Your First Visit - We want to know your first impressions.

So you’re visiting the MindBites sites for the very first time. Please tell us your first impressions! We’ve been looking at this thing change for months, so it’s really valuable to understand how a new visitor responds to the site for the first time. So please just throw down any and all of your first impressions

(hint – you need to “sign up” to be able to post in the community, but don’t worry it only takes 30 seconds or so)

Thanks!!!

Jason

Hello Jason!

Been meaning to share some thoughts but have been too busy/distracted/lazy.

First impression – looks nice, the navigation choices and organization seem good. Maybe a little punch of the 3rd color (like the buttons) could add a touch of energy, but that’s just me nitpicking.

The lessons themselves are great, I’m quite impressed. The production level is just right – good enough to get the ideas across and still retain some amateurish-charm.

Signing up – I wasn’t sure if I had already registered or not. I got a response saying my email or password was wrong, not that I hadn’t signed up. Probably me being stupid, but there are plenty of morons like me out there!

Also, the default volume on the lessons is set to the max, which is extremely loud on my computer. Rather than adjust my computer, it is much easier to adjust the slider on the video, maybe halfway as a default? Dunno, I saw your other post and the audio was low for some, so do whatever works. It was really loud on my laptop as well (PC).

There is some really cool stuff on here, it is nice the see this thing come to life.

I’ll keep playing around. :)

Hi Jason Just spent some time at the site and will be back. love it. thanks for letting me play. I’ve got some feedback about viewing issues and video critique but will put that in different thread. overall very positive experience, homepage is clean, I would like to see a more obvious welcome to new authors at least initially while you are building content – I know there is a section for authors, I haven’t been there yet but from the homepage I’m not recalling that the link shouts out to me “if you want to make a mindbite here is step one, two, three and we will make it so easy and fun you will be a mindbiter author forever” ....

here is a spot I didn’t like:

creating an account -its the gateway to the service but I didn’t like it much, it should be as fun and painless as possible. I felt like I was filling out an annoying form when I would rather feel like I’m joining a cool new venture. I think the sign up process on sites in general is treated as an administrative necessity rather than a positive initiation or welcome for your customer. It was confusing. Why do you need my birthday? (I can guess why but would rather check a box certifying that I am 18 than give out personal information) It feels abrupt and lots of sensitive information is tied to one’s birthdate, and some people are funny about their age. Why do I have to choose a community? I want to be part of lots of communities, I might make a mindbite about novels or playing the cello or my dog or how to protest. Choosing one community feels constricting, plus I didn’t really know what you meant by community and had to go back to the video pages to see some examples. ( I found out later that the community is about my screen name for mindbites. )

more later, thanks! Kala

btw, I love the sidebar where you can request content – would like to see this option in more places. Kala

OK, I love the videos so far. this is feedback about specific videos but speaks to general issues… so I didn’t post it in the review section for the individual videos…

hortencia and visiting a catholic mass – I loved this video, it seems to exemplify the type of thing that can differentiate mindbite – travel advice on a granular level, and she was so authentic it felt a bit like a mini documentary. critique – having said that, it desperately needed editing, nothing fancy visually but just paring down the commentary. I was drumming my fingers. I’m wondering about the tension between people being conditioned to super short videos on the web and the length of these. I understand the difference in what you are doing, just wondering how it will be perceived. Perhaps stress that the 1 minute intros should be as snappy as possible.

straightening hair video – great. well shot and edited. nitpicks: her intro was fun but would be annoying if every mindbite she produces made you go through it. pre-content branding has to be very short. ambient sound distracting. I would have asked them to turn the radio down or mic’ed her more closely. its too long. I didn’t need to see almost every section of her hair straightened to get the idea. how are you dealing with music clearance/ trademark stuff? if you are selling the videos and someone uses a popular song in their intro or in the video how does that work? there is a popular song by the Fray playing in the background the whole time. my daughter loved this one.

OK, thats it for today. thanks Kala

jason- thanks for letting me and donna in the gate early.. nothing like a backstage pass.. i will fiddle around some more, and comment again, but basically i liked the video quality, and the colors and feel of the site seemed ‘legitimate’... i know the topics have only started, but i didn’t find an easy way to search like is very obvious in YouTube, etc… I’ll have more as I look at some more vids.. thx – john w

Hey John! Thanks for the initial feedback. We are all eagerly awaiting a review of the Basic Men’s Clipper Cut video from someone who has seen the “bad” end of the how to!

