Status Board “InfoWall”

Like many, I thought Panic’s status board was a great idea. Sony Music’s D2C group produces countless artist web sites, runs over 70 90 artist stores, and has lots of data, sites, and screenshots to share with staff and visitors.

Inspired by Panic’s single display view, our execution of the status board is comprised of this hardware:

• 3 47” Sony FWDS47H1 pro displays with a super thin bezel and DVI input, rotated 90 degrees
• 1 Mac Mini
• A USB to DVI converter to add 1 more DVI out to the Mac Mini’s existing 2 video ports

Software: I wrote a rails app that our staff has access to which enables posting of new “slides”. Each slide is comprised of the individual 3 screens. Each screen can have:

• An uploaded image (of a full resolution of 1080 x 1920)
• HTML, to load URLs via an iframe — such as live feed RSS pages, stats, charts, web sites, etc.
• Or provide a URL that takes an automatic screenshot at the full resolution. This feature is powered by a separate screenshot web service we have for other reasons.

The server-side app lets you create new slides, edit existing slides, move slides to the playlist, re-order the playlist, specify how long each slide displays for, etc. The Mac Mini runs a main Chrome window that loads a JS app which loads the JSON data for the playlist, checks if the playlist updated or not, opens 3 new browser windows, and manages the slide transitions and timers. To hide the mouse pointer, we use Doomlaser’s Cursorcerer.

This execution is a hybrid slide show app as well as a live data dash board for stats, a map for where our last sale occurred in real-time, our most recent artist web sites (live), etc.

Here are some screenshots for the RoR app.

Sony Make.Believe Contest

I was one of 10 contest winners in Sony’s Make.Believe branding campaign.  Sony’s CEO Sir Howard Stringer’s email below.

TO: Sony Employees

FROM: Howard Stringer

DATE: November 12, 2009

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for the remarkable enthusiasm you have shown for the internal make.believe kick-off and employee contest across the U.S. and Canada.  As you may know, we received nearly 1,000 entries from every corner of the company and from employees at every level.  I am incredibly proud of all those who contributed, because your amazing personal experiences tell our Sony make.believe story best.

Last week, I announced our three Grand Prize contest winners. They are: Dave Chaimson from Sony Creative Software in Madison, Wisconsin; Erika Kato from Sony Computer Entertainment America in San Diego, California; and Lauren Rivera from Sony Pictures Television in New York. Each of them will have his or her story turned into a professionally directed make.believe videography to debut publicly at CES in January.  I know they’ll be terrific.  In addition, each Grand Prize winner will receive a trip for two to Las Vegas for their video debut, along with a grand Sony product prize package.

Today, it is my great pleasure to announce the 10 contest runners-up, whose stories are equally inspiring.  The winning stories of all of our winners and runners-up, which have been minimally edited, can be found below.  Each runner-up will receive the Sony product prize package. They are:

• Erwin Coumans, Simulation Team Lead, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Wende Crowley, Senior Director, Film & TV Music, Sony ATV/Music Publishing
• Marc Mackin, Senior Artist, Sony Online Entertainment
• Jeff Merghart, Senior Artist Animator, Sony Online Entertainment
• Christopher Nelson, QA Supervisor, Sony Computer Entertainment America
• Tim Nilson, SVP Technology & Operations/Direct to Consumer, Sony Music Entertainment
• Brian Orr, Principal Software Engineer, Sony Media Software & Services, Sony Corporation of America
• Cecil Prado, Assistant Director, Sony Pictures Entertainment
• Adam Visnovec, Customer Information Center Representative, Sony of Canada Ltd.
• Ling Wong, Associate Software Engineer, Sony Electronics Inc.

Congratulations to all of you!

Thank you, again, for proving that the passion behind make.believe is inside all of us, and for helping us share it with consumers around the world.  

Sincerely,
Howard

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AC/DC Backtracks: Global fulfillment via our M2 Platform

The new AC/DC rarities collectors edition box set AC/DC Backtracks is sold direct to consumer via Sony Music’s M2 commerce platform.  The store is fully localized in 6 languages and fulfills the product to 43 countries via quick UPS delivery.