Wow, it was nice to get a mention in USA Today. For the record, I have been shooting video with my trusty MPEG-4 camera since March of this year…mostly sports, local events and other oddities that piqué my curiosity. I have a few that I am very proud of (dock dogs, surreycam, Greg Luzinski, the ones I have done with Mike…) and the whole thing has become a fun diversion and a great way for me to further my research (for my day job).
I am exploring doing more with this medium; I am toying with the idea of actually buying a new Sony ® Hi Def camera and producing a seven-minute show..or maybe a few and allowing them to be commercially sponsored. I have produced and hosted TV programs on cable TV (in another lifetime) and am excited about what’s ahead for new TV distribution channels.
Today, Allen and Mike return from the holdiday weekend after extended travels to places like Phoenix Muni and the western suburbs of Chicago (Mike, that is). What do we have to talk about? TV over the Web which is different than IPTV. Yes, yes it is different.
We return to the thrilling days of yesterday--the days when advertisers had clout in making programming decisions. If you think what’s happening in Japan will not happen here, you don’t understand the power in the hands of those who pay for your free programming. The TV over the Web business places even more power in the hands of advertisers who will have a clear path of the consumer.
In 2006 and beyond, look for advertisers to create their own content and deliver it to consumers. Look for even more replicas of the model, articulated below in this release on Yahoo! News.
Dentsu Inc., Japan's largest advertising company, and five television networks said on Monday they have started talks on setting up an Internet television joint venture.
Dentsu and Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., Fuji Television Network Inc., Nippon Television Network Corp., TV Asahi Corp. and TV Tokyo Corp. said they aimed to provide content online, seeking to attract the growing number of high-speed fibre-optic Internet users in Japan.
The proposed alliance comes as Japanese broadcasters face pressure to change with the advance of technology and Internet companies try to take a slice of the lucrative business.
TBS is currently considering a merger offer from Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc., while Fuji earlier this year fought a takeover battle with Internet firm Livedoor Co..
Online advertising is also taking revenue away from TV. Dentsu is focusing on the Web advertising market, forecasting that its Internet-related business would post annual sales growth of about 30 percent over the next few years.
The power of rich media search is growing. I am trying to put these pieces together: Barry Diller is nowon Brightcove’s board coupled with IAC/Ask Jeeves’ newly announced deal with Go Fish, a rich media search platform. Diller is CEO of IAC. Factor in the news that AOL—a new partner of Brightcove—owns Singingfish, a powerful rich media search engine that competes with Go Fish.
Friends, partners, competitors. Where have we seen this before?
The folks at Tivo are wise for stepping up here, but I’d move quickly. A few thoughts, however. For one, Guba, with a graphical interface to Usenet, already has the mechanism to download videos directly to the iPod. The conversion to the MPEG-4 format is done in the background. In addition, Veoh now has the ability for folks to put videos on their iPod. What’s cool about Veoh is that you can set an RSS feed (manually) in your iTunes to grab the videos as they come into your Veoh player. Very smooth.
In the interim, while Tivo works on its plan, others in addition to Veoh—probably Blinkx, for one—will come up with the method to put its video feeds on the iPod. Stay tuned.
BTW, all of the sudden MPEG-4 is hot. Maybe, just maybe, this will force all of the companies that produce video editing software to support MEPG-4.
Our baseball season is officially over. Today, we trekked down to Phoenix Muni to watch the Olympic Qualifying Tournament for The Americas (a sub regional) as two teams that have no chance of making the Olympics—Panama and Guatemala-- squared off in front of 48 loyal fans (on an absolutely gorgeous day).
It was a 12-1 blow out, and it was a miracle that Guatemala scored. They were outmanned but not short on heart. A few of the Panama players are in the minor leagues—Jony Lasso, Avelino Asprilla and Donald Julio. The others are a collection of young talent and older players, still playing their hearts out for their countries.
Of note: they played both countries’ national anthems (no words) and the game was being broadcast back to Panama (as you see in the video). You can just visual millions of Panamanians sitting and hearing the accounts of their heroes thousands of miles away. As we learned after the game, the U.S. swept the five-game tournament and finished on top of the bracket with Canada and Nicaragua finishing in a tie for second at 3-2. The top four teams will advance to the Americas Qualifying Tournament to be held in Cuba in August 2006.
And so it goes. Our season comes to an end until next February in pre-spring training. It’s been a great nine months. We can hardly wait til 2006.
