The Mad Video Tool

The tool I would like to review is 'The Mad Video'. The reason this tool appealed to me is because of its simplicity, as well as its ties to video, which are an incredibly powerful median.

I thought the homepage of themadvideo.com was very well designed and user friendly. Being a video support tool, I appreciated that they were on-brand with promoting a video that displays how their tool works, as the main feature on their homepage.

In this day and age, we are so accustomed to seeing pop-ups on YouTube videos. Most of them are purely annoying boxes that block half the screen and are self-promoting asking you to subscribe and like their videos. Very self-serving. And very annoying.

What I like about this tool is that the icons that pop up in the videos are generally smaller, weren't blocking any portion of the actual video, and were offering you more information, insight and links to products and places being featured in the video. This is the first pop-up in videos that I've seen that was actually informative.

Another aspect of the tool which I appreciated was that the pricing offered various, very reasonable options. There is a free option, which is great for anyone looking to test and get their feet wet with the tool. There is a $10/month option which allows slightly more customization, by using your own logos instead of theirs. This is a great branding strategy. And finally, the third option is for $60/month, and this allows you to get accompanying analytics, advanced branding, higher page views, customized tags, SEO and more.

If you were a company that wanted the highest value, and had the funds to do so, the third option seems like the best one. However, if you're just promoting your own personal videos, whether new or experienced in the video-sharing market, there are other options that are more affordable.

The website also provides an FAQ section, a "how this works" section, and has a blog and Tumblr with additional information, tips and tricks.

All in all, I think this is a powerful tool that allows you to have one more way to set yourself apart, add value to your videos and reach a broader audience.

Peter Brown

Playing around with AppMachine

For my blog post this week, I decided to chronicle my adventure trying out AppMachine (while simultaneously creating a supporting text for my in class presentation tomorrow).

I picked AppMachine since the heading Mobile Storytelling Tools was the most attractive to me out of the 'Tools' section and AppMachine was the first tool listed.

Traveling to the AppMachine website, at first glance is seems that the website will be easy to manage. With colorful squared and step by step boxes to fill in, and even a little display of a phone on the right hand side of the screen, it seems that app making will be easier than I thought.

There are even options to upload personal images to your app (I thought "Oh, what a fun way to personalize the app!).

Well. Using AppMachine was, for me, a frustrating experience in creating a mess--at first.

The main issue was: I don't know what I'm doing and the AppMachine interface is not as easy as it first seems. There are almost too many selections that you can make. Without a very clear idea of the end product, you're randomly selecting options you think will end up well together.

Here are some images from within the app:

As you can see, my personal "heading" photos are completely awkward against the background "skin" I selected from AppMachines library. The text placement and color scheme could be improved to make the photo vs. skin separation seem less jarring.

However, overall, I believe that going in with a clear idea of what you want, insofar as text, color scheme, menus and web links are concerned, and some extra time for experimentation, AppMachine would work to create an enhanced ebook app hybrid.

-Jones