This looks extremely cool, but I almost didn't bother to see what it was all about. A couple of suggestions, strickly speaking from my "cold start" (as in, I've never seen this before) experience with the website:
* The term "Demo" lead me to believe I would be logging in to the tool to try it out, which I wasn't really interested in doing. I was pleasently surprised to find a video there. Maybe consider renaming this to "Demo Video", or even better, "Intro Video", which is more descriptive.
* I'd even consider moving that movie to the home page. I'm sure lots of internet radio broadcasters know who Robert Klajn is, but he's completely unfamiliar to me, and it comes across as name dropping right up front. I'd have felt much better seeing the demo video up front.
* Consider adding a "wide" version of the site template for pages that show video and screenshots so that the media can expand beyond the 850-ish pixels you have in the left column. This would be especially impactful for the screenshots, which I found difficult to see at their current size. Ultimately, I discovered that I could click on the photos and view them on Flickr, but it takes a few clicks.
Overall a very cool product that encourages creation.
Note the demo. page includes a link to the actual demo, where one can login & play with the software. I was wielding it a few days ago and it's fantastic :)
As someone who used to be a production director, program director, and DJ on a low-power FM radio station, this looks absolutely awesome!
The way we handled playlists and show airtimes was pretty arcane compared to this. We basically used some custom software I had written for our station which included basic scheduling and whatnot, along with Winamp and good old pen-and-paper (this was from 2003-2008, so pretty recent); this looks better by about 1000x. I'm considering getting back in touch with those guys and suggesting they give it a try (I think it'd be worth installing Ubuntu on their computers just to give this a go).
@bradleyland - thanks for the comments on the site. We've implemented some of those changes already. As @davidandgoliath said, there is a demo on that page - I've removed the video so that's more obvious (and added the video to the initial blogpost).
Encouraged to see the reception here - Airtime is at an exciting and sustained moment of development right now, so plenty more new features in store for the next 12 months, especially with regards to live broadcasting.
4 comments
[ 13.7 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] thread* The term "Demo" lead me to believe I would be logging in to the tool to try it out, which I wasn't really interested in doing. I was pleasently surprised to find a video there. Maybe consider renaming this to "Demo Video", or even better, "Intro Video", which is more descriptive.
* I'd even consider moving that movie to the home page. I'm sure lots of internet radio broadcasters know who Robert Klajn is, but he's completely unfamiliar to me, and it comes across as name dropping right up front. I'd have felt much better seeing the demo video up front.
* Consider adding a "wide" version of the site template for pages that show video and screenshots so that the media can expand beyond the 850-ish pixels you have in the left column. This would be especially impactful for the screenshots, which I found difficult to see at their current size. Ultimately, I discovered that I could click on the photos and view them on Flickr, but it takes a few clicks.
Overall a very cool product that encourages creation.
The way we handled playlists and show airtimes was pretty arcane compared to this. We basically used some custom software I had written for our station which included basic scheduling and whatnot, along with Winamp and good old pen-and-paper (this was from 2003-2008, so pretty recent); this looks better by about 1000x. I'm considering getting back in touch with those guys and suggesting they give it a try (I think it'd be worth installing Ubuntu on their computers just to give this a go).
Encouraged to see the reception here - Airtime is at an exciting and sustained moment of development right now, so plenty more new features in store for the next 12 months, especially with regards to live broadcasting.