Review of On The Loose by Jenny B. Jones

Written By: Timothy Fish Published: 10/9/2007

You may have noticed that Amazon.com is jumping on the bandwagon and they have a video review feature. I had to try this, so I grabbed one of my recent purchases from Amazon.com, set up the video camera and came up with the video that you see on the right. That turned out to be the easy part.

First, there was the issue with the file format. I used the .mp4 extention and the same rendering settings that I have been using for Google. It turns out that Amazon.com does not support mp4, so after waiting several minutes for the file to upload, Amazon.com comes back and says that the format is not support.

I rendered the video again. This time I used the .mpg extention. The resulting file was twice as big, but it was still only about 16 Meg so I uploaded it. This time, Amazon.com told me that the file had been uploaded successfully and gave me a button to preview the review. It also asked for additional information.

After putting the information in form, I clicked on the button. Instead of seeing the video that I expected to see, I saw a long string of error message dialog boxes fill my computer screen before all one hundred or so of them disappeared and the browser windows died. I didn't even have time to read the error message.

So now, here I am, waiting for the forty-eight hours that Amazon says it may take for the video to appear on the site. While I know that it is somewhere on their server, I don't know that the actual review is in their system. I don't know if I should try to upload the file again or to just wait and trust that they did a better job than what my experience implies.

I decided to put this video here. While I wait, you can watch this review of On the Loose by Jenny B. Jones. Overall, the book isn't too bad. It is aimed more to young teenage girls and that is evident in the main character's view of the world. It was written in first person present tense. It has a salvation message in it, but it doesn't seem to be tacked on as an afterthought, as some books do. My biggest disappointment with the book is that the cover is false advertising. Yes, there is a tornado, but it does not play a significant role in the book. There is a car wreck, but it does not involve a poultry truck, as the chicken on the cover seems to indicate. The wreck is also a nonevent. Cancer plays a role, but the biggest problem in Katie's life is dating.