now replaced properly by an image.  Other browsers can simply use something similiar to this:

    hr {
        background: url(/path/to/hr.png) left no-repeat;
        border: none;
       }

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I dug around a bit and found the plugin easy-contact, and you’ll see the form it creates below:

Configuration for this form is done on a single screen, and it’s inserted onto a page with a small piece of shortcode.  Here you can see the configuration page.  As you can see from that screen shot, this plugin is easy to use even for the beginning WordPress user.

There are many more advanced plugins that can handle custom forms, etc.  We have a post on one of these, Contact 7, that is linked as a related post below.

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1. WordPress Plugin: Contact Form 7
2. WordPress Plugins
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In all the reading we do to keep up with the web, occasionally a real gem jumps out at us.

That happened this week.  Wired magazine published Steven Levy’s article, “How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web“.  In this article, Levy explains many of the subtleties of Google search – how it works and why it works the way it does.

In reading this, one can gain a better understanding of the engine and help focus your work on principles that help improve your relationship with Google.

• Pages - Substantive, Unique, Fresh content
• Links - Popularity, Diversity, and Trustworthiness of Links(incoming, internal, and outgoing)
• Domain - Domain Reputation, Architecture, Consistency

This got our gears turning toward building a class around this topic.  Stay tuned.

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1. The Fresh Web – Web Report from Feb 12th

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Condensed coverage of happenings on the web this week.

The Fresh Web – Week Ending Feb. 12th

Includes videos, links, and notes.

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Complexity is the enemy of compatibility

Simpler is better.   It is easier and faster to understand.

Your content needs to be understood in many contexts.  There are hundreds of browsers, versions, platforms, and devices (think about the hundreds of models of printers, mobile devices, etc).

Each one of them has an opportunity to misunderstand a style command.

It is shocking but true, but not all browsers and devices understand much more than the bare minimum of styling instructions.

Here’s an example:

We set out to find which spreadsheet generates the simplest, most cross-browser compatible code.  We had two spreadsheet programs lying around – Microsoft Excel, and Open Office.

First, code as pasted from Excel to generate a simple cell of centered data:

td width="140" bgcolor="#90b8d6" style="width: 140pt; text-align: center;"

Now, a code snippet from an OpenOffice table as pasted into CenterStage.

td align="CENTER" width="88" height="18"

Our code from Excel is clearly more complicated.  The width is set in pt (points), which can cause frustrating spacing issues.

This was a simple example.  As formatting instructions get more complicated, the difference in generated code grows greater.

Special Purpose Classes

Problems can also arise with special purpose classes and non-standard attributes.

For example, Excel and Word produce a series of special purpose classes called “MSO” classes.

Both Word and Internet Explorer understand the class name “MSO Normal”, because that is the “Normal” paragraph style as used in MSWord.

These MSO classes may be an agreed upon standard between those products, but this strategy only works if all your visitors browse your site with Microsoft products only.

Since this scenario is extremely unlikely, you might see how a compatibility problem can arise when Firefox, Opera, Safari, an iPhone, or your new Blackberry ignore these proprietary style commands and fall back to something really ugly or, at best, unintended.

The Goal?

Let’s not forget that our goal in posting content to the web is to communicate.  Maybe even, to communicate as clearly as possible.

Of course, certain stylistic attributes can help communicate, but only if everyone can see them as the author intended.

Tips

Here are some tips for maximizing the readability of your content as pasted from other applications.

• Write and edit your page or post in plain text. Once you have a readable page, only then style your text.  (You’ll also be a better writer for it)
• Use the “Paste from Word” button in your toolbar.  When you “Paste From Word”, Center Stage knows to filter out the MSO classes.
• Paste plain text.  Center Stage also has a “Paste as Plain Text” button.  Start simple, complicate later.
• Use Open Office to paste in spreadsheets that you want rendered as tables.

Conclusion

Sometimes cut and paste just doesn’t cut it and what you see is not what your visitors get.

Keep it simple and remember why we write.  To communicate.  Wordpress, Center Stage and software like it is amazing technology,  far better than cave walls or parchment paper.

But these are merely tools.  Like all tools, they depend on a skilled user.

The impact that your writing has upon the audience depends on the hands and mind of you, the craftsman.

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This means that until the SpamAssasin team release a fix, and that fix is rolled out to systems across the web, pretty much all email hitting a system running SpamAssassin will get 2-3.5 points due to this bug.  This is likely to cause quite a few issues for senders over the next few weeks, not to mention the poor IT staff that get to field calls about lost emails.

If you use SpamAssassin you can add “score FH_DATE_PAST_20XX 0.0″ to you local.cf file and that rule will be disabled.  When a fix is rolled out, you can then remove that rule to add date filtering back in.

EDIT: Fix out, see SA page here: http://spamassassin.apache.org/

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The class attendees all thought it was curious that it was by far the most popular email we have sent to this audience.   Thriller / Bend garnered a slightly better than normal open rate, but the click rate was through the roof at 41.35%.  This was more than twice the clickthru rate of my next highest article which came in at a mere 20%.  Typically, we’ll expect a 10% rate.

So, with some 20/20, rear-view clarity in our vision let’s analyze these results in relation to the standard journalist’s rules of newsworthiness.

• Timing -  New is better than old.  Old news is no news. The video was taken Halloween night.  Locals saw it in their email Nov 4th.  Check.
• Significance – How many people in our audience were affected by this story? Odds are pretty good that you are one (a friend) or two degrees (friend of a friend) of separation from someone in that video.  Check.
• Proximity - How close is the news to the audience? This video was made in Bend.  The locals only audience is in Bend.  Check.
• Prominence – How well known is the subject? Since MJ’s recent, tragic death, everyone knows about those lovable Michael Jackson Thriller Dancing Zombies.  Check.
• Human Interest – Does it appeal to us emotionally? Those of us around in the early 1980′s often feel nostalgic about the days that MTV played videos.  Sure, it’s cheesy, but we fondly remember the heightened anticipation of a new Michael Jackson album that defined popular culture at that time.  Check.

Put another way, if we turn this on it’s head…  If we pretend that we instead sent the same video to the “Non Locals” segment of our email list, we can easily uncheck half of those factors and conclude that this video would have very low impact on that audience.

So, the conclusion is… the more targeted (or more finely segmented) the audience, the easier it is to be newsworthy in your message.

Comments?  Or, just watch it again below.  It’s a riot.

- Brian

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The slide show requires the JW FLV Player. Make sure to download the .zip file and save the player.swf file on your desktop. I go over this step in the video, but if you want to grab that pre then feel free!

And speaking of free this is all great functionality at no cost! Although, you could want the JWPlayer text removed from your slideshow and opt to buy the commercial version.

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