Digital Paper, eBooks and Multimedia Storytelling

Although I still subscribe to two newspapers and I love to read magazines and books, I am nonetheless excited about all the new eBook readers and digital paper technologies becoming available. With so many newspapers in trouble, many writers and readers are going digital.

The Kindle has really sparked a firestorm of recent interest, but there are a ton of other fascinating projects going on. Soon I hope to be digesting blogs, watching video, and reading articles and novels on a paper-thin, flexible color screen with tiny hi-def speakers. Bring it on!

Check out the links below for info on eBook technology, digital paper and what all this is doing to storytelling.

Watch Richard Archuleta, CEO of Plastic Logic demonstrate the world's first electronic reader aimed specifically for business users:
(Also see some other video from Plastic Logic.)

Both Plastic Logic and Kindle were recently mentioned on NPR's Marketplace (April 13, 2009): "New e-readers get a big push. E-readers allow users to read books digitally, but sales of the hand-held devices have grown slowly. That may be changing as Amazon and Sony, along with some well-funded start-ups, push a new generation of e-readers. Mitchell Hartman reports." (Listen to the MP3)

Kindle is Cool, But Color Ebook May Save Civilization
Is the digital savior of the sagging magazine industry finally in sight?

Flexible Displays Closer to Reality, Thanks to U.S. ArmyImagine a screen so thin, light and flexible that it can be rolled up and carried in your pocket, while consuming almost zero power. Phillips electronics is also working on a similar epaper technology.

The folks at TechCrunch are working on a great potential product that will be "a very thin and light touch screen computer, sans physical keyboard, that has no hard drive and boots directly to a browser to surf the web." Ladies and gentlemen, The CrunchPad.

Check out the review of the eSlick eBook reader that was announced before the Kindle2.

Samsung ready to roll out Papyrus touchscreen ebook reader Will the touchscreen make this a Kindle killer?

Readers and writers are also starting to develop technologies and communities to adapt and support this new way of publishing (or is it broadcasting?).

Wattpad is called "The World's Most Popular eBook Sharing Community." Self-publishing is also flourishing in this new world at places like WEbook. A company called Vook.tv is in private beta, but promises to be a site to promote and distribute a multimedia hybrid of books and videos.

Is This the Future of the Digital Book? Read about Vook and many other companies in this great NYT article.

The New Storytelling: Multimedia Children's Publishing Kids' publishing houses lead the way in developing multimedia platforms.

Fujitsu shows off colour e-book display. It's new, it's Japanese and it is almost ready for prime time.

My Documentary About Dot Com Culture

I finished editing late last night and here it is - Exit Strategy News Episode One: Bandwagon.

I've been collecting video and photos from over 18 years in the Internet industry. Erik Koto and I have captured many of our friends and colleagues on video and we'll eventually assemble further episodes. Tell us if you have video sitting in a closet somewhere. Also, we'd love to interview you. Everyone has a story.

We want to capture what it's like to work in the Internet industry, both past and present. What are your memories of the dot com bubble? Where will the future lead us?

Also Available: High-Resolution versions.

Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

I hate folders. My files never fit perfectly into a folder structure. Many modern taxonomists are suggesting that we are seeing the demise of folders and the death of buckets. In other words, if all content can be tagged with keywords then why bother sticking it in any particular folder. How often have we all tried to file a document in a particular folder only to realize that it could actually be at home in multiple folders? With tagging, we don’t have to worry about this, just tag a document with a variety of keywords and you’ll be able to find it again one day.

David Weinberger talks about this in a much more eloquent fashion than I do. Check out his new book Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. I especially enjoy his humorous brushing aside of Melvil Dewey, inventor of the stunningly frustrating Dewey Decimal System. Check out the video below where he talks about (among many other things) how Dewey was a man obsessed with the number ten...so much so that he would arrange his travel dates so that he would arrive at his destination only on dates that were divisible by ten.


"Google Tech Talks May 10, 2007 David Weinberger's new book covers the breakdown of the established order of ordering. He explains how methods of categorization designed for physical objects fail when we can instead put things in multiple categories at once, and search them in many ways. This is no dry book on taxonomy, but has the insight and wit you'd expect from the author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, Small Pieces Loosely Joined, and a former writer for Woody Allen."

Digital Media Products Store

I've launched a new Amazon Affiliate store featuring products of interest to digital media enthusiasts. Check out the new Exit Strategy News Store. I've included books, DVDs and software that I've found helpful, informative or just plain fun.

Follow-Up to My American Marketing Association Webcast

Below is a version of my presentation from my recent webcast for the American Marketing Association. It doesn't have audio or animation so you won't get the full mind-blowing experience.

To see the full-on presentation with audio and animation, visit the micro-site where you will find the following: the slides below, the full archived webcast from the American Marketing Association and my PDF eBook.

| View | Upload your own

Tiny Mobile LCD Projectors

I remember when digital projectors were giant, bulky and expensive. Soon companies such as 3M, Samsung and SK Telecom will be offering pocket-sized projectors which will hook up to your mobile phone or laptop and cost less than $400. Get ready to project your favorite YouTube video onto the back of the head of the person sitting in front of you on the bus. Check out the article about all this in today's New York Times.

5Min: How to Raise Money From VCs

This hilarious (but kinda true) video is available on 5min.com, "a place to find short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge."

In the video above, an Israeli entrepreneur shares his theories of how to raise money from venture capital investors. As he smokes his cigar, he suggests inserting the logo of another venture firm at the beginning of your Power Point presentation. Then politely apologize to the VCs you are pitching and pretend it was an accident. The theory is that VCs want to invest in companies that other VCs are interested in. Funny...but also true.

5min believes that everyone is an expert in something. So, either share your knowledge or go to the site to learn something. Where else can you get a 5 minute lesson in belly dancing, drawing and street fighting all in one place?

Nerd TV Video Interview Archives

"NerdTV (Soon re-launching as SuperNerds) was a weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics."

Some Guests Have Included:
Macintosh OS programmer Andy Hertzfeld
PayPal co-founder Max Levchin
Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy
Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle
Internet publisher Tim O'Reilly
Father of RSS Dave Winer
Autodesk co-founder Dan Drake
Intel Capital co-founder Avram Miller
Anina High Fashion Meets High Tech
Spreadsheet inventor Dan Bricklin
Computer mouse inventor Doug Engelbart
TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn
Internet entrepreneur, Judy Estrin

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.

Download: The True Story of the Internet

The Science Channel is broadcasting a great documentary chronicling the history of the Internet called Download: The True Story of the Internet. Created by technology journalist John Heileman, this film is full of interviews and insights and behind-the-scenes gossip.

They describe it this way: "From the founders of eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape, Google and many others, we hear amazing stories of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. These extraordinary men and women tell us how they went from being geeky, computer obsessed nerds to being 21st-century visionaries in the time it takes most people to get their first promotion. And, how they made untold billions along the way."

Merlin Mann. Worst Website Ever. SXSW 2008

Merlin Mann is one of the big brains behind 43 Folders. He gave a great presentation at this year's SXSW (South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin). He's a writer, speaker and broadcaster and this performance pokes the whole internet industry in the eyeballs. This is a really funny look at the web from a guy who's seen it all from the inside.

My Webcast for the American Marketing Association

TO: Macrom and Creative Contacts
SUBJECT: Aquent/AMA Webcast: Make Your Content a Powerful Asset in 10 Steps

Hi Reader:

How do you ensure that your content is a valued asset within your organization?

I thought you’d be interested in our next webcast, “Make Your Content a Powerful Asset in 10 Steps.” During the webcast, Todd Tibbetts from Aquent’s outsourcing division, Aquent Studios, will illustrate how careful planning, diligent implementation, increased collaboration, and development of success metrics and benchmarks will make your content a powerful asset that delivers the right information to the right audience every time.

Citing real examples from his clients Microsoft, Adobe, T-Mobile, Target, and Starbucks, Todd will address the following key learning objectives:

• Understand the difference between content as an asset and a liability.
• Realize opportunities for making content more powerful.
• Design and create content for maximum organizational impact.
• Learn how quality content can save money and generate more revenue.

I hope you’ll join us!

What: Aquent/AMA webcast presented by Todd Tibbetts: “Make Your Content a Powerful Asset in 10 Steps”

Who: Marketing communications managers and creative services managers who want to successfully create, leverage and manage content.
When: March 27, 2008, at 1:00 PM ET

Registration: https://amaevents.webex.com/amaevents/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=962895360&SourceId=3aquent032708
If you can't make the live broadcast but are interested in the subject, go ahead and register. We always follow up with details about the on-demand version.

Microsoft Silverlight and Expression Studio Training

I am here live at the Microsoft Conference Center at a full-day training seminar for Silverlight and Expression Studio. We have 70 people from our company getting trained by Arturo Toledo who will also be speaking at our Cre8 Summit conference in Florida in April. I'll be there blogging live from Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort.

One of the coolest new features in version 2 of Silverlight is the Seadragon image technology which aims to "change the way we use screens, from wall-sized displays to mobile devices, so that visual information can be smoothly browsed regardless of the amount of data involved or the bandwidth of the network." Check out the amazing demo below.

Presenting Perfectly with PowerPoint

PowerPoint has reached ubiquitous status in most parts of the world. Today anyone can give a multimedia presentation. Although most of these presentations are either mind-numbingly boring or brain-bendingly confusing, there are still artful public speakers who can use this tool to make magic.

David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads) created a great book and DVD art project called Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information that is a must see for any serious PowerPoint junkie.


