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Item of Interest

Jibjab Co-founders: Advertising doesn’t work

Jibjab Co-founders: Advertising Doesn’t Work http://bit.ly/b7i4V0 Not for producing high quality produced product at scale.

JibJab are best known for their “This Land” around the Kerry/Bush election. They abandoned advertising support a while back to concentrate on the ability to put your face into their animations (for a fee).

Asked if advertising works for his industry, Gregg Spiridellis responds: “To support a high-quality produced product at scale — no way. Absolutely no way.” He admits that advertising might work great as part of a larger strategy if you already have your production costs covered, adding: “If someone is saying: I want to do webisodes, I want to produce a series of two-minute comedy shorts and I want to make a lot of money with advertising, I’d say: ‘You’re probably not, but good luck.’”

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Item of Interest

IE 9 preview supports HTML 5 and fast Javascript

IE 9 preview supports HTML 5 and faster Javascript engine. Welcome ot the C21 Microsoft! http://bit.ly/bWUtnc

Although the support is rudimentary at the moment, it’s a good sign that we’re heading for a standards-based future on the web.

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Item of Interest

Newspapers: 55% PR and 90% copied?

Newspapers: 55% PR and 90% copied? http://bit.ly/9yOxUA And we want to preserve this why?

Yesterday’s post mentioned Australian research that suggested 55% of newspaper content was “Press Releases”. Well now the Neiman Journalism Lab looked into the reporting of major stories and found only around 11% of newspaper stories had any original reporting on the subject.

One set of research considered total content – news vs PR – this second piece of research compares the reporting on the same story to see how much is original.

So I wonder, what do “journalists” for most newspapers actually do each day?

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Item of Interest

55% of ‘news’ is PR driven

55% of ‘news’ is PR driven according to Australian study. http://bit.ly/bfbSTl No surprises there.

55% from press releases, 40% from AP or Reuters and very little original reporting in most newspapers. For the longest time the newspaper sold because of the movie listings, classified ads and stock reports. Now you can look up and book movie tickets online, Craigslist killed classifieds and if you’re not getting real time stock reports, you could be. Companies publish their press releases on their site (or should) where they can be found by search engines and I can subscribe to an Associated Press feed directly.

Why exactly would I want a printed paper with “aged” news from yesterday?

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Item of Interest

HTTP streaming – What you need to know

HTTP streaming – What you need to know. Article at Streaming media http://bit.ly/aImXjT

HTTP streaming was introduced by Apple for the iPhone and is now supported in QT X on Snow Leopard. What is it, how do you create it and where does it fit are all covered in this article.

Categories
Item of Interest

Metadata applied to more targeted delivery of advertsing

Metadata applied to more targeted delivery of advertising. http://bit.ly/cg1PfL Mmmm relevant ads are not as bad but they’re still intrusive.

I’m a big fan of metadata and not a fan of advertising so I’m torn! All uses of metadata strengthen the metadata infrastructure (make sure more metadata is available) but advertising remains intrusive. At least targeted advertising should be more relevant and therefore not quite as bad. Should!

Categories
Item of Interest

People won’t pay for news?

People won’t pay for news??? ORLY? Those that won’t pay never paid anyway. http://bit.ly/bUFuUk

Survey released earlier today “proves” that people won’t pay for news online. Alternate view says they already are or never paid for news offline. Papers that have paywalls are generally doing better financially than those that aren’t but that could be influenced by other factors.

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Item of Interest

Secret new product demo at MoPic NY March 17

Secret new product demo at MoPic Wednesday night http://bit.ly/dBdO0e, Robust FCP media at last??

If you’re can’t make MoPic this Wednesday, the same advanced demo will happen at BOSFCPUG on the 24th and Digital CONNtent Creators on the 25th. Planning to release it at NAB. A significant improvement on FCP media management metadata tracking.

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Business & Marketing New Media

I’m presenting my first East Coast Seminars

From the press release that went out today.

In conjunction with the New York based MoPic group and Boston’s Final Cut Pro User Group, Intelligent Assistance’s Philip Hodgetts will bring his business development and new media seminars to the North East for the first time.

These seminars have been among the most popular at the recent Digital Video Expo and have attracted crowds of interested people in San Diego and Los Angeles. Now New York and Boston get a chance to experience world class presentations.

“Now more than ever business owners need to know how to grow their production or postproduction business,” says presenter Philip Hodgetts. “This seminar is based on my book from last year The New Now. It summarizes the most practical advice into a interactive seminar.”

In an age where the democratization of production tools is almost complete people have turned their focus on equivalent democratized ways of growing audiences and making money from their work. In the How to grow and monetize and audience for your independent production independent producers will learn how to identify their core audience, grow the audience through social media and modern PR before understanding the many ways that producers earn a return from their independent production.

“The [MediaPro Camp] Day was capped off by a keynote address from Media Guru Phillip Hodgetts. He is a true Renaissance Man of the media. If you have ever been to one of his seminars, read one of his books, or his blog or heard him speak, you know what I mean.”

John Coleman, at MediaProCamp San Diego

In conjunction with the The Moving Pictures Collective of NYC both seminars are being offered in New York sponsored by AJA Video Systems and Video Corporation of America. The seminars will be held at VCA’s facility on 7th Ave, one block from Penn Station on Saturday March 20th. Details and signup can be found at http://mopictivehodgetts.eventbrite.com/.

In Boston Hodgetts has joined with the Boston Final Cut Pro User Group to present the How to grow and monetize and audience for your independent production on Tuesday evening March 23rd at The New England Institute of Art. Details can be found at http://newnowboston.eventbrite.com/.

About Philip Hodgetts (as if you didn’t already know)

Philip Hodgetts is an expert and consultant in digital production and post-production workflows, encoding, web applications, digital delivery and technology innovation. He is the President and CEO of Open Television Network, a company dedicated to democratizing distribution through monetized RSS feeds.

He remains President of Intelligent Assistance, Inc – a systems and technology developer – and one of the “Big Brains” of “Big Brains for Rent” consultancy. He is an experienced trainer and has written extensively online across a range of topics.

He is the co-creator of “Assisted Editing” and an expert on metadata-based postproduciton workflows.

Philip is the author of “The HD Survival Handbook”; “Awesome Titles with FCS” and “The New Now: How to grow your production or postproduction business in a changed and changing world” among other publications.

He has presented at many conferences and seminars including Keynote addresses for the New York DV Show; Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ NEXT TV symposium in 2006; and the 2007 Podcast Summit at NAB as well as presented at Streaming Media East and West; NAB Post|Production, Seybold among others.

 

 

 

Categories
Item of Interest

Adobe working on adding HTML5/CSS to Dreamweaver

Adobe working on adding HTML5/CSS support for Dreamweaver? http://bit.ly/9KfpR4

Right now Flash has a huge advantage over HTML5/CSS/Javascript as there is no integrated development environment (IDE) or authoring tool. If Adobe adds this functionality to Dreamweaver then Adobe gets to continue to play even if Flash use diminishes in favor of open web standards. (I’m a big fan of open web standards over proprietary technologies like Flash.)

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