We will have a standard search bar in the upper right hand corner of the site as you would expect, we just haven’t plopped it in there yet. In the early days though, we will probably emphasize Featured content and the ability to browse by category a little moreso than search since it will be an easier way to sift through our existing content.

Another cool piece of search functionality we will have is that when you search, it will search both existing lessons as well as the Wanted Listings for your topic. Thus, if its not there yet, you can either add your vote to an existing Wanted Listing, or create a new one.

Thanks again for the thoughts! Keep them coming!

This was my first visit, and I am very impressed by the site. I look forward to seeing how it will grow! I have viewed a couple of bites, and I wish there was a way I could download handouts for the lessons. Kudos for all your hard work!

Thanks for the feedback Donna! Welcome to the MindBites community. The functionality for authors to upload and for users to download handouts or attachments to their lessons is coming and should be up sometime in a few weeks.

Jason and Mindbites Team,

The site looks great – and I was quickly pulling down videos (it’s actually funny how excited I was when I saw that I had credits to spend!) Really easy to navigate, explain, etc.

A few comments / thoughts:

- Search: Full text search is going to be key as content grows (you probably have this in your plans, or maybe I just missed it on the site and didn’t look hard enough.

- Community Name: Even though I’ve signed up for my share of social networking and other community sites, it took me 20 seconds of staring at “community name” to figure out that it really meant “user name” that would display on the site. Similar to another post above, I thought it was asking me what community I wanted to be a part of.

- Rating the level of content: Something that might be difficult to do, but could help quality of experience would be to rate content. I.e. is this a basic cooking lesson (for people like me who are a nightmare in the kitchen) or would this help Emeril put some polish on his latest creation? Maybe Basic, Intermediate, Advanced? Just an idea.

Very cool – I’d sign up for email alerts notifying me when new content became available in my areas of interest!

Bryan

Bryan,

Thanks for the feedback. We will be adding full-text search shortly and it will show up in the main navbar on the right when it is there.

Great points about the ‘Community Name’, we may need to take another look at that.

Thanks again for all your thoughts!

This is very cool. The layout…the ease…the attention to detail…all outstanding.

I’m trying to figure out if I want to make a pool bite or a climbing bite

Promoting MindBites … I would like to have a button-type image to put on my personal web page that says “View my videos at MindBites” and then the MindBite.com logo. This would help promote MindBites, and it would make me look more legitimate (since I had VIDEOS) on the web. I can create a button or image myself, but it would be nice to have an “official” button so there would be design consistency. I bet ya’ll have already thought of this!

You bet correct Donna! Thanks for the feedback. Although we hadn’t thought about having a nice logo-ized button, you will be able to easily link to your videos on MindBites. Even cooler though, you will be able to actually embed our player on your site so people can view the preview for your actual lessons. Then after they see your 60 seconds of brilliance, they can click to go directly to your lesson page at MindBites to purchase your lesson. The idea for a button or logo-ized link though is a good one. We’ll throw that in the hopper. All of this functionality falls under the Share moniker and will actually be enabled right in our new slick player and be enabled as we go to our public launch. Thanks for the feedback!

Just found MindBites while surfing and it looks interesting. I’ve signed up and the Welcome page says “Use your free credit to buy a lesson and get a special deal for more”. How do I get a free credit?

Ah, thanks Prairie Pieces, you found a bug. During our private beta period we were giving a free credit upon new registration but we stopped when we opened the site to the public. Looks like we forgot to change our welcome page. As a thanks for finding it, I just put a couple of comp credits in your account. Enjoy and thanks again!

