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There was a time when air travel was considered a real privilege. Men and women donned their Sunday best like they would for any special occasion, while flight attendants wore uniforms that were just this side of enviable, more than appropriately stylish for the times. It was all very glamorous really. What's more, all passengers were treated like they were flying first class, because essentially they were.

Today's skyscape is a far different one filled with leisure suits, less than comfortable flying conditions and beyond heightened security, making travel more of a stressful occasion than a special one. Luckily there is FLIGHT 001(pronounced flight one) a site that's outfitted with all the flying essentials today's harried traveler needs, from regulation sized bottles for carry-on to kitsch travel accessories. Here are a few of the must-haves from FLIGHT 001:

1. Comfort is crucial when travelling. Does that mean I think you should wear pyjamas when you fly - no, it does not - but there's no reason for you to suffer in-flight with a stiff neck and the myriad afflictions associated with flying such as puffy eyes and sticky hands. For those flights that still allow carry-on (!), take the In Flight Comfort Kit. Comes complete with inflatable jersey neck pillow, earplugs, padded jersey eye mask, wet wipes and 10 sheets of paper soap and a handy little pouch to carry it all in.

In Flight Comfort Kit

2. Toiletries can often be a hassle, because you invariably forget something.  Just in case I think every suitcase should be packed with a Hemergency or Shemergency kit. These tiny kits have everything you could ever think to use in a jam plus a few things more!

The Shemergency Survival Kit

The Hemergency Survival Kit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3.  Packing (and unpacking) is probably one of my least favourite things to do, and I'm sure I'm not alone. There is an art to packing which very few have mastered, but the Flight 001 exclusive Spacepak can turn even the most helpless packer into a packing pro. According to Flight 001 "this system allows garments to undergo double compression and organization with 1 side for clean laundry and 1 side for dirty laundry." Ingenious!

F1 Spacepak Set

While we might never be able to recapture the luxury in the skies of yesteryear, it's nice to know there's something out there that can make today's travel a little less painful.

I don't know about you, but this time of year just isn't as fun as I rememeber it being as a kid. As a kid what was your major responsibility when it came to celebrating the holiday season? For me, it was to make my parents some crude holiday-related craft at school and wake up at dawn on Christmas day to open presents. Totally stress free. Now that I'm an adult (and I use that term lightly), there are a lot of stresses associated with the holiday season. Family obligations, friends to see, dinners to cook, dinners to attend, the endless parade of holiday parties, and I haven't even mentioned gifts. It's not the gift giving I have a problem with, it's the shopping - scavenging through the overcrowded malls and waiting in long lines with other tired and stressed-out shoppers. I said, No more! and for the past few years I order all my gifts online. Of course, this is not a novel idea and many people shop this way year round, myself included, but it can become a bit more daunting when you have several people to shop for. What sites should you visit?

 I'm a big fan of department store sites where you can order gifts for your whole family in one spot, such as Nordstrom (they deliver to Canada too), and John Lewis in the UK. Most places will gift wrap, and shopping for one household on the same site saves on shipping costs too. 

Gloves and Scarves for Her from Nordstrom

Hampers are terrific for families and couples because you only need to send one for a household and there is generally something in every hamper that will appeal to everyone. Once reserved solely for the British elite, high end grocer-turned-department-store Fortnum & Mason's charm has spread to to the masses, and now even delivers their world famous hampers to North America. With prices to suit all budgets they are really great way to send some love in a basket. They sell out quickly this time of year, but they still have several varieties available, so don't miss out.

Fortnum & Mason Christmas Hamper

 For friends, co-workers and everyone in between, check out FredFlare.com. This quirky site has all kinds of inexpenisve gift ideas from the silly (bacon bandages anyone? $9),  to the downright pretty (gold brocade tulle corset dress $52). And with almost everything under a hundred dollars, you might even have enough left over to buy yourself something to!

Pocket Guitar Hero from Fred Flare

Happy Holidays!

It’s been a few months since we launched Overlay.TV for Retail, and we’ve undergone some major changes since then.  Obviously, our goal is make shopping within video the norm – it is, after all, what we do.  But in talking to clients, analysts and media about our retail product, the opportunity for it to change the way we shop – even in some small way – is very real.

That’s why we’re very excited to announce the roll-out we’ve been hard at work on since the summer – Zappos.com.  For us, Zappos is a dream client – one with a huge fan base, and one that understands the role of new media channels and user-generated content in marketing.

