Thank you to everyone who has spread the word about Woubie over the the past year!
(click on the above image to go directly to the web site)
Showing posts with label Woubie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Woubie. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Happy birthday, Woubie!
It's hard to believe, but it's been a year since Woubie went live. In honor of Woubie's birthday we've given the Slam Industries web site a little face lift.
Thank you to everyone who has spread the word about Woubie over the the past year!
(click on the above image to go directly to the web site)
Thank you to everyone who has spread the word about Woubie over the the past year!
(click on the above image to go directly to the web site)
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Making Woubie Even More Woubieful
We've spent the past couple of months ensuring that Woubie 1.0 runs smoothly and efficiently. Now we're excited to be working on new features and functionality. Within the next couple of months we'll be upgrading to Woubie 2.0 with the following added features:
Here's an example of the difference it will make:
Let's say you're a comedian. You've created a Woubie called "Comedy Club A - 6/23/2010 Show" and you've stored detailed information about where you performed it, how long the set was, how well you performed, whether you sold promotional items or not, etc.
You've also created a database of 800 jokes and you've assigned categories & subcategories, ratings, duration, key words, etc. Simply having a flexible web-based database of your comedy material saves you a lot of time.
So, what could be better?
You could have the ability to flag the 20 jokes you used for the "Comedy Club A" show and link them to the Woubie you created for that show. Then you could easily print your set or replicate the set, change a few jokes and have a whole new set within minutes.
That's what the linking function will let you do!
For writers, the ability to link facts, characters and locations to a Woubie for a book or article will turn the process of managing hundreds of individual pieces of information from painful to painless.
So, keep on Woubiefying your world and we'll keep you updated on our progress towards Woubie 2.0.
Have a great summer!
- The ability to store Contact information.
- The ability to store Business information.
- The ability to print individual items from any of the data sets.
- The ability to link tasks, characters, comedy, facts, attributions or locations to a Woubie.
Here's an example of the difference it will make:
Let's say you're a comedian. You've created a Woubie called "Comedy Club A - 6/23/2010 Show" and you've stored detailed information about where you performed it, how long the set was, how well you performed, whether you sold promotional items or not, etc.
You've also created a database of 800 jokes and you've assigned categories & subcategories, ratings, duration, key words, etc. Simply having a flexible web-based database of your comedy material saves you a lot of time.
So, what could be better?
You could have the ability to flag the 20 jokes you used for the "Comedy Club A" show and link them to the Woubie you created for that show. Then you could easily print your set or replicate the set, change a few jokes and have a whole new set within minutes.
That's what the linking function will let you do!
For writers, the ability to link facts, characters and locations to a Woubie for a book or article will turn the process of managing hundreds of individual pieces of information from painful to painless.
So, keep on Woubiefying your world and we'll keep you updated on our progress towards Woubie 2.0.
Have a great summer!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Small Business DIY: Convert PowerPoint to Video
Over the course of the past year, while we built and launched Woubie, we learned how to do a lot of things ourselves. If you're a small business owner or self-employed, you understand how important it is to save money by doing as much as you can yourself. We thought it might be fun to share some of what we've learned, so this is the first of our Small Business DIY series.
The most recent trick we learned is how to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a video that you can upload to sharing sites like YouTube & Vimeo and then embed in your web site. Social Media is a great tool for small businesses and it seems that people find it hard to resist at least checking out a video. They're much more likely to watch a short video, even if it's just images & music, than they are to read a whole page describing your product or service.
But making a video can be a daunting task. So we started searching for an alternative and found out that you can create a PowerPoint presentation, complete with animation, and then convert it to video. Here's the first one we made; it took about 2 days to make, mostly because we tested different conversion programs. In the end it cost us nothing except our time.
Here are the basic steps to doing it yourself:
1) Create a PowerPoint presentation around 10 slides long. You don't want the video to be too long & free video converters may limit the number of slides that can be converted per video. It's a good idea to create just two or three slides and convert it to video, so you can see how text looks. we didn't do that and we wound up having to redo the whole presentation because our original text was way too small.
2) Add animation (if you want to). The more animation you add, the bigger the file will be, so keep in mind that you don't want to overdo it.
3) Once you have it ready, time the slide show. If you don't have a stopwatch, use http://www.online-stopwatch.com/.
4) We didn't do a voice recording for our first one; we simply found some open source music that we liked. One of the places you can find out-of-copyright sound recordings is http://www.openmusicarchive.org/ .
