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Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited - The Real Story
2009-02-26 17:35:49
This is a question keeps popping up at cons, in news stories, and whenever I get the opportunity to talk to fans, so I want to try to put the rumor to rest, once and for all. So here it is:
The name of our digital subscription product, Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, is not a swipe at any other company, no matter what its initials might render down to.
We picked the name because it explained our program clearly and succinctly, and it sounded good.
If any of you who are reading this have ever worked in a very fast paced environment you'll know, but sometimes when you're launching a product, things slip by. In all the hustle and bustle of designing, coding, pricing, merchandising, marketing, and trying to make the thing you're launching actually work, you sometimes miss small stuff. Small stuff like, oh, the name of your product coincides with the name of your competitor's (distinguished or not) comic book universe.
But in the end, we chose Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited because it was the right name for the product, not because we wanted to stick it to anyone else.
- peter
P.S. I'm pleased to announce several other new Marvel products coming soon to a store near you:
- Marvel Dare Cards: Ultimate series - a new party game that helps break the ice at post-convention gatherings
- Marvel Doughnut Cans: Unbound - collectible tins for doughnuts, begniets and other pastries
- Marvel Durien, Cantaloupe, and Uglifruit - exotic tropical fruits engraved with some of your favorite characters
Norway Vs. IE 6 - Our Take
2009-02-20 10:34:07
Long time no blog (and I'm sure you'd rather us be building the site rather than blogging, but this caught my eye). As reported in Wired and elsewhere, a number of Norwegian websites now flash peevish messages at users who visit their sites with Internet Explorer 6.
So what's the Marvel web team's take on this?
IE 6 is, to put it mildly, not a popular browser with the type of people who build web sites (although the rumors that our front-end coders spit on the ground when anyone mentions it are highly exaggerated and I wish people would stop spreading them). In the end though it's not our place to force people to use any particular browser. Our rule about browser support is that we test and support the browsers that visitors to our site use. If a high enough percentage of our users visit us with a given browser, we support it - even if it makes things less convenient for as we build.
So even though our developers might ask IE6 users to upgrade your browser for the love of all that's holy (or switch to another one), it's not our job to do so.
Our job is to make sure as many people as possible who come to our site have the best experience that we can give them.
- peter
P.S. as you probably know, a big chunk of the Marvel staff is on Twitter. You can find me here. I'm happy to answer questions as long as I'm not, you know, working and stuff. I'm also going to try to blog here more frequently - and this time I mean it.
Thursday is Thor's Day was My Idea
2008-04-03 17:56:58
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It's crazy busy for us this week here at Marvel.com HQ (Alexa hasn't even had time to do the Weekly Watchers with her usual frequency lately). However we have been able to launch a new feature that you guys have been requesting: the Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited Publishing Calendar!
Now you can easily see when your favorite comics are added to the Marvel Digital Comics library. And yes, every Thursday is Thor's Day.
Also, we have a lot of cool features launching over the next month, so keep watching this space. I leave you with an awesome picture of Galactus riding through the halls of Marvel.
-pete
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Facebook, Digg, New Nav, and more
2008-03-10 08:55:18
Hi all. Happy Monday.
As always the Marvel.com suite of neat stuff expands. We have a couple of small items and a one big thing this week:
- New Nav!
It's not a radical redesign of the old one, but it's simpler, more elegant, and (most importantly) faster loading.
- Digg Button on news stories.
Now you digg Marvel.com stories without leaving the page. Five years ago that sentence wouldn't have made any sense.
- Digital Comics on Facebook!
If you somehow missed the giant box on the front page, you can now view Marvel Digital Comics while on popular social networking site Facebook.com (just go here) . Its our first Facebook app, and we think it turned out well.
If you're a Digital Comics Unlimited subscriber, you can actually link your Facebook and Marvel.com memberships and view books on either platform. Plus you can show off your favorite comics and creators to your friends and enemies by placing them on your profile with the click of a button. And hey, there's free books there too.
new marvel.com features (or getting back on the horse)
2008-02-27 14:21:36
Hi all. Long time no blog.
I'm going to try to redirect this blog a little bit and instead of writing long diatribes that no one reads, use it to keep you updated about cool stuff going on around the site. We are constantly changing and adding new stuff to Marvel.com, marvelkids.marvel.com and our other sites and we don't always wave our arms in the air and yell about them when they go live.
