Entries For: April 2007

Joy Nash Rocks Our Socks

Liz Miller
Posted April 30, 2007

In case you missed her appearance on the TDR Top Ten, please know that Joy Nash is awesome. And we're not just saying that because she dropped by the office this afternoon with chocolate and sangria. Though she did drop by with chocolate and sangria, so we're tremendously fond of her at the moment.

Joy's Fat Rant is one of those cool breakout videos that inspires a lot of discussion; check out the YouTube responses if you don't believe me. She's also got a fierce Myspace presence. Let's be clear -- this lady is going places. And you saw her here first! Well, hopefully.

Widgetifying

Spencer Somers
Posted April 24, 2007

So, dear readers, The Daily Reel has introduced a way to put our remarkably well-picked videos right on your blog or web page, with the help of this awesome widget.

The widget is currently being featured on Steve Bryant's ReelPopBlog, as well as Mark Netter's Nettertainment, if you want to see it in action. We're all pretty excited about this here. Honestly, this is the biggest thing to happen to our Top Ten in a long while. We've been wanting to promote these new talented online filmmakers with as broad of a reach as possible. This cool little widget definitely increases our wingspan, and theirs.

Where can you put our super cool widget? Myspace, Blogger, Friendster. This scrolling widget fits nicely into sidebars. Just customize the border color to match you blog and then pull the html or Blogger code for your style sheet. If you are looking for a way to snazz up your Friendster or MySpace profile, you can add the Daily Reel widget by selecting the site icons. SpringWidgets will place the Top Ten widget on your profile for you. No effort involved. Not into social networking? It’s easy to add our widget to a Google Reader near you.

Get this widget!

It's Like a Series of Tubes

Felicia Williams
Posted April 20, 2007

What's the point of having great content, if you can never find it? Recently, The Daily Reel made the effort to not only organize our content, but also make it easier for you to find the best stuff.

In the “viral” world of web video, some trendy videos come and go, but our handpicked videos are timeless. A funny sketch or an informative documentary will always be good, regardless of when we first featured it. So we broke it down to make things a whole lot easier for you, the web video lover.

The way I see it, this new archive functionality is sort of like a “series of tubes.” We, at the Daily Reel, have a “vast amount of information” from all over the Internet. "And the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”

Basically, we took our enormous amount of quality content and built a brand new sewer system with bigger, stronger tubes. Every video has Related Content that was personally selected to match that video. If you watch a spectacular hand-drawn animation, three more just like it should pop up on the page. Also, the archives have been broken down into sections (comedy, drama, music video, animation, documentary, experimental, and politics) and each section can be browsed by user-rating, recent features, or Editorial favorites. So check it out, and leave an M&M trail so you don't get lost!

How We Listen

Liz Miller
Posted April 17, 2007

Perhaps in some offices, headphones are forbidden -- it's an indication, after all, that you might be goofing off on YouTube instead of doing real and productive work. Here at TDR, though, goofing off on YouTube is real and productive work, and headphones are an essential tool of the trade. Imagine, after all, an office of ten employees rocking out to ten different online videos at once. Chaos and anarchy would reign.

Everyone uses their own personal headphones, and I suppose that if you spend a lot of time thinking in metaphors, they become a pretty good indicator of personality. Felicia's headphones are too cool for school, after all, collapsing for storage into a tiny space capsule case. Spencer favors sleek black ninja earbuds, so it's impossible to tell from across the office if he's absorbed in quality video or if he's just ignoring you. Alex doesn't like headphones, but when necessary she begrudgingly straps on a solid plush padded set -- the kind you can't help call "cans."


Alex, On Her Cans

Currently I rely on a battered set of iPod earbuds, which manage to be comfortable even after a ten hour day. But today, I have forgotten my headphones. This means that if I don't borrow Alex's cans, I'm in danger of revealing things about my iTunes library I REALLY don't want to reveal. (That Best of Styx collection was a GIFT, okay?)

But on the plus side, Alex's headphones are huge. So from fifty feet away, you can tell that I'm working hard.

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