30onair is a series of 30 second videos answering “Why Flex?” “Why Flash?” “Why ColdFusion?” and more. These YouTube videos (all with the tag “30onair”) were recorded with a wonderful little video camera called Flip which lets you shoot and post quickly and easily. And, I have a stash of these Flips to give away. Want one? Just tell me what 30 second video clips you’ll record. If you come up with 10 great 30 second clips, I’ll send you a Flip for you to use to record them (and yes, you’ll get to keep it). And it need not be 10 videos of you yourself, you could play cameraman and director and enlist friends and relatives and coworkers. Check out the examples already posted, and then come up with your own list of videos. You can post your list here in the comments, or e-mail them to me directly, and I’ll pick the ones I like best. I will expect you to record and post your suggestions rather quickly, so come up with ideas that are fun, creative, but also practical. Oh, and I don’t have an endless supply of video cameras, and when I run out, so does your chance to win one of these babies. And with that … Lights! Camera! Action!
Want A Flip Video Camera? Tell Me How You'd Fill 30 Seconds
20 responses to “Want A Flip Video Camera? Tell Me How You'd Fill 30 Seconds”
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How about "Why Read Ben Forta’s Blog?"
mp/m -
Here is my 30 second ad:
Scene – Big conference room, programmers (casual) and managers (suits) seated and standing. Charts on the screen showing down arrows. Large glass windows looking out on a stormy sky
Head Manager – "We need to improve our web presence, make it more interactive, easier for our customers to use, and more likely to generate sales. We need to move quickly to get ahead of our competitors and we need to get it right the first time. "
(Head Manger looks around the room)
Head Manager – "Robert, your our Java expert, if we use Java on the backend and AJAX on the front, what’s a ballpark for our development time? "
Robert – pained look (like he needs to go to the bathroom bad but can’t leave the meeting) – "Umm, that’s a tough question, our J2EE setup is complex, maybe 6 months to a year, but that is umm just a guess."
Head Manager – (shakes his head, looks disgusted) "We don’t have that much time to turn this around." (Looks over everyone again) "John, what if we switched to .Net on the backend, and went with Flex, the Web interface programming language from Adobe for the frontend. How long until we can get a new and better website for our customers?"
John – (wearing cool glasses and looking enthusiastic) – "Wow, Flex, is great and Adobe is a leader in web development. Other companies are rolling out new websites designed using Flex. Users report these sites are better, more interactive. Also Flex sites are shown to improve sales and attract new customers. But .Net on the backend? I don’t know; .Net and Flex work together but it’s not as easy as we’d like."
Head Manager – "Yes, we’ve had good reports about Flex and Adobe’s rock solid. But what can we do on the backend to connect to our databases, process all the data, maintain security, and improve speed? What other choices are there?"
(Quiet in the room for a few seconds).
Hot, but professional looking blonde female – stands up (all eyes turn to her): "What about ColdFusion? It’s a great web programming language, it is also made by Adobe and works very well with Flex. It’s easy to learn and proven to help people develop great websites quickly. Flex even has built in wizards that generate the ColdFusion code we’d need. Instead of six months using some other technology, we could have our new website ready in six weeks using Flex and ColdFusion together."
Head Manager – (Big Smile – sky starts to clear up outside the windows) – "Yes! ColdFusion and Flex both from Adobe. Diana, you’re on to something." (Everybody in the room gets excited and starts talking.)
(Pull back shot, beautiful sunshine, bright sky outside) – Voice Over “Flex and ColdFusion made by Adobe –Bring Your Company’s Website into the Future.â€
Fade in rapid changing screen shots of company’s new Flex website and charts showing increased customers, increased sales. -
Hi Ben,
I think it would be cool to have a series of clips where people(developers) are describing things that they hate about the modern website design and development and as they are talking – there is a screencast of someone solving that problem with flash, flex or air….
For example – "I hate styling websites and trying to get them to work in three different browsers!…etc"
Screencast: Someone is styling a flex component with css – it’s then published and shown in firefox, ie, and safari…
VIdeo ends with the logo and the product used to solve that problem…
I can think of 20 things that flash, flex, air and coldfusion take care of right off of the top of my head…easy. -
Bruce, not a bad idea for an ad, but not quite in style with the series which are less *ads* and more snippets. Check out the current posts for ideas.
Paul, you’re on to something – run with that idea, and figure out the products associated with each.
Oh, and I have already given away one of the Flips to someone who e-mailed me this morning with 10 really slick ideas!
