by Scott on February 17, 2008
Web 2.0 Expo, April 22-25 2008, San Francisco.
PodCamp NYC, April 25-26, 2008.
Podcamp NYC is an “unconference” focused on educating participants on how to use, implement and share any/all new media tools including, podcasts, videocasts, blogs, Second Life, Facebook, and YouTube. The conference is FREE to attend and you’re a “participant” versus an “attendee” at our event. You also make our conference happen since you register to speak. You can talk about anything you want as long as it focuses on new media.
by Scott on February 14, 2008
Content Convergence & Integration Conference
Vancouver, British Columbia
March 12-14, 2008
Content Convergence and Integration 2008 is for content professionals who need to find more strategic ways to manage their content in a world where content now gets created and syndicated, integrated, repurposed, and redistributed. Content professionals, from Web to marketing to technical communication professionals, from content management to knowledge management to information management consultants, are searching for new techniques to stay ahead of the curve.
Lots of interesting stuff.
by Scott on February 13, 2008
Adobe is soliciting material for it’s “Adobe Dynamic Media Customer Reels,” to be showcased at NAB, among other places.
This is a chance to showcase the work you produce using Adobe® After Effects®, Adobe Flash®, Adobe Premiere® Pro, Adobe Photoshop® Extended, and other Adobe products. We want to see your work and show it to others in the industry so they can see how creative our users are — and discover the possibilities of Adobe’s dynamic media products.
Portions of the reels may also be used in other Adobe marketing videos, as well as on Adobe.com.
More info at Adobe. Deadline March 7, 2008.
by Scott on February 13, 2008
Apple finally released the anticipated “AppleTV Take 2″ update yesterday.
The ATV Guided Tour.
Engadget has pics.
Notes+Observations after a quick update and run-through:
_ATV now includes 1080p support.
_Compatible/works with AirTunes.
_You can now stream radio stations from iTunes. Very interesting. (New idea—how about Xm/Sirius integration?)
_Purchases on the ATV auto-sync back to the paired iTunes, pretty much how the mobile purchases from the iPhone/iTouch iTunes store also sync back to iTunes.
_Can’t actually subscribe to podcasts from the ATV, but can mark as “favorites”. Subscriptions from and thus syncing the OPML between the ATV/iTunes would be a nice “power-user” feature.
_The search podcasts by provider option is really nice.
I found the rental interface kind of interesting—the main/”home” screen is simply a wall of video “covers”—essentially the same experience one would have browsing a physical video store:
The paned main interface feels like a bit of a kludge. Not sure why.
iPodlounge has a good roundup, from which a few things stand out:
Not All HD Videos Offer The Same AV Encoding: HD video rentals do not uniformly guarantee the same AV experience. Some of the videos, such as Transformers, feature Dolby Digital audio encoding, while others such as “Two Weeks Notice” do not.
Hidden iTunes Features, Unlocked: Updating to Apple TV 2.0 unlocks features included but previously hidden in iTunes 7.6, including a choice between Automatic Sync and Custom Sync, AirTunes streaming to the Apple TV, and the ability to transfer rented movies from iTunes to the Apple TV for viewing. Automatic Sync lets iTunes choose which audio and video to sync to your Apple TV, giving priority to newer items, while Custom Sync gives you the choice of audio and video to sync, giving priority as space allows to movies, TV shows, music, then podcasts. AirTunes treats Apple TV like an AirPort Express, enabling it to wirelessly receive audio sent directly from an iTunes-equipped computer, and perform it on a connected audio system.
Related: Visual Hub dropped an update this morning adding support for 5.1 surround encoding for ATV.
by Scott on February 11, 2008
Best news I’ve heard in a while.
Gearlive:
Well, we’ve just got word from a reliable source that Flash support is on its way to the iPhone, and it should be coming very, very soon. Speculating a bit further on our own, we are guessing that it would be pretty convenient for Flash support to be introduced alongside the iPhone SDK…
by Scott on February 11, 2008
An excellent precedent, and an interesting business move by CBS, even if you have no interest in the NCAA Tournament. Via Silicon Alley Insider.
