Category: General

You Don’t Need A Website! http://bit.ly/bZVc3C

Interesting post about the many connections a project or marketing website needs:

Now, you might want to build a website that allows your customers to access your data (content, video, audio, text, graphics, pictures, etc.). But you will also need an easy way to supply their needs on smart phones, app phones, cell phones, landline phones, netbooks, notebooks, slates, tablets, iPads, iPods (separate because they are not flash compatible) and a whole host of other devices that are out there and that are yet to be invented. You’re going to have an App vs. WAP debate, and sadly, you’re going to decide that you need to create both consumer experiences. You might also have to supply your video to broadcast television, cable television, satellite television, on demand systems (online and offline), IPTV and even lowly YouTube. Audio may go to traditional radio, podcasts, online distributors, iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora and a thousand others. This list of deliverables is not endless but it is frighteningly long and it is getting longer every day. And, it won’t come out of a website, it will come out of a database that can be accessed by a plurality of devices in a plurality of ways.

The most important part is that data – in a database.

Autotranslation good enough for everyday conversations? http://bit.ly/9cb0VT

Nothing specifically about production and postproduction other than translation has been one of those “difficult” things for computers to get right – like assisted editing! 🙂  Apply the right algorithms and enough example data (Google’s big advantage) and it can improve.

I do like the idea of language no longer being a barrier to communication.

How have the machines become so adept? Mostly by using new “statistical” techniques. Instead of trying to teach a program the rules of language, computer scientists locate massive corpora of online documents previously translated by humans — say, UN proceedings, which are routinely available in six different languages, or bilingual newspapers. Then they train cloud computers to recognize which words and phrases match up across tongues.

That’s why Google is leading the pack: It’s best at finding oodles of documents to train its cloud. This method also means that the more the Web grows, the better our multilingual machines will get.

Also takes away the need for a world language, if translation is good enough.

Rumblefish to sell songs for use in YouTube videos http://yhoo.it/cKrjPm Smart move on Rumblefish’s part, and good for their artists

Rumblefish mostly represent independent musicians so you won’t find any major artists (or labels) in there, but there are about 35,000 songs to choose from, all with appropriately cleared licenses. This makes it good for YouTube videographers and additional revenue for the musicians.

Currently, YouTube videos that use music without a license can be deleted from the site, or can be partiallycovered with an ad that generates revenue for YouTube and the recording company.

Privately held Rumblefish, based in Portland, Ore., will be selling the licensed songs at its new website,FriendlyMusic.com.

Blu-ray Disc Association approves final BDXL format specs http://bit.ly/dbnog7

The BDXL specs allow for discs up to 128 GB: up against decreasing cost of hard drive storage and solid state storage, is a 128 GB disc going to change much?

Targeted primarily at commercial segments such as broadcasting, medical and document imaging enterprises with significant archiving needs, BDXL provides customers with triple layer 100GB RE (rewritable) and R (write-once) discs and quadruple layer 128GB R discs. Possible consumer applications include capture and playback of HD broadcast and satellite programming in markets where set-top recorders are prevalent.

FireFox 4 going Flash Free http://bit.ly/9QvVvX

Mozella Foundation say that HTML5 is the future.  OTOH Google are bundling Flash with their Chrome Browser, which is rapidly catching up to FireFox in users.Not particularly polite about the reasoning:

“We’re trying to balance the reality of the web today,” explains Sullivan. “Flash is there. Our users are going to use it, and it’s going to crash. We want to protect them from that. But over time, we really believe that HTML5 is the future.”

File-sharing has weakened copyright—and helped society http://bit.ly/bcwl1W

Copyright is about creating incentives to create. It is not about protecting the business models of entrenched players.

Given that there is currently zero evidence that file sharing has hurt any music performer or TV/Film producer (and the US GAO says the “studies” by the industry (ie IRAA MPAAP are not factually based) and that performers still perform and creators still create, there seems to be no evidence that society has been hurt by relaxing copyright. In fact there’s a lot of evidence that weaker copyright has made society stronger, while not harming any industry.

Now, specific sectors, like CDs may have been hurt, overall the music industry is up 5% since 2007. What we’re really looking at is a business model problem from the Record Companies and studios, who are trying to get their dying business models entrenched in law by outrageous lobbying (and the congrescritters listen without brains turned on) regardless of what is good for society as a whole.

There’s just so much great content in this article at Ars that you really have to read it all.

Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf presented a recent paper at a music business conference in Vienna that tried to answer this question empirically. By charting the production of new books, new music albums, and new feature films over the last decade, the authors tried to see whether creative output went up or down in correlation with file-sharing.

“Data on the supply of new works are consistent with our argument that file sharing did not discourage authors and publishers,” they write in their paper, “File-sharing and Copyright” (PDF).

“The publication of new books rose by 66 percent over the 2002-2007 period. Since 2000, the annual release of new music albums has more than doubled, and worldwide feature film production is up by more than 30 percent since 2003… In our reading of the evidence there is little to suggest that the new technology has discouraged artistic production. Weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society.”

 

Hulu’s Views Are Up, But Its Audience Isn’t http://bit.ly/c0hjqb

It’s a very interesting graphic/statistic. Apparently the same viewers are going back to Hulu more often, but it’s not growing the total numbers of viewer anywhere near as quickly.

It’s hard to interpret other than that some people have really gotten into the Hulu Habit, watching a lot of their TV viewing there, while it’s not catching on beyond that core group. This could simply be “early adopters” and it won’t be until it moves more into the mainstream that the unique viewers will go up. Viewer numbers have actually dropped a little since last year.

Hopefully they will, or Hulu’s problem in brining in sufficient revenue from the service for its Corporate Masters will be exacerbated. Advertising more to the same people isn’t going to fund growth at Hulu.

Hulu had 43.5 million unique visitors in May, which is just barely above the 40 million unique visitors it had a year ago. It’s down from Hulu’s peak which was 44 million last December.