5) If the music you found is too short and you want to either loop it or merge two different songs into one MP3, you can download a free MP3 merging program that makes it simple to select two MP3s and merge them into one. The idea is to have a sound file that is about the same length (maybe a few seconds longer) than your slide presentation.
6) After trying several different video converters, the one that worked the best for us was E.M. PowerPoint Video Converter. They have a free version that limits you to 10 slides, but it did a great job and the resulting video was cleaner and clearer than some of the others. The program is easy to use and you can simply select your PPT file, your sound file and click Convert. You have a choice of AVI file or MPG. We tried both and the AVI file was better for us.
7) Upload your file to a video sharing site, such as YouTube. If you don't have an account, it's simple and easy to create one. Once you've uploaded it, you or you webmaster can easily take the code they provide for embedding and insert it into your web site or blog.
You can see what the above video looks like on our web site here: http://www.woubie.com/WoubieSite/ProductPage.asp and how it looks on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gvbPAME0L8.
The most recent trick we learned is how to convert a PowerPoint presentation into a video that you can upload to sharing sites like YouTube & Vimeo and then embed in your web site. Social Media is a great tool for small businesses and it seems that people find it hard to resist at least checking out a video. They're much more likely to watch a short video, even if it's just images & music, than they are to read a whole page describing your product or service.
But making a video can be a daunting task. So we started searching for an alternative and found out that you can create a PowerPoint presentation, complete with animation, and then convert it to video. Here's the first one we made; it took about 2 days to make, mostly because we tested different conversion programs. In the end it cost us nothing except our time.
Here are the basic steps to doing it yourself:
1) Create a PowerPoint presentation around 10 slides long. You don't want the video to be too long & free video converters may limit the number of slides that can be converted per video. It's a good idea to create just two or three slides and convert it to video, so you can see how text looks. we didn't do that and we wound up having to redo the whole presentation because our original text was way too small.
2) Add animation (if you want to). The more animation you add, the bigger the file will be, so keep in mind that you don't want to overdo it.
3) Once you have it ready, time the slide show. If you don't have a stopwatch, use http://www.online-stopwatch.com/.
4) We didn't do a voice recording for our first one; we simply found some open source music that we liked. One of the places you can find out-of-copyright sound recordings is http://www.openmusicarchive.org/ .
5) If the music you found is too short and you want to either loop it or merge two different songs into one MP3, you can download a free MP3 merging program that makes it simple to select two MP3s and merge them into one. The idea is to have a sound file that is about the same length (maybe a few seconds longer) than your slide presentation.
6) After trying several different video converters, the one that worked the best for us was E.M. PowerPoint Video Converter. They have a free version that limits you to 10 slides, but it did a great job and the resulting video was cleaner and clearer than some of the others. The program is easy to use and you can simply select your PPT file, your sound file and click Convert. You have a choice of AVI file or MPG. We tried both and the AVI file was better for us.
7) Upload your file to a video sharing site, such as YouTube. If you don't have an account, it's simple and easy to create one. Once you've uploaded it, you or you webmaster can easily take the code they provide for embedding and insert it into your web site or blog.
You can see what the above video looks like on our web site here: http://www.woubie.com/WoubieSite/ProductPage.asp and how it looks on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gvbPAME0L8.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Friday, January 1, 2010
2010 - Year of the Woubie
We're back on track. Keep an eye out for our press release coming this spring.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Soft Launches & NFLM
Due to weather delays, we have postponed the full rollout of the Woubie program and only did a soft launch over the weekend. By "weather delays" I mean clouds of Halloween cobwebs and residual damage caused by an excess of sugar flooding the area.
What the heck is a soft launch? Find out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_launch. Please keep in mind that Woubie is a software program; not a missile.
Access to Woubie is currently limited to a set group of people for final testing. However, within the next week or so we will be providing "demo" access for a few days to anyone who is interested in checking Woubie out and giving us feedback. If you're one of those people, please click on "Contact" (just below the red line above), enter your email address and let us know that you would like to participate.
PSA:
November is National Family Literacy Month. You can get involved by simply reading with a child (your own or your nieces, nephews, grandchildren, someone else's grandchildren, the neighbor's kid...just find a kid and read, okay?). Or you can find literacy programs in your area by going to this site: http://www.famlit.org/programs/search (National Center for Family Literacy). Happy reading. :)
What the heck is a soft launch? Find out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_launch. Please keep in mind that Woubie is a software program; not a missile.
