metablog

I attended the inauguration with a great group of folks (about 2 million of them). We couchsurfed in DC with Dan, who hosted about 15 other couchsurfers from around the world. There were many other people in DC who hosted 10+ people.

Read this great CNN article on Couchsurfing + the Inauguration.

I’ve included a rundown of my own personal experience, along with a rundown of interesting takes on the inauguration from the mainstream media.

Personal Videos + Photos (shot by Rob Moon)

Photos of the Inauguration on Flickr

Video of the Inauguration on YouTube

I love this video – we saw this amazing woman from Memphis after the Inauguration speech. She sang to us.

My Photos on Facebook (uploaded from my iPhone)

I also shot video on my iPhone + uploaded it to the web using Qik. For more videos of the inauguration, visit the Qik Inauguration Page.

For a fascinating look at Obama’s speech, simply type in a keyword in the video player below, courtest of Delve Networks

Below is a tag cloud of keywords Obama said in his Inauguration Speech, courtesy of Read/Write Web.

Mainstream Coverage

And now a rundown of great inauguration mainstream media + resources

The Inauguration Speech on NYTimes.com

Washington Post’s Moving Video of the Inauguration and Beyond

Online Video of Inauguration Sets Records (NYTimes.com)

400 Newspapers across the world featuring the inauguration (going.com)

China Censors Part of Obama Speech (NYTimes.com)

CNN’s AMAZING Photo-Multimedia Collage of “The Moment” – a must view

Incredible Hi-Res Photos from The Boston Globe

And finally, a roundup of resources I found on AlumniBlender:

Data Visualization of the Inauguration speech

An analysis of CNN Live’s integration with Facebook

Lately, I’ve been looking at solutions for broadcasting live events on the web. This past Summer, I helped the Martha Graham Dance Company produce a live web broadcast of their open rehearsals (see ClytemnestraProject.com).

The service provider we ended up choosing was UStream.tv.

Not only did they offer us a live broadcast, but we also featured a chat moderator, so online audience members could ask questions, ask us to zoom in and out, or simply give us feedback on the show as it was happening.

In addition to UStream.tv, there are many other live broadcasting options available, including creating your own using Quicktime Broadcaster

When considering what service to use for live web broadcasts, consider these issues:

1. Archiving – What kinds of archiving options are there? Can you choose to make it public or private? To only friends + family? Can the broadcaster/producer control these options? Can you download the archive? In what format? Can you control the time frame it’s public? i.e. only 30 days? Can you sell the archive as a download? Can you set the price point?

2. Embedding – Can you embed the live feed on another site? For example, UStream.tv allows you to embed their video player anywhere on the web, so you don’t have to go UStream.tv to watch the live feed. You can embed the player on your own site, or have other blogs feature your stream, so there’s more distribution.

3. Control – Can you monitor the audio + video quality while the stream is occuring.

4. Support – When there are issues, who do you call or email? Is there some kind of chat support service? Afterall, if it’s live broadcast, there should be live support .

There a quite a few other live web video solutions:

I also recently discovered Live Wedding Broadcast which allows you to broadcast your wedding for those who just couldn’t make it to the wedding.

In addition to the above services I mentioned above, I’d like to know – what live streaming services are you using. What have you seen that just rocks?

filed in New York Ciity

In a recent internet scandal, a Limewire employee was caught using BitTorrent to download movies. Limewire declined comment and did not immediately return phone calls.

According to Limewire.com, “Limewire is a fast, easy-to-use file sharing program that contains no spyware, adware or other bundled software.” Users can search, preview, and download music, videos, and porn from the internet.

Apparently, using a BitTorrent is illegal, and can get you into trouble. NBC found out about this allegedly illegal activity and sent the offender a notice. He claims it was a dishonest mistake. “I…I had no idea. I just really, really wanted to watch Hot Fuzz. For free. Like I do on TV. But on the internet. And Limewire just didn’t have it on the network. I was willing to do anything for Hot Fuzz.” Including betraying his company.

The yet to be named offender has been courted to work for BitTorrent, but has no immediate plans of resigning from Limewire. “Limewire is just so cool. And it’s kind of legal too. But not really. But kind of. Working for BitTorrent is just going to get me into more trouble. But not too much trouble.”

Asked if he would curtail his internet activity, the employee responded, “I’ll definitely be spending less time on the internet, downloading things. Not.”

NBC Universal and TiVo are two companies making television history. The two companies recently struck a deal that would create CLICKABLE ADVERTISEMENTS. From the NYTimes

“With proliferating media options and changing consumer behavior, our clients are asking for new ideas, better metrics, and more accountability,” Mike Pilot, president, NBC Universal Sales and Marketing, said in a statement.

The agreement with TiVo covers NBC Universal’s 14 television networks — including NBC, Telemundo and Bravo — as well as its 10 NBC-owned TV stations. NBC Universal is a unit of General Electric Co.

