NOTES FROM THE MEDIA REVOLUTION

User driven photo mag folds

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 13:21:36 -0500

The user driven photography magazine Jpeg will be closing this week. They apparently ran out of money before they were able to create a substainable business. Personally I found it a very interesting venture in the social media space, and I think it has moved the way we think about content and the people that produce content. Maybe it was too radical to make a magazine that purely relies on non professional contributers - maybe it should have been combined with more traditional content, or maybe the timing or execution was just wrong - but I think we will see much more of this kind of user driven print media in the future as well. I could see my own project - storyplanet.com - launching some kind of print product in the long run as well - or what about a company like Flickr?

Here is what the JPG guys write about the descision to close down: http://jpgmag.com/blog/2009/01/jpg_magazine_says_goodbye.html

Promising new HD cam's

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:07:00 -0500

It is interesting to see how moving images and still image are merging on differnet levels. One of them being, that the new HD cameras are actually shooting RAW still images at a blazing speed making it an entirely new video experience. So far one of the weaknesses of digital video has been that the image tend to be flat because everything is in foucs. But with the new RAW technique you get the same kind of focus and dept of field as in still photography (you also use the same lenses as still cameras). The object of desire so far has been the red camera (http://www.red.com/) - but another interesting choise the Ikonoskop A-cam dll (http://www.ikonoskop.com/dii/) which costs around 8000$ (about half of the RED). The A-cam only shoots 60 RAW frames 1080p video a second on to a 80gb memory card. The catch is that it can only hold abotu 15 minutes of video, then the card has to be changed.

Here is Gizmondos review: http://gizmodo.com/5050283/

Here is the sales director for Ikonoskob showing off the goodies:

The Anti-Patterns of Bootstrapping

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:13:05 -0500

The Anti-Patterns of Bootstrapping:

msg:

Simeon Simeonov, Entrepenuer turned VC turned CTO/VC, has an interesting post about the most common bootstrapping mistakes he has observed. Here are the 3 most common:

Setting the wrong bootstrapping objectives.

Miscalculating the opportunity cost of bootstrapping.

Getting the wrong type of customers.

He has a tangent on 1 that I found of interest

One particularly common mistake is failing to build strategic value. Cash, customers and revenues are important but often it takes something else to build strategic value. It may be critical mass. It may be achieving particular positioning.

GPS on Cameras

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 06:05:18 -0500

While reportage photographers definitely do not want more quipment to deal with, the GPS devices are becoming so small that they will probably soon be built into the cameras. This could mean that every picture would automatically hold metadata with position (latitude, longitude, elevation) and the precise time of the shoot. I am not a big believer in long captions, and I think that a lot of captions are badly written (they say what you can already see in the photo, instead of adding to the story of the photo). On the other hand informative captions are very valuable when editing and selling photos - and having worked at a photo agency for a long time, I know that missing captions is a huge problem. So I think that just knowing location and time of the photo would be great, and it would also take a load off the photographers if they did not manually have to deal with this. Here is one of the small GPS devices already existing: http://www.di-gps.com/di-GPS/usb_1.htm

Student Sentenced to 15 Years for YouTube Terror Video

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 04:40:54 -0500

Student Sentenced to 15 Years for YouTube Terror Video:

msg:

somewhatfrank:

An Egyptian engineering student was sentenced in the United States on Thursday to 15 years imprisonment after pleading guilty to uploading a 12-minute video to YouTube that demonstrated how to convert a remote-control toy car into a bomb detonator.

File this under: The Power of YouTube

I wonder if all these people at the security check are really disabled or just faking

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:10:37 -0500

I wonder if all these people at the security check are really disabled or just faking

When I was a kid I was really taken by rap music because it is...

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:44:13 -0500

When I was a kid I was really taken by rap music because it is such a strong form of commuication and storytelling (and I don’t mean the wack commercial rap of today, but the intelligent old scholl stuff). Ok, it is hard to justify this clip intellectually but it is just damn funny, Thanks to Lars Bastholm for leading me to this.

Looking at http://mygengo.com - pretty cool translation service launched by someone i know.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:16:23 -0500

Looking at http://mygengo.com - pretty cool translation service launched by someone i know.

It is snowing in Brooklyn. Christmas has come.

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 20:16:20 -0500

It is snowing in Brooklyn. Christmas has come.

The positive side of the financial crisis

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 22:21:00 -0500

A lot is said and done these days about the financial crisis. I am optimistic of nature and naturally look for the possibilities and benefits of a given situation. In this situation I see three positive things (at least positive in my view) for the media industry:

1. The return of paid content: For the past years whenever media startups were asked about business models the magic word would be “advertising”. This is no longer a valid answer, as the ad spending will be down, and the funding it takes to build the audience and the platform to attract serious ad money is harder to find. So media organizations will have to go old school and try to turn their content and services into products that people actually want to pay for - or attach derivative products to their main business (like Google selling a pro version of Gmail etc). I think this is a good thing for the content. When your survival is dependent solely on commercial interests it becomes very hard (I would say too hard), not to corrugate and corrupt the content.