Access to Woubie is currently limited to a set group of people for final testing. However, within the next week or so we will be providing "demo" access for a few days to anyone who is interested in checking Woubie out and giving us feedback. If you're one of those people, please click on "Contact" (just below the red line above), enter your email address and let us know that you would like to participate.
PSA:
November is National Family Literacy Month. You can get involved by simply reading with a child (your own or your nieces, nephews, grandchildren, someone else's grandchildren, the neighbor's kid...just find a kid and read, okay?). Or you can find literacy programs in your area by going to this site: http://www.famlit.org/programs/search (National Center for Family Literacy). Happy reading. :)
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Woubie Woubie Doo, Where Are You?
At the beginning of the month the plan was for me to post a new blog at least every other day leading up to the Woubie launch. Clearly a dumb plan. Here we are, 8 days away from D-Day, and this is only my fifth post since the October 1st.
Whoa, hold on a minute...8 days? 8 DAYS?! Do you have any idea how much I still need to do before then? Let's make a list:
1) Make final corrections to the Slam and Woubie sites (Thanks, Mom, for the grammar lessons). :)
2) Get some more of those Rolaid soft chews.
3) Final test of the billing process.
4) Buy some beer.
5) Make sure the duct tape we used on MatStreet is still holding up.
6) Finish writing the press release.
7) Have a beer.
8) Try one more time to break Woubie; click on every button, type something in every space, save, edit, search, filter...this process takes a while because Woubie does a lot of stuff.
9) Chew a Rolaid.
10) Untape MatStreet and let him have a beer just to perk him up a bit and make him create marketing and training videos.
11) Tape him back up again. This is a time consuming process. Our takeaway from this learning experience is that it's much smarter to buy duct tape in bulk.
12) Have the Advisory Board members read the press release (since they need to do something to earn the money they aren't getting).
13) Give each of the advisory board members a beer since we can't pay them. Oh, wait, 2 of them are pregnant. Sweet, more beer for the rest of us.
14) Fix the footer links inside of Woubie so that they open a separate window instead of taking the user away from Woubie.
15) Reassure the Mad Scientist for the thousandth (is that really a word?) time that, "Yes, I really do think that Woubie will make at least enough money for us to buy food and toys".
16) Finish up the Woubie Help file.
17) Chew some more Rolaids.
18) Add the "30 Day Trial" button to a couple of pages, so that people can easily find them.
19) Get ready for the Launch party (which is also going to be a Fall Festival / Halloween / Birthday Party). And by "get ready" I mean meditate, have a beer, lose sleep, stress out and have another beer, because I'm definitely not the hostess-with-the-mostess and the damn party is making me down more Rolaids than the idea of launching "the very first product of our very own company on a tattered shoestring budget".
That last one did me in. I'm outta here. I have stuff to do.
Whoa, hold on a minute...8 days? 8 DAYS?! Do you have any idea how much I still need to do before then? Let's make a list:
1) Make final corrections to the Slam and Woubie sites (Thanks, Mom, for the grammar lessons). :)
2) Get some more of those Rolaid soft chews.
3) Final test of the billing process.
4) Buy some beer.
5) Make sure the duct tape we used on MatStreet is still holding up.
6) Finish writing the press release.
7) Have a beer.
8) Try one more time to break Woubie; click on every button, type something in every space, save, edit, search, filter...this process takes a while because Woubie does a lot of stuff.
9) Chew a Rolaid.
10) Untape MatStreet and let him have a beer just to perk him up a bit and make him create marketing and training videos.
11) Tape him back up again. This is a time consuming process. Our takeaway from this learning experience is that it's much smarter to buy duct tape in bulk.
12) Have the Advisory Board members read the press release (since they need to do something to earn the money they aren't getting).
13) Give each of the advisory board members a beer since we can't pay them. Oh, wait, 2 of them are pregnant. Sweet, more beer for the rest of us.
14) Fix the footer links inside of Woubie so that they open a separate window instead of taking the user away from Woubie.
15) Reassure the Mad Scientist for the thousandth (is that really a word?) time that, "Yes, I really do think that Woubie will make at least enough money for us to buy food and toys".
16) Finish up the Woubie Help file.
17) Chew some more Rolaids.
18) Add the "30 Day Trial" button to a couple of pages, so that people can easily find them.
19) Get ready for the Launch party (which is also going to be a Fall Festival / Halloween / Birthday Party). And by "get ready" I mean meditate, have a beer, lose sleep, stress out and have another beer, because I'm definitely not the hostess-with-the-mostess and the damn party is making me down more Rolaids than the idea of launching "the very first product of our very own company on a tattered shoestring budget".