Also, check out Clif Atkinson's seminal guide to presenting, Beyond Bullet Points.


Very Funny: Don McMillan on most common mistakes people make while doing PowerPoint presentations.

Amaznode Visual Relationship Searching

I loved this the first time I saw it a couple years ago and it is still a blast to use. Type in your favorite author, musician or filmmaker and (based on the amazon database) you will see a visual representation of your search results. Lines connect related images and clicking will bring you to the products. This is a great way to discover relationships you never new existed.

"Amaznode is a relation based search engine for amazon which is made with adobe flash9(as3). This search engine visualizes a relation network of products in amazon, from the statistics data "customers who bought this item also bought", by digging related products again and again. Amaznode is not only for searching but also good for researching and making an associate link."

Digital Media Project Surprises

Usually it ain't a good idea to surprise a client. However, an occasional good surprise is ok.

It is best to set initial project expectations and then stick to delivering on those. But as is often said, "under-promise and over-deliver". When you surprise a client with something other than their expectations, use this handy chart to determine if you are offering a good surprise or a bad one.

Good Surprise	Bad Surprise
The project is finishing on time.	We are so totally late, it's ridiculous.
We're under budget.	Yea, let's talk about some budget issues.
We pursued some new design avenues and came up with a stunning interface that plays very well with the focus groups.	We accidentally turned everything purple.
We finished a few extra deliverables.	We haven't really, technically "finished" anything yet.
We found an unexpected revenue stream.	To keep this project alive, we need $10,000 a week.

Zune Arts Digital Music Videos

I love my iPhone, but the marketing efforts surrounding Microsoft's Zune are catching my eye. They are funding the creation of a lot of great mini digital art pieces.

"Zune Arts brings the best creative minds to collaborate on inspiring works of art under themes of sharing, connection, discovery, and friendship. Zune Arts is continuously growing, ever-evolving, and always open to new voices, influences and ideas. Zune is Microsoft's music and entertainment brand that provides an integrated digital entertainment experience. The Zune platform includes a line of portable digital media players, the Zune Marketplace online store, and the Zune Social online music community."

MountainZone.com Early Media Coverage 1997

Here are some more retro flashbacks from the early days of the web. This montage shows how the mainstream media was covering our dot com start-up between 1995 and 1997.



These clips were pulled from the following:

MountainZone TV Commercial series

"Wild Wild Web" syndicated on CBS

CNN Financial

Seattle News on KIRO-TV

ABC Sunday Night Movie "Into Thin Air"

"Up To The Minute" on CBS

Live Update on CNN

Reebok's "PE-TV"

"Playing in Style" on FOX

For more stories from the dot com days, see posts about my personal Internet history.

10 Steps to Make Your Content a Powerful Asset

I often work with clients who are overwhelmed by their content, information and digital assets. For many individuals and companies, their content (pictures, text, video, etc) is a mess, a liability and a cost center. It takes focus and effort to turn the content from a liability into an economic asset, but the path is straight-forward and very achievable. Your organization will benefit internally and externally; creating a smother-running operation on the inside and promoting your message to the outside. You may even create additional revenue streams once you wrangle all those assets.

This is continuous publishing in a global digital media environment. Control your content before someone else does. Today much of your content is digital. And it has escaped your grasp. Below I’ll describe your ten to-do items. You’ll get control of your content and you’ll grow to understand the power and value that content will bring you.

1. Discover. Identify your existing content. What do you have? What format is it in? Perform a content inventory or content audit. Create a content matrix, a spreadsheet of all your pieces and their attributes.

2. Develop your Core. Create the essential main ingredients of your content. This is often called Single Source where a team develops base content that is used in multiple locations or formats. Crystallize your message down into the essential ingredients.

3. Prepare for Community Involvement. Your content will be captured, quoted and manipulated. Plan for it. Make your community plan. Much like a business plan, but it outlines your philosophy, approach and rules for your audience/social network. This is user-centered content creation: know your audience. Give them a voice. Give them tools like widgets or online forums.

4. Architect Your Content. Use information architecture theories and approaches. Put your content into categories that make sense. This is often called bucketing. Try doing a card sort. Your community may begin to add categories and tags to your content if you let them. This “folksonomy” approach can be powerful.

5. Create you Multi-Destinational Plan. We are in a cross-platform world. Your content will live on more than the three screens (TV, computer, mobile). Create a delivery method attribute matrix to predict where your content is most likely to land. Remember we are in the age of the globalization of content. Understand translation and localization.

6. Acquire or Build Your Tools. Content management tools will most likely be needed. Make you build vs. buy decision. Visit the CMS Matrix to get comparison information.

7. Design Your Content. Separate your content from the way it is presented. Determine the base elements of your visual brand and stick to ‘em.

8. Document it. For internal use and the retention of institutional knowledge, please document your content adventures. Develop style guides and knowledge management practices to ensure knowledge transfer to others on your team or others who may follow in the future.

9. Tell your Story Continuously. Assign, hire or rent full-time staff to constantly add new content. Generate Continuous Content. Become thought leaders. Quality content and real content wins. Don’t fill a page with keywords and call it content. Humans and machines can tell what good content is and they seek it out.

10. Track it. Define your metrics for success and document your benchmarks. Analyze your numbers. Watch them change. Modify your behavior based on results, not assumptions.

Pie Charts, Graphs and Humor

Stand-up comedian Demetri Martin gives a great performance aided only by a flip chart and a pointer. And his humor. Those of us who want to improve our public speaking skills could learn a thing or two from this guy.

T-Commerce, Digital TV and the Digitization of Content

In one year, your old TV won't work anymore. Broadcast is going digital. This is the end of the TV antenna.

At midnight on February 17, 2009, all full-power television stations in the United States will stop broadcasting in analog and switch to 100% digital broadcasting. Digital broadcasting promises to provide a clearer picture and more programming options and will free up airwaves for use by emergency responders.

Learn the details from the US Department of Commerce at DTV2009.gov. More info at PC Mag.

We've seen many buzzwords develop from this impending switch-over. One such word makes me simultaneously excited and terrified. T-commerce is the merging of remote-control ease-of-use boob tubes with the instant economic advantages of online ecommerce.

What does this mean for advertisers and the economics of television broadcasting? Accenture, the global technology consultancy, has produced a detailed study on the subject. I actually think it is great news for digital content producers and designers.

"The findings of our Global Digital Advertising Study 2007 represent a resounding call to action for participants throughout the advertising value chain. The survey also shows that the challenges facing them should not be taken lightly. Change is coming, and businesses will have to invest and change radically to get in or to stay in the game. But Accenture believes that the rewards will justify the effort. The long-term future of the advertising business — if we will even be calling it that a decade from now — is bright."

Social Searching and Collaborative Filtering

In the early years of this century, my friends and I finally got what we were half-expecting. We figured that as soon as enough of our friends joined the internet, we would have enough interaction data to begin to realize a true benefit of online communities: filtering on the likes and dislikes of our social circle. We were finally able to discover stuff instantly based on what our friends and family were discovering.

With sites like StumbleUpon and Last.fm stealing the social media headlines, I took some time to explore "social searching". I present this list of search engines that filter results based on things other than keywords; like collaboration and input from social circles or like-minded community behaviors or implied meanings.

hakia
A semantic search engine that brings relevant results based on concept match rather than keyword match or popularity ranking.

Acoona
Accoona's proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms deliver relevant results by merging online and offline information and by analyzing search terms rather than just matching keywords.

bessed
Find websites that are ranked well by your peers. Leave comments about sites or recommend information.

Powerset
Employing technologies that take advantage of the structure and nuances of natural language.

ChaCha
Mobile search solutions plus live human guides to help you find what you are looking for.

Squidoo
Squidoo's goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search.

sproose
Sproose is a user powered search engine that allows users to contribute to the ranking of web pages by voting for pages they find useful. Sproose also enables users to browse pages that have been voted and/or tagged by other users making it easy to discover new and interesting pages in a social network environment.

Eurekster
A custom search portal around the topic of your choice powered by your community.

Definition: Grok

To grok is to know. If you really truly understand, then you grok it. You have become one with it and you have enveloped the meaning.

The word comes from the Martian word, "to drink". Yes, Martians. Robert A. Heinlein, the author of "Stranger in a Strange Land" gave us this word back in 1961 and the computer industry later adopted it as our own. Trekkies have used this word, along with Matt Groening so you know it has reached the pinnacle of geekdom.

Comic: Make it Orange

How to Name Your Server

If you've ever worked on a team that shares a file server, you know the importance of naming computers. Especially on local area networks where multiple servers are available. You need to have a way to tell them apart. Otherwise we'd be referring to the computers as "that box".

Server naming tends to be either functional (like PHOTOSTORE1 or Backup3) or whimsical (Ophelia and Hamlet). Production servers seem to take on a personality after a while, either because of the type of files on the box or because of the server's behavior. Does a temperamental computer called Tempest take on the personality associated with the name? I worked on a team where the servers were named after inventors and the Edison and Tesla machines were constantly battling each other just like their namesakes.

I have seen numerous approaches to server naming over my 18 years in the Internet business. Some have been named after Shakespeare characters; Jachimo, Othello and Roderigo. Other times it became all too clear that I was working with geeks when the servers were either named after Star Trek (Kirk, Sulu, Picard) or Monty Python (Throatwobbler, Gilliam, DeadParrot).

