Month: June 2010

How Paypal Can Help Save Media—And Itself http://bit.ly/ddotgG similar to Techdirt’s CwF+RtB=profit. (Probably a truth if from 2 sources)

The essence of the article is that:

I wrote recently that there is an easy formula for consumer spend on media:  
Desire + Relationship + Ease = Spend

What struck me with that was the similarity between Ben Elowitz understanding of the future of media and that at techdirt.com. Techdirt expresses it as:

CwF + RtB = profit.

Connect with Fans (build audience/followers) and give them a Reason to Buy and they will buy stuff.

The ease of purchase is of course what we were trying to achieve with klickTab/Open TV Network: one of the easiest ways to get media is via RSS and we added in a commerce engine to make the process of paying for digital downloads much easier. Maybe PayPal can make it easy enough.

With ad revenues going less far to foot the bill for published content, making media profitable will increasingly mean turning to consumers to pay for content and experiences. And consumers open their wallets in proportion to how badly they want it (desire); how well they know the other parties (relationship); and how little work it takes (ease). This is why there is such a strong future in bite-size media consumption: for all the talk about paywalls and subscriptions, it is far easier to get payments of a buck or two. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)demonstrates the value of bite-size with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues from apps alone, far exceeding any leading online publisher’s subscription programs.

Petition: ACTA ‘threatens’ Public Interests http://bit.ly/a8EeuV

ACTA is a “trade negotiation” supposedly about trade mark protection, but is actually intended to force even more restrictive copyright on all signatories, that will eventually be used to become law. Given that all the evidence points to a loose copyright being best for society, this is very bad news. That it’s being negotiated in secret, with direct input by “big copyright” (ie MPAA, RIAA and their sister organizations internationally) one could hardly think it’s going to be in the best interests of society.

About 650 people, including 11 members of the European Union Parliament and about 90 intellectual property (IP) professors, have signed a document saying an international IP enforcement agreement being negotiated by the U.S. and 36 other countries “threatens numerous public interests.”

After I posted that last reference to Boing Boing’s iPhone photo and video examples I read the very last line:

Video is saved and exported as h.264 QuickTime, and you can email, MMS, or publish to YouTube right from the iPhone. Editing on the device is possible with iMovie for iPhone ($5 in the Apple App store).

So, iMovie on iPhone can edit H.264 QuickTime Files but Final Cut Pro has to transcode to ProRes? What’s up with that?

Now there’s a lot of good reasons to transcode to ProRes (or DNxHD even with AMA for H.264 QT files) but surely if the underpowered processor in an iPhone (relative to any desktop or laptop) can do it, why not a fully blown 8 core Mac?

iPhone 4 video camera “outperforms other smartphones and ultra-mobile devices” http://bit.ly/bpIQib

That’s good news as I’m finally going to get an iPhone. Just never seemed the right time or device until now.

There’s some video and nice still examples at Boing Boing.

You can see the difference, but the verdict in short form is this: iPhone 4 outperforms other smartphones and handheld ultra-mobile digital video camcorders, and I’ve tried nearly all of ’em for web video production while on the road. When it comes to video recording in a smartphone (and in “Flip” class devices), iPhone 4 is the one to beat.

Audition officially coming to the Mac http://bit.ly/cOHThO

It seems that Adobe’s move back to the Mac with it’s CS video and audio apps has gone well, since they now plan to bring Audition – Soundbooth’s big brother – to the Mac. I guess that Intel Inside helps keep things compatible!

Earlier this month, video showed the software running on a Mac, but without any apparent acknowledgment from the developer. The arrival of Audition could be important, as it will compete in some respects with other professional audio production tools, such as AVID’s Pro Tools and Apple’s Logic. Adobe will try to carve out a niche in broadcast and post-production work, a representative says.

Audition – originally Cool Edit – is highly regarded and should be a good addition to the creative arsenal for Mac users.

Why Ad Agencies are making a mistake with Flash http://bit.ly/9ie1JV

The use of Flash ads could be the thing that prevents the message:

Many advertising agencies are hung up on having a fun, flashy, aesthetically appealing website that may actually end up working against them. With Adobe Flash struggling to update and revamp their service, the Flash can be the very thing that buries your potential website’s audience reach, traffic and search engine optimization tactics.

And btw, the web is only surfable if you block Flash (and ads in general). Otherwise my eyes bleed!

Adobe Delivers Flash Player 10.1 – Most People Can’t Use It http://bit.ly/9rvosv and http://tcrn.ch/9g8DFS

This quote from TechCrunch is spot on:

Adobe can prove Apple’s decision to bar Flash from running on some of the world’s most popular and capable smartphones and the iPad wrong, but only by doing what it is doing now: by actually shipping Flash for Mobile and showing that it knows how to make it an integral part of the mobile experience, without slowing things down.

Gig Om is a lot less positive with it’s headline:

Adobe Delivers Flash Player 10.1 But Most People Can’t Use It

Ouch! Kevin Tofel continues:

The key word in Adobe’s press release today being “expected,” which appears three times. Platforms other than Android are expected to integrate and work with Flash Player. All of the latest Android handsets are expected to see Froyo, which is required for Flash Player 10.1. The production version of Flash is expected to be available as a final production release for Froyo devices. Translation: Adobe hasn’t delivered anything to most handsets today and the fate of Flash Player is increasingly out of Adobe’s hands.

YouTube Expands Catch-Up, Primetime TV Content Library With WWE Deal http://tcrn.ch/bMHjN4

I’m not sure that I’m the demographic for “current episodes of a suite of World Wrestling Entertainment-related programming” but it’s an important step in YouTube’s evolution to have premium quality entertainment.

Since it began serving full-length episodes last year, YouTube has primarily offered content that was old (in some cases, really old), and it hasn’t been a place people would look to catch an episode of a show they missed the week before. In contrast, recent content has been Hulu’s bread-and-butter, as users log on to catch the episodes they’ve missed. YouTube obviously has a long way to go, but expect to hear about more deals in the near future — I doubt they would have called out the fact that they’re growing their library of catch-up content if it wasn’t the start of a new trend.