Trial and Error

Whoever said you never get a second chance to make a first impression?
Well, on Trial and Error you do.

After my troubles with CNN Pipeline, the network offered to help me resolve the technical challenges. As you may recall, I had to uninstall Pipeline, CNN’s broadband service, in order to view videos on CNN.com.

It turns out—big surprise—I might have been part of the problem.

Here’s why. I’ve had a complimentary subscription to CNN Pipeline for about a year. But I have never used it, I admit sheepishly. When CNN Pipeline upgraded the service twice in the last year, I never downloaded those upgrades. Those upgrades would have eliminated the troubles I had yesterday.

So CNN sends me a link to download Pipeline again. The new player launches and it’s a cool-looking service with live feeds, on-demand videos and links to top stories. A news clip about a missing soldier plays. I look around for other videos and spot a story covering how the movie “Dirty Dancing” has been adapted for the stage.

Then I decide to try the search function. I search for “cats”—I always do. It’s my random search test term. However, nothing shows up. The Pipeline manager suggests I try “Iraq.” Aha. That does make a wee bit more sense. Still, nothing shows up. I close Pipeline.
In the meantime, I launch CNN.com in a separate browser window and click on a random video link. When I do that it re-launches Pipeline, which solves a problem I had yesterday. So that’s good.

Then I try both searches again— “Iraq” and “cats”—and both return several video results this time. I choose to watch a video about a cat who walks on its front paws only.
Here’s my conclusion. The service takes a little getting used to. You have to play around with it. But when you do, it’s pretty handy for news and amusement.