Thanks to Red Herring, I read about a site called Judy’s Book, a “yellow pages” that is based on user recommendations. It’s very well organized, and part of the Web 2.0 (I hate that name) phenomenon where individuals add their voice to the Web to make it more personal.
Simply put, the winners will be those who get the most traction. My favorite site in this realm, Tripadvisor, has saved me from many bad travel experiences. I like Tripadvisor’s approach which essentially has people send in reviews. That’s it. No fancy bookmarking, no log-ins, not downloads, etc.. There is beauty in simplicity
Okay, I admit, perhaps watching a dog herding goats into a pen is about as exciting as watching paint dry, but it's one of the most popular events at the recent dog agility competition held last week at Westworld.
Ouch. The downward spiral continues. What's going to happen short term is interesting; seems to me the print product will get smaller and more emphasis will be placed on the Web-based channel. Sadly, it's difficult to imagine the Web ever generating enough revenue to support a typical infrastructure-heavy print business. It's not a pretty picture.
Good news: all of those out of work journalists likely will create great blogs (not to mention Podcasts) and make more money than they ever did as newspaper employees.
Five newspapers owned by Tribune Co., including the company's two flagship papers in Chicago and Los Angeles, said Wednesday they will cut jobs amid declining circulation and revenue.
Google officially announced Google Base today (see below). My take? Well, it’s party eBay, part Craigslist and part this crazy Web 2.0 notion where every tags his/her own content and everyone else adds their tags along the way. At this point, the community tagging is missing here, but I am sure it’s to come.
Also, it appears to be part of Google’s “open” strategy in that the company applies as few limiting standards are possible to cut down on the typical friction required to get anything done on the Web. It’s like the company’s IM strategy in which it used an open (XMPP) standard to encourage as many developers and third parties to become part of the federation. Google can afford this approach because of its massive ad revenue flow. It will get even better for Google once it opens up the Google Wallet as a payment scheme. That has to be coming soon as well.
Google Base is an extension of Google’s existing content collection efforts such as our traditional web crawl system, as well as Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video – all which enable content owners to easily make their information searchable via Google. The goal of Google Base is to improve the overall quality and breadth of Google Search results by collecting even more information about a wider diversity of content.
Similar to a database, Google Base enables content owners to describe and assign attributes to it the information they upload and uses this meta-data to better target search results to what users are looking for. For example, if a chef chooses to upload their very best recipe for tamales he/she can further describe that recipe with a photo or by assigning attributes such as “medium-spicy” or “spicy.” When a user searches for the word [tamale recipes] from the Google Base homepage they will be presented with a list of recipe results accompanied by a list attributes at the top of page which enable them to further refine their search to “medium-spicy” or “hot” tamale recipes.
Google Base also creates a new opportunity for content producers to submit any kind of information even if it’s not a web page or online. This could range from an old family photograph to a large database of museum artifacts both of which may not have been previously accessible online. As part of the early-stage beta, Google has been working with a variety of commercial and non-commercial information providers. Some of which include:
ArtNet an online art information source and marketplace is uploading information on artworks, artists, galleries and auction records.
CareerBuilder an online job listings site is uploading its listings with various attributes including geographic location, field of profession and other information.\
Collegeboard.org not-for-profit membership organization is uploading free information for students and parents about college admissions, financial aid, college selection, and other college planning resources.
StepUp a local shopping services company uploading product lists from a variety of local retailers so that people searching can learn where to by products from stores near them.
World Resources Institute an environmental think tank is uploading links to data on sustainability issues such as climate change, human health, and resource consumption.
AOL released its third annual “Instant Messaging Trends” report, and to no one’s surprise (well, at least for those who have a teenager at home), Instant Messaging usage is up 19 percent over last year. Some 38 percent of users say they send as many or more IMs than emails, and the younger users are, the more likely they are to favor IM. About 66 percent of teens and young adults (ages 13-21) say they send more IMs than emails, up from 49 percent last year.
One thing should be clear to media companies: IM will be an increasingly popular platform for the delivery of rich media. With its inherent capability to virally share content, an increasing number of TV networks and film studies will join record labels in taking advantage of consumer-driven networks as a distribution path. According to the trend report, 26 percent of IM users say that live streaming television is the one feature they wish was available on their IM service. Music on demand came in second with 25 percent and video on demand was third with 21 percent.
