Entries from January 2007 ↓

Here’s a very good example of how some parts of the TV industry still have their heads buried firmly in the sand when it comes to how online video is going to radically change their business.

“The Long Tail…is not an economic reality and it has almost no relevance to the economics of the television business”. A quote from Shelly Palmer, chairman of the national Advanced Media Technology Emmy Awards Committee

Oh dear.

(Courtesy of Chris Anderson)

PS Here’s more on The Long Tail if you’re unfamiliar with the concept.

I’ve just been having a play with Brightcove, a system which allows anyone to set up their own online TV channel. It’s quite like YouTube but much more geared to content producers who want to charge for what they want to do and make a business out of it. It has other advantages over YouTube. I put together my own channel to test it out, and here are my initial thoughts:

• Easy to sign up
• Easy to use
• Comes with its own offline software application (the PublishPod) which converts the video before you upload it, unlike the annoying YouTube process which forces you to do it yourself, degrading the quality.
• It’s possible to set charges for each individual video. This is the first time I’ve seen this available in the UK, although I may be wrong.
• The player skin looks better than the YouTube one

I’ll post more as I play with it. Here are the results - it took about 20 minutes in total from start to finish to set up the channel and upload this video.

Here’s an idea - why not give 10,000 young people £10 and see what they can build with it in one month?

www.makeyourmarkwithatenner.com

A fantastic idea - I’m really looking forward to seeing the results.

UPDATE: You can now keep track of the results at The Tenner Blog

If you’re a Blogging, Flickr or Del.icio.us addict then it’s worth checking out Flock, “the social web browser”.

You can blog, post photos, read RSS feeds all using the software. My favourite feature after only using it for a day is the ability to post favourites and have them go straight into your del.icio.us account. Sad isn’t it.
I’m using it right now to write this post and I must say it’s pleasant being able to write my post directly into the browser - however it is a bit limited in that you can only post, not edit or anything else.

I’m trying not to get too attached to it though - my money is on the fact that Google are probably developing their own version of this right as we speak. It probably won’t be long before they yet again sweep away this little niche of the market by simply doing it better than anyone else.

Further to my last post, 4Talent have also released two videos featuring yours truly exploring the world of podcasting.

You can find them on the 4Talent website (click “watch the videos”)
NB Some people have had problems accessing the clips - let me know if you do and I’ll pass it on to C4.

I’m currently producing a five month series of online radio shows for 4Talent on digital media for creative people. The first two shows are now online, so please check them out. Episode 1 focuses on the subject of online selling and looks at how creative people are using the web to sell unique, niche products. Episode 2 is an all round guide for creative people on how to commission a great website. You can listen to the first two episodes here or subscribe using the link on the page. I’d love any feedback you may have.

technorati tags:Video, NewMedia4Casts, 4Talent, Video, Audio, Podcasting

One of my plans for this year is to really get this blog going. I think part of my problem has been the fact that I haven’t actually been reading many blogs until now, but a bit of time spent over Christmas has now left me with a Google Reader nice and full of juicy RSS feeds.
As time goes on I’ll start posting some of my favourite blogs here. Here’s the first installment:

I really love this one. Springwise provide subscribers with their “Daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas”. For example, a great post the other day on a company providing Customised Love Songs. You send them the outline ideas, they write, produce and package up a tailor made song for that special someone in your life. (As a musician I think I don’t think I would quite be able to live with myself if it was my job but the idea’s great).

Mark McGuinness writes a blog on creativity, coaching and business with great passion and clarity.

He’s really on a roll at the moment and seems to keep coming up with really interesting stuff. I think his post on “Why Enthusiam’s Better than Confidence” is inspired and quite a few others seem to agree.

Finally (for now) there’s Buzzmachine’s Jeff Jarvis who’s writing some really interesting stuff about how media is changing. Probably my favourite topic at the moment.

The World Economic Forum are holding their Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks. The 2007 event is being held in Davos and features a pretty heavyweight of speakers including Mohammed Abbas, Mohammed El Baradei, Paul Wolfowitz and our own beloved PM.

Traditionally a fairly closed event, the WEF have decided to get communicating with the wider public. As well as webcasting many of the seminars they have also invited the public to submit video questions and responses.
In addition they will also be setting up a Davos Conversation page which will collate media related to the event from around the web.

Nice to see the world’s great and the good actually making an effort to listen to people for once (it doesn’t seem to happen very often, especially in the UK nowadays). Whether they actually will or not remains to be seen.