Zappos is rolling out the video eCommerce integration in two phases, starting with “engagement pages” for specific brands like Nike (http://www.zappos.com/nike), and eventually incorporating video into every aspect of the site, allowing users to see the product from all angles and outside of a simple catalogue image.

It’s early days for video eCommerce, but you can expect to see some big things coming over the horizon.  Together with Zappos.com, we look forward to bringling online retail into the video age. 

Rob

Read full Press Release: http://www.overlay.tv/press_release.html

We are looking for a talented Systems Administrator with commercial experience managing web applications and database servers. The ideal candidate has experience configuring, administering and hardening common Linux distributions, deploying and managing web applications, troubleshooting network problems, configuring firewalls, implementing extensive monitoring and is highly proficient in at least one scripting language. He or she should also be comfortable working in a small team, collaborating and presenting ideas.

Required Skills
Expert with Linux, specifically Ubuntu
Experience configuring Tomcat, Apache2, and MySQL
Experience with CDN’s
Version control systems

Desired Skills
Experience with Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, EBS)
Deployment with Capistrano
Experience configuring Solr
Ruby experience highly desirable

Contact Information

Email: careers@overlay.tv

What a beautiful day! Sun is shining, the air is crisp and Overlay.TV has been named one on of the top 20 innovative technology companies in Canada by the Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX). Each year CIX picks 20 Canadian owned and operated companies that have demonstrated, among other things, their ability to be innovative technology leaders in a competitive market.

Thanks to CIX for the honour and congratulations to everyone on the list including our Tech Capital portfolio partners PostRank and Metranome.

Since launching our eCommerce platform for online retailers we have been exposed to loads of cool e-tail sites in our travels, so I thought it would be neat to introduce a new feature to our blog that showcases the ones that are doing really innovative things. 

At this year's Shop.org Annual Summit we met some of the gang from MyShape.com, an online retailer that finds clothes for you based on "your unique body shape." Interesting, I thought, and being someone that is proportionally challenged when it comes to clothing fit (AKA every woman on the planet!), I thought I should investigate further.

MyShape.com

Having ordered plenty of clothing online, I have come to realise that fit guides offered by most online shopping sites are dubious at best. What makes MyShape truly innovative is that it will find clothes for you based on your specific measurements and even pre-determine what size you should be for each item of clothing you select. Membership is free and once you've inputted all your measurements, MyShape will fill your "personal shop" with only the clothing that is best suited to your particular body shape. With an array of high-to low-end designers and brands there is something at MyShape to fit not only everyone's size, but also everyone's budget.  Alas, they do not ship internationally, so my investigation stops here, but it looks as if they are working to fix that, and judging by the feedback peppered throughout the site, there have been a lot of satisfied customers!

Know of any eCommerce sites, or just cool sites in general, that you feel are doing truly innovative things we'd love to her from you! Leave us your suggestions in the comments section or tweet us @OverlayTV.

UPDATE: Good news! Just heard from @MyShape and they told me that customers outside the U.S. can get their "shapes" shipped internationally by using  BongoUS.com. And here's the bonus: international customers who use Bongo will be offered a MyShape.com gift certificate!

Overlay.TV is expanding and so is our team. We are currently looking for a talented Flash developer with experience developing interactive user interfaces using object-oriented ActionScript. The ideal candidate has experience creating or using UI frameworks, delivering video using Flash, working with the camera and mic, publishing live video to media servers, integrating with web services, working with CDN’s, handling cross-domain issues and using various skinning techniques.

A solid grasp of object-oriented programming, unit testing, debuggers, source control systems, build management, HTTP and web development, code profiling and performance tuning is expected.

The candidate will be passionate about creating robust designs that perform well, look great and are easy to use. He or she should also be comfortable working in a small team, collaborating and presenting ideas.

Required Skills

Flash AS3

AJAX, JSON, XHTML, JavaScript

XML, Regular expressions, text manipulation

Photoshop, Illustrator

Desired Skills

Flash Media Server or Red5

Experience specifically building AS3 video players

Adobe Flex

Ruby-on-Rails

Contact Information:

 If you think this sounds like the perfect job for you please contact us at careers@overlay.tv.

Just read an interesting article on AdAge today, which talks about a sharp decline in percentage of users who click on online display ads. Couple this with recent numbers of online ad spend decline and you’ve got yourself a pretty scary picture of the state of content monetization. But is it really?