Along the same thread, Fox is beginning to take full advantage of its recent Myspace.com acquisition. Fox is “Webcasting” an unseen episode of its program “Kitchen Confidential” to the more than 36 million Mysapce.com users through mid-November. The network is tossing in a contest where answering trivia questions about the show can net a $100 Amex gift check. It will be interesting to see what impact the event has on the show’s all important November sweeps ratings.
Here's another clip from the dog agility show from last week at Westworld in Scottsdale. A Japanese competitor in the Ashley Whippet Flying Disc competition puts her dog through the paces. My wife and I actually once met the Ashley Whippet; that's a story for another day.
A few new things about Revver--1) The site now takes MPEG4 uploads; in fact, three or four clips featured here are on Revver (awaiting legions of loyal fans) 2) A lot has been made about AOL's new ad-supported TV over the Web model. AOL is not alone; Revver also is working on an ad-supported model.
The for sale sign is headed for Knight Ridder's newspaper properties. Who is likely to buy the papers? Here's a wild guess...Yahoo! or Google. Both companies can use their powerful online business to fuel a newspaper company, but in a greatly reduced form. Leveraging the print channel for ads as an add-on to the Web (there's a novel concept) could work, but not with all the reporters, editors, presses, unuions, trucks, etc.. that would come with the deal.
This is a huge deal. Not only is AOL jumping into the TV over the Web busienss (with Kontiki providing the service backbone), AOL is offering an ad-delivery component that makes this real. Look for others to jump on the bandwagon!
The AOL.com portal is the first to introduce a trial for a new “AOL Hi-Q” high quality video format. The AOL Hi-Q format builds on the AOL.com Web portal’s industry-leading video experience (http://www.aol.com/video) and can deliverDVD quality videos, in addition to standard quality streaming video, free to broadband users. Consumers can view AOL Hi-Q video on demand as well as select to have new Hi-Q videos in a particular category of interest, such as online movie trailers, music videos, video game trailers and more entertainment content, pushed to them when they are available
On a sunny Saturday, we made it to the Arizona Fall League championship for the second consecutive year. Oddly, it was the same two teams as last year—Scorpions and Desert Dogs, although the players and MLB teams who made up the squads, were different. The results were the same as the Desert Dogs were the winners, this time 9-3.
Matt Kemp of the Dodgers was the star of the game with two home runs and Jamie Shields of the D-rays pitched seven strong innings for the win. Casey Daigle—with celeb wife Jenny Finch cheering him on—came on to pitch the ninth inning. It was a sloppy game with five errors between the two teams, a few of the errors leading to big rallies for the Dogs.
The game was as much about who was there as who played. In this clip, you will find Davey Johnson, former Mets manager, Braves second baseman as well as manager of Team USA Baseball, the Olympic team; the Big Bopper, Bob Watson, (former Astros star now MLB and Team USA exec) and Angels owner Arte Moreno. We saw but did not capture on video former Cardinals/A’s/Cleveland outfielder Georeg Henrdick, former White Sox exec Rollie Hemond and the father & son Garagiolas, Joe and Joe Jr.
Thus ends another season of Arizona Fall league. Who from this crop will vie for Rookie of the Year in ’06? Stay tuned!
After last year’s posting of pictures from the Dock Dogs event at Westworld here in Scottsdale, I was psyched to come back in 2005 at shoot video. So, on Veterans Day, we made our way to the U.S. Dog Agility Association event in which the amazing diving dogs were featured.
It’s a long clip, but it’s worth all six-plus minutes. The star of the show is Gabe, a flying Border Collie who is owned by and trained by Todd Bobula of Dayon, Nevada. I spoke to Todd for a minute after the event and the bond between man and dog was remarkable. The announcer said (and he might have been joking) that Gabe delivers invoices to customers’ doors for Todd as part of his business. I would not be surprised. The other star of the day is actually Gabe’s son, Bolt, who flies just like his dad. Another member of the Bobula clan handles Bolt.
Today was the second day of heats (or waves, as they call them) with the finals on Sunday afternoon.
As promised, here’s a more in-depth look at The New York Marathon. A few postscript notes: It was cool to see the number of people walking around New York in the subsequent days proudly displaying their old medals (indicating they finished the race). Also, on my flight from LGA (New York) to DEN (Denver), there was a woman who was inured in the race. She had to be taken on board in some sort of device that slides down the aisle and literally delivers the injured party to his/her seat. I tried to hear her tell her tale of woe, but the noise of the 757 muffled her comments.
