Trying to get my head ready for traveling, way too much to do here at Empressr HQ

Empressr, Bryan (@bryanthatcher), Mike (@globalcitizen) and Orian (@orian) will be at Future of Web Apps next week in sunny Miami Beach. Come by our table for a hands on demo of the new Empressr v5, some stickers and whatever else I may be giving away.

The peeps at Empressr and Fusebox are doing a 5 day challenge of who can create the best Hemingway like “six word stories” check out the ones that have been posted so far.

Here is one of mine:

A short list of some of the new features and changes to Empressr v.5

I don’t generally like long gaps in code pushes, but this particular push has some substantial changes in the underlying Empressr Engine. The first thing you will notice is that objects placed on the canvas are now selectable anywhere as opposed to having to grab a handle, the feedback as you move and manipulate objects is much tighter and responsive. This was a major redevelopment and the reason it took so long to push this version. A list of new things:

BIGGER — 

• Empressr now has a smaller application footprint aka uses less memory so you can now do bigger presentations without running the risk of running out of memory
• fullscreen slide sorter, making it easier to organize your presentation

FASTER —

• You’ll notice that both the application and the viewer load 100% faster than v.4 w00t
• We now only load fonts that you are using in your presentation and no longer load a default set, this saves about 1MB of things you may or may not have been using
• Flex 3, we are now Flex 3 which by default is substantially faster than Flex 2
• Optimized thumb-nailing with less server calls
• Optimized 3rd party api calls for faster results in your searches

STRONGER —

• Publish your Empressr as you save your work, less steps means more efficiency = happy users
• In-line preview of your work
• Import from PowerPoint will auto-preview

…and finally with this big new code push it is going to allow us to focus on bringing more detailed features for things like  text, video and images and much faster fashion, so stay tuned.
go create something now!

Code name: Hemingway

Incubating since: way too long ago!

What did we say we were going to do?

• Empressr is BIGGER — more features, more functionality, more AWESOME NESS.
• Empressr is FASTER — don’t blink. you WILL miss the loading bar? or WILL YOU? hmmmm…..
• Empressr is STRONGER — upgraded back-end… faster throughput… ready to do the heavy lifting for you.

What’s out there! Check it out!!

Have previous empressr’s that you created with the composr? No worries, they are all still there, and functional. We wouldn’t do that to ya now, would we? 

We are coming out with a Hemingway-inspired contest for all to participate in. Stay tuned..

To end a blog post about a release code named Hemingway, I thought I would sign off in similar 6-word story style invented by Hemingway.

Empressr Goodness Out. Eagerly Anticipating Feedback.

GLOBAL CITIZEN… OUT!

Empressr upgrade taking a little longer than expected, no big issues so far, 10 more minutes we should be ready

Hi, Empressr is going to be offline for the next 30 minutes as we update the databases and load the new code to the server. We don’t anticipate any problems and expect to be back online and rockin’ shortly.

Thanks

Bryan

Hey everybody, Global Citizen here, and just had a few thoughts I wanted to share.

One of the more recent phenomenon that I’m noticing are content players (content is king) who are also trying to become distribution players (how much can WE earn on that/your content). The companies in this list are varied, depending on the type of content. Let me just focus on one content type, video, to keep this blog post short

A partial list would include:

1. YouTube
2. Viddler
3. Blip.TV
4. uStream

The technology platform of these companies are impressive in their own right. Simply put, smart people working on innovating solutions to a common problem. We all want to be rock stars. We all want the world to know of how funny, creative, smart we are and video is the perfect medium for that.

But here’s my question. When do you move from becoming a content platform player to a distribution player? There are obviously pressures to monetize and stablize. But how? and more importantly when?

Moving from a content platform (content is king) to a distribution platform (how much can we earn on that content)  affords additional revenue streams. Clearly advertising and syndication are two of the top reasons on that list. I feel that the pro’s of this are outweighed by the cons.

Let me share with you some of what is going on at Empressr.

At Empressr, we have made the decision to focus on content and the tools to allow you, the user, to create. Content is the court, then our community are the kings and queens of that court. We want each person to enjoy the process of telling their story. At empressr, we believe that the story often dictates the distribution channels. Depending on the content, the user should have full control over what distribution channels they would like to tell their story.

As such, we have made a decision to focus on being a content platform. TELL YOUR STORY.

Go forth, and speak.

Go forth, and share.

At Empressr we want to empower the content providers, YOU, to tell your story. Our objective is not to become just a destination site, or riddle your story with advertising overlays, or post-reels, or pre-reels to monetize. The monetization will come in forms that will not cheapen the content. Let me give you a very specific analogy. Putting advertising overlays on user-generated content is like this….

So, there’s this guy, right? and he walks into the BAM HOLY CRAP, YOU TALKING ABOUT WALKING? HAVE YOU SEEN THESE AWESOME NEW SHOES!!! … uhhh… yeah, so he walks into the bar, SPEAKING OF BAR, THE BAR NEAR WHERE YOU ARE VIEWING THIS PRESENTATION IS HAVING A HAPPY HOUR SPECIAL TONIGHT…. 

Would you like to use a platform like that? 

If you are a content platform. Do that. If you want to go into distribution, then do that. But modifying the content in hopes to have a distribution play, I’m not sure that is going to be successful. Let it be the user’s choice. 

What are your thoughts?