The NCAA tournament has been one of CBS’s most successful forays on the web, drawing nearly 1.4 million users last year. And putting the games online is one of those moves that’s incredibly sensible, yet hard for big media companies to pull off: Most online viewing goes on at work, so it’s hard to argue that the Web will cannibalize TV audiences. And anyone who could watch the games on TV instead of a PC is obviously going to do so.
by Scott on February 11, 2008
BBC Radio has an interesting mashup prototype that associates data from LastFM, LyricsFly, and MusicBrainz, as well as media from YouTube and Flickr, with currently playing song metadata.
The idea is to take the basic now-playing data from our music radio networks, throw it at the web, and see what we can get back. We could then use this, and other BBC API’s to create a pretty rich visualisation console pretty much automatically. We had a quick brainstorm and decided that we’d use the excellent Last.fm, the incredible MusicBrainz, and the usual suspects Flickr, YouTube, and LyricsFly.
by Scott on February 11, 2008
A developer has released a beta plugin for Windows Media Center that allows you to edit your queue, browse titles, and watch Netflix streams. More details at the developer’s site.
It’s really a shame that Apple hasn’t opened the AppleTV (officially) to such development. WTF?
by Scott on February 10, 2008
by Scott on February 10, 2008
WMG has decided to test the DMCA Safe-Harbor provisions once again by suing Seeqpod.
The safe harbor principle is the same one that prevents major search engines from being sued every time they link to illegal information or content (though it hasn’t prevented porn purveyor Perfect 10 from going after both Google and Microsoft over the use of its thumbnails). Under the DMCA, service providers who qualify for safe harbor must be notified through a “notice and takedown” system rather than being sued in court.
Actual law. More at the EFF. Seeqpod responds. SAI has the business angle.
It’s certainly possible that the two sides will end up with a deal. The basic template for these is that the startup gives the labels cash and/or equity, plus a rev share or per-stream payment. But the preemptive nature of the lawsuit gives us a hint that Warner is up to something else here.
by Scott on February 10, 2008
Interactive: Singularity is “the first large-scale online web conference in the world,” from October 24-26th, 2008.
Flixwagon joins Qik as a live-video-blogging-service-via-cellphone.
Film, video, and music: Made in America. Stacy Peralta documents LA gang culture.
Cynical-C blog digs up some hilarious FCC complaints from Government Attic.
Download some Negativland.
Radiologik is a Mac DJ automation app:
Radiologik is a set of two programs that seeks to address the specific needs of radio broadcasting in an accessible and focused way.
It is being developed for LPFMs, online streaming radio stations, and school radio stations and it should grow to support commercial operations over the next year.
The DJ portion is ready for prime-time now and along with the scheduler (now in public beta testing) you can have a fully-automated station.
TechLegalPolitics: Comcast, after it’s discovered throttling Bittorrent traffic, got sued, so NewTeeVee takes a look at other major ISPs Terms of Service.
Tim Lee digs into the history of the Bell patents, and concludes:
Now, the standard policy argument for patents is that without them, inventors would lack a suitable incentive to invent new technologies. I think this story is at odds with that theory in a couple of important ways. In the first place, it seems exceedingly unlike that, had Bell not invented his telephone in 1876, no other inventors would have been invented in the subsequent 18 years. To the contrary, there was a veritable explosion of interest in telephone technology during this period, at least some of it totally independent of Bell’s work. I don’t think it’s at all crazy to surmise that in a world without a patent system there would have been more telephones in operation in 1894 even if Bell had been deterred from inventing the telephone by the lack of opportunity for a patent monopoly.
RIAA/MPAA investigator Media Sentry may have it’s testimony excluded in a NY case, as they are not licensed as a private investigator in NY.
