Post 5 - Site with integrated streaming media

I decided to try out Amazon's new Fishbowl feature. I enjoyed the short films they created a year or so ago complete with product placement and I've been wanting to take a few minutes to check out this content. And heck, they have a pretty good author this week - Janet Evanovich. I had no idea what Bill Maher would have to say to her but that was part of the fun.

I accessed the site from a Dell computer (running Windows) over DSL using a wireless network.

The player is a bit strange. You can just hit play in the window and it plays a small version or you can click below and get larger versions that play in Real or Windows Media. It wasn't entirely clear until I clicked that the larger versions aren't integrated into the window but pop up in the player. As for the integrated player, it's pretty cool. Very very simple with clear controls that are easy to operate and the video was smooth. When I paused, the video froze quickly and unfroze when I clicked play again with no noticable delay. The video in the larger format looked slightly fuzzy, I wasn't terribly impressed, but I did like the larger version for seeing detail even if it did look like lower quality.

The content is relatively long but they've broken it up into manageable chunks by streaming the segments separately. The intro monologue is one section and then the interview section loaded separately. The buffering was very fast, almost unnoticeable. The media started playing almost immediately after a minor pause. The book selections below the streaming media also change with the different segments. I like that as it feels more relevant, less sales-y.

The ad for Cingular came very late in the content, I almost missed it. There didn't seem to be a lot of cause for that but I guess they were afraid to lose people earlier.