That last one did me in. I'm outta here. I have stuff to do.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Big pain in the arse…
Mat Street here, resident comedian and expert Woubie user at Slam Industries LLC, according to my description on the site. (Hey Webmaster, why not “expert comedian”, hmm?) I kid, of course, because the webmaster’s bigger than me!
I’m currently inputting years of material in my Woubie database and, as a result, I can access it all with a simple search. However, I’m giving these designers and programmers hell, sending a gaggle of emails to them about changes I’d like them to make. They know this will all benefit future Woubie users, but I have a feeling they’re starting to turn on me. As we get closer to launch date, I fear for my safety. They make the changes, but I detect a little malice in their email responses. Should my correspondence go silent for more than five days, please send help. I might be duct taped to a chair, taking the beatin’ of a lifetime, or, even worse, being forced to watch hours of reality TV. If that’s the case, don’t save me, shoot me
(Guest post by MatStreet)
I’m currently inputting years of material in my Woubie database and, as a result, I can access it all with a simple search. However, I’m giving these designers and programmers hell, sending a gaggle of emails to them about changes I’d like them to make. They know this will all benefit future Woubie users, but I have a feeling they’re starting to turn on me. As we get closer to launch date, I fear for my safety. They make the changes, but I detect a little malice in their email responses. Should my correspondence go silent for more than five days, please send help. I might be duct taped to a chair, taking the beatin’ of a lifetime, or, even worse, being forced to watch hours of reality TV. If that’s the case, don’t save me, shoot me
(Guest post by MatStreet)
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Why is Woubie only going to be available online?
Several people have asked why Woubie is only going to be available as a web based program and not as desktop software. Apparently 'just because' isn't an acceptable answer; hence this blog post. We decided to go with an SaaS (software as a service; tech speak for software that you access online instead of installing it on your computer) business model because...
...we like to move it, move it, we like to moooooove it!...
If you're lost right now and would like to take a break and be entertained for a minute, watch this video (no worries, its good clean fun):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6Vk183xGQ
...the thought of having to manage multiple versions of the program, constantly send out notices about new upgrades and deal with possible compatibility issues between different versions, gives us nightmares. But it's not all about us. We thought about it from your perspective too.
Picture this:
You're doing research for an article that is due later today. A friend emails you a link to a video on YouTube. You think, "Hey, I'll just take a little break, watch it and then wrap up this research". The video is hilarious, you spit coffee all over your laptop and now it's fried. If you're using a desktop program to store and organize your research material, at this point you're up you know what without one of those doo-hickeys that makes a canoe move. If you're using Woubie, you refill your coffee cup and head over to a friend's house, go to an Internet cafe and get fresh coffee, or stop in at your local library (sans coffee unless you have a really lax librarian), log back on to Woubie and wrap it up.
For those of you who prefer lists to random hypothetical stories, here are the primary reasons we chose to make it web based:
You have secure access to your creative data from any computer anywhere that has Internet access.
You don't have to install anything on your computer, so you don't have to worry about space requirements, program compatibility or keeping up with updates to ensure that you have the latest version.
You get upgrades and new services automatically without paying more.
You don't need to worry about backing up your data.
No annoying pop ups on your computer for updates saying "A new version of blah blah is available".
...we like to move it, move it, we like to moooooove it!...
If you're lost right now and would like to take a break and be entertained for a minute, watch this video (no worries, its good clean fun):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nD6Vk183xGQ
...the thought of having to manage multiple versions of the program, constantly send out notices about new upgrades and deal with possible compatibility issues between different versions, gives us nightmares. But it's not all about us. We thought about it from your perspective too.
Picture this:
You're doing research for an article that is due later today. A friend emails you a link to a video on YouTube. You think, "Hey, I'll just take a little break, watch it and then wrap up this research". The video is hilarious, you spit coffee all over your laptop and now it's fried. If you're using a desktop program to store and organize your research material, at this point you're up you know what without one of those doo-hickeys that makes a canoe move. If you're using Woubie, you refill your coffee cup and head over to a friend's house, go to an Internet cafe and get fresh coffee, or stop in at your local library (sans coffee unless you have a really lax librarian), log back on to Woubie and wrap it up.
For those of you who prefer lists to random hypothetical stories, here are the primary reasons we chose to make it web based:
You have secure access to your creative data from any computer anywhere that has Internet access.
You don't have to install anything on your computer, so you don't have to worry about space requirements, program compatibility or keeping up with updates to ensure that you have the latest version.
