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Posted: 2009-12-29 12:36:03 Shortcut URL: http://t.conquent.com/i700 We were contracted to build a sweepstakes site for Disney/ABC for the final season of the TV show LOST (or as they put it LOST: The Final Season, which sounds more ominous). It was a pretty straightforward database project, with two major wrinkles. First off, they needed it in a week. I was thinking two weeks when we agreed to do it, but when you consider we had Christmas right in the middle of the project, we pretty much had to get it done in a week. Purnima did a great job of creating custom graphics for the site based on the imagery we were provided, and Eric got the programming and server set up done in short order. Even the HTML came together, which is remarkable when you consider how short-handed we are in that department at the moment. But the real thing that had me worried about this project is that this is LOST; this is a show with a fan base that put fanatical back in the word "fan". There are over a million fans on the LOST Facebook page which could pummel a web application. Then there's the fact ABC will be advertising the sweepstakes on TV, which can get thousands of people to hit the site at the same moment. Fortunately Conquent has faced this before and we were able to get a site set up on Rackspace's cloud -- we looked at Amazon and Google (even considered Microsoft's), but what made Rackspace work for me was that I had a couple business cards from meeting tech and sales guys in Vegas at the CLIO awards. Yep, I made the business decision from hanging out in the cabanas by the pool at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas. It's not that they had plied me with booze and wifi, it's that I was able to pick up the phone and talk to someone who was able to help my team set up the right solution. No matter how hard you try, you just can't automate real customer service. Even with over a decade of doing exactly these kinds of projects, cloud computing is new, and I honestly didn't know enough about how the technology works to understand how the pricing works or how we might get in trouble with one package versus another. We're in Day 2 of the sweepstakes as I write this, and it's running so smoothly it's almost disturbing. I mean, I don't want to break the site, but I'd like to see the thing strain a little. But so far, it's just another ho-hum miracle.  Here's a link to the sweepstakes site, which probably will be pulled down a week before the February 2nd season premiere: http://abc.go.com/shows/lost/final-season-sweepstakes
Eric Weaver: Re: Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes 2009-12-30 00:55:10 An amusing challenge was that they wanted to give people a right/wrong indication on each question. How to do that without just letting them view source and read the correct answers? Wound up doing a bunch of nasty number hacking in Javascript. Lots of multiplying and dividing-and-taking-the-remainder. The correct answer will be divisible by a certain number that's not obvious at first. I figured anybody hackerly to figure it out will have wasted enough time they might as well have submitted the form 25 times. Taylor Singletary: Re: Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes 2009-12-30 18:07:26 Great project. I also recommend Joyent's cloud solutions pretty highly. AppEngine has legs but requires very specific implementation choices Michael Bissell: Re: Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes 2009-12-30 18:07:50 I like the way Rackspace Cloud Sites (as opposed to Cloud Servers) scales automatically leaving fewer of those implementation choices |
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The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
Violated by Madison Avenue
Google+ Scares Me
"We need to..." Internet Marketing Myths
Facebook's deal with the Devil
My cool new phone is a little too cool.
You are never alone
Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
Publishing Industry Watch
Content for Social Media
Social Media Slot Machine
Anonymous vs Me
News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
The Demand For The Loss of Creativity
Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
Time for a New Reality
The Death of Email
Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
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Time for New Ideas
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The Great Technical Disconnect
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Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
Inspecting my Navel Base
A shoebox vs. an online backup
Is Your "Resume" Website Recruiter-friendly?
iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
The Failure of Success
The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
Time lost on Twitter
Client Vendor Relationships
Twitter's back alleys and dark places
Social Media is NOT Advertising
Microsoft Courier
Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
The volume of screens
Logorama
Google Adds Biking Directions to Maps
Transmedia
That magical little tablet
How your website can be in two places at once
Masterpieces created by sheer volume
Suing over lack of originality
A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
Checking my messages
Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
So many accounts, so few passwords
Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
The Twit Cleaner
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The Emotions of Text
The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
The Internet is the New 60's
Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
Social Media and the Destruction of the World
Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
You can't buy social media
A book unopened is but a block of paper
Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
Archiving Twitter
Too Many Toolbars
Random Censorship with Google Adwords
Accessibility and Shopping Online
Twisted path to customer service
Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
Twollow and other gold rush scripts
GPS in a Laptop computer
Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
It's not the corporations, damnit
Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
Socializing is more than Social Media
Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
The Internet is Gooder than Books
Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
Best Twitter Branding Campaign
Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
iPhone SMS Security Hole
How Flipmytweet works
Cell Phones as Microscopes
Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
Automatic Social [un]Awareness
First splash for United Against Malaria
New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
Understanding Google To Get Your Resume Noticed
The trouble with Wordpress and other templates
Wayward Words with Baggage
Speaking at SXSW March 17th
The fleeting Memory of the Internet
It's okay to say 'I don't know'
Nike Takes Over Conquent
Facebook owns this title
Excuses, excuses
A little on Social Media
Feeding on Content
Attack of the Bots
Web 1.0
Net Neutrality
Getting clever with data feeds
The Other Credit Crisis
The Broadband Inauguration
T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
Browser Bigotry
The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
Is PayPal Tacky?
Old School Web Design Still Works
Domain Squatting
Green Chri$tma$
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Get some return on that web traffic
I think they have a backup...
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The [un]importance of statistics
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You Designed for Print First
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The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
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crowdSPRING
Creative Services for the New World
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It's the Brand, Baby
Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
On Truth
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With a career that has spanned advertising, production, technical services, and project management, Michael is able to articulate the wide range skills and professions that make the Internet work. This eclectic understanding and his desire to shine the light on those hiding behind techno babble has brought success to a wide range of projects.
Twitter @bissellLinked In
Past Postings:
Using Dissent To Enhance Your Social Influence Online
Industry Profile - Author
Industry Profiles – Full Time Employees - Professional Writer
Some Thoughts On Freelancing
Building Your Online Brand
Marissa Mayer and the Change in Yahoo's Remote Workforce
LinkedIn for Professional Writers
Fake Republican Twitter Accounts
"Did you mean?" -- Google's chiding nanny of search results
Branded Technology
Sharingspree.com -- Stealing more than GroupOn's Idea
The Internet Isn't Entertaining Enough
It's not your bank... It's Apple's and Amazon's
Violated by Madison Avenue
Google+ Scares Me
"We need to..." Internet Marketing Myths
Facebook's deal with the Devil
My cool new phone is a little too cool.
You are never alone
Promotion vs. Distribution... You'd think they'd know that one...
Publishing Industry Watch
Content for Social Media
Social Media Slot Machine
Anonymous vs Me
News from the Twitter Follow Campaign Trail
The art of Indiscriminate Twitter Following
The Cloudy Meaning of The Cloud
The Demand For The Loss of Creativity
Alien Technology and Government Conspiracies
Time for a New Reality
The Death of Email
Protecting Free Speech... Anonymously (and geekily)
Amazon Shouldn't Have Shut Down WikiLeaks
The Superpowers of the Hive Mind
Time for New Ideas
Comcast, Netflix and the Mystery of the Modem
The Great Technical Disconnect
New for the Sake of New
A Retail Store Built Like the Web
Disposable Personas
When did Google Start Policing the Internet?
Getting back to HTML basics, thanks to Apple
Inspecting my Navel Base
A shoebox vs. an online backup
Is Your "Resume" Website Recruiter-friendly?
iBooks -- Creative Epicenter or Gatekeeper?
The Failure of Success
The Economy is Going to Get Worse, but that's okay
Time lost on Twitter
Client Vendor Relationships
Twitter's back alleys and dark places
Social Media is NOT Advertising
Microsoft Courier
Form (designers) versus Function (geeks)
PDXBOOM -- The power of social media and the portland pipe bomb
China and Apple -- Different organizations, same management
The volume of screens
Logorama
Google Adds Biking Directions to Maps
Transmedia
That magical little tablet
How your website can be in two places at once
Masterpieces created by sheer volume
Suing over lack of originality
A Primer on Internet Fame -- dancing babies, hamsters, numa numa, and more...
