Internet video provides another channel for Design Idea delivery

By Maury Wright, Editorial Director -- 6/7/2007

If you've recently visited EDN.com, I hope you've noticed a number of enhancements. Under the banner EDN Tech Clips, we've begun to offer short tutorial and how-to video programs, including video versions of our always-popular Design Ideas. And, as we detailed in an earlier column, we've redesigned the Web site using a community structure to make it easier to use (see "10 reasons to visit EDN.com," April 26, 2007). We've also just launched EDN Part Search—a real-time pricing and inventory tool. I'd certainly like you to give EDN.com a spin and tell me what you think. I'd also invite you to participate.

I'm not a big fan of the term "Web 2.0." It's a bit absurd to think of new Web developments happening in discrete chunks. But without a doubt, full-duplex communication is becoming prevalent on the Web. We've long welcomed reader comments in the "Feedback Loop" associated with each article. And our blogs receive quite a few animated comments. With our redesign and our new video capabilities, we've opened the doors to more two-way information flow.

EDN has always depended on readers to write deeply technical contributed articles with a how-to slant and to provide the shorter Design Ideas that are universally popular. So, of course, we want you to participate in the video movement. Go to www.edn.com/techclips to view both our Video Design Ideas and some signal-integrity tutorials from columnist Howard Johnson. Then, think about what you might contribute.

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We're still working through the logistics of video contributions. We started with reader research. In a recent technology-usage study among our readership, almost 80% of the respondents had viewed Web-based videos. The respondents were interested in how-to-design videos. But it's clear that time is a precious commodity. Indeed, 38% prefer video programs lasting three to five minutes, although 31% indicate a preference for videos of six to 10 minutes. We've decided to target five minutes for our video presentations. So, we are looking for finely focused topics that allow the presenter to quickly make the pertinent points. As we've done with the first Video Design Ideas, we'll try to augment the presentation with information such as schematics (available as PDFs) and links to related content on EDN and elsewhere.

If you have videography skills and want to submit a finished video, contact me or EDN.com Editor in Chief Matthew Miller directly. If you have a great idea but no way to capture the footage, call us anyway, and we can discuss it. For the moment, we have no automatic way for readers to upload videos, but that capability is coming soon.

Of course, videos are just the newest opportunity for you to participate in the EDN community. With the redesign of our Web site at the beginning of April, we opened our doors for you to submit reference designs. We're also allowing the marketing community to directly post new-product releases to augment our own new-product coverage.

Our goal with video and other multimedia presentations is to provide you information in whichever ways you want to consume it. We remain committed to our print product. For print, we still need contributed articles, Design Ideas, and Tales from the Cube. We'll do our best to optimally use the combination of print, Web, and e-mail channels. Based on the response to our early work with videos, it's clear that some of you really like that option for receiving information.

Finally, please go to www.edn.com/partsearch to try Part Search. Enter the part number of an IC, and you'll get the current price and delivery information. You can view recent price trends and even get a data sheet.

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