Fun and Fail
I was just looking at a federal internship program just now for my new firm, tMedia. With the right program, we’d be able to help a student get a headstart in the emerging media space in return for 75% of their wages covered by the government.
But, as usual with many federal government web sites, the layers of redundant clicks and processes is mind-boggling.
Check out what happens when you try to apply for the program.
Step One
- Click the “Application Form” link.
- Gives you the choice of downloading a PDF form, another PDF that’s a “guide” to the form, and seeing an HTML page with locations of where to send the form. (Okay, first… PDF forms?! Still?! You know, web pages can handle forms on their own. And how about putting all that info in a single document?)
Step Two
- I select the “Form” link, and you get a page with a single link on it: “Request this document.” Well, that’s what I was doing when I clicked on the link!! It’s like every time you click a result link in Google, it gives you an intermediate page with just a link on it that says “Go to this site.” Well, duh!
- I clicked the link and did I get the form? There’s no way to download the form — you have to give them your email address.
Step Three
- This is where it gets absolutely stupid. The feds then send this email: “Confirmation of receipt. Thank you for submitting a document request. We would like to confirm that we have received your request. The document you have requested will be sent in a separate message to this e-mail address shortly.”
- Then, literally one second later, they send the document in a separate email.
I tried to link to these pages directly, but the site prevented me from doing that.
Honestly, are the programmers there trained at some other school? Only on government web sites do I see this kind of nonsensical user-interface insanity.
Am I missing something?
A brief detour from social media strategies for a moment…. I wanted to update you on something I’ve launched (well, re-launched, really) that I’m pretty excited about.
Back in 2006, I had one of the most popular podcasts on the Internet — the How To Do Stuff podcast. I always tried to make it a quirky, entertaining, and informative how-to series on all sorts of random things. Things you wouldn’t hear or read about on any of the many how-to sites out there.
The podcast came to an abrupt halt in September 2006 when I became ill. Well, I figured, now is the time to re-start it! And so HowToDoStuffPodcast.com is back up and running! New episodes will come every few days. So far, here’s what’s on the site:
I hope you’ll visit, listen to a few, and share the word about it. If you have a Twitter account, you can use something like this:
Tod Maffin’s quirky, entertaining, informative podcast is back! http://HowToDoStuffPodcast.com
If you’d like to receive an email each time a new episode/post is published, you can sign up here.
I presented my “What It Is: Awesomizing Your Podcast Using Secrets From Radio” workshop this past weekend at Northern Voice, Vancouver’s annual blogging conference. (I’ll be presenting it again on June 20th at Podcasters Across Borders in Ottawa.)
The basics of the presentation focused on what “it” was — you know, that little something, that thing on the end of your tongue, that makes you know if you like a radio piece or personality or if you don’t. We all know if a host has It, but I tried to outline exactly what It was so one could duplicate it. Here is how I defined It:
- It is intimate. You are speaking directly into someone’s ears — even more so when they’re using earbuds… you can whisper to them. Radio listening is almost always done today by one person at a time; families don’t gather around the radio any more. And yet so many podcast hosts talk as if they’re speaking to a room — they use a hyped voice, or they call their audience “everyone.” Remember, you are only speaking to one person. There may be thousands of these one-person audiences, but aim to speak to just one.
- It breathes. One big mistake that many beginning podcasters, radio reporters, or audio editors make is they edit out the um’s and ah’s, and the long reflective breaths that sometimes inteview guests make. Unless they are completely distracting, you should aim to leave breath in. Breath is emotional punctuation. It gives richness to the words being spoken. One long, thoughtful breath taken before answering a tough question can say so much more than just the answer.
- It seeks the Universal Truth. The great radio shows, like This American Life, are always seeking a Universal Truth in their stories. It’s not enough to report the flow of what happened — try to find out why it happened and what your characters learned from it. In short, great stories give us pause for reflection. Great storytellers draw out those moments of reflection and give us the space to reflect.
- It takes time. It’s said that the best portrait photographers throw away the first few rolls of film they’ve shot with the subject. Why? Because in those first minutes, the subject isn’t as relaxed or comfortable with the photographer, so they appear stiff and uneasy. The documentary filmmaker Errol Morris is famous for interviewing people for hours at length, even if he’s only going to use a short clip, because he knows the longer one stays with a person, the more comfortable they’ll feel, the more they’ll tell you, and so on.
- It is everywhere. Always take your digital recorder with you, because amazing audio will happen when you least expect it. Even if you’ve got a podcast coming up but no ideas on what to talk about, just look around, take in your surroundings, examine the patterns you do each day. Content is everywhere if you know how to find it.
- It does not abuse music. Great music under a podcast should sound like the scoring of a film — like harmony to the melody of the words. Avoid recognizable songs because your listeners’ mind will be transported from your narrative directly into whatever memories those lyrics evoke. Avoid songs with words that “comment on” what you just said — for instance, don’t play “Life Is a Highway” just because you finished talking about hitchhiking. It’s predictable and a cliché.
- It is phony. Realize that the best storytelling employs a lot of tools to make the a podcast or radio story really come alive. It’s okay to add a pause where an interview guest thinks. It’s okay to “act” while reading a script — in fact, it’s very much your job to make that script come alive.
Rob Cottingham, who pens the hilarious Noise to Signal cartoon, was in the audience of my session and did up this great cartoon summary of my points:
You can watch this video if you like. It’s only about a minute long.
Sometimes I really don’t understand airp0rt security. I’ve been having boarding passes sent to my iPhone for a few months now and generally love it. I tend to lose anything in my pockets.
It struck me recently, that the screen you show to the security people when getting your carry-0n bags screened is pretty easily faked. You just need any barcode and you can type in the info you need below it. This would be about a 30-second job in Photoshop.
Save it to your cellphone and bingo — you’re into the “security” area.
Why would this work? Because the person checking boarding passes to get you to the x-ray lineup doesn’t actually scan anything. They just eyeball it — they’re looking to make sure you’re flying on that date, and they wave you in.
Of course, once you’re about to b0ard, they scan it and will figure out pretty quick that you’re using a fake screen.
But that could still get someone dangerous into what’s supposed to be a very secure area.
Is this something that hasn’t crossed their minds?