I admit I just don’t get this deal between Comcast and the networks. From my I can tell, the deal allows users to download recently aired programs for 99 cents. Is that right? Who is the target market…folks who cannot properly operate their digital video recorders? As a sample of one, I cannot think of a single program in my rotation (Miami CSI, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Vacation Challenge…) that I watch live. If I had to pay 99 cents per show to watch it the next day versus time-shifting it on my DVR, I’d hook up my old VCR and buy a bunch of blank VHS tapes from Radio Shack ®
The other point of confusion—can you download these shows on your PC? Everything I have read says no, but in watching CNN an hour ago, the network implied/inferred you could download the shows to your PC and maybe even put them on your iPod. I must have misunderstood.
Either the messaging here is bad, or I totally miss the point here. Can someone explain?
Other other 2004 Fall League favorite, Ryan Howard, officially makes it 2 for 2. He was named NL Rookie of the Year. Props to him and Huston Street. Which 2005 AFL star will it be next year?
Shooting video at the New York City Marathon was, so far, the highlight of my eight months of videoblogging. The best thing about it is that the clips need very little explanation. Here are two clips that speak for themselves. I will string a bunch together into a “movie” with titles when I have access to my PowerBook and the wonderful iMovie application.
I called it. Tomorrow, it will be official, Huston Street is the AL Rookie of the Year! Back in February when the A's were in pre-Spring Training, you could sense that Huston Street was up to the challenge of being a big-league closer. He has the stuff plus the mental toughness of a veteran (or perhaps the toughness of the son of a former UT quarterback?).
In this clip, now close to eight months old, Street is signing autographs (saying "Thank your, sir" and "Thank you ma'am") for the handful of A's faithful at Papago Park in Phoenix. Later, I asked him how it felt to be the future "Rookie of the Year." He just smiled. My wife and I saw it coming; we saw him in Fall League last season when he saved the Championship Game.
Here’s a gratuitous night shot of Times Square in New York. Actually, I am constantly testing the light limits of my Sanyo Xacti so I can establish whether I need a camera with more low-light functionality. It would be a tradeoff unless I could get a higher-end camera that was as small and nimble as my Sanyo.
Thanks to Fast Company for saying nice things about this blog in its November 2005 print issue. For the record, Mike and I are working on upgrading the sound quality of our MADCasts. Once that's in place, there's no stopping us...
Not exactly part of my New York music series, but here's a street mime who stands still until a passerby puts some money in her hat. That will set her in motion...temporarily.
I just happened to walk by Bryant Park in Manhattan when I came upon what an ice rink (The Pond). It’s cool outside, but not cold enough for a real ice rink. Nonetheless, skaters were having a good time. I am not sure it this replaces the one a few blocks away at RockefellerPlaza or is just additive.
Here's a short clip of a new billboard of Marvin Gaye in Times Square. As I seek inspiration to get through a busy day, I'll think of Marvin Gaye and his great music (solo and in duets). My favorite Marvin Gaye song-- "Ain't That Peculiar."
As with every visit to New York, I listen to Howard Stern while I get ready for the business day. Howard still has a distracting energy that takes you away from your anxiety and makes you laugh—sometimes with him, sometimes at him. Every other word on his show today is about him leaving for satellite radio. Listeners call in to talk about it and every word of his banter with Artie and Robin has to do with negative issues related to his current show, and how wonderful his new gig will be.
It makes me wonder, will Howard Stern thrive in his new home? Half of his act is complaining about censors, so without someone to press the button every time he crosses the line, what will be the focus of his act? Who will be his new "Tom," a station manager at whom he can vent and target his rage? Does he now expect to let forth an endless stream of epithets? Whatever he does, where he goes, lots of folks will follow him to Sirius. My question is, will I be one? I am tempted and curious, but not enough to pay $10 a month and buy yet another radio (I already have a dozen). I will be one of the countless people who will comb the net looking for sound bites of Stern after he moves to satellite radio.
The clock is ticking and the “I’m so happy to be leaving” act is growing old. Time for the next chapter; I envision mixed results. Stern gets money and Sirius gets a franchise star. Will it be enough? I say no.
It looks like Knight Ridder's largest shareholder wants the company on the auction block. Could be just a scare tactic, but if not, it will send ripples through publishers' executive suites worldwide.