Checking my messages
Rules are made to be broken -- in a reasoned, systematic way
So many accounts, so few passwords
Who really uses Twitter? 60% of Twitter's traffic isn't on Twitter
The Web is a Jerry Rigged Kludge
Twitter: Asleep at the Mouse Wheel
Where regulation is good: Google Voice and Vonage
How Facebook is (unintentionally) forcing programmers to piss off users
The Twit Cleaner
Perfect Secretary's pitch for @Adbroad (and the Youtube API)
The Emotions of Text
The Shorty Awards Scandal -- Manual Spam is still Spam
Google Analytics, the cloud and missing numbers #fail
Helen Klein Ross & Michael Bissell Interview at Adweek's Social Media Strategies Conference
The Internet is the New 60's
Cougars from New Zealand (and I don't mean big cats)
Adding facts together, or why you can't charge your cell phone from wifi
Social Media and the Destruction of the World
Rabid Fans vs Passive Viewers -- The Coco vs Leno saga
How to tell someone to retweet (without using up your 140 characters)
You can't buy social media
A book unopened is but a block of paper
Building the LOST: The Final Season Sweepstakes
Holiday SPAM (or the lack thereof)
Archiving Twitter
Too Many Toolbars
Random Censorship with Google Adwords
Accessibility and Shopping Online
Twisted path to customer service
Flash: Shiny objects blinding your audience
Twollow and other gold rush scripts
GPS in a Laptop computer
Thinking outside the box... There was a box?
Twitter was designed for Text Messaging
It's not the corporations, damnit
Entrepreneur or Dreamer?
Adweek Social Media Twitter for Brands Presentation
Socializing is more than Social Media
Generational Marketing is a Myth (or Who's your Daddy?)
Social Media is Just the Way We Use the Internet
Twitter Followers Don't Matter (ask the porn sites)
The Internet is Gooder than Books
Sometimes you don't want your campaign to go viral
Best Twitter Branding Campaign
Like flies to crap, Spammy Twitter Followers don't really go away
iPhone SMS Security Hole
How Flipmytweet works
Cell Phones as Microscopes
Digg is not the Hijacker -- You Are
Steve Ballmer -- the walking dead?
Twitter as an open mic poetry reading
Automatic Social [un]Awareness
First splash for United Against Malaria
New Media/Old Media and the CLIO Awards
Interview at SXSW: Mad Men Twitter And Tracking
We've got an App for that -- it's called the Web
Understanding Google To Get Your Resume Noticed
The trouble with Wordpress and other templates
Wayward Words with Baggage
Speaking at SXSW March 17th
The fleeting Memory of the Internet
It's okay to say 'I don't know'
Nike Takes Over Conquent
Facebook owns this title
Excuses, excuses
A little on Social Media
Feeding on Content
Attack of the Bots
Web 1.0
Net Neutrality
Getting clever with data feeds
The Other Credit Crisis
The Broadband Inauguration
T-Mobile owns Magenta and Other Patent Stories
The Risk-takers, Doers and Makers of Things
The noise of 20,000+ Twitter Followers
30,000 feet, 500 MPH Suburban Strip Mall
Cellphones, toilets and the Inauguration
The End of Days (of song): Microsoft Songsmith Example
Browser Bigotry
The Death of your Soul: Microsoft Songsmith
Creative Development or Developing Creatively?
The Myth of Wikipedia (or the Wiki-1400)
Online/Offline Sales -- is it really that bad?
Is PayPal Tacky?
Old School Web Design Still Works
Domain Squatting
Green Chri$tma$
QA 101
Portland Snow
Get some return on that web traffic
I think they have a backup...
I'd love to have that problem
The [un]importance of statistics
Don't be a tool of viral marketing
Emails, discussions, blogs, wiki and web content
You Designed for Print First
You let someone else register your domain name
You figured .biz, .info, .us would work fine
What's after the Integrated Circuit?
Intelligent life is out there (but it's bugger all down here on earth)
Subject Matter Experts Talking Other Subject Matter
The Totalitarian Regime of Apple
Oversimplifying how people work
crowdSPRING
Creative Services for the New World
Reverse Anthropomorphism
The End of Time
Better Living Through Twitter
Lessons Learned From Apple
It's the Brand, Baby
Business Architecture vs. Web Construction
On Truth
Inverse Peter Principle
Random Knowledge
The Hive
RSS for this blog