— Ben -
Here’s mine:
"Why ColdFusion? Because the Internet is so fast paced that you can’t afford not to use it. ColdFusion lets you rapidly create powerful, dynamic web applications so you can keep up with your competition. With built-in tools that are very easy to learn and master, you can quickly do things like build charts and graphs; manipulate images; produce PDFs from HTML; generate interactive ajax components; create intuitive user-friendly forms; and many more innovative features, ColdFusion truly stands out in the crowd of Internet application platforms." -
I’d do ten 30 seconds clips of chronicling the recovery period of my Lab recovery from Bilateral TTA surgery in both of her rear hind legs. It’s a lengthy 6 week recovery period. I’d show off some of the physical therapy and show the progress as her legs heal. She’s just begun the process and is just into week 1 and she’s trying to recover from infections in both rear legs.
I figure that could be interesting to people considering having their pets undergo the surgery. -
I’ll be at 360Flex next week where I’ll interview many many people on "Why Flex?" "Why Flash?" "Why ColdFusion".
Once I get back, I’ll cull out the best 10 responses and post them to YouTube!
DW -
Jake, great, now 9 more. 🙂
Dan G, would probably be interesting, but the subject is a little out of scope I think. 😉
— Ben -
I think you keep it simple. Go after the competitors which is why I like CF.
After learning ASP.net and PHP including looking at silverlight, etc. all you need to do is show someone trying to write ADO.net code to connect to a database. Jeez what a pain in the butt.
Sure, datagrids in .net are cool, but once you try and do something more coplicated it quickly turns into a mess. Show a guy trying to search the messageboards for example .net code. What version 1.1, 2.0, 3.5? c#, vb, j#? code behind? holly crap .net is maddening to try and learn, especially from a non-programmer background. CF makes good sense to designers who need to be eased into coding, but powerfull enough for experienced programmers to do anything that needs to be done. Show that.
Show visual studio eating all your memory and killing your laptop.
Show a sample error message from vb.net application, it tells you nothing unless you work at MS.
Show code to send an email in CF, then show code in .NET. wow!
Show a reference book/chart for .net then one for CF.
The background music could be heavy metal/trash speed metal for .NET and classical / new age music for CF.
I’ve used them both and find CF much more enjoyalbe to code with. -
My video would chronicle my weight loss from my current 250 pounds down to my goal weight of 175. Each segment would include me talking about my journey and how I’m getting there and then how much I’ve lost. Maybe, just maybe it will motivate someone else to lose weight.
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Christof, that can work. You’ll need to figure out how to make each 30 second segment stand on its own two feet, as they may not be seen sequentially. Figure out exactly what each segment contains and you make get camera #5.
Julie, while I am sure that your suggestion could indeed motivate others, it’s rather out of the scope of this project. Look at the linked examples for a better idea of what the desired content is.
— Ben -
I have two promotion ideas:
1) Maybe you could suggest that Adobe put their flagship server product on the front page of the downloads section??
2) Maybe you could do a promo on the new Coldfusion IDE from Adobe! 😉
Forget what it does, look at Apple Macs, they have less features than a PC, but are ‘COOLER’, it’s not about features it’s about WOW factor…
How about an animation? Coldfusion gives you wings! -
Oh also:
Mention that ColdFusion uses ExtJS… then it’s instantly cool…
Do a spot on cfajaxproxy, ajax interaction in one line of code -
hi Ben…I just emailed you my 10 wacky ideas. thanks for your consideration!
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Okay, I thought this would be fun. However, the more commercials I came up with, the more they went in the gutter… so I stopped at five. If you want more ideas… BEWARE!
:30 Commercial One – Flex Rocks
I’d shoot for the younger generation and start off with a shot of my 9 year old playing Guitar Hero III. He’d totally rock out and then say, "Think that’s cool? I really rock on Flex!"
Then we’d show the Flex app he’s building for Guitar Hero cheat codes.
Ending slate:
YOU ROCK FLEX!
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:30 Commercial Two – Kid’s Play
Video of:
Three kids in my neighborhood riding their scooters. Ages: 9, 5 and 3
Script:
First Kid (5 year old): Dude, how’s the cheat codes site coming?
Second Kid (9 year old): Man, it totally rocks. I’m using the Flex Builder 3 beta and it is so cool.
Third Kid (3 year old): What’s Flex?
—-Everybody stops riding their scooters—-
First Kid: Dude, where have you been? Flex is just like the most awesome IDE for creating Rich Internet Application out there.
Second Kid: Yeah dude, it’s in the mxml language and like compiles in flash so it’s totally cross browser compatible.
Third Kid (the three year old): So, it’s a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications that enables you to create expressive, high-performance applications that run identically on all major browsers and operating systems. Why didn’t you say so?
—all kids get back on their scooters and ride off—–
SLATE: Just Flex it!
