The office is wild these days! It's like Christmas - a geek Christmas! The myriad of multi-sized boxes piled around my desk are calling me... "don't write that blog... open me!" "No! Open me first!" "Hey - I was here first!" Can't you just hear them?
The boxes are filled with products that range from the absolute necessities (such as the USB version of NetScanTools) to the absurd (8-Bit Dynamic Life shirt set - that includes a transmitter for folks who have no friends)!
Why the *(#$*$#@%! do we have all these new products rolling in? Well - it's simple - BitSpitters!
Taking the advice of our buddy Wil and numerous folks who told us to "go viral," we took the leap!
The first four BitSpitters videos are online (see www.wiresharkU.com/bitspitters.html for the links and HTML code to embed on your site, which we'd love!). Alternately you can search YouTube for "bitspitters."
This is what I've learned from my initial foray into the world of viral videomaking:
- I talk too much - YouTube's limitation of 10 minutes for the cheapo freebie account has to be first and foremost in my mind when I start recording. I really only want the videos to be between 1 and 3 minutes long. So far, the closest I've gotten to this lofty goal is 3:44. Maybe I can cut out the title and ending slides!
- People want to be entertained more than educated - the humorous "Look Really Smarterest" is viewed twice as often as the straight-tech talks. That's ok since I think this techie stuff is pretty entertaining anyway - we're going to follow this trend and keep the BitSpitters videos light and lively.
- Watching hit counts is addictive... within minutes of posting the first video I had a hit count of five. Not a big deal in the YouTube world, but fascinating to know some late-night insomiac was already viewing stuff I'd just recorded. (I could only hope they were properly dressed at that hour.)
The upcoming BitSpitters will be shorter (maybe I could cheat and do 'part 1' and 'part 2' videos) and hit some of the more humorous topics, such as:
- How to Keylog Your Kids
- Is Microsoft Unedumacated?
- Secrets of Laura's Lab Kit v9
- Macof Ate My Network!
- Is Nessus Naked?
- Is NetBIOS Ignorance Bliss?
- Aliens and IPv6
If you have ideas for future BitSpitters episodes, send them to me at lchappell@packet-level.com. Watch for the announcement regarding Binary Balloons as well... he he he...
Time to put my headset on and spew!
Laura
www.wiresharkU.com
