Saturday, December 6, 2008

Weekly Review: Links from 12/1/08 - 12/5/08

Here's another installment of the weekly review. There were just so many links from this past week that caught my eye. Changes in the social media world, online video news and publishing tips, industry updates, gadgets, new devices, mobile, advertising and viewing metrics, funding and layoffs, and of course news on YouTube, Google, Facebook.

I have to say congratulations to For Your Imagination for scoring BabyBjorn as the exclusive sponsor of the current lineup of DadLabs weekly web series - The Lab, Quality Time, Daditude and Gear Daddy. (See related blog post - BabyBjorn Sponsors DadLabs for Six Months - Digital Media Studio Blog)

Also, kudos to Nico McLane for launching a recession friendly webcast facility in New York City’s Financial District.

Have a quick scan and enjoy the exclusive Funny or Die video "Prop 8 - The Musical" starring Jack Black, John C. Reilly, and many more...


December 1, 2008



Flip Video CamerasFlip Video Sponsoring Cameras For Non-Profits | Ypulse
The folks at Flip Video sent me a note last week right before Thanksgiving asking if I could help them get the word out about their pro-social initiative. I don't think I've been this excited about posting something in a long time — the company will offer non-profit partners two camcorders for the price of one in order to document the work they’re doing. From their email to me:

"We are focused on getting the video technology of the Flip Video camcorder into as many nonprofit hands as possible. We are the charitable outreach of Pure Digital Technologies in San Francisco and our CEO committed to getting one million Flip camcorders out to charities and nonprofits by 2012."



Ning Blog
The End of the Red Light District

December 2, 2008

Dad Labs




TubeMogul - Analytics for Online Video

Audience Dropoff of a Typical Web Video

  • Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the Nokia N97
    Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen - a true mobile computer


n97_1 Nokia N97 Unveiled, The First High-End N-Series Touch Phone


samsung-instinct-video-details



  • Roku Netflix Player suffers mystery glitch | Digital Media - CNET News
    The Netflix Player by Roku, which enables owners to watch streaming Web video on their TV sets, has received plenty of applause from pundits and
    owners since debuting last May. But the box now faces its first major challenge.

    Customers from around the country have been "experiencing inexplicable loss of video-streaming quality," for at least three weeks according to Roku's engineers, who have posted comments at the company's Web forums. Device owners have posted complaints to the same forums about receiving less than half of the video quality they've had in the past. One user told CNET that the video stream is now "unwatchable."

  • eMarketer Lowers Internet Ad Spending Projections - TVWeek - News
    Citing the battered advertising budgets of automakers and retailers, research firm eMarketer revised its Internet ad spending projections to $23.6 billion this year, down slightly from its $24.9 billion estimate issued in August.

    Despite the small decline, online ad spending will still grow 11% from last year, eMarketer said. Categories suffering include display advertising, which has been hit hard by slashed budgets from automakers and retailers. Paid search is still growing more than the overall Internet ad market, at 21% growth this year and 15% next year, eMarketer said.
sethgodin
Seth Godin - Don't go to business school:Instead of getting an MBA, consider spending six months in my office

December 3, 2008



Screen shot of Twitter


Los Angeles Times




December 4, 2008



Mogulus Blog » Blog Archive » Mogulus Pro Launches: HD Quality, White Label, Privacy, Analytics & More Available Today

Tilzy.TV
  • A few weeks ago, Daisy Whitney asked Josh and me to make some predictions for web video in 2009. Our short list of thoughts, predictions and predilections have made their way fromNew Media Minute toABC News toMediaPost, and are now here in their unadulterated form on Tilzy.TV! Help us add to the list.

    1. 2009 will be all about brands, not just shows.

    2. There’s still very little money to be made in online video, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create. Don’t believe us? Ask Michael Eisner.

    3. In 2009, concept before craft.
    4. There will be celebs.
    5. Apocalyptic/Economy web shows.
    6. Content is king, contacts are queen.
    7. Sketch comedy is so 2005.
    8. Interactivity goes beyond a Facebook profile.










Funny or Die - Funny Videos



http://www.webvideoanswers.com/files/YouTube-HD-mock-graphic.png
YouTube Changes
  • There are many changes going on at YouTube and many of them aren't likely to improve user experience.
YouTube Search
  • YouTube Refocuses on Premium, and Once Again Misses the Point « NewTeeVee
    YouTube’s director of content partnerships, Jordan Hoffner, has been hard at work signing on premium content providers like CBS, HBO, Showtime, C-SPAN and MGM. According to reports of a speech he made this week, the company’s No. 1 priority in 2009 is to get that content in front of viewers.... YouTube’s highest priority for 2008, according to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was figuring out “the perfect solution of how to make money.”

    Despite a flurry of recent ad product launches, we doubt the site can legitimately check that task off its list. But Schmidt may have been putting the cart ahead of the horse; before you can figure out how to make money, you need to figure out what you’re selling.

    And Hoffner’s comment reveals another lapse in self-awareness: YouTube’s strength is not premium, nor should it be. Rather, YouTube has a tremendous (and surely monetizable) opportunity to show that premium and user-generated can coexist. All they need to do is figure out how.

rtmfp-small

Adobe Makes P2P Flash Video Available to Developers « NewTeeVee

  • Adobe officially unveiled the P2P video streaming capabilities of Flash 10 to developers this week. The technology itself is still in its infancy, but the mere fact that Adobe decided to embrace P2P for Flash 10 made a lot of headlines earlier this year. Many people, including Om over at GigaOM, wondered whether Adobe was taking aim at the CDN market with this technology and whether we will soon all watch our YouTube videos in a P2P fashion.

Flickr image

Flickr Revamps Mobile Site, Adds Video Streaming Support

  • A faltering global economy is expected to take its toll on trade shows next year and January's Macworld will be no exception, with more big names planning to downsize their presence or pulling out altogether, AppleInsider has learned.



Javafx

Sun Launches JavaFX To Try And Compete With Flash and Silverlight | The Business Of Online Video

Nico McLane, Inagueral Streaming Media All-Star
Times Extra

Times Extra: The New York Times Opens Web Front Page to Outside Content - ReadWriteWeb


Facebook Connect officially open | Webware - CNET



Official Google Blog: Google Friend Connect: now available




boxee blog » boxee
  • when we planned the Dec 4th release we had minor changes in mind, mainly bug-fixes…. but we were undisciplined and immature.. and it turned from a minor release into a big one..we could not ignore the number of people asking for Netflix on boxee.. so we called, emailed, and in general harassed the Netflix team.. in the meantime, we went to the keyboards coding ferociously to make it work on boxee.

NFL in 3D
Broadcasting adds an extra dimension - Los Angeles Times
Chargers-Raiders game goes off with only minor glitches in 3-D
December 5, 2008

Bhaskar Roy
@MartinSFP Thx. We launched alpha on 12/17/07. There's a gr8 story behind this involving @scobleizer. Will do a post on this on 12/17/08 :) - FriendFeed
  • Qik about to turn one year old
Facebook Introduces Embeddable Videos Only Your Friends Can See



youtubelogo.jpg
Streaming Media Global
Streamingmedia.com: Back to Basics: H.264 Transcoding for Flash
  • At Adobe MAX in Milan earlier this week, Flash developer Fabio Sonnati presented a session packed with suggestions for transcoding H.264 video for Flash delivery.