Are people who name their servers after Disney fairies just too cute to work with? Are people who name their servers after gangsters ultimately corrupt? When you meet a new team, you can tell a lot about them by how they name their boxes.

I sometimes wish I had 100 servers to name. Or better yet, maybe I could develop a special area of consulting. Yea, I could be a professional server namer. Can I get paid for that? I could come up with a million naming themes. Servers named after action movies. Nine servers named after planets. Seven small server named after dwarves. Call me and I'll solve all your server naming problems.

Top 10 Ways to Create Your Own Business Deals

Sometimes, if you're lucky, the money will come to you. Most of the time, however, you must go get the money. There is no top secret weapon to help you generate business, but if you put in the work then you will begin to notice nice deals coming your way. Here are some of my suggestions on how to generate leads, develop business and keep yourself busy with projects. Remember, the harder you work, the luckier you'll get.

1. Schmooze. See my exploration of schmoozing strategies.

2. Relationship Marketing. Write down 100 people who will take your call, follow up for no reason. Do you know 100 people? Keep a list. Keep that contact list warm and active.

3. The Rags. Follow business and industry publications. Really read them.

4. Become the Expert. Write articles and speak on topics you know the most about. Start a blog. It doesn’t matter if you are the best at what you do, as long as you are better than most. Plus, most people are too lazy to actually get off their ass and become the expert so the competition really ain't that bad.

5. Other People’s Sales Forces. Real partners who help co-sell can multiply your outreach. What you are offering is exciting, but make it more exciting by offering additional value brought by your partners. They'll do the same for you.

6. Walking Billboards. Turn your clients into walking advertisements for your offering. Satisfied clients will share your business card or brochure with leads they run into. Tell them specifically how you want them to help and make it easy. Plus, ask if you can quote them and use them as a reference. Overly document every positive client project with case studies.

7. Cold Calls. If only 1 in 100 will result in work, then you’d better make 100 calls right now.

8. Go Vertical. Choose a niche and dive deep.

9. Competitor's Clients. Watch client lists on the websites of your rivals to learn who's buying.

10. Google It. Search job postings. Who's hiring? Search venture capital lists. Who's got the funding? Who has budget? Find local successes and add them to your target list.

Digital Handel's Messiah, 1994

In 1994 my company won a contract to broadcast the the annual Kennedy Center Handel's Messiah performance live on the web with video. We'd barely just started our company, MediaZones, and the only reason we got the gig was because very few companies were doing live internet video. We'd had some cursory initial success with local Seattle events and that made us the default experts. So, we loaded all our digital gear into travel cases and headed to Washington, DC to try and make it work.

We were hired by a company associated with the Paramount Theatre in Seattle. They'd made all the arrangements to get our crew from Seattle to DC and all we needed to do was make a postage-sized flicker of video appear on their webpage while the live event was going on. We used a now-defunct software-hardware combo called Xing Technologies that required we lug a giant server with us, along with 4 desktops and a laptop. Not to mention our cameras, microphones and cables.

In those days we felt lean and mean when it came to equipment. When we were at events, the TV crews would gawk at us and be amazed that we could broadcast from just seven suitcases. They couldn't take us seriously because we, in their minds, had barely any equipment. We didn't even have a van. How could we be professionals? How indeed.

Back in 1995, I sketched this comic rendering of the whole adventure and I have recently posted it online.

In comming weeks, I'll post some photos of this trip...I just uncovered another box of media from those old early days of the web. Stay tuned!

Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 2

In October I began collecting helpful little aphorisms, mottoes and adages that many consider "words to live by." Below are a few more to add to the list.

“Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” Every piece of information we get from another person is filtered thru their unique reality, thus it is tainted. Plus, what we see with our own eyes ain’t always that reliable either.

“When all you have is a hammer then every problem starts looking like a nail.” Artists should experiment with new mediums. Musicians should try other instruments and knowledge workers should broaden their toolsets and approaches.

“Shit in. Shit out.” The end result is a direct product of the effort and talent put in. This also means that a project is only as good as it's initial assets and ideas.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” This was proven time and again during the early days of desktop publishing when young designers realized that computers rendered 16 million colors…and set about to use every one of them. In a single project.

“Luck favors the prepared.” The harder I work, the luckier I get.


See also: Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 1

The Restless Phantom Jimmy Leg Syndrome

I was glad to hear that I was not the only one. Recently experts have confirmed the existence of "Phantom Vibration Syndrome." This is when you think your cell phone is vibrating, but in fact it is your imagination.

You pat the pocket that holds the phone and...nada.

It has also been called “vibranxiety."

The good news is that we are not crazy or dying, probably. In fact we are simply oversensitive to that particular sensation. The pleasurable act of receiving a call is punctuated by a stimulus that we learn to anticipate. This is a learned habit. We have re-wired our brains. Scientists call this neuroplasticity. We've hacked ourselves and now we are malfunctioning.

This is not to be confused with Restless Leg Syndrome, Phantom Limb Syndrome or The Jimmy Leg.

Do Not Erase: My Lust for Whiteboards

I have always been pro-whiteboard. I do not miss the days of the chalkboard. I welcome the glossy white surface! I once created a small conference room where all the walls were covered with whiteboard material. We could brainstorm or write notes or just sit there and stare at the wide open expanse of board.

The other day I was driving over the Fremont Bridge in Seattle and saw a billboard for Google. They've been advertising in Seattle a lot lately, doing a bunch of hiring for their Fremont and Kirkland offices. I love the want-ad they created. It's a giant whiteboard with "Do Not Erase" scrawled across it. Sorry for the blurry photo, I was driving by and I snapped the above picture with the iPhone during traffic.

If you too feel the whiteboard lust, then perhaps you should contact Wall Talkers. These high-end, custom dry-erase gurus will create all manner of whiteboard mayhem. They make curved whiteboard walls or they'll paint all surfaces with special dry-erase paint so that literally everything is write-onable!

If you don't have a whiteboard that prints out onto paper, then you'll need to take photos before erasing. Thousands of people have drawn all manner of things on their dry erase boards and posted the photos to a group on Flickr.

Many have been inspired by the mighty whiteboard, including artists and animators who create fun hand-drawn animations like this.

Comic: Digital Bear Bot

Definition: Smoke Test

In the computer industry we use the term "Smoke Test" to mean an initial test of some software or hardware. Y'know, you plug it in and see if it smokes.

The term originally comes from plumbing, where a mini-smoke bomb is tossed inside pipes to see where it leaks out. This determines if water will flow without any drips.

This has nothing to do with last year's exploding laptops from Dell.

Family Friendly Digital Media

I've recently made updates to another web site I created called FamilyMusicParty.com. The site publishes information about family-friendly music including videos, lyrics, artist bios and other fun stuff.

Comic: Making a Cybercast 1997

Back in 1997 I owned a company called MountainZone.com. We published outdoor sporting information on the web. We didn't know it at the time, but we were building a community.

We traveled from Seattle to Stratton, VT to broadcast the US Open Snowboard Championships. Since we were posting our audio, text, pictures and videos to the Internet, we called it "cybercasting" which sounded even sillier in the 90s than it sounds now.

We finagled ourselves into all-access media passes and we bartered a free room in exchange for a banner graphic on the event page. We were doing everything for the first time...breaking ground. Media folk and journalists rarely asked for web connections in the early 90s when we started our cybercasts, but by the late 90s it was becoming more common for press rooms to offer Internet. Although the connections were thru 28.8 modems, definitely not high-bandwidth.

We were serious about the sport and our team knew the riders, event planners and other professionals. By the end of the weekend there was underwear on the lamps, beer on top of the computers and silly string hanging from the ceiling. How we ever published anything is beyond me.

But it worked...and the visitors to the website started streaming in. First there were dozens, then hundreds, then thousands. By the time we sold MountainZone in 1999 we had millions of visitors pouring into the site to learn about mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding and climbing.

Above is a comic I drew on the plane ride home (click it for the full story). The photos are provided as proof (to myself) that it all really happened and it was not a dream. Watch this blog for more of my personal Internet history. I’ll be digging up some great dirt.

TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) Part 2

Back in October I wrote about the Internet industry's particular penchant for acronyms (see original post). As promised, here is an update with more web-speak definitions.

CLM (Career Limiting Move) "His dirty dancing at the company holiday party was a total CLM."

KPI (Key Performance Indicators) These are numbers that we should actually pay attention to.

WAG (Wild Ass Guess) Although clients will always promise that they won't hold you to your initial estimate, beware of publicizing any WAGs.

AYFKM (Are You Freakin' Kidding Me?) I have used this one a lot lately as I see the common everyday atrocities committed by some in the web business.

SME (Subject Matter Experts) Not at all like Smurfs, these know-it-alls are not necessarily cuddly. SMEs have massive currency in the knowledge economy.

ABC (Always Be Closing) In sales, as in your career, always be landing the next deal.

EOD (End Of Day) Always make sure to verify the time zone when someone requires something by EOD. And usually this means 5pm, but in a pinch it can mean midnight.

Check out TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) Part 1.

Definition: SneakerNet

We use the term SneakerNet to mean physically carrying a disc or flash drive from one computer to another. You move the files with your tennis shoes rather than over digital transmission lines. Sometimes, during the chaos of hard-core production, files just need to be carried. Networks break down and internet connections flake out, but the humans can always carry the bits.

Sometimes SneakerNets are the only way. Some files are so huge that it is quicker and cheaper to copy the data to a portable storage device and carry that device to the intended recipient. Scientists and data warehouses do this kinda thing all the time. Other users of SneakerNets are seeking high-security environments which can only be found today by avoiding cyberspace.

