As promised to Sheeny on the Softspot... the cover of this October's Numéro. There's a Twiggy-ish, 60s-ish fur editorial inside with the predictable emaciated models in war paint. This cover is far more attractive and inspiring than any of the pictures inside. The furs and the fashion make up for a lot though, and there are some nice ads -maybe more later. I might even try a better version of this scan, because it has suffered from reflection.
A stylish street ad for a jewellery brand somewhere in XU - no furs or feathers on the site that I know of. There still more to come - not bad for a Summer holiday.
Sometimes it's fun to bash bad websites, but often it isn't. A fresh example of the latter case is www.albefurs.com, a link brought to us by SSFF regular Hack__Jack. Why wouldn't it feel quite the same to unleash our best irony - if not sarcasm - on this effort? Most of all - these people have been trying very hard. They've forked out for a designer who knows his Flash (wow!), there was a really amazing photographer at work and the products look promising too, in spite of the website. Hold on, in spite of? Yes. First of all, people don't come to this website to watch a Flash animation, they're looking for furs. There's a 'Skip' button, but it takes dangerously long to show up, even on my 3,2 GHz machine and broadband connection. If internetsurfers have a patience span of 20 seconds, Albefurs.com is one foot over the edge. Secondly, there's the music. If talked about music on websites before, and to sum it up, it's almost always an annoyance, be it Beethoven or The Ramones. Sadly, Albefurs' music isn't Beethoven at all. Even if you have no other music running yourself or if you are in a noise-friendly environment, this is the kind of 'music' that makes you really, really want to go away after a minute or so. It gets to your nerves and it makes you want to smash things if you do hang around for longer. Thirdly, there's the pictures. I love photography, I love fashion and I can tell you, these are wonderful pictures, which is exactly why it's a waste and a shame that they're so small, even looking at it from the shop's point of view. There used to be time when there were reasons to use small pictures on websites, but since then, let's say five years ago, things have moved on. No one's using a 640 x 480 screen resolution anymore and if there's anyone still using a 56K dial-in modem, he or she's probably living somewhere in the Third World - not a likely Albefurs customer. On the other hand, go to a serious photo gallery and you'll see that most if not all pictures are displayed at very large sizes. There's reason for that: 'Less if more' doesn't work for the size of good pictures. Photos have larger impact on a larger size. Add to that for furs: you'll get a much better 'feel' for the fur's texture if the picture has a decent size, and the fur's softness is obviously a major drool-factor when it comes to selling them. The only reason I can think of making the pictures so small: it might disturb the page design. Now, the page design would be much more important than selling furs, wouldn't it? Whose priorities are we talking about here?
Excuse me for getting ironic after all. Some positive suggestions: 1. Add plain HTML next to the Flash, if you want to stick to Flash at all. Visually challenged surfers will love it too. Just because people are blind or have eye-problems, it doesn't mean they can't afford or enjoy a fur coat. 2. Ditch the music. Delete it. Burn it. Nuke it. Shoot the composer. Strangle the guy who told you it would be a good idea to put it on the site, and do it real slow. You don't want music if you want a people-friendly website. 3. Larger pictures. Are you proud of your product? Show it. Even better: put your logo on them and make them downloadable. For the foreseeable future they're going to do the rounds among online fur lovers, saying 'Albefurs-Albefurs-Albefurs'. They're that good, and who wouldn't want that?
One of the good things of having this blog is that - other than on the SSFF - I can allow myself to be gloriously off-topic.
The past three quarters of an hour I did a lot of thinking. This was no fault of my own, but apart from watching the text 'WINDOWS IS CLOSING DOWN NOW' or observing the gradual lengthening of the traybar down right on the screen of our laptop, I only managed to send a away one email and inspect a site - very briefly - on the SSFF. The reason was that the antivirus program needed its weekly update and the firewall got to a new version too. Both required rebooting. To counter your obvious objections, no, this isn't a very old laptop and I like to keep its setup rather clean. Now, imagine you switched on your tv set and you had to spend about 15 minutes to update some bit of crucial maintenance software in its prints, after which you'd have to switch it off again - perhaps only allowing you only a few minutes of the nine o'clock news - and repeat the process for another piece of functionality.
