The Simian Downtime Analyst

Indeed.

More and more television networks are having a harder time getting people to watch their shows.  Coupling this with the fact that there are many facets for the same data online, they are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to the attention of the average viewer.

A quick tip:

If people are actually watching your news show, don’t tell them to go check it out on your website. Your staff  are basically asserting that they are middlemen and therefore unnecessary.  Say it enough times during your scripted shows and people dump their cable/satellite service to stream online instead.

We know the internet exists and that you have stuff there, but don’t send us away during the little bit of time left you have to keep us tuned into your scheduled programming in the era of increasingly available on-demand.

It is understandable that you want people to consume your content and then share it with all their friends.  It is also quite considerate of you to try your best to make the process easier, by adding sharing methods directly to your content. The “social” toolbars that are showing up with great frequency lately however, may not be the best route to take to accomplish this.

Many of these toolbars are full of chunky code and just make a decent number of visitors  leave the site before it finishes loading.  Many of these toolbars are, for lack of better expression, butt ugly and completely clash with the design of your site. The worst offenders actually load in front of your content, preventing users from reading what they came to see.

To be honest, once one of those things pops up on my screen, I’m pretty much done. Your content can be FANTASTIC, but I hate the “social” toolbars with a passion.  If you added one of those atrocities to your site for a mainstream visitor, you probably could have just added a small “Add to Facebook/Email” link somewhere.

It is much worse when the content is geared toward more of the tech savvy/extra geeky crowd. Probably 80-90% of us have a stack of sharing bookmarklets we can navigate in our sleep.

The toolbars scream desperation, and that is just not attractive.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I have played video games religiously for years.  Any console that has come out since I was born (and one which was released right before), I have spent some quality time with one of its controllers in my hand. The funniest bit about all this gaming, is that up until the expansion of gameplay, I have been a pretty terrible player.  In the side scroller days I was doomed to not only just donating quarters to the cause, but I am also well aware of just how every one of those villains had that cackle when you fell off the cliff.

I can’t jump worth a damn.

When it was just two buttons which were either run and jump or jump and fire, I never mastered the art of jumping. Hand me a controller now with 20 buttons and say go slaughter those zombies/villains over there and I’m good as long as I don’t have to jump stones across a creek or something.  Complex puzzles are cake, but if I have to get on that ledge that is just a little too high for me to grab, you might as well get comfortable.

I did thoroughly enjoy playing the older games.  As much as I dig them don’t think I ever completely finished the things on my own, I would always hand my brother the controller and say “jump a few times, give it back”.  I also did the same for games where there was driving, but it was not the primary aspect of the game because the interface was always clunky.

Seeing the promos for the Prince of Persia movie brought this to mind since I have played every single one of those games, but the endeavors always end in a string of profanity and occasionally a smashed controller.  I am just glad games have opened up to where being able to jump without plummeting to your death is not mandatory and I can just enjoy taking out a bunch of pixel creatures or explore a vivid fantasy world with a shotgun/sword instead.

Because it would be hilarious.

Not too long ago I would have described myself as what is affectionately called an early adopter. Very little made my day more than having a nice new service or piece of software to play with before anyone else.  I thoroughly enjoyed having stacks of beta invites in my inbox just itching to be clicked and consumed.  It was a glorious time, and there was very little better than showing off my new toys to my friends.

Even when I was knee deep in newness, at some point it became taxing to keep starting over. Once where I was overjoyed to build something new, it felt like a chore.  More often than not it was beginning to work my nerves to keep having to enter in my birthdate for all the profiles that would soon lead to nowhere. To combat this, many of the developers caught on to the annoyance and found ways to use existing services for login purposes.  At that point it was already too late.

I must either be getting old or I have just found a set of tools that work great for my needs. I don’t go out of my way asking for invites to things and half the time ignore the ones I already  have.  I do not want to use this thing over here that looks just like this other thing, which isn’t broken and does not need to be replaced.  I do not want to have to invite my friends to something else when I can already keep up with them in 90 other places.

I do not want green eggs and ham.

There are plenty of folks left in the world who are still chasing that “Ooh Shiny” high, and they can have at it. The downside of the trend is that at some point when the shimmer starts to wear off, some of them treat the people that remain in the communities built like they are flaming dog crap on the front porch. Unfortunately, most of the time this is not even intentional and even the early adopters themselves are beginning to splinter off into smaller groups over it.

Choosing the tools over the people is always going to cause more problems than it is worth. Following around some random guy you never met on the quest for the technological equivalent of a sugar high is not good for you either. I am sure there is some middle ground where you can appreciate the aspects of both can be reached.

Starting off the month drawing a complete blank for an entry.

So I’m just going to play Tiger instead.