So remember, the next time you carry a CD over to a friend’s house to give ‘em a file, you are participating in a long history of file transfer. And one day your children will find it foolish and antiquated.

Definition: CamelCase

CamelCase is used to describe mashing compound words together and capitalizing the first letter of each word. Just like camels, these words have humps. I am noticing that this practice is being used more and more every day. Popular examples are AstroTurf, RadioShack, BlackBerry and QuickTime.

As with many habits of the computer industry, CamelCase comes from computer programming. That's why Microsoft used to be spelled MicroSoft. Rather than introduce spaces or hyphens into long words, programmers started using capitol letters to make variable names human readable. Sometimes CamelCase is actually camelCase (with the initial letter being lowercase, similar to how some variable names are spelled when writing code.)

CamelCase is sometimes called BiCapitalization when referring to marketing practices. I've also heard it called BumpyCase, HumpBackNotation and NerdCaps.

I am officially changing my name to ToddTibbetts and I live in SeattleWashington. I am a DigitalMediaConsultant. ThankYou.

Comic: Digital Power Overload

2007 Year in Review

It has been said that when journalists get lazy at the end of the year, they write “Year in Review” articles. When bloggers get lazy, they link to these retrospectives. So, without further ado, I present my own year-end linking extravaganza.

Reuters Year in Review
The worldwide news service looks at 2007 with photos and video.

The Onion 2007 Year in Review
What the Hell Just happened?

People Magazine Best of 2007
The Bible of pop culture.

KEXP 13 Great Musical Discoveries of 2007
Including Vampire Weekend, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, and Yeasayer with audio samles.

NPR Music Top 10 Lists
Tons of great music was birthed this year.

ABC News Top 5 Quotes of 2007
Some things are better left unsaid such as “Don’t tase me, bro”.

The Time Magazine Best Websites of 2007
Including Mozy, StumbleUpon, Etsy, and Weebly. Also a list of the worst sites.

JibJab Remembers 2007
The kings of link fodder wrap it all up.

Best Product Design of 2007 on Business Week
A slideshow of the 2007 International Design Excellence Awards.

Internet TV Year in Review
Mucho movement in the world of Internet TV including Joost, Divx, set top boxes, Zattoo, Hulu, and iTunes.

The CNN Year in Review
A year of tragedy and scandal.

The CNN Top Science & Technology Stories
Facebook, iPhone, crazy astronauts, new planets and Halo 3.

YouTube Year End Video Wrap Up
Including Obama Girl, Chocolate Rain, Nora the piano playing cat, and the Haiti UFO.

Some of the most popular posts on ToddTibbetts.com have been: They Promised Us Convergence, Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims, No Schmooze, You Lose, SWAG Stories, and My Widget Wad.

Those Who Left Us in 2007
Notable deceased include Art Buchwald, Michelangelo Antonioni, Boris Yeltsin, Jerry Falwell, Robert Goulet, Molly Ivins, Norman Mailer, Evel Knievel, Charles Nelson Reilly, Anna Nicole Smith, Don Ho, Oscar Peterson, and Paul Tibbets, commander of the Enola Gay.

Comic: Rumor Mill On Internet Time

Comic: Stealing Office Supplies

Treemo 1.0

Seattle-based Treemo.com graduated to 1.0 status today. Right on, cats. Great new widgets and some slick interface enhancements.

Comic: Well Oiled

They Promised Us Convergence Part 3

There has been plenty of TV-Internet convergence going on since I posted the first two parts of this series. (parts 1 and 2)

On Networks is producing tons of original content.

Mojo is a high-def online site owned by Comcast, Cox Communications and Time Warner among others.

Vuze is allowing users to upload or watch high-def videos.

Lots of Little Screens: TV Is Changing Shape
By Denise Caruso for the New York Times
"INEXPENSIVE broadband access has done far more for online video than enable the success of services like YouTube and iTunes. By unchaining video watchers from their TV sets, it has opened the floodgates to a generation of TV producers for whom the Internet is their native medium."

However, CastTV and Hulu are still in private beta. I've seen both and they look very promising.

They Promised Us Convergence Part 1
They Promised Us Convergence Part 2

Business Networking Online

My posting from July 2007 listed websites that helped people schmooze and network.(see original post)

Since I posted that, many new web sites are appearing to challenge the mighty LinkedIn for supremecy.

itzbig
Built to serve professionals like you, itzbig puts you in control. Anonymously explore opportunities in real time with instant feedback. Keep tabs on the market in case your dream job appears or a life change pushes you toward a "Plan B."

Jigsaw
Jigsaw is an online directory of more than 7 million business cards. Every card on Jigsaw has an email address and phone number, allowing members to bypass gatekeepers and get directly to decision makers and influencers. Jigsaw has become a required resource for sales people, recruiters, marketers and small business owners.

ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is the premier business information search engine, with profiles on more than 37 million people and 3.5 million companies. ZoomInfo delivers fresh and organized information on industries, companies, people, products, services and jobs.

Ryze
Ryze helps people make connections and grow their networks. Members get a free networking-oriented home page and can send messages to other members.

Viadeo
Discuss different topics, share your expertise and make new business contacts with over 1,800,000 business professionals in the Viadeo network.

FastPitch
Fast Pitch is the fastest growing business networking community in the world. Their online network provides you with a one-stop shop to network and market your business. Make Connections, Post & Distribute Press, Market Your Company, Market Yourself, Promote Your Blog and more.

IncBizNet
IncBizNet is an online business networking community and database created exclusively for private companies.

The Redemption Room

Business travel often rewards the weary with unbridled surprises. My flight from Richmond (pictured at left) landed late so I missed my connection in Atlanta. They booked me on a flight scheduled to leave the next day and told me to go to the room where I could redeem my hotel and breakfast voucher. The Redemption Room. This is the room where you go if you are crying or angry or tired or cranky. A room full of the bleary-eyed, seeking a new itinerary. Good times.

Looking on the bright side, I did get a complimentary care package with a toothbrush and some toiletries. Plus I got to visit the McDonalds off Airport Road by my Red Roof Inn. Plus, Richmond was lovely.

My Personal Internet History: Mae Phim

Back in the late 1990s, me and fellow Internet junkies in Seattle would occasionally take time away from the computers to eat. A little Thai place in Pioneer Square was always packed with dozens of high-tech knowledge workers. Mae Phim was the place to go if you wanted to pick up secrets, spot entrepreneur rock stars or spread rumors. It is still there today. Order the garlic chicken. Three star.

Definition: Dogfooding

One of the terms I hear all the time in this industry (especially at Microsoft) is "dogfooding". It means to use your own product (eat your own dog food). You can't expect others to use your software if you don't use it yourself. The concept is said to have originated with actor Lorne Green who, in the Alpo dog food commercials of the 1970s, exclaimed that he fed it to his own dog. Yum!

Found Photos

Found Photos is still one of my favorite websites ever. The best ideas on the Internet are sometimes the simplest. This site celebrates the twisted spectacle of humanity, displayed with amateur snapshots for your voyeuristic pleasures.

As the creator describes it, "The Found Photos started in 2004 while searching for mp3's using a filesharing program. I was searching through someones shared file list and saw a folder named 'pictures'. I downloaded the folder and found 20 or more pictures from this persons life, photos of himself and his friends etc. It made me wonder what else was out there, and after searching for more photos I found hundreds, thousands of them publicly shared. The FoundPhotos Archives consist of my filtered view from hundreds of thousands of images downloaded via peer to peer filesharing networks, updated regularly."

Vloggers and Lifecasters

Bloggers with video. Subjective audiovisual journals telling intimate stories. They have been posting to YouTube since the beginning, but now many outlets broadcast personal video logs.

United Vloggers is attempting to attract outspoken, talented and interesting storytellers to post regular videos. Some great stuff...some junk.

Ze Frank broadcast a short vlog every day for a year straight. This is a master storyteller and an articulate spoken word master. Few vlogs are this eloquent.

Justin.tv started a huge live video trend recently. This is vlogging to the extreme. Justin Kan began broadcasting his life continuously around the clock in early 2007 and now many others have joined this "lifecaster" by broadcasting their own lives 24/7 using wearable cameras.

A gazillion hours of talking heads and their personal narratives await!

A Sloppy Survey of Branded Content

I see a possible future where almost all commercially-produced entertainment will be what we call today, “branded entertainment”. Whereas today we are awash with “interruption marketing” (commercials that punctuate your TV show with pauses), tomorrow we will have stories that are financially supported more directly by brands. Positive side effects may include more visibility into who is footing the bill for our content. We will also benefit, as media consumers, from the increase in variety and the decrease in interruption. However, the pitfalls are many. Dangers include the possible triumph of propaganda over free press or the diluting of all that is culturally pure. But whatever, bring on the entertainment!

It has been called advertainment, branded content, advertorial and content marketing. Some call it story marketing, capturing the imagination first and the wallet thereafter. Merchandise joins narrative. Experiential campaigns with brand integration. A new age where brands speak to their audiences thru the use of stories, ideas and characters. The much-blathered-about death of the 30 second spot.

Some modern entertainment more closely resembles a traditional TV commercial. For example, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition is essentially a 60-minute Sears commercial. Sponsor and creator become one. Other branded content, while still being a commercial, feels more like entertainment. One example is the BMW Films campaign which started a massive trend back in 2001, paving the way for numerous experiments and innovations.