Still, some people think the worldwideweb is some kind of television. They believe you need more than just information and pictures - before you get to anything, you have to watch floating logos, one or two graphics twirling here or there, there has to be an agonizingly slow progress bar progressing somewhere and, of course, you need music. You can't have silent television, that would be unnatural and perverse. Imagine how happy we were with the music on the site I inspected if you know one of us was suffering the consequences of a long day in corporate life. Yes, she was sleeping.
Music on websites is, all by itself, as mindbogglingly contraproductive and irritating as Flash animations. People who are not listening to music while websurfing very likely have good reason. They're in a business environment, on a train, or there's someone dozing next to them on the couch. On the other hand, people who are listening music while websurfing aren't happy with some piece of repetitive musical junk cutting through their Madonna or Monteverdi.
Which leads me to the conclusion that a baffling number of the people who are responsible for creating websites, probably don't do any websurfing themselves.
Soft Spot TV ep. 6: Mikhail fills his Ipod. (Fur and feathers.)
These are all mp4s intended for use on an Video Ipod. You can play them on Quicktime or Itunes too, but if you have an older version already, these are of no particular use. If you don't have them however, you might like a lot of them, provided you stick to your favorite texture (fur or feather). NOTE: Due to the place where they're posted, the links will only last a day or five from now! So far, media-convert is the only fool-proof way I've found to convert .flv into mp4. It's takes some work though, so if you feel inclined to post some material too (conversion automatically results in a link), bring it on. Fur http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=zytyiv Ayumi - Bold and Delicious. Should be a classic. Never leave the house without it. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=xkyocw Lilkim - Came back for you. Fur must-have! http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=caekce Dior Backstage . Huge collars and doll faces. I love this one. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=tesuvd Galliano Haute Couture ('decadent'). Oldie, very good. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=jksmkw Joan Crawford, Ice Folies of '39. Short fragment digitized by yours Faithfurry. Longer and better versions exist. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=syyxtm Ayumi wins award for No Way To Say. Great fox stole. http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=bqvkpu Ayumi - Unite! (live). Okay, just one foxtail... :-) http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=yxfexl snejanaonopkaatdiorhcfw06bulkyfur.mp4 Two of this year's big Galliano/Dior furs. Of course, they always focus on the wrong coat... http://media-convert.com/convert/?xid=owfapz Northern Pursuit. Classic BW furclip. YouTube post by Fibreway.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3abKsbjNEoQ Snejana Onopka in Fendi (sent to my by Jerry). For me, Fendi has been missing the Gasp!-factor the last few years, but for completeness' sake, have a look.
Ciao all, As some of you know, I'm rather partial to things and people Venetian, even remotely Venetian, so I can't resist using this video to testdrive You Tube's blog option. Seriously, look at this one, and also at pt. 1,2 and 3 (look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXjPRkUEgAM). 'Venetian Princess' is one of those rare people who are genuinely funny without looking like they have to compensate for something. Being a 'nature lover' (eeeww) she'll probably hate *my* blog, but such is life.
No news in this issue, I just re-post it here for safekeeping. If you've never gone through the Digest, have a look, you might find it useful.
