The experience begins on the home page with a series of graphics that show the circumstances of Boston’s homeless. It’s a broad demographic profile, which is far less effective, in my opinion, than homeless people in their own words. But I can understand the logistical and ethical concerns of featuring videos of homeless people.

In addition to data about Boston’s homeless, the site includes donation locations both in Boston and nationwide. To further spur you to donate, Land’s End (the company behind this coat drive) points out that coats go to local homeless people. If you donate a coat in Alabama, it goes to a person in Alabama.

But I think the best piece — the part that lets you really feel like you and your donation have made a difference is the “Find Your Coat” feature.

Yup! Donate a coat, get a number and find out where your coat has gone. I don’t have a code, so I can’t tell you what it looks like on the other side. But I am curious to find out. It’s this tangible tie-in — one that piques curiosity and interest if you haven’t donated, and rewards you with warm fuzzies if you have — that makes this campaign (potentially) very effective.

Site by: Firstborn.

I was stymied for several seconds by the interface of this Yahoo! player. I was looking for a share or an embed icon so I could add this video to my blog. I saw an information icon. I saw full screen and volume icons. And I saw an e-mail icon. Let me repeat: I saw an e-mail icon.

So I clicked the e-mail icon …

… and found the embed code.

To be fair, the e-mail icon does reveal that it’s an all-purpose “Share” link if you hover for a second or so. The problem, however, is that the icon Yahoo! is using is a long-established icon for sending e-mail. What’s more, Yahoo! is the only major video site that seems to use an e-mail icon as a synonym for a share icon.

How YouTube does it:

Note the arrow that reveals an iconic representation of their video sharing screen.

How Vimeo does it:

Imagine that! Separate links for sharing and embedding the video.

How DailyMotion does it:

DailyMotion uses a text menu with a “URL & Embed code” link.

I think it’s safe to say that users expect embed features to be labeled ‘Embed’ or ‘Share.’ I think it’s even safer to say that users don’t expect an envelope to mean anything other than e-mail. E-mail is not embed, and Yahoo! should redesign their player interface to distinguish between the two functions.