July 2008 Archives

Since vzaar started we've been creating contacts and building bridges with various people across the business industry with the aid of our trusty moo business cards. When handed over, they never fail to illicit a response like "oh they're neat," or "what a funky card!". We like that.

Our business cards (not actual size!)

And in actual size (with no obvious thing to scale next to)

In the US at eBay Live they went down a storm and so pockets stuffed with cards Adrian and I tagged along to the Moo.com annual street party last week (except it wasn't in a street) to say hello to a few folks. Free drinks and free food (check out the feeding frenzy) helped to bring lots of like minded fans together in the name of the world's oldest industry, printing, but to get a feel for the night watch our brief video here:

Check out some of these videos that are on vzaar right now.

This video of a delightful narrowboat just makes you want to chuck it all in and take to the rivers and canals of England.

A great example of why it pays not to be shy: this engaging peiece to camera really shows off the item for sale.

This charming water feature will be a hit in any garden. But, must dash, need to go to the toilet...

After an extremely stressful 5 hour session battling with html, I'm pleased to announce that the Help section of vzaar is now up to date with lots of new FAQ's. Having probably been the vzaar employee that you first encounter if you have ever had a problem on vzaar, I've trawled through all your old emails requesting help and support to collect the most... well, the most frequently asked questions and updated the Help section accordingly.

So two things I considered while compiling these:

Firstly - How hard it is to strike a tone in the broad space that sits between authoritative tech speak and patronizing nursery school teacher. Your (the audience's) knowledge varies greatly and one has to respond accordingly to that knowledges - but the FAQ's have to appeal to everyone. Customers I've spoken to have ranged from developers to my favourite lady that wanted to know why her video always appeared upside down (solved with the response "Which way round do you hold your camera when you film your items?...") I hope I've struck a tone that's right, gives enough deatils to answer the questions, but not too much that it confuses the issue.

The second thought that I pondered over while trawling through the annals of customer support was... Does anyone actually ever READ the help section? Disappointingly I think not. My continued watchful eye over the customer support inbox will probably go to prove this. The reason why I think that? Because I'm terrible at looking through FAQ's myself. It's like not being able to find your wallet, grabbing all your pockets in a dramatic manner and declaring to your friend what a disaster it is. Said friend comes to your aid and calmly locates your wallet almost immediately. Much easier that way round. I do it all the time. Maybe if everyone knew the blood, sweat and tears that went into the extensive list of FAQ's (yes I dislike typing in html THAT much) they'd have a rummage through there first... but probably not. I wouldn't.

Jamie mentioned that a movie would be coming soon on his post about the office move.

You'll find it below in all it's glory. You'll notice how half the office*cough*emmajonathanmauricio*cough found excuses to not be there whilst three of us did all the heavy lifting. Only joking. Jonathan and Mauricio had too much important work to do (some great changes to vzaar coming over the next few months), whilst Emma had a summer festival to attend.

You'll notice the video jumps in places where magically stuff happens very quickly. This isn't because we have an office magic unicorn that packs things up, but rather that Jamie and Ian were more concerned with "getting stuff done" rather than my integrity as a stop motion film maker. I'm sure you're equally appalled at how my creative spirit was trampled on. Alas, my pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyway, we all love a bit of video at vzaar so we hope you enjoy our move to new digs.

Jamie and I went to a SoHo Chruch (believe it or not) to the Techcrunch (UK) Pitch Night last Thursday.

Jamie and I found it a really worth while night. It's always good to watch others pitch as it gives you both ideas and and thoughts on your own pitching.

However the key bit I found that was spot on, was Doug Richard (seen below), who Mike has brought in as a Simon Cowell type figure. After each pitch, Doug chimed in with one point. Reagardless of if the point was mostly positive or mostly not, his remarks where spot on, really thought provoking and the most valuable bit of the night. Even more so than the free beer. I'm not sure I would have got as much out of the night had it not been for Doug's bit.

I'm not going to say to much else on this, as the trackbacks and comments and Mike's follow up will surely do this. Except to say I can recommend going along to these things if you can. Always good to observe what's going on in the industry and who is saying what, and to whom, and why.