Television can become a new platform for advertising. Imagine a TV Guide channel that is clickable and searchable. It already exists on our computers under the cloak of YouTube. However, when our televisions become truly interactive, television advertising can adopt Google’s popular pay-per-click model on our laptops and desktops. TiVo and NBC recently partnered to make this a reality: “…[advertisers] can insert TiVo ‘tags’ into television commercials that let viewers click on an icon when watching an ad to obtain more information about a product.”

As of this writing, there are close to 10 million TiVo users. What will occur when this becomes the status-quo?

Small business owners who were once priced out of advertising on television or never considered television a viable advertising medium will be able to afford to advertise on this new interactive medium.

The impact will produce tremors across the board. Broadcast networks can take note. Instead of pandering to the least common denominator and generating “the next big hit,” television will be able to focus on producing original quality content. Chris Anderson observes,

Hit-driven economics is a creation of an age without enough room to carry everything for everybody. Not enough channels to broadcast all the TV programs, not enough radio waves to play all the music created, and not enough hours in the day to squeeze everything out through either of those sets of slots…This is the world of scarcity. Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance. And the differences are profound.

With all these small players in the field, THE IMPACT FOR NICHE CONTENT will be tremendous. Just as blogs and websites generate revenue through Google’s affiliate networks, these independent content creators and providers will reap the benefits of this new economy. With a growing demand for advertising space, niche channels can easily develop. An entire channel devoted to modern dance would not be out of the question. With an increase in original content, we will see an overall growth in cultural capital.

For additional coverage:
Adweek

This is not news. But this article breaks it down real well.

Small Dance Companies in NYC: The Economic Reality
by Natalie Bostick

http://www.ballet-dance.com/200708/articles/NYCDance2007.html


In this article, Natalie pulled out some facts from a recent survery by Dance/NYC, Her research shows that, “Small modern/contemporary companies collectively reach as large an audience as do the 3% of New York companies with budgets over $1 million. That’s an impressive 50% market share.”

While these numerous companies have a huge collective market share, they do not have a huge share of the resources. Even when they are working, dancers usually do not expect to make a living off of dancing alone. Many work other jobs to make ends meet. Choreographers face similar financial problems.

The difficult questions are:

“How do you support your work? In other words, how can you create work if you or your dancers are expected to lose money on a show?”

“How do you present your work with limited financial resources?”

There are no simple answers here. However, there is a great opportunity in showing excerpts of work online. Or simply create work for an online venue. Currently, there are a few online “venues” (think YouTube) but they do not focus on the arts.

What if there was a place to see the performing arts online? Why are the performing arts so behind the curve technologically? Is it a money issue? A skill issue? Do companies and artists know how to use webtools to show or document their work online?

It’s time artists begin creating work for an online audience. With enough artists doing this on a consistent basis, there would be enough content to create regular programming for either an internet audience, or an IP Tv audience.

My friend, Erin, pointed me to this idea that the FoodNetwork is just like Soft Core porn. I never really thought of Food as Porn, but this interview makes the case.

The interviewer Barbara Gladston says:

What accounts for The Food Network’s success is not necessarily the quality of the food or the service. What keeps us tuning in to yet another choreographed confection by yet another culinary star is the vision of great-looking meals. After all, we’re not actually tasting anything….Frederick Kaufman argues in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine, “Like Porn.”

As the article points out, a key demographic for the Food Network is 18-35 year old males – the ones who “like to watch.” It’s tough to actually execute, but watching is so satisfying. This also recalls the stereotype that men are turned on visually (Playboy), where women are turned on aurally (dirty talk).

For the full interview (including an audio stream), visit the link below:
http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_100705_porn.html

or, just listen here:
[audio:http://www.wnyc.org/stream/ram.py?file=otm/otm100705g.mp3]

As the broadcast television continues to move onto the internet, I wonder how the look and feel of cooking shows will continue to develop. Even more interesting – the delivery of these shows and segments will continue to stimulate the senses while we’re on the go. It will continue to become even more sensational and pervasive (or is it perversive in this case?)

I found this article on [itvt], which featured an interview with Jumpcut’s Founder, Mike Folgner

http://blog.itvt.com/my_weblog/2007/03/itvt_itv_interv.html

Mike actually worked at OpenTV, which I have never heard of until reading the article.

Interesting fact:

“In 2004, only a small percentage–around 15%–of the regular digital cameras shipped had video-capture capability. In 2005, that rose to something like 50%. And now it’s somewhere over 80%. ”

In the article, he discusses why he thinks Jumpcut will thrive. He also shares his ideas of how video sharing + editing will work in the near future. Pretty good read, though it is a bit much of a plug for jumpcut. Can you really blame him, though? He’s the CEO.

On a total side note, MTV is doing a User-Generated Content (UGC) contest. I saw this on the yahoo site, but here’s the post on [itvt]:

http://blog.itvt.com/my_weblog/2007/04/mtv_movie_award.html