Back in 1995 I worked on a website project for MCI. Gramercy Press was a fictional office from their television commercials, filmed in a “reality TV” style. The website displayed clickable photos of office locations, allowing the visitor to dig into the desk or listen to the voicemail messages. The audience began to identify with the characters in the episodic TV commercials and had a ravenous appetite for online “back-story”. I remember talking to one MCI partner who was under the impression that Gramercy Press was a real company, staffed by real people and was worried that the website would be left unattended if “Sheila” from the commercial was hit by a bus or was out sick. I distinctly remember a conference call where my colleagues and I at Free Range Media in Pioneer Square, patiently explained that Sheila was a fictional character from a marketing campaign…and this was an MCI vendor close to the project. Story Power! (Evidence of this campaign is hard to come by. All I could find was this and this.)


Today giant corporations like Microsoft understand the power of story and encourage marketing campaigns such as SiteOfChampions.com, an interactive, narrative Flash/video campaign to promote their SideWinder mouse. And huge brands such as Got Milk? develop richly imagined and painstakingly executed interactive marketing art like GetTheGlass.com.



A frenzy has begun to infect all modern media. Today this phenomenon of the merging of brand and story is explored in many mainstream media. PBS Frontline broadcast a great documentary called The Persuaders which explores this world. Characters seem to be jumping seamlessly from sitcoms to advertisements and even the reverse. Caveman began as a Geico commercial and has now become a TV show. Even mainstream magazines like AdWeek have created sub-brands like Madison & Vine to explore the merging of Madison Avenue and Hollywood.



This swirling vortex of modern messaging in mutating before our eyes. Watch it unfold and you may find yourself simultaneously fascinated, repulsed, intrigued and disgusted. Behold!

The ON: Digital + Marketing blog has a page of posts regarding branded entertainment including stories about Hanes underwear, Mercedes-Benz.TV, P&G’s Crescent Heights online soap opera, Scion’s “Little Deviants”, Oprah’s product placement and more.

Gamekillers: Axe Dry and MTV team up to bring you a show about guys sweating over chicks.

Wikipedia talks about how branded content blurs conventional distinctions between what constitutes advertising and what constitutes entertainment.

A search for branded entertainment on Del.icio.us brings up almost 600 links.

There is even a Branded Content Marketing Association.

Hottest Mom in America, a reality TV series that auditions American women vying for the title of "Hottest Mom", is one of the first entries by a pharmaceutical company into Branded Entertainment. The show from Buzznation studios is backed by a single sponsor, Medicis Pharmaceutical, the makers of the Restylane cosmetic injection treatment.

Aquent is a marketing company with “the world’s largest creative talent pool”, more than 400,000 working creatives. They understand the growing need for creators to build story-driven campaigns.

Seattle-based Digital Kitchen promoted themselves via a mocumentary. Designerslashmodel.com: I love design but what i really want to do is direct.



Subservient Chicken: classic viral marketing content from Burger King

Branded Entertainment online magazine interviews R/GA, the world's most award-winning interactive agency

Branded integrations are many things, but "measurable" is not often a word that can easily be used to describe them. But NextMedium, a branded entertainment company based in Los Angeles, is bringing accountability and detailed metrics to the art of product placement.

What can actually be called “Branded Entertainment” anymore? The production of most modern entertainment was paid for by someone, somewhere along the line. Is branded entertainment simply the stuff where the brand is exposed? I don’t mind watching sponsored content, as long as it is of high narrative quality…plus I also like to be told who is paying for it.

Much of the new branded entertainment will not resemble a traditional product promotion model; in fact some entertainment may not mention a product at all. A simple brand identification at the beginning may allow the viewer to make the association. A viewer might think, "Brand A created this content. I like this content. Therefore I like Brand A."

We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors…

October on the Microsoft Campus

After snapping these photos (egads, with my iPhone no less) during a few fall visits to Microsoft, I overheard a receptionist telling a group of shutter-happy Japanese visitors that there is no photography allowed on campus, inside or outside the buildings. I stopped. I promise.

TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) and Beyond

A new TLA often creates FUD. (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) Has our language become too cumbersome? Are we in such a hurry that we can’t be bothered saying so many words? “I’m sorry,” we say, “I’d love to talk to you but I am in a tremendous hurry. Perhaps I could just say the first letter of each word of every sentence?” WTF!

Every industry has its own particular acronyms. Our internet industry is one of the greatest creators of new TLAs, but we also share many traditional ones as well. I’ve included some fun examples below and I pose the question, “Do we need more acronyms or less?” WWTD? (What would Tim Burners-Lee Do?)

I decided not to list “chat speak” which is a language all its own. These abbreviations are almost emoticons describing fleeting feelings, lol. (Laugh out Loud)

PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair) A subtle way technical support people describe a problem caused by a user who can’t figure out how to use a computer.

RTFM (Read The Frickin’ Manual) A response to an obvious computer question may illicit this abbreviation.

SWOT (Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities & Threats) A strategic analysis technique developed at Stanford in the 1960s as a way to compartmentalize planning.

CYA (Cover Your Ass) When creating contracts or proposals, this is a more fun way to say “assumptions” or “caveats”.

SWAG (Stuff We All Get) The free stuff given away to those in (or near) the internet industry. But, as I wrote about in SWAG Stories, this one has many definitions.

OOF (Out Of Facility) Originally used in academic settings and has now come to mean Out of the Office in the corporate world.

FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Repair) Borrowed from the military, like many of our acronyms. Used to describe a project that will never get well.

SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) A WWII term the troops used to describe that everything is as screwed up as usual.

IP (Internet Protocol) or (Intellectual Property) I’ve been in quite a few digital studio environments where it was not always clear whether the conversation was about IP numbers for the server or ownership rights regarding a piece of content.

ASP (Active Server Pages) or (Application Service Provider) Many acronyms have multiple meanings, but this one in particular can get quite confusing. An ASP may run ASP, for example.

Even TLA has multiple meanings. It can mean Three Letter Acronym, Trial Lawyers Association, True Love Always or Top Level Architecture.

Want to explore more? Go to the Internet Acronyms Dictionary. We could go on and on… 24/7.

Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 1

In the digital media business, as with many industries, communication sometimes consists of trite sayings that rattle off the tongue almost absentmindedly. Many of these utterances are merely verbal filler spoken by people who are trying to fill the air with words. However, many of these mottoes and adages are actually solid truisms. I've collected some "words to live by" below. I hope you'll consider these to be helpful little aphorisms which you can use to solidify your succinct understand of the universe.

"Pay yourself first." Whether you are a business person or you're just doing your home finances, a cardinal rule is to set aside your money first. Someone is always owed something (the tax man, the landlord, the bookie). Remember to get yours before you give 'em theirs.

"Don’t throw good money after bad." If you've spent a bunch of money and the effort is failing, don't spend more money to try and fix it.

"Make more than you spend." This seems simple, but I saw quite a few dot com companies staffed by people who thought this rule was antiquated and obsolete.

"Beware the FUD." Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt are familiar bedfellows of the entrepreneur. In small quantities it is normal, but don't allow FUD to rule your world. FUD is used by your enemies (and by deceptive advertisers) to influence your thoughts and actions.

"As soon as you’ve landed the deal, shut up and leave." If you have a deal, the best thing you can do is wrap up the meeting and go away before the other party has a chance to change their mind.

"Wear a belt with your suspenders." In England they say "belt and braces" which means the same thing. If you want to make extra sure your pants don't fall down, wear a belt in case your suspenders break. This is being double-insured.

"Don’t be all mouth and no trousers." We all know people who are all talk and no action.

"Pour ‘em strong." A philosophy of some bartenders, cuz if the drinks are strong then the customers will keep coming back. Pouring a weak drink might save you money in the short term, but won't get you known as the place to be. A good deal increases sales volume. A slightly smaller profit margin may net you more income in the end.

"Don’t fall for the bait and switch." A product is advertised as an amazing deal, but in the end it turns out that the deal is altered to such an extent that the original deal is gone. A car salesman takes you for a ride in the car with all the extras and when you decide to buy it he notices a scratch on the car and switches it for another one which he says is exactly the same. When you get it home, you realize it is missing some features you had assumed were included because you saw those features during the test drive.

"Unless you are the lead dog, the view is always the same." Similar to the belief that being second is being last. The lead sled dog has the view of the world out in front, the other dogs are looking at butt.

"Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle." It has been said a thousand times, but it still holds true. You can't just put the product out there and expect it to move, you need to tell the world why it is amazing. As Elmer Wheeler said back in 1936, "It is the sizzle that sells the steak and not the cow, although the cow is, of course, mighty important."

"Your mileage may vary." Beware this phrase or others like it. It basically says that your experience won't compare with what has been advertised. You'll get less and you can't say nothin' cuz we warned you.

"Pony up." Simply meaning, pay what you owe.

"Eat what you kill." This is direct cause-and-effect business. Self-employed consultants understand this. Go out there and make it happen so that you can eat. If you hunt it down and kill it, then it is all yours and you deserve it.

"If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his ass a hoppin’." I often hear people whine and moan that if only they had some item or talent, then they would be successful. I tell them they don't have it so figure out how to succeed without it. This is similar to what a friend once told me, "Yea, and if I was an astronaut, I’d be dancin' around on the moon."

UPDATE: See the next installment Idioms, Credos, Sayings and Maxims: Part 2

No Schmooze, You Lose

Schmooze to Live, Live to Schmooze. Ultimately, all business is about relationships. Those who are good at making and keeping contacts are the winners in the end. Those who are creepy and dishonest can only survive for a short time before everyone stops returning their calls. The slime gets weeded out, the sincere rises to the top.

