Carsonified

The votes have been counted, and the results have just been announced at FOWA Miami. Gmail was top of the list in our recent Web App Charts survey. Find out the top ten, as voted for by over 3,000 passionate web users, at webappcharts.com

Holy crap! There’s already a ton of interestingness happening at FOWA. FOWA Miami Flickr group, Photos tagged with ‘fowa’ and Tweets about FOWA.

skinnyCorp (the company behind communities such as Threadless) is a massively successful company that just oozes coolness - here’s a film from Frank Gruber inside the Threadless office.

If you would like to spread the word about something you’re doing, YouTube is an amazing resource that you can’t afford to ignore. Here’s a quick story to demonstrate this:

I wanted to offer folks a few tips on starting a business, while also raising awareness of our new Start-up Clinic workshop.

I spent about one hour putting together a rough script, about two hours filming and three hours editing. The result was my How to Build a Start-up video which has been viewed over 10,300 times. Not bad for six hours work!

Here are a couple things I learned from this:

Simple editing makes a huge difference

I used iMovie ‘08 to add a simple intro, music and transitions. It adds credibility to the movie and makes it more fun to watch.

The content is everything

Make sure you have something valuable to say, before you hit the record button. No matter how slick the editing is, if you what you’re offering is of no value, people won’t view it or link to it.

Use variety

The first half of the video is me teaching in front of a blackboard, the second half is a simple screencast. It gives the video more substance and interest which means viewers get more value.

Focus on YouTube

I’d rather use Vimeo because it’s beautiful, but the truth is there’s a lot more people on YouTube. If you compare 90 views on Vimeo to 10,367 on YouTube there’s just no comparison.

Get a mic

Next time, I’ll spend a few bucks on a cheap lapel mic so the sound is clearer. However, if you’d like to get started today, just do it. No need for a mic initially.

Use Mousepose

When I did the screencast section, I used a simple tool called Mousepose.

If you’re showing people your screen, they obviously can’t see where you’re pointing ;) so you need a simple way to highlight areas of the screen. If you’re not on a Mac, Dragnifier does roughly the same thing.

Let Twitter know

I used Twitter to spread the word by letting people know I had posted the video. I don’t know exactly how many views this generated but I’m sure it helped.

Share your stories

That’s it - if you’ve had success with video on YouTube, please share any tips you’ve learned.

We’re looking for a tremendously talented web designer who is passionate about Web Standards, accessibility, blogging and beautiful hand-coded CSS and XHTML (print design experience is also a bonus).

We work a 4-day week, give you 35 days holiday, and supply you with great gear (iPhone, 23″ Cinema Display, MacBook Pro and Aeron Chair). One of your first jobs will be do re-design Vitamin :) Please note that you’ll need to work from our nice new office in Bath, UK.

You can apply today. Move fast as the job will probably get filled quite quickly.

The entrepreneurial bug has bitten Elliot and he’s decided to brave the wild and start his own design firm. We’re so excited for him and we know he’ll kick ass :)

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Please note the following prefixes for todays live tweeting experiment. Follow the action here.

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