Amazon Fresh - Now Home Delivering Top Amazon.com Items

Living in Seattle, a test-market for Amazon Fresh, we signed up and never looked back. Ordering groceries online and having them delivered within hours makes going to the grocery store seem like such a pain.  With Amazon Fresh, Amazon proved to us they could replace the grocery store experience with home delivered goodness.

Just today, Sachi noticed something new and very interesting on the Amazon Fresh website - a new tab appeared pointing us to "Amazon Now." 

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Making the Election Video: Behind the Scenes

People often ask for a look at how we make the videos. When we were putting together the the "Electing a US President" video, I made a special point to take photos of the process. Here's how it works:

Every video starts with a script. If there is "secret sauce" it happens in writing the script because the script drives the video. We use Google Docs to collaborate until we feel like the script is close to finished. Then, we start looking at a thumbnail storyboard.

I draw the scenes for the thumbnail storyboard. It's our first attempt to represent the visuals.

After a couple of rounds of thumbnails and lots of talking between us, we make a list of all the elements that need to be drawn for the video. At this point, I start drawing and digitizing the images. Of course, with the maps in this video, I resorted to tracing.

Once the images are drawn and digitized, we set up a new storyboard using purely digital images. This way, we can manipulate sizes easily and see how everything fits together. Once we feel confident, we print out the materials and start cutting and coloring.

Sometimes, we leave things laying around and our dog decides to put them in his mouth.

Before shooting the video, we assemble all the materials and take them to the studio. We iterate at every point in the process. The script and visuals change every day.

Once production begins, we follow the storyboard and slowly lay out each scene. Often, scenes are revised on the fly. You can never really see how it will work until you see it on the screen.

Each video is different. Sometimes we go down a road, only to find a dead end. We are both prepared to throw away our work and start over if it doesn't feel right. It's painful, but necessary.

Sachi takes over control once we get to the studio. She runs each scene, the camera, lights, etc. She manages the voice-over and all the post production work. Editing is a huge part of what makes the videos work and those decisions are Sachi's. While she's doing that, I start this process over for the next video.

All these elements come together to create this video (on Vimeo, YouTube and dotSUB):

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Having an Old Dog

He's 13, his breath smells really bad, he's deaf, he walks like a retired football player, begs with renewed vigor and is increasingly obstinate. 

Indeed, the old dog experience is so different than the young dog experience. He's still the same sweet dog, but with new quirks that keep things new, even in old age. He is not the Frisbee catching dog of yesteryear. He is more like Jabba the Hut. A deaf Jabba the Hut with with a better disposition.

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Photo Products to Watch in 2008

2008 is shaping up to be a interesting year to try out new things when it comes to digital photos. From photo transfer technology, to wall hanging, to photo sharing services, here are a few things I'll be using in 2008.

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Home for the Holidays (and an off-topic interview)

First, we want to wish you and yours good cheer and positive vibes for the Holidays.  It's been an exciting year for us at Common Craft and it couldn't have happened without you.  Your links, your blog entries, your emails to friends all put a spotlight on our work that wouldn't have happened otherwise.  Maybe there is something to this social media thing after all. J

Between now and the New Year, we'll be with families on separate coasts and generally unavailable. 

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Learning The Independent Lifestyle

I always wanted to be independent - I never, not once in my life, had the goal of working for someone else.  It's not in my genes.  In 2003 I founded Common Craft and in January of 2007 Sachi joined the company.  Since then, Sachi has been the real force driving our goal of having a truly independent lifestyle.

And it is ALL about lifestyle.  As I've written before, we make our lifestyle a huge priority.  Why choose to be independent if you can't create a job and schedule that works for you?  We've been trying to figure out what this means and I have a couple of examples.

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How to Stop Receiving Phone Books and Yellow Pages

You've likely seen it before, you come home to find a bag of useless phonebooks on your porch. I realized recently that I haven't used a phonebook or yellowpages in years - I take them straight to recycling. They are dinosaurs.

This got me thinking - shouldn't I be able to opt-out of automatic delivery? Wouldn't there be a significant impact if everyone stopped receiving phonebooks and yellow pages? Apparently the major players pumped out 540 million directories this year.

This is insane and wasteful and I want people to know they can opt-out. Below are the numbers to call for the major distributors of phone books and yellow pages (none have online forms as far as I know). Simply call the numbers and tell them you want to opt-out of delivery - it takes a few minutes. I called all the ones below myself.

AT&T/YellowPages (formerly SBC and Bell South):

1.866.329.7118

Verizon (Idearc):

1.800.888.8448

Dex:

1.877.243.8339

Yellow Book:

1.800.373.3280 or 1.800.373.2324

The major players use a tactic called "saturation distribution" that means that you may get books even if you don't have a land line.

PaperlessPetition.org is one of the only resources I found who is working on this issue. From their site:

...expedite an end to this needless environmental waste, educate consumers on free and easy alternatives, and shed light on the growing inaccuracy of readership statistics that drive advertisers to still invest in this antiquated medium.

If you're interested, you can get a badge here.

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Investing in Paperworks Videos

If someone told me back in March of this year that we'd be making videos as our full time job in July, I would have said it was preposterous. What do we know about making videos? Such is the current state of affairs - we're booked through the summer doing paperworks videos on commissioned basis and feel 100% confident that this is the right direction for us.

Of course, having people paying us to make videos means we have to learn fast and make some investments in our equipment and software.

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Pre-GnomeDex BBQ Retrospective

I few months ago, I had a bar-b-cue at my house and invited the Internet to come over. It was the afternoon before GnomeDex and I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I didn’t write about it much then, but the results were incredible and I hope others will do similar events.

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The Most Expensive Spam

Spam has been around for a lot longer than computers or email, but we’ve gotten used to it. Ever since I had a real world mailbox, it’s been filled with spam every day. A percentage of my phone calls are spam. Some might even say that billboards on the side of a highway are some sort of road spam, or maybe not.

Mailbox spam is expensive. It wastes resources to print all those brochures that I just recycle immediately (which takes time). Phone spam costs a little of my time and there is a certain annoyance cost.

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