Schmooze. To Schmooze. To idly blather in pursuit of gains. Press the flesh. Grab and grin. Meet and greet. Going to the Meet Market. This is a necessary aspect of a successful life in the internet business, be you a designer or salesperson. You need to get out from behind your desk and gab with other people from your industry.

In other contexts, the term is sometimes used to describe getting out of a sticky situation, like talking your way out of a parking ticket. However, in the business world it is used to describe what has become an art and a craft. The fine art of slick networking.

For further research, don't miss Guy Kawasaki and his Theory of Schmoozing version 1.0.

Also, back in July I blogged about business networking sites, which could be considered "virtual" schmoozing. Although these sites cannot compare with real, flesh-n-blood schmoozing.

There are many events that allow digital media professionals to practice their schmoozing. Check out Meet Up, NetParty, Toastmasters, The Rotary Club and various Chamber of Commerce events in your city.

A wise friend once said to me that a main goal of any businessperson should be to create a list of 100 people who will take your call...and enjoy it. You don't want folks to sigh heavily when they hear that you are on the phone, you want them to feel relieved that you called.

Some Books you might want to check out:
Mr. Shmooze: The Art and Science of Selling Through Relationships by Richard Abraham
It's Not Your Smarts, It's Your Schmooze: How to Succeed Without Being Brilliant by Ty Freyvogel
The Art of Schmooze, Vol. 1: The Confident Schmoozer by Beth Mende Conny
How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less by Nicholas Boothman
Life's a Pitch!: From Hosting to Toasting...from News to Schmooze by Soni Dimond

Now get out there and GRAB-N-GRIN!

Technology, Entertainment, Design

Since 1984, the TED Conference has organized many of the worlds great thinkers, artists, scientists, architects and performers for an annual gathering. Each presenter gets only 18 minutes to give a talk. This forces them to crystallize their ideas into a direct and efficient performance.

Recently TED has embarked on an ambitious web initiative. They have digitized many of these speakers and are offering their talks free to the world via their website.

Some of my favorite talks include:

Dutch artist Theo Jansen demonstrates his amazingly lifelike kinetic sculptures, built from plastic tubes and lemonade bottles.

Planetary scientist Carolyn Porco shows breathtaking images from the Cassini voyage to Saturn.

In a friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces.

Jonathan Harris wants to make sense of the infinite world on the Web -- so he builds dazzling graphic interfaces that help us visualize the data floating around out there.

After sweetly confessing that he never meant to be a performance artist, Golan Levin explains that his art is all about the quest to find a personal way to use a computer.

Bill Stone, the maverick cave explorer who invented robots and dive equipment that have allowed him to plumb Earth's deepest abysses, explains his efforts to build a robot to explore Jupiter's moon Europa.

Kevin Kelly uses evolutionary theory to discuss the purpose and value of technology.

Also, don't miss The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED, a documentary about the conference, available from Netflix thru their "Watch Instantly" online streaming video service.

Day Job

An aspect of consulting which I find fascinating is learning about what other people do for a living. Doing internet project work for different companies allows me to peer thru a temporary portal into the daily working life of someone from a different industry. Ultimately what we learn is that we are all facing the same archetypal challenges every day, whether we are a doctor, an electronics technician or a drug dealer. But every trade has it's own set of secrets.

I've recently devoured some media on this subject. Check out the stuff below to learn how to spy on other people's day jobs.

Online magazine The Morning News has a great article by Seattle writer Matthew Baldwin called Tricks of the Trade. "For every occupation, there is a catalog of secrets only its employees are aware of—such as how waiters with heavy platters know to look straight ahead, and never down."

I loved reading "Gig, Americans Talk About their Jobs" which is 650 pages worth of 3-page stories, each from a different profession. Learn the secrets of a Wal-Mart greeter, a bookie and a smokehouse pit cook, among many others.

Of course, Studs Terkel did an amazing job of chronicling people's work lives as a historian, writer and expert interviewer. Read his fabulous book, "Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do". Listen to an NPR story about the 30th anniversary of the book, including some of the original recordings Studs made.

And remember, next time you see someone at work (no matter what they are doing) understand that they know something you don't. But maybe if you ask them nicely, they'll tell you.

Transnational Blueblood

I wonder if people outside the industry find this as hilarious as I do. Who cares. Just take a peek at his comics to see the raw truth about the world of modern advertising and marketing. CAUTION: plenty of naughty language. Cutely blunt.

Definition: Kludgy and Kludgier

In internet studio terms, a kludge is a sloppy, messy ball of code. A kludge is a software application that was slapped together with little thought of planning and with no respect for the best practices of a mature industry.

Web developers often inherit code from previous, long-lost developers. When a new developer begins working with new code, some kludges work and others don't. A working, functional kludge is one you don't want to touch for fear you'll trip on some code and the whole application will come crumbling down. Most kludge applications are not documented so you'll always need to reverse engineer everything.

SWAG Stories

"Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong,
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boil,
You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me."
- Waltzing Matilda by A.B. Paterson

What is SWAG exactly? Traditionally it referred to the cloth bundle a transient Australian vagabond might carry, filled with his clothing and belongings. For our purposes here, let's talk about a contemporary definition meaning the free stuff given away to those in (or near) the internet industry. I'm talking about promotional items, branded souvenirs, marketing giveaways and what we sometimes refer to as "tchotchkes" (Yiddish for "trinket").

There are many definitions and derivations, some of which are:
Marketing speak: Samples, Wearables And Gifts
On the industry floor: Stuff We All Get
Slang: Shit We All Git
Jaded veteran: Some Worthless Advertising Gimmick
Production studio: Scientific Wild Ass Guess

SWAG is one aspect of the internet industry that makes it all worthwhile. When a colleague shows me some new piece of SWAG they just received, it is usually because the gift is either really great or, alternatively, uniquely horrible and ill-conceived.

I've received these trinkets over the last 15 years and have kept many of them. T-shirts are probably the most common variety of SWAG, but the gifts are often of higher value. When we started MountainZone.com to broadcast content to the outdoor sporting industry, we hoped the gifts would begin to roll in. Oh, and roll they did. We received free condo stays and lift tickets from WhistlerBlackcomb resort, branded jackets from Warren Miller Entertainment, and free meals at local Seattle restaurants. Perhaps the greatest SWAG item I ever received was a limited edition K2 "Tricky Glow" snowboard (see photo). They made 750 of them and mine is stamped #666. And yes, it does glow in the dark. Because I need that.

We've all seen the bad gifts, too. What does it say about a company when you use their branded pen and it runs out of ink in a day? What about that key fob/flash drive that looses your data? A couple years ago I attended a medical technology conference and I was given a pen that barely wrote, but I kept it because of it's kitch value. It was promoting a collection agency and claimed they could, "get blood out of a stone." The ink was red.



I am constantly fascinated by how language and words mutate and develop. The term SWAG has a twisted history of spellings, derivations and origin stories. Explore for yourself and derive your own conclusions, I'm too busy playing with my branded plastic toys!

Wikipedia has a deep history of SWAG.

A similar spelling, Shwag, is often used to reference marijuana of questionable quality.

Another spelling is Schwag as used on the new website Start Up Schwag. This is the place to go to get branded T-shirts from the internet industry.

Some internet industry folks are taking photos of their loot and posting them for all the world to see. For example, Yahoo! employees have begun collecting SWAG from their company and photographing it all.

So, before you say, "I Survived the Dot Com Crash and All I Got Were These 3,000 Lousy T-shirts" remember that you are part of history! Join me in saving photos of these items for history to view. Send me photos and, if I get enough, I'll start an online SWAG museum.

They Promised Us Convergence, an UPDATE

Back in June I published a list of companies that are blurring the line between TV and computer. (see original post) The march toward convergence continues as evidenced by the companies below.

iFilm was acquired by Viacom in 2005 and "is a leading online video network, serving user-uploaded and professional content to over ten million viewers monthly."

Blinkx apparently has over 14 million hours of searchable video and major partnerships with dozens of media companies. Read more about the partnership with RealNetworks (and the competition with Windows Media) in a post on Beet.tv.

The Interactive Television Alliance is "an independent trade association representing the broad interests of the entire ITV industry."

Seattle-based BuddyTV has all the info you'd ever want to know about your favorite TV shows.

For a great article on the marriage of search and TV content, check out John Battelle's post "TV and Search Merge".

Of course, BitTorrent is still going strong as some users continue to ignore the strictly legal channels and just trade huge files back and forth.

Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s joint video venture, still in private beta. They have some huge plans, which is probably why they just left iTunes to go it alone.

UPDATE: One for the Money, Two for the Showbiz

Back in April I posted a roundup of companies who provide tools and services which help content creators distribute and get paid for their work. More companies continue to emerge...

A comprehensive list of video content companies has recently been assembled. Blogger Scott Kirsner posted "Getting Paid: Sites that Help Makers of Film and Video Make Money."

Triond is "a comprehensive publishing service that enables users to publish quality content of any type while maximizing its revenue-generating potential."

Associated Content is "an online publishing showcase where everyone - from experts and enthusiasts to amateurs and professionals - can become a Content Producer and submit original material on virtually any topic."

MetaCafe says, "if your video has what it takes to entertain people, we want to license it and pay you for every view."

A Good Day in Carkeek Park

Sun, beach, late summer Seattle.

