Once only a fantasy in the minds of technophiles like me (I admit), a pocket-size projector has been the Holy Grail of gadgets for many years. Now it’s arrived. 3M recently sent samples of their MPro110 mini projector to electronic industry writers, and it immediately made an impact.
“I plugged it into a DVD player and watched Blackhawk Down on my desk — literally, on it, as I aimed it at my white desktop. It also worked on the wall, on a piece of 8.5-by-11-inch printer paper and on the back of my colleague, Doug,” one critic said.
Images are discernable up to about 11 inches across, even under bright fluorescent office lights. But they are definitely faded. In a dark room, you can project a big enough image to be the ultimate inexpensive home theater!
The projector will sell for a mere $359 (US).
NOTE #1: it doesn’t have a speaker, so you have to get that separately. NOTE #2: A VGA input lets you plug in a laptop; and the composite video jack will take output from a digital camera, PSP, iPod, iPhone, or most any handheld device. COOL!!!
Online video does open new ways of connecting with your customers and other constituents; and new revenue streams too, if you are in the enviable position of being able to monetize your content. This ONLY happens, though, if you are attentive to the following three key areas:
1. Identifying important streams 2. Establishing performance targets, and 3. Comparing your performance to your competitors
Your technology staff and/or contract professionals have equally important roles to fulfill. They have to:
4. Define the right technical delivery methods 5. Quantify performance targets, and 6. Ensure adequate capacity
All web elements are not equal. As you focus on the most critical streams, your tech staff must examine the means for delivering them: What's available in-house? What do we have to outsource? Have we tested third-party video distribution services?
Today, the minimum standard for delivery is 97% error-free multimedia performance. Your viewers and customers' expectations are also formed by their experiences at other online sites.
As your commitment to multimedia grows, so too will your investment in technologies -- in-house or with third-party vendors -- to help you deliver your content effectively and consistently.
Yes, producing good online video is one thing; delivering it well is another and the third where most of us have had the most difficulty and I'm sure others will concur is making your "channel" known. Enter MillionDollarWebTV, which will deliver your message in your own channel on a widely known, high traffic website.
* Gas for less than two dollars! * 15 percent flat tax! * Good pay for honest executives only! * All terrorists' eyes for one victim's eye! * Judiciously applied political incorrectness! * Much more to come!!!
Delivered to you courtesy of The Summit Group, tsgnet.com and YouTube.
WOW - Now the fine print I received in an email from YouTube:
Your video "Vote for Obama ? McCain ? NO ! Steve Kingsley in 2008!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akwArklQUBo) has been identified by YouTube's Content Identification program (http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=83766) as containing copyrighted content which Suburban Noize Records, Inc. claims is theirs.
Your video "Vote for Obama ? McCain ? NO ! Steve Kingsley in 2008!" is still available because Suburban Noize Records, Inc. does not object to this content appearing on YouTube at this time. As long as Suburban Noize Records, Inc. has a claim on your video, they will receive public statistics about your video, such as number of views. Viewers may also see advertising on your video's page.
Claim Details:
Copyright owner: Suburban Noize Records, Inc. ====================================== Content claimed: Some or all of the audio and visual content ================================================ Policy: Allow this content to remain on YouTube.
* Place advertisements on this video's watch page. Applies to these locations: Everywhere
Suburban Noize Records, Inc. claimed this content as a part of the YouTube Content Identification program. YouTube allows partners to review YouTube videos for content to which they own the rights. Partners may use our automated video / audio matching system to identify their content, or they may manually review videos.
If you believe that this claim was made in error, or that you are otherwise authorized to use the content at issue, you can dispute this claim with Suburban Noize Records, Inc. and view other options in the Video ID Matches (http://youtube.com/my_videos_copyright) section of your YouTube account. Please note that YouTube does not mediate copyright disputes between content owners. Learn more about video identification disputes (http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=83768).
Sincerely, The YouTube Content Identification Team
Rallypoint offers software and services for Internet-enabled HTDVs, including their patent-pending “widgets on TV” - software embedded in the chipsets shipped to TV OEMs. They aggregate Internet information and content, develop the applications (widgets), and provision the services that you will be able to access through your remote after an on-line “configure your TV” session. News, voting, social networking, sports and fantasy sports, shopping, TV-related search engine, and video-on-demand – all through your TV remote, coming to your screen sometime in 2009.
Internet on TV? Where did this idea come from? The answer is simple. The founders of Rallypoint are completely guilty of watching TV with their laptops out. While they watch college football or NFL games, they also surf the web to get rankings, stats, see replays and highlight videos, and check on their fantasy leagues....