The return of in-depth journalism: So what can you make money from, if not from advertising? To be able to charge for something it has to represent a special value for a the people paying for it. The off-the-shelf news that main stream media is pumping out like wiener sausages from an assembly line has very low value for the news consumer. Registration of news events has become a commodity that you will often get better from friends with cell phones and local bloggers. What does however represent a value, is a carefully edited and verified selection of information presented and analyzed with perspective and historical context. This is not what the vast majority of mainstream media organizations are doing at the moment. They are simple holding up their microphones and re-writing the press releases adding very little value and giving very little extra knowledge. As a media consumer you want to leave a website thinking that you gained a much better understanding of current affairs. That is worth paying for. I think there will be a market for high quality content, often times appealing to a special interest or niche audience.

3. The return of the cause driven journalist: I am tired of hearing journalists complain about the state of the media industry. Reality is that if they sliced a bit of their salary, gave up some of their benefits and started working a bit harder, everything could change in a heartbeat. Then we would have the resources to make clever and powerful stories that we could all be proud of. And all the clever people out there would once again want to be part of traditional journalism. The majority of main stream media employees has become to fat, happy and established. This is why most of the relevant and interesting journalism now comes from non-profit projects and volunteer bloggers. Now to be fair, I know a bunch of journalists who are working around the clock for little pay and is really in if for the cause. And I have to add, that I have nothing against people getting high salaries (hopefully I will have one of my own one day). But in general I think there is too much hypocrisy and too little will to pay the price to change things among journalists. It is my hope that tough financial times will force people to think more about what they are really working for, and make them start caring about the cause. And maybe the successful ones will be those who are in it for the love of journalism and the cause of changing societies - and not for the benefits and glamour of the media industry. The times they are a-changin’, baby!

msg: mikehudack:danw:jackcheng: jacobbijani: Cool graphic,...

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:37:35 -0500

msg:

mikehudack:danw:jackcheng: jacobbijani: Cool graphic, obvious article.

Happy that danish soccer team just tied Man U at Old Trafford

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:30:27 -0500

Happy that danish soccer team just tied Man U at Old Trafford

For 16 years, WITNESS has harnessed the power of video to...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 18:31:32 -0500

For 16 years, WITNESS has harnessed the power of video to advance human rights. In honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th, we’ve put together this short video with different WITNESS staff talking about images that opened their eyes to human rights abuses around the world. To learn more about the images mentioned in this video, click here. Now we want to hear from you:

This is not really about media. But it is about revolution. And...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:28:28 -0500

This is not really about media. But it is about revolution. And it is about Storytelling. Star Wars is just such an amazing piece of storytelling - I especially love the way they use music and audio effects, and I always use examples from the movies when I lecture. Part of the brilliance of the story is that it is discussing some basic universal dilemmas. Like faith, karma and what makes people good and evil. This clip is a good example of this.

Why a bad economy is good for startups

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:10:41 -0500

Why a bad economy is good for startups: As followers of this blog might now I run a startup called Storyplanet. So naturally I agree with all the clever people saying that it is a good idea to launch a startup during recession. However I do think this article has some really good points.

Why Apple is so great at interface design

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:04:36 -0500

Why Apple is so great at interface design: Rather than survey a bunch of users on every decision, the Mac team decided each issue among themselves, invariably going for the option that might amuse a user the most, that would give a user the most pleasure, and therefore imbue the Mac with personality.

Pretty amazing series of very telling clips with economists...

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:04:16 -0500

Pretty amazing series of very telling clips with economists discussing the US enconomy. Starting in 2006 Peter Schiff nails the current crisis in detail. But all the other experts and journalists are denying. They’re even laughing him off as a complete idiot. Talk about objectivity and critical thinking.

Sometimes the key to a good interview can simply be to ask the...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:20:14 -0500

Sometimes the key to a good interview can simply be to ask the simple, honest questions. In 1969, 14-year-old Beatle fanatic Jerry Levitan, managed to get an interview with John Lennon in a hotel room in Toronto. 38 years later he has produced this amazing little film about it.

Checking out Global Voices AIDS day event: http://ping.fm/4tbS4

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:14:27 -0500

Checking out Global Voices AIDS day event: http://ping.fm/4tbS4

Play Auditorium

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:51:28 -0500

Play Auditorium: This is the start of what could become a really cool e-learning project. And potentially it could also involve storytelling to solve the different scenarios.