My first impression? Why would I pay $1.69 for something I can probably find for free on YouTube? There are plenty of instructional videos out there. Now, I’ve only watched one preview (for the “How to Act on Camera”) video, but the preview didn’t tell me anything about what would be included in the video itself, and so I wasn’t any more interested in watching the video after the preview than I was before. And although I haven’t searched through your catalog, I’m going to assume that the premise of your site is that the quality of the videos and ease of searching for what you want (vs. YouTube or other free video site) makes them worth $1.69 or more. But at first visit the site is not compelling enough for me to explore to see if I agree. I’ll bookmark your site, and check back later. I wouldn’t bother leaving a comment if I didn’t think the concept was interesting, I’ll just wait until I have more free time to investigate. I couldn’t even be bothered reading the other “first impression” posts—they all looked so long and detailed. But I suppose I’m guilty of that, too. The posts are probably more interesting to the site developers who asked for the feedback than the general public anyway. . .

When I went to you tube to find how to fix a treadmill. All I got was a bunch of people who didn’t even know how to use a treadmill much-less fix one. With Mindbites you get honest people, sharing their knowledge, for people who can use it.

First impression- great concept! Looked at several previews and one technical suggestion: Advise teachers to use (even an inexpensive) remote lavalier microphone (a wired or wireless one that is worn on a blouse or shirt) which will greatly improve audio quality by minimizing the room echoes and ambient noise. One man’s opinion

Great suggestion. Sound is really underappreciated in video production. And an ok wired lav mic does make all the difference in the world and you can get them for around $40 last time I checked.

Guys – sorry to be brutally honest, the concept is interesting, but the execution is poor. Very poor.

To boot, the site is a complete rip-off of http://www.clipgarden.com, which has been in beta for well over a year now. At least those guys have the execution side down, it probably would’ve done you well to “borrow” their messaging too.

Remember, if you’re attempting to sell content, it has to appear to be premium content. The website design & production values don’t reflect a premium brand at all.

Sorry to be harsh, but someone has to say it. Not a big fan of plagiarism. Makes my skin crawl.

~Roger

Thanks for the opinion Roger. Hadn’t come across clipgarden before. We’ve been working on this since late 06 and in beta since early last year as well. Not entirely sure what your plagiarism reference was to though.

It’s like this. I thought of a toilet fan that would take the smell out before it was in the room. Turns out a guy in Australia had the same idea.

This is essentially what I’m looking for. I’m an adult educator (classroom setting) and I’m looking to put my content into video format and distribute it on the web. So, this fits the bill, however while some of the mindbites I see here are intriguing, I have two concerns that I’ve noted already. One, the community/forum isn’t well used, there seems to be a number a postings from summer of 07, then a big hush, a few posts this year, but nothing consisent and current. My second concern is regarding promotion of the content listed here. Once I found this site and saw one of the author’s content ( Laura Berg), I then went back to Google to see if it would take me back to her mindbites content via a search of “teach baby sign language video”. While her youtube video was in the search results, mindbites wasn’t. One thing that would be important to me is the ability of someone to find my content here if they were using a search engine. Everything else fits. Right price, right length content, level of quality I can expect to create making my own videos, etc.

Two great things you bring up NCH. On the first, completely agree that the forums have been underused up until now. Our belief was and is that they will be an active and valuable area for authors and users. It partly seems to be a site design issue in that the forums are a little hard to get to, and in fact we on the team field more questions through the “contact us” feature right now. We are making some designs changes to the community tab to bring the forums out more which should help. The second reason is that right now we don’t have a focused place for authors to go and interact. We are also in the midst of making some changes to this as well. So, you should start to see more activity in here soon.

Second, in terms of promotion. You are exactly right that part of the goal for us is to be the best publishing platform for you as an author to create, sell and promote your expertise across the entire web. A large part of this is SEO or Search Engine Optimization, i.e. how high you end up in searches. Search rankings are dependent on a few things: 1. Keyword relevance, 2. Number of links to your page, 3. Pagerank of your page and the site overall, and 4. the level of competition for that search terms. Laura has done a great job of promoting her lessons and getting links back to them in relevant blogs. We have also worked with her to make her lesson titles and description more keyword rich. Baby sign language is a contested space though, so it will just partly take time. If you look at other more specific terms and niches, authors rankings can be surprisingly good, e.g. How to sew a pillowcase dress, how to embroider a greeting card. So part of the answer is there is no single magic bullet, but the goal is to provide the tools and the systems to allow you to best promote your lesson.

So, we are all dying to hear what you are going to teach!