Loop du Jour

Today's loop celebrates a perennial favorite childhood character: Curious George. The new Curious George movie starts on February 10th.

This loop enables you to meet the characters, view the picture gallery, watch the trailers, download wallpaper, get the video game, and order the soundtrack. Even if you're not into Curious George, it shows how to use FilmLoop as an online marketing tool. You can share this loop by forwarding this URL:

http://snipurl.com/curiousgeorge

Comments

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[tim]

Guy,
In today's business world they are called partnerships, but men have been "partnering" for mutual benefit almost since the beginning of time. If you look to the ancient middle east you'll find "vassal" treaties drawn between two powers - one greater and one lesser - I think you'll find these treaties are much like partnerships in point six of your blog. The greater power always demanded fealty from the lesser and set the terms of the agreement because they had the power to crush the lesser power if there was any opposition. Treaties made for the sake of avoiding extinction never really made things better for the vassal nation. Partnerships based on desperation probably face the same difficulty.

[Dan Keldsen]

Guy - So my apologies... partly.

Looks like I hit a glitch (very slow download of the photos/clips, and my connection is normally quite fast) while poking around, and the loop I had spent the most time with was the Super Bowl Ads loop - which doesn't link straight to a specific clip, but the whole bloomin' collection.

I suppose the advertising goal there was to get the masses to view as many of the ads as possible (serving the advertisers), rather than to link directly to a specific clip that *I* was interested in. It could even be that behind the scenes it's tracking that I did indeed click on the Bud Light commercial, so the advertisers/FilmLoop would know my behavior, but as a user, having to jump through hoops isn't exactly thrilling me. I could've found that content more directly just via Google and Google video.

Always fun to experiment, but I still see no benefit to this to me, only to filmloop and their advertisers - which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but that's the clear mission of this solution, and personally, I bought a TiVo so I could avoid commercials (and time-shift my viewing habits of course), not to then watch them separately on my computer.

I'll stick with HTML, Flash, Shockwave, Javascript, or Java-based, non-intrusive solutions to photo and video sharing.

Best to the crew - good luck. Personally, I'd rather see more money go towards another portfolio company of yours - http://www.hokuscientific.com/ - they seem to have quite a bit more going for them.

Keep up the great pace on the blogging front though - great to see you in this medium! Interactivity and conversation takes it all to a different level.

Dan

[mett]

Can filmloop start running as a screensaver on a desktop?
Could it be a screensaver on a cellphone?

Can it be streamed to my xbox360?

[Robert]

First, I think the name "FilmLoop" is pretty cool. I am guessing "loop" kind of means "network". Haven't you heard the saying "keep me in the loop"?.

I agree that the software isn't GREAT... But I would definitely change my opinion if my family started using it and distributed pictures with it. As a matter of fact... I just might do that. It would be cool to be kept in the "loop".

[Patrick Klatt]

Dan: I have a dispute with your comment and I suspect you may have some faulty settings or hardware as it functions completely fine on my 100% updated winxp Pro machine.
a celeron with 256 mb of ram at that :P
Guy: Question for you though; I know you're well familiar with adobe and I'm curious if filmloop considered using an embedded browser client and why (since I imagine there are more thorough or as equally thorough brains as mine involved)it was decided against? Having a million windows open can be annoying where as multiple tabs in firefox is a lot easier to deal with.

[Dan Kravman]

Guy, you have a great blog and I respect you for that. You are also an accomplished businessman and probably a great VC.

But, I have a bit of advice about FilmLoop:

1. Drop the word 'loop'. What the heck is a loop? Just brainstorm some good names, then ask around which names are good, and choose a good name. A great name is, for example, Google Video.

2. Take a good look at Google Video, at how they do things. The fact that you can see a movie without having to download anything is GREAT!

3. The fact that the Film Loop executable asks so much information (name, age, email, etc) is bad. It's abusive. My instinct is to simply press ESC and forget about it. Or enter fake info - the unpleasantness is there.

4. On Windows, the god damn Loop executable locks when loading! I know you love the Mac, but that's no excuse for distributing a bad Windows application! Just.. I don't know, buy a Windows PC, use it for a month, and then use the Loop executable to see 20 movies. You will see that it behaves badly and as a Windows app it's bad.

I wish you the best of luck with FilmLoop!

[Guy Kawasaki]

Smittie,

I enjoy the banter. It takes my mind off writing the next blog entry. :-)

Guy

[Smittie]

"Closet I can tell is thst Flickr sends 10 images in an RSS feed. Hard to see how a whole soccer team's set of families could share photos with such a limit."