Wilco Live

Just a short post about the soundtrack to my summer. Wilco has been playing over and over in my car, home and iPod. Great rock, well-made, rich and textured. Attached to this post are a couple photos and a short video clip from my old Treo phone which was laid to rest right after this show. They played outside in Marymoor Park, Redmond, Washington. Bill Frisell joined them for a few songs. A lovely night for humans and dozens of freshly-hatched dragonflies.

Family Friendly Digital Media

Sometimes I hook my laptop up to our home LCD TV and I watch videos and play games with my kids. One thing we’ve noticed is that it is often a challenge to locate appropriate music videos for the whole family. An innocent search for "Oh Suzanna" on YouTube.com might display a frat boy fart contest. We've been saving links to good videos on a new website we slapped together called FamilyMusic.tv.

Lately, rather than searching the web, we’ve been producing our own family-friendly digital creations. It is true that one of the drivers of user generated content has been users not finding what they want, so they create it themselves. Below is a sampling of our latest experiments. These were all created using consumer tools in our home. So, ah.. watch out!

The Mystery of Lazy Hill Farm
A music video made using toys and art supplies found around the house. The song was written by me and brilliantly brought to life by Ray, Zack and me at Andrew’s home studio.


The Camptown Ladies
A classic old tune spiced up by The Family Music Party Experience. Zack, Ray, and Todd played on this. Andrew engineered and produced.


Little Boxes
Written and recorded originally by Malvina Reynolds in 1962. I recorded it at Poolhaus Studios in Burbank, CA. I played all the instruments and sang all the vocals.


Faces on My Money
The kids and I tried to record a song and shoot and edit a music video in 4 hours or less...and it shows! I wrote the lyrics and part of a song and Ray supplied the better part of the melody and some real chords.

Joybubbles R.I.P.

Joybubbles
(May 25, 1949 – August 8, 2007)
AKA Josef Carl Engressia Jr.


As a young computer nerd in the mid 80s, with my first-generation Radio Shack TRS-80, I would hear the legend of phone phreak Josef Carl Engressia Jr. He was blind and possessed perfect pitch and could whistle 2600 hertz. This allowed him to fool AT&T phone systems, impersonate the early computer tones and hijack phone calls and conference lines for free for him and his buddies.

This early pioneer of virtual community used the only massive network widely available at the time, phone lines. He joyfully ran amok over long digital distances, exploring.

He died today. The history of the web and social networks originated with many of those early hackers and phreaks. Lest we forget!

Space Case Race

Some days I look directly up. I wonder how soon humans will be living and working and conducting business in outer space. This century will see entrepreneurs, investors and various adventurers teaming up to colonize, democratize and commercialize off-earth properties.

Looking straight up makes me remember how I often daydreamed as a boy, dreaming of what it would be like to leave Earth. Apparently many Internet and computer industry veterans have the same desires today...and some of these guys have a tremendous amount of resources to draw upon. Today, as you read this, hundreds of smart, dedicated and imaginative engineers and scientists are using the most modern tools to make traveling to the stars a routine experience for our grandchildren.

The Seattle area alone is home to a few space exploration companies. Kent-based Blue Origin is headed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and is building launch vehicles. Bremerton-based Liftport is building a space elevator. This super-strong cable will be tethered to the earth and stretch up to a geosynchronous satellite. Planned completion is the year 2031...check out the countdown on their website. And then there is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen whose team won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by flying a private space vehicle 62 miles straight up. Oh, and then there's a little aerospace start up called Boeing.

Kirkland-based Kistler Aerospace has merged with Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Limited to create Rocketplane Kistler, a company creating reusable aerospace vehicles.

Believe it or not, things actually happen outside of Seattle. Elon Musk, creator of PayPal has started SpaceX, a space exploration technology company.

Sir Richard Branson has created a space tourism company called Virgin Galactic.

Burt Rutan, visionary of modern flight, has been intimately involved on the projects with Paul Allen and Richard Branson. He is tha man behind the investments, engineering ideas into reality.

The New Mexico Space Port, a $200 million launch pad, is going to be a center of activity over the coming years as more and more space entrepreneurs bring their products to market.

As with any speculative industry, there will be companies that never make it, like the Forks, WA company Space Transportation which closed its doors in 2006. Another Seattle company called ZG Aerospce is also now defunct.

A list of dozens of private companies in the aerospace market can be found here.

Enjoy your flight. Please make sure your seat-back and tray table are in the upright position. Please secure your helmet and gloves.

My Widget Wad

Today’s landscape of online social networks is vast and fragmented. How many profiles can a social human really endure before networking fatigue takes over? The great value of online communities lies in connections between people, yet many social networks today function solely to gather as many members as possible, pulling those people away from other competing communities.

So, I have begun a dangerous experiment. Today I embark on a journey to sign up for every social network that ever there was. So far I have accounts on almost 30 of them. I have my Facebook account, a MySpace page, a LinkedIn account, and the list goes on. I am collecting cut-and-paste widgets from every network I join, like they were postcards or treasured little travel mementos. I am documenting my journeys by sticking a widget or button from each community onto one single page on my website. One long JavaScript nightmare of a page. By the time I am done, I will be in possession of The Largest Widget Wad on the Internet.

I have so far learned this: I want to own my profile. My data is mine. But, I really want to share it with people across the world thru online communities. Each service basically asks for the same data. Sure, each service has a unique twist…so just ask me the questions that are different. I want a social pass key that will allow me into all of these sites easily. I want to be able to walk up to the Flickr community door, step in (with extremely minor verification/signup requirements) and start socializing. My data follows me, but when I am in different virtual locations, I want access to different functionality. My experience with my SecondLife 3D avatar will be different than my Jobster account, but each will be fed by my latest data.


Facebook understands this and has opened their API to outside developers. Will their dominance translate into what some are dubbing the operating system for social networks? Will this create a vast playground of socializing on a Facebook platform, with a few rouge, anti-Facebook communities going “off-the-grid”?

There are already a number of companies providing aggregation software which will gather all your data and even update all your social network profiles at the same time. Do you have a new favorite band and an unstoppable desire to share it with 9,000 of your closest friends? Just click on over to ProfileLinker, OtherEgo or Profilactic and use their services to socially network with your social networks.

Open source efforts are also attempting to create a viable standard. For example, the volunteers at Open ID are attempting to create a URL-like ID for individuals. This group describes itself as, "an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity."

Other sites like Ning, MyLifeBrand, GoingOn and CrowdVine allow users to create their own social networks, fragmenting the community even further.

So I stand here before you with a pledge. Until I get my social pass key, my Widget Wad will continue to grow long and tall. I will continue to add silly widgets from every community I join until the spaghetti code of the page grows so unruly that it takes over the whole dang web!

This is a call for an extensible social networking language with personal data-sharing protocols. I demand it. Don’t make me use my wad!

On Digital Steroids

Since when did we say it was alright to feed performance-enhancing drugs to our sweet, little computers? Everywhere I look, each application boasts that it is like another application, yet much better (and apparently muscled and covered in veins). My new product is like your product...on steroids.

I think I require a more creative way to describe new technology. Let's develop an amazing new way of talking about computer topics. Some hyper-detailed way of telling others about digital news. Like exposition...on steroids.

A simple Google search for the term "on steroids" with qualifying words such as "digital" or "computer industry" reveals over two million mentions.

This month, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that WiMax has been called a "WiFi on Steroids".

Forbes magazine has described LinkedIn as "networking on steroids." I've been to plenty of business networking events and, believe me, the last thing I want to see is this crowd in some amped-up state. They are bad enough on martinis.

This all gets more surreal when talking about Web 2.0 companies with funny names. "Pownce is kinda like Twitter but on Steroids." See what I mean?

Complicating the comparison further is the tendency to compare a product to another product that has already claimed to be like a third product on steroids. For example, if "Google Video is like Flickr on steroids", and "Flickr is like iPhoto on steroids", then is Google Video like iPhoto on a double dose of steroids? And if Zooomr is "a Flickr on steroids", does that mean that Zoomr is taking steroid with Google?

We all know what happens after years of steroid use. People become cranky, violent and begin to degenerate. Is that what will happen to our hardware and software? Don't do digital drugs!

LinkedIn Competition

Some of the more successful social networks to emerge are focused on a specific audience. For example, business networking sites have taken common tools found on community sites and created value by connecting professionals in new and useful ways.

LinkedIn is the big kid on the block and has become extremely popular. It gains value as more users join.

I have also found biznik to be useful. They bill themselves as "Business networking that doesn't suck." Their software allows professionals to arrange in-person events and promote them.

For those in the media industry, there is MediaBistro.com. They are "career and community for media professionals." They've done a good job of raising awareness of their services in Seattle by throwing networking parties in local bars.

Some organizations are taking the next logical step by creating their own social networks using enterprise social networking tools from companies like Connectbeam who talk of harnessing the collective mind of your company.

We'll have to wait and see if anyone can catch the front runner, LinkedIn. They have a huge community, but will some upstart with better tools swoop in to steal the show?

iPhone Parody Parity

I walked by the Seattle Apple Store today just to check out the line. It certainly stretched for a few blocks. I want my iPhone, but I can wait. I shot this video with my Treo 650 Palm-based camera phone.

There is very little to say about the iPhone that hasn't already been said. The reviews are good, with some complaints that the "phone" part of the iPhone is lacking, but the "i" part of the iPhone is ground-breaking. This product is not so much the ultimate palm computer, it is more like a milestone along the road to computers becoming more and more personal and simplified.