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:30 Commercial Three – Coming of Age
Shot of an 80 year old man
"Hi, I’m Fortran"
Shot of three 60 year olds
"I’m Cobol" "I’m Basic" "I’m C"
Shots of various aged people >40
"I’m Perl", "I’m Java", "I’m Php"
Shots of people >20
"C++ here", "I’m Ruby"
Shots of a cool kids
"Hi, I’m Actionscript"
"I’m MXML"
"And I’m Coldfusion – we’re the next generation!"
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:30 Commercial 4 – Flex Workout
At the gym
Totally buff dude doing his workout – the sweat pouring off his ‘flexed’ muscles
Two women in the corner observing buff dude having discreet conversation
First woman, "Oh my God, I’ve never seen anyone flex like that."
Second woman, "It’s incredible."
More shots of sweaty buffy dude doing his workout
First woman, "I wish I could Flex like that."
Buff dude leans down to the workbench and camera zooms in to flex builder 2
Second woman voiceover: "Did you see the backend on that?"
Big slate: Just FLEX it!
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:30 Commercial Five – Shop Talk
At the beauty salon
Shot of pretty red toenails
Owner of pretty red toenails gossips: "I love Adobe."
Manicurist pops her gum and says, "What?"
Woman with pretty toenails: "I love Adobe.â€
Manicurist: “Why?â€
Pretty Toenails woman: “They have this new program … it’s called Flex Builder 2. It’s like this rich internet application development environment thingee.â€
Manicurist crinkles her nose and says, “What’s that mean?â€
Woman with pretty toenails: “What it means is I haven’t seen my husband Frank since he bought it.â€
Manicurist pops her gum.
Everyone in shop looks around at woman with pretty red toenails.
Woman yells across the room, “What’s that program called?†-
1. Why ColdFusion for Personal Use
2. How Flex can help your company
3. How Flash is easy to learn
4. How ColdFusion can make an easy to manage photo gallery
5. How Flex can make your site pop
6. ColdFusion Flex and user interaction
7. Flash for ad banners
8. ColdFusion 8 and it’s new features
9. ColdFusion on the cheap
10. ColdFusion is easy to learn -
I would just like to do 10 random clips of wither Flash developers at work, or of the L.A. Flash group I attend. Just to give a good cross-section of candid people using and enjoying adobe products in real life, and not some cheesy setup scene. 😉
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1. I would show ColdFusion saving someone from being run over by a car.
2. ColdFusion slowly but surely eating away at the issue of world hunger.
3. ColdFusion talking someone down from suicide, making them realize that life with ColdFusion is actually worth living.
4. ColdFusion helping an elderly couple realize that they still love each other and should stay together. For their last 6 months of life on Earth.
5. ColdFusion helping to automate the changing a baby’s diaper, and/or the making of a baby.
6. ColdFusion walking 10 dogs at once while delivering newspapers and teaching kids about drug resistance.
7. ColdFusion pointing out about 30 of the flaws in OS X and admonishing it to aspire to follow its example and be a better product.
8. ColdFusion macking on 4 hot ladies, PHP sitting in the corner with a Wold of Warcraft guidebook picking its nose bragging to .NET about an online ‘raid’.
9. ColdFusion coming up with a quick cure for Cancer, then discovering it won’t actually work, then shrugging its shoulders and saying, "Next version; definitely by the next version."
10. ColdFusion’s walking down a dark alley. PHP, .NET, and server-side Javascript (or maybe Jaxter) jump out of nowhere and start heckling ColdFusion.
PHP: "You can get the same work that takes us hours done in 2 minutes."
Jaxter: "You make difficult tasks like Web services and mulit-channel distribution instant and natural."
.NET: "My wife says she wishes you were her boyfriend…"
Then they start physically attacking ColdFusion, gang-initiation style. Then ColdFusion beats the hell out of each and every one of them WITH intermingled verbal abuse Vanilla Ice style (see Cool as Ice http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101615/).
These 10 idea will convert more users to ColdFusion than 8,000 hours of legitimate, example-based evangelism. -
At my work it is a constant battle between the JAVA developers and the ColdFusion Developers. That is until you have to connect to a webservice and parse XML, then the JAVA people start running around adding in classes and libraries while I finish the project….and they haven’t even started yet.
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Hi
Is this still going on? I’m looking for a Flip to record the interesting people who drop by Bondi Beach. We get ’em all, from Borat and Paris Hilton and Mr Bean to the Socceroos and the Indian cricketers.
http://www.lushonbondi.blogspot.com
I’d be happy to buy one but I can’t find them anywhere in Australia.
Look forward to hearing from you. Cheers, Stevo
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