They don't use RSS feeds. Using a web browser isn't the terrible thing that you seem to think it is.

aloha

[Smittie]

So, I'm curious, Guy. Is all this discussion about FilmLoop of any use to you? I know you'd like to convince all of us that FilmLoop is in league with MacPaint, PageMaker and Photoshop. But I'm curious, do you gain any useful knowledge in these discussions?

Aloha

[Smittie]

Yeah, with the exception that FilmLoop doesn't do RSS.

aloha

[Guy Kawasaki]

Smittie,

Closet I can tell is thst Flickr sends 10 images in an RSS feed. Hard to see how a whole soccer team's set of families could share photos with such a limit.

FilmLoop has a limit of 200 per loop. Plus, you can create sub-loops once you use up the 200 limit, so in a sense, the answer for FilmLoop is unlimited.

Guy

[Smittie]

So, just out of curiosity, how many images does FilmLoop push in its RSS feed??

Aloha

[Patrick Klatt]

All I can really say is yahoo has really annoying business practices so if yahoo backs flickr it's already suspect.
http://digitalphotography.weblogsinc.com/2005/08/01/flickr-hack-all-sizes-for-all-pics/
Guy, you mentioned perversion ^
And I had to dig through forums to find this seemingly well-hidden fact. And I quote:
http://flickr.com/forums/ideas/2447/
So the maximum number seems to be either 20 or 10.
Anyone find better info than I did? Research is my specialty but I'm not perfect.
:)

[Smittie]

10. Flickr will push the ten latest images in whatever group, tag collection or whatever.

Aloha

[Guy Kawasaki]

Dan,

PS: Put your cursor over a frame, it will turn yellow. There's a little arrow pointing down. Click on it. Then launch Set Frame Action to point where you'd like people to go when they click on a frame.

Guy

[Guy Kawasaki]

Dan,

Do some research for the group and find out the answer to this question:

What is the maximum number of pictures Flickr will push in an RSS feed?

Thanks,

Guy

[Dan Keldsen]

I'm a Guy Kawasaki fan from a long time back, and I'd have to agree here - a gear has slipped in the Kawasaki machinery. It's recommendations gone wrong...

I'm joining the masses (well, the rest of you) who don't see what the great benefit of FilmLoop is to anyone other than FilmLoop.

Viral marketing is hardly viral if the threshold of infection is a PITA - better execution of the idea is the cure for this virus.

Slow-scrolling, static pictures, that don't even link straight to the clip you're interested in (unless my poking around the interface just hasn't uncovered that), AND it requires a separate client. What's to like?

Flickr and other web-based knockoffs runs circles around FilmLoop.

Maybe I'm just dense - surely there is a reason to be interested in this?

[Emer]

The snipurl link never works for me... I always get a 403 error.

[mikey]

along the lines of raza's post - have you guys played with pandora.com?
apart from being a wonderful music tool (that I have told many many people about), the interface is absolutely fantastic.
you can separate the 'player' from the main webpage by hitting the minimize button.. this in effect creates a small separate window - very similar to the filmloop window. could be an easy way to get more people to use it - rather than having to download & install...
also I think you should turn messages off by default. there's not much more annoying than an application I'm not yet sold on constantly popping up from my task bar to tell me something I don't care about it :)
great ideas smittie!

cheers,
mikey

[smittie]

I don't think the client is the issue. Everyone I know has downloaded Google Earth. That requires a separate client. I use ecto to write my blog entries. That's a client. I'll download and use a client when it does something for me. FilmLoop doesn't do anything for me. It does lots of things for people who want to get their stuff onto my desktop, but at the end of the day, FilmLoop does nothing for me that I can't get more easily, more quickly, more efficiently somewhere else.

Uploading pictures to FilmLoop is equally inefficient. The only place that those pictures can be used is in FilmLoop. Can I have pictures uploaded to FilmLoop show up in my blog? No. Have to use something else for that. Can I share the photos I upload to FilmLoop with my friends? Yes, but only if they can and will use FilmLoop. So now I become FilmLoop's salesman and it is generally a hard sell. The first question most everyone asks is, can't you put them on Flickr? That's a lot easier.

Guy and I have already had a long discussion about this so he's probably going to be unhappy to hear me joining this conversation.

Sorry Guy. I like you. I love your writing. FilmLoop, not so much.

Aloha

[Raza]

Wouldn't it be great if flimloop had worked within browser rather then having to download a complete application ?

Something made in MX Flash ??

It is always a hassle to download and install:)