Anyway, new stuff:
1) New galleries on our movie pages:
(click on the big image that says "Launch the Gallery")
2) Some tweaks to the comics hubs:
We're presenting the books for each family in a more streamlined way, and also you can now see blog entries and podcasts for a given comic hub in one convenient location. (And if you haven't seen them check out the new Secret Invasion and Soleil hubs.)
Keep watching this space for more stuff.
-pete
Animated Series Coming to Cartoon Network
2007-05-25 15:03:13
test blog
google desktop gadget
2007-05-08 09:58:58
After a long and arduous development process, we've released our first gadget for Google Desktop! Now you can see this week's comic book releases right in Google sidebar.
Check it out here!
How not to spell
2007-05-08 09:58:44
Ack, it's been a long time since I blogged. Anyway, every week or so we review the top searches on our site, and I thought I'd share with you, my loyal cult following of two or three readers (depending whether my mom is reading this week or not), some of the fun things that we've found.
Spider-Man not SpidermanPoor Spider-Man. When it comes to finding our most popular character on the web, Peter Parker has it rough on a number of fronts. First, everyone misspells Spider-Man. It's tough...most people don't immediately think "Capital-S Spider Dash Capital M Man" when they hear Spider-Man, they think "spiderman", which is how most people type the name when they want to search for it. Aside from obvious typos like "Spinderman" or "Spidderman" (which sounds like a dentist I used to go to) and a few deliberate cutesy misspellings (was Spyderman ever a real character here?), Spiderman is the most common misspelling we get...and is always in the top 5 searches for our site.
But even if you spell Spider-Man correctly he's hard to find. I mean, I don't think that Stan Lee had sophisticated search engine optimization techniques in mind when he was busy inventing the everyman super-hero, he couldn't have spelled it in a worse way when it comes to the internet. First, a lot of search engines interpret Spider-Man as "find articles with the word 'spider' but not the word 'man'." And then even a lot of search engines think you actually mean (wait for it) Spiderman. Even the computers are confused.
Anyway, it's Spider-Man, not Spiderman.
DashesWhile we're on the subject, dashes are tricky. The rough rule seems to be that characters with animal names get them in the form of Animalname-Man: Ant-Man, Spider-Man, Giant-Man (giant being an animal for our purposes) etc. This holds true for the various Animal-Woman characters as well: Spider-Girl, Spider-Woman. Gorilla Man seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Other "man" names don't get dashes: Iron Man, Machine Man, Wonder Man. So animals get dashes, minerals don't. Not sure about plants, but I will check with Tom.
Why are you here again?Every week a certain number of searches in our top 20 are for characters that belong to other companies. And we're happy to have the traffic.
The king of the misspellingsAfter Spidey, the clear winner for the most misspelled character is Juggernaut. It's a tough word (I just had to look it up to make sure I got it right), and I'm not blaming anyone. But still. Here's a few of my favorites:
- jugernote
- juggernauth
- juggernatr
- juggrunat
- juggernautt
- juggrunat
- and finally Jaggernuat, which sounds like something I had too much of once at a party in college
Anyway, until next time, happy searching. And remember. Spider-Man. Not Spiderman.
wallpaper tweaks!
2007-03-22 08:55:14
The Marvel.com wallpaper section has been one of our most popular features on the site since we added it in August, 2004, but that doesn't mean we just rest on our laurels when it comes to how it works. We've just launched a few features that we hope will enhance your wallpaper browsing and downloading experience.
First, we made it a lot faster. Not the flashiest tweak ever, but, you know, it's faster.
Second, we've indexed each wallpaper by character. So now if you're looking for a wallpaper with say Daredevil, in it, you don't have to futz around looking through a million different book titles.
Finally, and the closest to my heart, we've added another way of looking at our popular wallpapers. In addition to the standard cumulative total tally of downloads, we're now tallying a decaying average of the most popular wallpapers over time. So the longer it's been since a wallpaper was posted, the more votes it'll have to have to stay near the top. This will give more recently posted wallpapers a chance to make the all-time most popular list. Take that House of M poster!
networking the marvel way
2007-02-21 08:58:15
stuff
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About this blog:
A blog about Marvel.com, what's going on, what we're doing, and where we're going.
 | About the author:
Peter Olson is the Director of Web Development for Marvel Entertainment. His hair does kind of look like that. |
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