Updated at 4:11 p.m. PT: A reader says in a comment that the companywide rollout of the new video publishing platform I wrote about earlier, below, has been delayed. My question: Why?Earlier: Eli Lilly and Co. workers paint a possibly record-breaking half-mile mural yesterday, The Indianapolis Star says today. The pharmaceutical giant is based in Indianapolis, where it's a major employer. Photo by Danese Kenon, Star, via Newseum.
The Star also offers video of the event -- part of Gannett's rollout across the company of a new video publishing platform. With that change, bloggers and other online publishers can embed GCI video -- as I've done, below. That's a technology tool I've wanted the company to add to its arsenal. It extends the reach of both video and individual papers, boosting revenue potential from any "pre-roll" paid advertisements appearing with them.
Couple thoughts: Why doesn't the Star's name appear anywhere? (Sheesh: Lilly sure worked its name in, over and over!) What about a byline? And: So annoying! How come the player starts the moment this page loads; why doesn't it allow us to hit the "play'' button first?
It's a well-known Maven bug (the auto-playing on embedded video). Just one of the million things that needs to be worked out...
ReplyDeleteYou did know the roll-out of Maven corporate wide has been indefinitely postponed, right?
Ummmm....if by "bug" you mean something that can be turned off in the backend user interface, then yes, it's a "bug" that causes the autoplay....
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying Maven is great or anything (actually it's quite far from it) but it looks like the folks at indystar.com need to RTFM
Although if you take into account the fact that every time a page loads with embedded video set to autoplay it tracks as a video streamed, well that seems like a pretty swell way to boost those numbers!!!
Hold on tight online ad reps, here comes the rush of all those advertisers just throwing money at you for pre-roll ads!!!
(note: I couldn't even type that without breaking out in laughter)
That auto-play "feature" is annoying, especially now that the entry has rolled below the fold. Just a disembodied voice, talking about god knows what, from god knows where. The first time it started up, I wondered if you had been hacked.
ReplyDelete@4:30 p.m.: Exactly! I hope someone in IT is reading this string -- and can explain why this auto-play flaw was allowed to go through. I never have this problem using YouTube and other players with embeddable software.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhh, the "Microsoft Mindset": It's not a bug or flaw, it's a feature.
ReplyDeleteI kept returning to this page and my computer slowed to a crawl. Finally a warning box came up to the effact that "A flaw in the Adobe Flash script may cause a a slowing of computer processing. Do you want to abort this script?"
ReplyDeleteWhen I did, the video stopped and my computer resumed normal speed.
Maven is an absolute dog - we get daily missives that this or that feature is bjorked, that this bug is being worked on and will be fixed 'in the near future' and so on.
ReplyDeleteThe amount of time and effort expended on this crap is astounding...
The big problem with the player was that it was loading 100+ thumbnails of other videos, pushing papers' home pages to 20 megabytes (yes, mega) in download size.
ReplyDelete