THE SSFF DIGEST------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- * The Soft Spot back up blog (that is, I'll back up some of the messages that I particularly like, and in case of Boardhost going down, I'll keep you posted there):http://mksoftspot.blogspot.com/ * Some links to watch on a daily basis (if you've got that kind of day)- http://www.sagafurs.com/ Brilliant pictures.- http://www.bwgreyscale.com/ After this excellent photo part was taken down but it it has revived in some form. Still interesting.- http://www.theplace.ru/forum/ pictures stay here only for a few days, almost like a Usenet group. If you post something from this site, you'd do everybody a favour to repost the picture on an imagehosting site.- http://keskescans.blogspot.com/. A blog with nice occasionally rare fashion scans. (Sheeny) - http://www.nysocialdiary.com/ during the fur-wearing season, and the occasional Dennis Basso show. I only wish Milan or Venice had a site like this...- http://www.gettyimages.com/ small pictures and often watermarked in a pig-ugly way (as if it helps to sell them!), but an endless source for fur and feather-clad celebrities.- http://www.corbis.com/ Similar, but better if it comes to older material. Look for 'fur woman' or 'fur actress' and you'll find some classics.- http://thecelebritydatabase.com/forum, suggestion by Votanodin. This is new to me, but people share videos here too, which might be interesting.- http://www.ismaster.net/newest_gallery.php(Del Boy: 'This is actually about the best site (as it is Italian and they sport the odd fur or two').- http://thumbs.globalnews.it/categories.php?viewmode=&cat_id=171&page=1(from Votanodin)- And as to Getty, here is a good one by Del Boy:"I often look at Gettty and Rex Features - and if I see a celeb wearing some nice furs I then go to http://forums.superiorpics.com/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0and I try to find the pics - often with success. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*Clifford's favorite dog food:"My favorite brand of dog food is NaturalChoice Senior (in the silver bag). I also like peanut butter and pasta" ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* Share, share, share!- http://www.rapidshare.de/ Post big files so people can download them.- Also consider e.g. www.yousendit.com...- http://www.imageshack.us/index.php Our resident picture hoster. There are other good hosters too, just as long as you don't use Imagevenue. :-> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* Honourable mention:- http://sheenys-fur-fashion-scans.blogspot.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* While we're in a charitable mood... (from Del Boy)- http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_you_can_do/give_to_oxfam/company/partners/co-op.htm- http://www.americanexpress.com/pes/uk/benefits/red/microsite/card.shtml?sourcecode=X63692RD05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------* How to convert Imagevenue links:(Posted by zb on March 8, 2006, 22:00:06)Hi! If the links to the imagevenue-pics only lead you to the front page, try the following: 1) link used for the example:http://img12.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-27565/loc252/48927_Gisele_B_Fendi_Fall00_03.jpg 2) Basic address is:http://img*a*.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc*b*& image=*c*(Had to insert a blank between "loc*b*&" and "image=", otherwise it would have looked like "loc*b*ℑ=" ... Please remove that blank!) 3) Replace *a* with the number after "http://img", e.g. "12" 4) Replace *b* with the number after "/loc", e.g. "252" 5) Replace *c* with the name of the pic, e.g. "48927_Gisele_B_Fendi_Fall00_03.jpg" So you'll get a URL likehttp://img12.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc252& image=48927_Gisele_B_Fendi_Fall00_03.jpg(Again inserted a blank for better readbility, see above)Good luck! ----------- * How to convert FLBG pictures?Another recurring question! In the current state of things, the big pictures have been taken down in their original 4 MB size, probably because of traffic overflow. I'm told they've been reposted in much smaller resolution, but they're still nice to look at. This is an example of a working URL:http://www.fblginc.com/asp/photo_2006/large_z/7554_4859_l_800.JPG (And thanks to all involved in dealing with this question on this board.) A lesson from this: we're not the small, double-figure band of aficionados anymore. On picture sites I've seen pictures getting hundreds of hits. Keep this in mind if you link to something big that's not on a professional, really solid Google- or Yahoo-type server.
Continuing our Balkan theme, just one little gem tonight, with thanks to my email pal Jerry who alerted me to this one, and a guy called Amitech on Googlevideo: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2577833703908385767 It's Çiljeta, who must be an Albanian singer. Or a Kosovarian singer, it's hard to tell if you don't know the lingo. The good thing she apparantely brought a nice silverfox jacket. Also, I found 'Rozana', also in a fur coat but not as good and sadly, this clip is rather pixellated and LQ, technically speaking. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6172584938627802956
Back up and heads up to the Soft Spot Fashion Forum, and consequently mostly devoted to (fake) fur- and feather-related fashion. And perhaps some other good things too, time will tell.