Apple has orchestrated the marketing masterfully. They know the limits of hype and how to push it right to the edge of saturation...and beyond. One thing is for sure, slick marketing creates slick parody. Dozens of sites and mock commercials are floating around the web. The beautiful iPhone marketing graphics and slogans become a press kit full of assets for satirists. It works well for Apple.

iPhone parody is everywhere: Saturday Night Live, iPhoneSize.com, iPrecious, College Humor, Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson, the biPhone, YouTube Ad, and, of course, The Onion.

Start-up Companies Sprouting

It's finally summer in Seattle and that means all the little start-up companies that sprouted in the spring are growing full-bloom and are spreading across the land. I believe there are more new web ventures now than there were back in the late 90s. There is definitely a leaning toward social networking and video entertainment, but this new crop of companies come in all colors and varieties.

John Cook put together a list of over 60 Seattle "Web 2.0" Internet companies. Geeking with Greg organized the list and stacked them by Alexa traffic rankings.

Seattle-area company-watchers have always been able to turn to Seattle 24x7 for a good overview of Internet and new media companies.

The phenomenon is happening across the country, with more new Internet companies cropping up than ever before. Baris Karadogan posted a great list of companies from all over the place.

Online Advertising Rollup

The $40 billion global digital advertising market is growing and is in need of services and content. This is good news for those of us who provide the skills, imagination and talent to new media enterprises. We have some very busy times ahead as the battle for eyeballs begins and is waged on the TV screen, computer and mobile phone.

Last month Microsoft purchased one of my neighbors, aQuantive, for $6 Billion. They’ve come a long way from being AvenueA who placed banner ads on my previous company's site MountainZone.com back in the dot com days. What we in the web services industry are watching for is what Microsoft does with the agency side of the business. Can they really support a web shop that builds sites for its competitors? Can they re-focus the team to build internal projects?

WPP, one of the world’s largest communications companies, recently bought 24/7 Real Media for $650 million. WPP owns JWT and the Grey Global Group and is well positioned for this worldwide shift to online advertising.

Back in April, Yahoo! purchased the advertising network RightMedia for over $700 million. It actually bought 20% of the company last year and with all the activity in this space, they finally bought the rest of the pie.

And then there’s Google, always a formidable competitor, who stepped up their efforts in April with a purchase of DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Combine that with the acquisition of YouTube and you’ve got yourself a full-meal media empire.

International marketing company Publicis bought Boston-based Digitas for $1.3 billion and then Digitas turned around and bought a French web agency, Business Interactif, for $182 million. Their advertising and marketing clients apparently have a great hunger for services.

So, it remains to be seen what these acquisitions will produce in terms of work for creative agencies and studios, but I predict busy times ahead. With all the interest and budget behind online advertising and marketing, we are quickly moving beyond the banner ad. Branded content, sponsored games and private label social networks are just the beginning. The audience is moving to the web and the advertisers are following.

Virtual World, Real Money

In the interactive business, we often labor for months on a project and then deliver it to our client with the click of the FTP button. Occasionally we will deliver physical assets such as CDs or printed materials, but more often than not our deliverable is made of virtual bits.

Lately I’ve been seeing this concept taken to the extreme. Why be kind-of virtual when you can be the virtualest!? The proliferation of online virtual worlds and internet-based role playing games have opened a vast new market for goods and services that exist only inside the computer machine.

For example, late last year Anshe Chung (not her real name) became the first virtual real-estate tycoon to become a millionaire in the real world by selling online plots of land in SecondLife, the avatar-based online world. Players of the game shell out real-world dollars to own a piece of the ever-growing online playground.

Other similar online worlds are experiencing similar phenomenon. There.com, Active Worlds, and Project Entropia have very active online economies that bleed into “meatspace”.

And this weekend in the New York Times Magazine, I read about the Chinese “gold farmers” who put in 12-hour shifts playing World of Warcraft, collecting virtual booty that is then sold to westerners for real cash.

Earlier this year Facebook started to offer a virtual gifting service which seems to be catching on. Users can buy $1 cutsie icons to hand over to their friends. So, Facebook is essentially selling bits that allows people to say to their friends, “Don’t say I never bought you anything.” But is it really a thing? I guess it is if you paid for it, eh?

It looks like many Internet users have moved beyond the old 1990s fear of online commerce into a brave new world where you order an item and it is delivered instantly online because it is fully virtual. Watch out FedEx, the all-virtual world is sneaking up on us.

Getty Lee: Distant Early Warning

Here in Seattle we have lately been seeing more evidence of the rising power of content in the new media industry. The networks and platforms are all well and good, but the true value lies in the information itself. The data. The content.

Local Seattle powerhouse Getty Images seems to understand this and has been gobbling up various companies lately. Two examples are Pump Audio and Scoopt.

Pump Audio licenses music for advertising, helping independent artists connect with buyers. Chris Ballew of the Seattle band Presidents of the United States of America is one of the more famous artists who sells music thru the service.

Scoopt is a site for citizen photo journalism. Members sell their videos, photos and blogs to the press thru the service.

Watch for more acquisitions from Getty in the coming months. They will provide an early warning of where the big companies are finding value in content.

They Promised Us Convergence

I am still waiting for my hover-car and my bionic elbow, but something that "they" promised us long ago has finally arrived. My TV has mated with my computer. Unfortunately the offspring is an unruly tike in desperate need of potty training.

Although the technology has arrived and the content has begun to flow, the landscape is still very much like the wild west days of the early web. We see multiple standards competing. We see sites that exist one day, but are gone (or gobbled up in an acquisition) the next day. Quality is all across the board. The method of presentation and delivery is varied from site to site. It sure ain't one kind of idiot box, it's full-on control for the user with no owners manual.

Here are a few sites that are combining TV-style entertainment content with the web:

Joost: All the things you love about TV, fused with all the fun and interactive power of the internet. From the guys that brought you Skype and Kazaa. Full screen. Downloaded client.

FORA.tv: "The World is Thinking." Political, social and cultural issues via web video.

AtomFilms: A source for independently produced, online entertainment for ten years.

Zattoo: Live TV on your PC from all over the world.

TVTonic: Watch, subscribe and manage video content. Designed to be used with a remote on Windows Media Center.

AllOfTV: An archive of streaming TV content on the web. A site with this range of free content is surely going to be shut down soon.

JumpTV: Free live TV from all over the world on your PC.

Current TV: A global television network that gives you the opportunity to create and influence what airs on TV.

BabelGum: "TV experience, Internet Substance." High-resolution and full-screen.

Veoh: From home videos to premier internet television content.

Acceptable: Watch. Vote. Create.

Amazon UnBox: The ecommerce giant begins to experiment with online delivery of entertainment content.

Adult Swim: Cartoons for adults.

CinemaNow: Movies. Buy, Rent, Burn. Online.

Ustream: "Live interactive video for everyone."

Art Wolfe Travels To The Edge

I was on the team that just launched a new website for internationally known nature photographer Art Wolfe. The new site will support Mr. Wolfe’s new television series, Travels to the Edge and is located at http://www.travelstotheedge.com/.

We created the entire website, including design, development and unique hosting concerns related to management of such a highly trafficked site. We also created, wrote and edited all of the content, from interviews with Art Wolfe team members to the final copy edit. I acted as executive producer and art director.

For the multimedia sections of the site, we used Adobe Flash in a complex configuration to serve multiple video streams, utilizing XML.

Major sponsors for the program include Canon and Microsoft. The program is produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and distributed by American Public Television.

Red Menace

I need one of these cameras. Or two. This is the deal; entrepreneur Jim Jannard who is famous for founding the Oakly eyewear company started Red Digital Camera Company. This is a company that seems to be doing everything right. They even nabbed red.com.

All the buzz about this camera is because it promises super-high resolution at consumer prices. No one can get their hands on one just yet, but Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") shot some promotional footage with the camera and supposedly loved it.

With a 4520 X 2540 resolution, this Super 35mm is a mind-blower at 12-Megapixels.

Where the Hell is Matt?

I was on the team that just launched a website for Dancing Matt from WhereTheHellisMatt.com. He is currently on another round-the-world trip, this time seeking out others to dance with him. Check out his site where you can follow him on Google Maps.

One for the Money, Two for the Showbiz

I have recently contended that the age of the platform-creators is ending and the age of the content-creator is upon us. For years companies have been scrambling to create the online network with the most eyeballs. Companies are creating the networks and protocols to make content sharing a reality. But now the tables are turning. Those individuals and companies with the most creative entertainment are now driving the market.

Some recent companies are providing services to content developers, helping them realize profits from their creations.

Cruxy: Power tools for digital creators.

Brightcove: From personal video blogs to major media sites, use Brightcove to deliver your Internet TV. Choose the option that fits you best.

PaidContent.org: ContentNext Media network provides global coverage of the business of digital content.

Blip.tv: Servers, software, workflow, advertising and distribution for videobloggers, podcasters or Internet TV producers.

vSOCIAL: Brand, target, virally distribute and monetize your message via video.

Federate Media: Support for independent website authors.

SplashCast: Enables anyone to create streaming media 'channels' that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds.

Revver: Monetize your video as it travels virally across the web.

ScanScout: Create new ad inventory and new revenue streams from your existing online video content.

Generation C(ash): A great research report about "minipreneurs" (web content producers who are monetizing their output).

YouTube: This tiny start-up is now offering to split ad revenues 50-50 with content creators.