You get upgrades and new services automatically without paying more.
You don't need to worry about backing up your data.
No annoying pop ups on your computer for updates saying "A new version of blah blah is available".
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Mat Street is a big fat wuss
With the exception of Mr. Noseeum, the Slam team is basically a family affair. The things you learn about family members once you become co-workers are interesting. For example, I found out today that Mat (@matstreet) is a big fat wuss. Since I've known him his whole life (okay, fine, he was probably already 15 minutes old the first time I saw him, but you know, 15 minutes isn't a whole lot unless you're holding your breath), it came as a bit of a suprise that I didn't know this about him before now.
The highlight of our Woubie launch party was supposed to be Mat Street jumping out of a plane and landing on the roof of my house. Today, on Facebook, he posted this comment in response to my announcement of our plans:
"Can you park an airplane in your backyard and I jump from your roof onto it instead? Pretty please? Let's think this through. Me no likey freefall!!!"
Damn baby.
Seriously, Mat, you wimp out on this, but still expect me to believe you when you say you would do anything for your family? Does your girlfriend know you're such a wimp? And since when is a feeling like freefall a negative thing for you? Also, you couldn't tell me to my face that you're chicken?
All I have to say now is that you better come up with something awesome to take the place of the plane jumping-falling-landing-splat routine.
If not I'm tellin' Mom.
The highlight of our Woubie launch party was supposed to be Mat Street jumping out of a plane and landing on the roof of my house. Today, on Facebook, he posted this comment in response to my announcement of our plans:
"Can you park an airplane in your backyard and I jump from your roof onto it instead? Pretty please? Let's think this through. Me no likey freefall!!!"
Damn baby.
Seriously, Mat, you wimp out on this, but still expect me to believe you when you say you would do anything for your family? Does your girlfriend know you're such a wimp? And since when is a feeling like freefall a negative thing for you? Also, you couldn't tell me to my face that you're chicken?
All I have to say now is that you better come up with something awesome to take the place of the plane jumping-falling-landing-splat routine.
If not I'm tellin' Mom.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
The time has come the walrus said...
...to speak of many things. Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax. Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot. And whether pigs have wings. (The Walrus and The Carpenter - Lewis Carroll)
As much fun as it would be to discuss pigs, the state of their wings (or lack of) and the many reasons they may have wings, the time hasn't actually come for that yet. But it has come for Woubie. In our previous blog we posted a screen shot of one section of Woubie. And although it's crystal clear to me, I've been informed by The Walrus that it may be about as clear as mud to the rest of the world. So I'll try to smear away a little of the mud.
The primary purpose of Woubie is to organize data. Not just any ol' data though. Woubie focuses on data that would be stored by writers and comedians. Specifically all of the minute details about facts, characters, locations, bibliography, quotes, jokes and several other things that we like to refer to as Objects. The screen shot we posted was of the Comedy section (or Object). Using Woubie, a comedian can take all of his or her material, store it, assign categories & subcategories (with easy to use drop down lists), sort & filter it, assign duration & ratings, flag whether it's "clean" material of not (i.e. rated XXX or not) and then link multiple jokes together to form a set.
The Walrus just informed me that I'm close to exceeding my word limit for this post. So we're off to have some oysters.
As much fun as it would be to discuss pigs, the state of their wings (or lack of) and the many reasons they may have wings, the time hasn't actually come for that yet. But it has come for Woubie. In our previous blog we posted a screen shot of one section of Woubie. And although it's crystal clear to me, I've been informed by The Walrus that it may be about as clear as mud to the rest of the world. So I'll try to smear away a little of the mud.
The primary purpose of Woubie is to organize data. Not just any ol' data though. Woubie focuses on data that would be stored by writers and comedians. Specifically all of the minute details about facts, characters, locations, bibliography, quotes, jokes and several other things that we like to refer to as Objects. The screen shot we posted was of the Comedy section (or Object). Using Woubie, a comedian can take all of his or her material, store it, assign categories & subcategories (with easy to use drop down lists), sort & filter it, assign duration & ratings, flag whether it's "clean" material of not (i.e. rated XXX or not) and then link multiple jokes together to form a set.
The Walrus just informed me that I'm close to exceeding my word limit for this post. So we're off to have some oysters.
Friday, October 2, 2009
First Official Woubie Announcement
Labor will be induced on October 31st at 9:00pm EST.
Here's the most recent sonogram, in which you can clearly see Woubie's sense of humor:
Here's the most recent sonogram, in which you can clearly see Woubie's sense of humor:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)