Seth Kenvin's dashboard

We pushed a new release of software code on Nov 4 '09.

A lot of the work was infrastructural. This includes revision / consolidation of our use of Javascript to just what's essential. For users this means that a lot of features should run more swiftly (ex: make a bunch of Tasks in that module & then drag them up & down the list), and there should be fewer slow-script warnings, which have been especially hitting users of Internet Explorer. We still expect that Firefox, Chrome and Safari are browsers that will provide better usage experiences, but IE is no longer as much a poor stepchild as it had been.

Another infrastructural change has been increasing the amount of available server resources and dynamically directing traffic among them. This makes our availability more robust, flexible and scalable. Ongoing increases to capacity can be done rapidly, and before long probably automatically (meaning as soon as usage hits a level at which more servers would be better for user experiences, those new servers could come on immediately).

Feature wise, we have one, very cool, new area of functionality. When scheduling events, there is now a visual depiction of who's available when and whether other people's existing appointments are in the video.Market7 project being considered, or in some other project. We also have determined how we'll be able to extend this to the rest of people's calendars, so that if someone gives our application permission, it would be able to check out & indicate when person's available based on that too, and Market7 events could be scheduled with total optimization for times people are available. Here's a demo of the scheduling work we've done so far: http://bit.ly/4A0tMl

Blog post on our most recent software release including screen capture demos: http://bit.ly/4o2yrB

Our current emphasis is largely towards making Market7 a top-tier service for file management within the context of it being a specific solutoin for collaborative video production.

o We have recently enhanced our activity feed, largely for people to keep track of what files & shared document updates are made in projects, and who's looking at, commenting about and modifying those files & documents. Most recent advances on this are largely in ability to automatically stay abreast of such activities by email subscription.

o Content within projects can now be organized by file folders. In order to minimize disruption of usage, by default all folders are open, so just like it's always been when someone navigates to the File Management module all content initially shows, but the folders are also immediately visible and can be clicked to filter down to certain sets / sub-sets of content.

o There have been some recent, documented challenges in Flash-based upload functionality that we and others use. We have witnessed uploads not completing especially for files that exceed 1GB size and especially when the operating system of the uploading computer is Mac. We are working to improve this situation but in meantime we've created an "alternative uploader" that can be accessed from the bottom of the upload window. It has some but not all of our Flash upload functionality, in particular only one file can be uploaded at a time.

o Project-owners can now edit or delete other people's comments in the Annotative Player.

Again, see more about these + screen-cap demos of the activity feed subscription & folder organization in particular at: http://bit.ly/4o2yrB

As mentioned, ongoing enhancement to files will remain a major component of our work over coming weeks & months, but there are also enhancements to Player, Script etc. we've got scheduled. As the new-release blog post indicates, user feedback was major in influencing what we just pushed, GetSatisfaction is a significant forum for that, so please keep the suggestions, questions (, complaints) etc. coming -- it's vital for prioritizing among the many ideas we have about how to enhance video.Market7.

We're busy guys. And generally productive too. Sometimes we get a lot of work done, but it's all kind of under the hood, so it can be hard to really show it off. Right now it's the opposite. In just the last couple of weeks we've come up with significant new user functionality in three areas:

o New styling, organization and reporting in the activity feed accessible from any project's home page to stay up to date on what everyone's doing in the project. This includes filters and module-specific reports to monitor exactly what sort of activity is of interest

o Mouse over any thumbnail or video still image, in the activity feed, the main file listing pages or the media column of a script, and rapidly see a high quality magnification with data about the item (ex: when uploaded, by whom, how large)

o Events module includes a three month calendar view to quickly survey the whole schedule for a project including highlighting of which dates involve events for the person logged in / which ones don't and one-click access to the specific page for any event directly from that calendar

It's especially fun to release so much user facing functionality, and it's important to highlight the importance of this GetSatisfaction forum to that. Please suggest ideas, ask questions, report problems etc. -- understanding your experience with video.Market7 is crucial for our being able to best enhance it.

This blog post includes Shannon demonstrating these new features: http://tinyurl.com/m7sep19rel

After intense focus for a period on development of Resource Management as an entirely new module, we’ve dedicated the last several weeks to fixing bugs, sprucing up a few features, and improving performance throughout video.Market7. This includes fulfillment of a number of requests that have been made on our Get Satisfaction site, so please keep up the questions and comments there. We hope users are generally noticing quicker performance, fewer errors and clearer feature usage. Here’s some of what we’ve done lately:

o Enhancements to layout and presentation of data in new Resource Management module
o Inclusion of resource management data on the cross-project dashboard
o Ability for certain accounts to block content downloads — please let us know if you’d like us to turn this on for your account, although some of the work we’re doing right now will make this available with File-by-File granularity very soon
o Faster and more precise type-ahead suggestions when entering character names in Collaborative Script
o Streamlined and clearer process for inviting Team members

We are now embarking on a couple of ambitious projects that we expect will radically reinvent two of our existing modules, facilitating much more powerful usage.

We've built a financial model about frequent video production mistakes due to disorganization, miscommunication and inefficiency, and how much they can cost, and how video.Market7 can help. Here's a demo: http://tinyurl.com/M7bottomline. Contact sales@market7.com if you want to go over it including in putting in the specifics of how youwork.

Blog post with demonstration of Market7's new Resource Management module to track people's time in video production projects, and how that compares to forecasts & the financial implications: http://bit.ly/4aj3q0

Two thirds of our release cycles hone in on some singular theme, like attaching files to comments about videos that we launched a couple of weeks ago and the new time tracking functionality that we’re currently developing. But in between those two we knocked out a really nice stuff. Here are highlights:

Avid! Comments about videos from our Annotative Player module can now be opened in Media Composer synchronized with the videos being edited — just like what we accomplished for Final Cut & Creative Suite with our NAB release.

2GB! We have doubled our maximum upload size, coincidentally around when YouTube makes the same move (next time it’ll be us out in front). Please note that we recommend using Flash 10 when uploading files above 1GB.

Logo!Our accounts from Line Producer level up have long allowed customers to displace our brand with your own, well now if you’re Producer Pro or higher (so upgrade already!) you can specify this branding at per-project granularity.

On-off switch!The account management page (”My Account” link in upper-right visible only to account holders (versus their admins or invited team members)) — anyhow, that page now includes de-/re-activate buttons and whenever a project’s deactivated its storage does not count towards the account.

Another on-off switch!Free Production Assistant accounts (upgrade already!) are still limited to five team members, but now members are not stuck there permanently but can be removed from projects (& also can be subsequently reinstated).

More acurate than ever!Our script running time estimation had been anchored on speech at 100 words-per-minute which is fine for drama and such when there are non-verbal passages mixed with dialog, but most videos are filled with speakers at a natural language pace so we’ve scaled up and now anchor on 125.

Coolest of all — four out of the six items listed above are based on ideas originally articulated by our users.