The “instant viewing” program from Netflix — streaming video for Netflix subscribers — is supposed to be available to their entire subscriber network by June of 2007. I tried it out last night. It was awesome.

Netflix doesn’t yet have a particularly extensive collection in their instant viewing treasure trove, but it’s certainly substantial enough to provide items of interest for most audiences, with about 2,000 videos to watch across genres.

I watched a 45 minute television program at full screen on a monitor with 1400 by 900 pixel resolution. During the course of the viewing there were:

• 0 sound glitches
• 0 video glitches

The video quality was very acceptable for a TV sitcom. I’m not sure that I’d find something more exotically special-effects driven to be quite so satisfying, but that’ll have to be another test later! The relatively simple camera work and audio work of “Ballykissangel” were just fine.

The time between hitting “Play” and beginning to watch the video, including the download and install time for the Netflix video player was approximately 2 minutes.

Sweet. Now, if only Netflix.com were an accessible site…

All right, I confess — I’ve been delinquent. But, to be fair, I have been writing! What I’ve been writing, however, is not for publication on this blog. Actually, I’ve been writing for print — rather a novelty for me! At any rate, I’m having an article published in Qualityworld, the journal of the Chartered Quality Institute.

Quality assurance is not an area where I have a lot of specific experience, but the whole subject of planning and building a high-quality website IS something where I have some vague knowledge. I’m not exactly certain when the article will be out. I think it’s for the June issue, but I don’t know exactly how long the editorial cycle is for the journal.

At any rate, that’s what has consumed a large amount of my available writing time recently. Soon I’ll be returning to the usual rigamarole. If you could see my drafts list, you’d see that I have plenty of half-baked ideas!

My brand-new niece, Ramona Nina:

Congratulations to my sister and her husband!

All right, if you’re expecting to read about web development, prepare to be disappointed (or bored.) I don’t claim to always stay on topic, and right now I’m intending to split off a bit…so here goes.

I was just reading an interesting little article at Humanities Talks: “20 Greatest Historical Myths,” and I have a subtle quibble with one point: (actually, I could quibble with several, but this is the only one I’m going to discuss.)

The article states:

6. America became independent on July 4, 1776

Hold the fireworks! As most American school children (and many non-American ones) are aware, America’s founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. However, the war raged for another seven years before independence from England was finally granted on September 3, 1783. On that day, Britain’s George III and US leaders signed the Definitive Treaty of Peace.

Here’s my question: what’s the signifier of independence? In my view, the concept of political independence must come from the people declaring independence: if they perceive themselves (or declare themselves) to be independent, then they ARE independent. If one resists the government, then one is not ruled by the government. If one is sentenced and shot by a government which one does not acknowledge, then, although the government may perceive you as a criminal, you may perceive yourself having been killed as a prisoner of war.

I would suggest that the Declaration of Independence literally gave the colonies their independence. At that point, it was England’s responsibility to either re-conquer the colonies and re-assert their dominance, or to eventually concede the independence of the colonies, which they did.

The Treaty of Peace asserted that the war was over and that “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.”

The Treaty contains an official relinquishment of claims: not a grant of independence. The two are significantly different: the crown COULD NOT grant independence, since the American Colonies had already taken it for themselves. It could only relinquish future claims on the territory and officially acknowledge the newly establish “United States.”

Essentially, independence is a function of self: if a body claims itself to be free and independent, then that condition is self-defining. Alternately, if a foreign body grants independence to an group or individual who does not acknowledge that independence, that group or individual is still not free.

All right. Just had to think out loud. Thanks for reading, if you made it this far!

Well, the title says it all, methinks. I’ve been interviewed by Elizabeth Able, Cre8asite’s chief blogger-in-residence and a moderator in the forums.

First time I’ve ever been interviewed, I think – it was a good experience, though! Thanks, Elizabeth and Cre8asite!

