Having trouble converting crazy video formats to proper mp4s for editing?

Yeah, sorry, you can't do anything with that cellphone video because it's in some stupid format, right? and yeah no your conversion software will convert it... into some special magical mp4 file that can be played by your player but not opened by your video editing software... especially if you're trying to use Ableton Live for video editing. Which you can do. It's great. Shut up. It's awesome. It can only open mp4s and movs if you have QuickTime installed and nobody bothers to document that but whatever, that's OK. It's software. Accountability. It has no meaning.

So anyway, give up on your encoder and just upload the offending video in its crazy format to Google Drive, or YouTube, and then rip it back out of the YouTube player using Firefox Video Download Helper.

Yet another classic instance of having to use software that's legal but in the process of getting shut down for enabling hacking and piracy, in order to do something that's totally legal, but made difficult by companies that want you to pay for your right to edit the videos that you yourself record using the camera in your phone... instead of just sharing it.

So, yeah, the solution is basically to share it, to nobody, then rip it, using software used almost exclusively for piracy, and then you can edit it. Don't be surprised if you can't even see the video clip when surfing your cellphone's hard drive from your PC while it's tethered. Maybe it'll be visible, maybe it'll be invisible. It's software. Literally half a person at Google cares what your experience is like with it. There's somebody around there that's just a pair of legs (no ears so they can't hear your usability problems).

Google does the right thing about the Blogger Nav Bar

It's a time for rejoicing, not only in less sketchy CSS code needed but also in the reaffirmation of Google's intentions for us: it wants us to use its software, even if others don't know we're using it.

So now, let us bid farewell to all that is old and broken:

Now, we can chill out and work with this:

"Will Be Added Soon..."

Just don't do it. Don't make someone think something's there, then try to open it, and revise their idea of its status. If it's not there, just let it be not there.

This is the backwards way that many people add content to a site:

1. Make the section.
2. Make the content.
3. Add the content to the section.
4. Adjust the section to match the content.
5. Rewrite the content.

Do this instead:

1. Write all the content and get the pictures together, and do it on a page that's hidden from public view.
2. Publish the page and content.
3. Link to the page and content.

If it really needs to be expressed that something is in the works, then it warrants a blog/news post.

The Deal With MySpace FAQ - aka How to Deal With MySpace

Everyone loves to hate MySpace:

This user study found only 20% of users could successfully upload a new profile picture and only 30% could figure out how to post a status update!

How's "LOZ ... MYSPACE IS TOO HARD TO USE, LOL YGM" for a profile name?

"MySpace is really Hard to use for me....."

"MySpace wants me to delete my account it seems. "

MySpace Employee: "[T]he primary failure of Myspace was usability."

"We need not look much further than the horrible user experience of the average MySpace user to find out why the crown is gone."

"facebook = Everything you want, Easy to use. MySpace = music, Emo's, Hard to use & navigate. [...] Myspace runs way too slow"

"If you’re able to use Myspace with no trouble at all you’ve gotten yourself into some really bad habits. Working around Myspace is really difficult, holes need to be jumped through over and over again."

"MySpace is messy, hard to use and impossible to even find new music with."

"What makes me mad is how can you save the changes you made on the Mypace editors. I tried to publish it but it'll just take me back to my old page."

"I hate the new myspace. it's to much and it's hard to work with... whats myspace if you can't edit it like you use to be able to?"

1. Why do MySpace profiles suck so much? Because people in bands are lazy or bad at customising stuff?
   
   No. Anybody with a MySpace profile knows how hard it is to customise it, even with a profile editor.
2. Do I really need to use MySpace?
   
   No. I recommend using it for the Friends feature - don't even get a music account, just use Blogger along with SoundCloud, PicasaWebAlbums, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and use your MySpace account to link to them. You can embed your music, videos, pictures etc, and then MySpace never gets control of your tracks.
3. What's wrong with trusting MySpace with my music?
   
   MySpace shuts artists out of their profiles all the time, claiming bullshit copyright violations. One of my MySpace profiles got locked, and now I can't do anything with it - can't update or remove tracks, change my layout or anything... and it's the one with my completely original songs! The one that contains tracks that are so sample-heavy that they're illegal got left alone. Go figure. Anyway, when you use embedded playlists from other sites, even if your MySpace profile gets locked, you can still keep control of your materials.
4. Isn't it kind of a pain to maintain all these different accounts?
   
   Nope. MySpace is so terribly designed and hard to use that it's less work to maintain your Facebook, SoundCloud, Twitter, Flickr/Picasa and YouTube accounts. Plus, with each one, you reach a whole new audience, and when you bring them all together with your Blogger or MySpace account, you get so much power to present media all in one place.
5. But isn't MySpace changing and improving to become more modern?
   
   Yeah, but because they don't do any user testing, analysis or Information Architecture work, it's just getting worse, not better.
6. Won't the MySpace people clue in at some point and start doing user testing?
   
   They've had a decade to figure this out. It's not going to happen.

Who wants to help me build a DJ mixer?

So I want to start on this pretty quick, it's my design for the simplest possible DJ mixer ever, running on batteries, no crossfader, just a switch, and the cueing and master channels are both controlled by the switch, so when you switch it to put channel A into the speakers, channel B goes into the headphones, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I still have to find a place for the audio outs. This is something I actually think I can accomplish with a bit of help at Sketch Studios.