My Interview with Michael Jahn

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing a true industry veteran, Michael Jahn. He's a printing industry consultant, color specialist, PDF evangelist and glob-trotting presenter. He's also a surfer, goof-ball and trickster.

We talked about what's changed for content creators, designers and publishers in the last 20 years. He's been involved with PDF since it was just "P" (for postscript). He describes why now is one of the most exciting times ever for digital publishing.

We spoke in Orlando just before his CRE8 presentation entitled, "What Color is Your Cheese Doodle?"

To learn more about the CRE8 Conference on Creativity & Technology, see my posts from the show.

To enter the mind of Mr. Jahn, view his blog.

This video is presented using the Veoh service. Learn more about Michael Eisner and his connection to this company.

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop

Want to edit (or warp) your images? Want to avoid spending $1,000 on Photoshop? The fun and informative LifeClever blog has a great post about free online image editors. LifeClever offers design advice, productivity tips and life hacks for designers and non-designers.

PDFs with Video

15 years ago Adobe had the foresight to launch a format that was cross-platform, cross-browser and behaved the same on different computers and printers. Today the PDF document format is a major standard for those of us who consume and distribute content on digital platforms.

This month they added support for video! This is great news for digital content creators and distributors. Although it is simple for us to post video on YouTube or a million other services, the fact that we can now create context for our video is exciting. Sure, we can embed video into our websites. But, more and more, destinations on the web are becoming irrelevant. In the early days of the web we were attempting to attract eyeballs to a particular URL. Today, even though portals are a solid business model, we are increasingly seeing the content travel to the viewer rather than the other way around. Now we can package video content up nice and neat and deliver it to our audience.

Learn more at the Adobe site. There is also a good story on The Murcury News where they describe it this way, "along with adding video to documents, Acrobat 9 is intended to let users create professional-looking "portfolios" - combining text and graphics with video, 3-D representations and other applications - and store them as a .pdf file that will appear the same to anyone who views or prints it."

They Promised Us Convergence, part 4

The great plodding march toward complete convergence continues. TV and movies are merging with the digital world. This series on my blog tracks many of the companies, creators and video sites that have joined this quest for convergence. Below are links and quotes about many of the sites I didn't cover in parts 1, 2 and 3.

The goal of CastTV is "to index every video on the web (from YouTube to iTunes, and everything in between) and to help users find videos that matter to them."

"Viddler is a fresh, creative web application that lets you upload, enhance, and share digital video quickly and easily inside your web browser. Sharing your story. Making search results relevant. Bringing users together."

"LiveVideo is where you want to be to find original and exclusive content, weekly video contests, and great videos. Essentially, LiveVideo is your ultimate video destination on the web. We are a customizable video streaming community that allows users to watch, upload, search and share videos, allowing you to have a completely interactive video sharing experience!"

Stickam is "driving the next wave of business communications with rich media meetings that liberate users from time and geographical constraints." They provide "Web communication services... designed for the delivery of multimedia Web communications."

Qik lets you "stream live video fast to the world. Right from your phone."

MoveNetworks is calling themselves TV 2.0.

"WorldTV is an entirely new concept in the world of web video. More than 10 years in the planning, it realizes a long term vision to empower anyone, anywhere to become their own media mogul, and to create their own fabulous TV Channel."

Adobe Media Playerlaunched a media player that works great for finding, cataloging and watching your videos.

Also see my recent post about the DIY Video Summit.

Remember that the deadline for the mandatory shift to digital television draws ever closer. See my recent post T-Commerce, Digital TV and the Digitization of Content.

The set top box market continues to take in new players. "VUDU is the revolutionary new movie on-demand service that provides instant access to more than 6,000 movies and TV shows, with hundreds of titles in high-definition. Whether you're in the mood for a top Hollywood new release or an art-house classic, VUDU lets you rent or purchase and starts playing faster than you can grab the popcorn." FOXTEL has a pretty great box. And this month also saw a widly publicised rumor that Blockbuster Video is about to announce a set top box of their own and this rumor appears to be true.

Maven is "the power of internet TV" and was bought by Yahoo for $160M. "Introducing the first and only complete online video advertising solution to dramatically increase video advertising inventory and revenue via new ad formats, an intelligent and dynamic video ad insertion engine, and sophisticated video ad inventory management tools."

Live Universe, the latest venture from MySpace founder Brad Greenspan, bought Revver, in February 2008. LiveVideo.com is another project by Live Universe.

BuddyTV is "original and fresh coverage on TV Shows, TV News, TV Spoilers, Live TV Commentary, TV listings, Forums, and Community."

"MeeVee is the first destination to bring together traditional TV listings and online video from hundreds of sources in one place. Using innovative new technologies, MeeVee has changed the way viewers find TV programming and online video by enabling them to personalize their guides to surface new programming choices based on individual interests."

Beet TV continues to crank out great video coverage of many of these topics.

Mogulus is "giving users the power to create live, original television programming, all done on their own global broadcasting channel."

PermissionTV will give you the tools to monetize your video assets.

ViralVideos displays "the web's most shared viral videos."

YouTorrent, is a meta search engine that finds you bit torrents.

Stay tuned for more in this ongoing series. Check out the previous posts:
They Promised Us Convergence, part 3
They Promised Us Convergence, part 2
They Promised Us Convergence, part 1

Adobe Media Player for Internet TV Content

Adobe is now in competition with iTunes, Windows Media Player and Real Player. Their new Adobe Media Player is a great digital media content player that helps you organize your favorites and find great video and audio.

Adobe has also teamed up with a bunch of participating content producers and suppliers such as CBS, Comedy Central, BlipTV, MTV and Universal.

Adobe has a great history of making universal, cross-platform apps that quickly become the standard. This Media Player has a chance to become the standard tool that allows digital content consumers to aggregate and control the incredible amount of audio and video that is sprouting anew every day on the web. Check out my previous three articles on the convergence of TV and the web.

"Adobe Media Player software provides control and flexibility to view what you want, when you want — whether online or offline. You can queue up and download your favorite Internet TV content, track and download new episodes automatically, and manage your personal video library for viewing at your convenience."

Photoshop. For Free? YES!

It's like some beautiful dream. Adobe Photoshop has released a free online version of their software. Yup, you heard that right. You can go to a web page and use Photoshop Express thru a browser.

So, it's definitely not a "full" version of Photoshop...but it is everything you need to do your basic editing. Crop, hue, sharpen. They also have a neat Gallery feature that allows you to share your artistic creations online. With a free 2 GB of storage.

Dreams really do come true.