Semi, or unrelated display ads, are not like other links on the page. They usually bring no utility or immediate value to users; more like “content high jacking” than “content monetization”. It’s no surprise then that people are fed up with this noise. We do still click on things  - to get to more relevant content - so click-through is not dead, just getting smarter.

I think it’s got something to do with the packaging. When we visit web pages we very easily separate between “content” and “noise”.  The former is what we came in for, while the latter is what we have to put up with because we are not willing to pay for the real content. We’re obviously less likely to click on the “noise” which drives its price down, making it even more difficult for good content providers to survive. It’s not the underlying content though, it’s the ineffective way of associating the message with a call-for-action.

One of the main reasons for this, I believe, is the lack of relevance due to weak contextual association. In order to have an effective “participation” from viewers, one has to bring closer the enabler (primary content) and the CFA or ad (secondary content). There are two dimensions to this. The first one is space: if it’s relevant to the content then couple it with the content, don’t just throw it into the same container (page) and expect the two messages to stick. The second is time: most content is fundamentally linear (text you read through, video you watch though, or audio you listen to) and comprises of lots of smaller pieces of information (a sentence, a frame in a video or segment of audio). It is those pieces, rather than the big piece, that could be monetized, just like hypertext links to relevant/contextual content are being followed.

The ultimate goal is to personalize this, to get the right message delivered to the right person at the right time in the right context. Lots of progress is being made towards these goals by my company (Overlay.TV) and others.

Click-through is not dead, it’s just getting smarter.

[Orginally posted at  http://kishkush.com/2009/10/01/is-click-through-really-dead/]

In my last post I mentioned that I would be sharing some examples of companies and organizations that have integrated the Overlay.TV for Retail platform into their websites. Despite what its name implies, our retail platform has many functions that go beyond just allowing users to shop through video, it can also provide them with an opportunity to share and even give through video. Sounds like a lot of work but it's actually quite simple.

Case in point: Our friends at United Way Ottawa, United Way Toronto and the Government of Canada Workplace Charitable Campaign (GCWCC) have all implemented a version of the Overlay.TV Community Recorder, whereby their users and staff can record or upload videos of themselves sharing ideas and stories about helping the community. You don't need to be a computer whiz or filmmaker to use the recorder either. All you need is a web cam or video camera to get started. Giving doesn't have to be just about a monetary donation, it can also be about communities coming together to share their collective experiences about how we can make our workplaces, cities, environments and the world better and cleaner and about teaching others to be more tolerant of our differences. Simple.

United Way Ottawa

Have a story or an idea you would like to share? Check out the links below to record your own video and to find out what other people in your community are doing to give back. Feel free to share your video, or any other video you find inspirational, either by email or to Twitter and Facebook by using the share tabs located below the player.

United Way Ottawa

United Way Toronto

GCWCC

Time for an update on what's been going on at Overlay.TV. A few months ago we launched a new platform called Overlay.TV for Retail. At the time, the focus on our site was split between user-generated content and our new eCommerce video platform, but it became clear in the months that followed that interest in the UGC side was dwindling and that our energies would be better spent if we concentrated solely on our retail platform. It wasn't an easy decision to make as we had some very loyal users, but we felt that the new platform needed all of our love and attention, especially in these early stages, in order to deliver the best possible product  to all of our clients. Check out the revamped site to see how our focus has changed and to find out more about Overlay.TV for Retail.

So, with our sites set on making Overlay.TV for Retail the most widely used eCommerce video platform, we thought it was time to have a coming out out party of sorts, and what better place to do that than in Las Vegas! Myself and some of the gang from Overlay.TV traveled to Vegas for the Shop.org Annual Summit 2009 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino where we set up shop in a 10x20 booth.

The Summit was 3 days of non-stop meet and greets. Not only were we able to introduce ourselves to loads of people from all over the world, but we were also given the opportunity to see what's new in the world of online retail. What we heard a lot was that online retailers are looking for new ways to integrate video, product and user-generated,  into their sites to better engage existing customers and entice new ones. It's not just about pushing products and shopping, but about building a community of like minded consumers and giving them the ability to share their experiences with others. If you you missed the Summit, check out the Shop.org Blog for recaps on the show and keynote speakers. Thanks to the Shop.org crew for putting together a fabulous trade show. We couldn't have asked for a better coming out party.

Stay tuned, because over the next coming weeks and months I'll be posting stories and examples of how our clients are successfully integrating the Overlay.TV for Retail onto their sites.