So, the general shape of blog posting around this time of the year is in the form of “my five predictions for 2007″ and in discussing site statistics for the calendar year. I’m not going to bother with predictions; but I’m going to walk through my statistic through the year and talk about what I was doing in the way of marketing and how those activities impacted my site traffic.

It’s been an eventful year, as these statistics fairly clearly demonstrate:

Although any set of site statistics should be taken with a big fat grain of salt, these do seem to show a teensy trend towards more traffic. In the month of January: 156 unique visitors. In December: 4940 unique visitors. What caused this increase?

To be entirely honest, it was a bit of careful planning and intentional personal marketing. Let’s be honest: I’m in business doing accessibility consulting and web design, and I though that increasing traffic to this site might help me in pursuit of that goal.

Month by Month

January

In January, I received, as I mentioned, 156 unique visitors. This is generally along the vein of the traffic I’d receive during the previous year as well, based on, essentially, no marketing at all. I’ve been listed in DMOZ for quite a long time, but as of January that was the extent of my marketing activities.

February

In February, traffic doubled to 300 uniques. This was the result of my authoring a brief tutorial on Blogger. Using the interface, etc. Although most of this information can be found on Blogger’s help pages, this tutorial summarized things nicely. It also mentioned explicity information on uploading documents to Blogger: apparently, a very common question.

This was my first taste of search-based traffic, really: people finding what they want on your site.

March and April

March and April get grouped together because I didn’t really do much more with this site during that time. Instead, I started a second site: inter:digital strategies, a search marketing consultancy. I joined Cre8asite Forums and began to maintain a search marketing blog. Both of these things increased my overall industry profile, but didn’t directly associate with http://www.joedolson.com.

May

In May I authored a pair of articles on Boolean searching with PHP and MySQL, which accompanied a PHP script doing that very task. These were highly strategic: I knew full well that this was a highly specific search query which was currently lacking any valuable search results. I filled it. The articles were posted in mid May: my traffic doubled that month.

June, July and August

During the summer months, I continued to let things grow. I began a blog at JoeDolson.com and backfilled it with a few of my older announcements and articles. I continued posting heavily at Cre8asite Forums and in both blogs. I took a month’s vacation (all of July). I moved from Vienna, Austria to Saint Paul, MN. Traffic kept growing, a mixture of the greater search traffic spawned from my PHP/MySQL articles and the higher profile which was gaining valuable in bound links.

In August, I became a site grader for Accessites, an awesome accessible design showcase, thanks to the invitation of Mike Cherim.

September through December

Kept on writing. Ultimately, this is the key: find an article that needs to be written and write it. Overall, this technique caused my traffic to multiply 35-fold over the course of this year. I spent practically nothing on any other kind of marketing: a couple of quality directory submissions which were probably completely unnecessary, but otherwise my only expense was my own time.

And what has this meant?

At the beginning of the year, my job queries were very slow: I knew a few people who might need websites, and would talk to them and let them know I was available. Every once in a while, I’d receive a cold contact: 90% of this proved to be unqualified leads. This week, I’ve been contacted 7 times so far through my website. Two job proposals, four “thank you” notes for articles, and one offer to become a moderator at Cre8asite Forums. (Thanks, Kim!).

No question in my mind: business profile is the key to success on the web. In my industry, this has meant writing useful articles, helping people out through Cre8asite Forums, and letting people know I’m out here. The key has been writing with people in mind: being friendly, approachable, and responsive. Do I think that my writing alone has made this much of an impact? No, frankly. I think the fact that I’ve also made a concerted effort to respond to blog comments, to respond to every query I receive through my contact form, and that I’ve helped people is what’s ultimately been the most effective marketing tool I could wield.

Cre8asite member Jozian has been having a ball recently doing recreations of other member’s avatars. It’s like caricature, but digital. At any rate, here’s what I got out of it:

And speaking of the violin…I’ve got a concert tonight for anybody who happens to be in or around Saint Paul, MN. 8:00pm, Sundin Music Hall at Hamline University. Admission is $18.