They are also guilty of “smack talk”, chatting online and text messaging with friends and fellow fans at game time. They developed Rallypoint to fill a need they have – to get information already on the Web in one place – that place being their large format HDTV.
Voting, Texting, Bidding Through Your TV? Sports and social networking are cool, but just imagine all the other applications. The reality TV craze has brought “voting” to the forefront of truly interactive television – imagine voting with your remote, for starters. How about texting from the TV to your friends mobile phone – or sending a text from your own phone to your family’s TV? How about being alerted of your eBay outbid notice, and responding with a successful bid using your TV remote? The possibilities are endless ... but how much time will that leave for a REAL, MEANINGFUL LIFE?
Developed by the Institute for the Future, Superstruct, the world's first massively multiplayer forecasting game, went live October 6, and will last for six weeks, played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other online spaces.
"By playing the game, you'll help us chronicle the world of 2019--and imagine how we might solve the problems we'll face," the Web site says. "Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It's about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential."
The Ten Year Forecast team at the Institute for the Future will analyze the player-created game content and prepare an official Superstruct Report featuring the top collective insights about the year 2019, and the best tactics for "superstructing" society.
Now how about fixing the broken global financial system first???? NOW!!!!
How much cornier can it get? Never mind … here is the rundown, according to Richard Kligman, Qoof’s founder, from their VenCorps submission:
“Qoof is a new video commerce solution that bridges the world of Online Shopping, Internet Video, and Direct Response TV to create a distributed, targeted, and personalized video commerce network.
There are many solutions today that offer a video player, but Qoof is the only one to focus and offer a video commerce engine that combines video with all the direct response call to action tools. All this is delivered in an IAB Compliant framework --???? -- (question marks are mine), that is capable of being distributed through many distribution channels including traditional ad networks and social media sites."
Qoof offers a full video commerce solution including:
• Video Commerce Widget with a full suite of direct response tools:
- Click to call - Click to chat - Buy Now - 1-800 numbers - Countdown timer - Stock inventory list - How many sold, etc.
• Widget Distribution through Affiliate Networks, Ad Networks, Social Media Sites, and via our own Publishers. • Full Video Commerce Website (Your own hosted home shopping site). • Video Production, Hosting and Streaming. • Detailed Analytical based Reporting.
With a current investor and advisor roster like this:
• George Conrades, Chairman of Akamai, Oracle Board Member • Alan Laifer, CEO Datran Media • Ian Stone, founder of Card Payment Systems (CPS) Advisors: • Sara Levinson, Harley Davidson, Inc; Macys, Inc. and KickApps Board Member, Former Chairman & CEO of ClubMom • Kara Nortman - Vice President, Mergers & Acquisitions, IAC, previously VC with Battery Ventures
they should have no problem making this business successful in short order. As a VenCorps member I already voted for them in the next round of showdown there.
Christine from lookandtaste.com just notified me about the name change - iFoods.tv has become LookAndTaste.com. I do like the new name; however I'll stick with the "look" part....
For starters, iFoods.tv offers over 140 step by step video recipes, with a further 200 planned for production over the next 18 months, and a ‘foodie’ social network. They claim to have over 7,000 members already on the site and over 1000 user generated videos uploaded. Features such as the iFoods blog, blog profiles, and the blog league are designed to develop the community further. iFoods’ aim is to become the ultimate online destination for food lovers of the iPod and YouTube generation.
And get this: Rather than using guesswork to navigate through a recipe, you are expertly and seamlessly instructed, step by step, by a professional chef. Can you see this taking place in your kitchen with your iPhone decked up to instruct you as you are preparing your culinary masterpiece of brandied apple-pie? (OK, I’ve made this up … it’s not far-fetched, though. Maybe I should dabble too…?)
According to the company:
“All iFoods recipes are researched and market tested at length for both practicality and relevance to their target audience. They will also create and post content throughout the year to coincide with seasonal festivities such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving.
The hugely talented iFoods culinary team has over 40 years of combined experience and is backed up by strong business management. All members of the team have risen through their respective fields to achieve success and acclaim. Niall Harbison and Pieter Plaetinck have achieved culinary success having worked for some of the world’s richest and most famous people including Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Sultan of Brunei.”
Sounds appetizing to me … with or without Bill, The Donald and the Sultan!
It has taken a while (actually only two years since Google acquired AdScape in 2006), but the search giant may have come up with another winner comparable to AdSense. No loss for Adsense - it is incorporated in the AdSense for Games software.
As an advertiser, you can use the software to insert ads into games or videos for YouTube, making the ads more versatile. As a Flash video game developer, you can also designate the points in a game that make an “ad request.”
Playfish, a maker of casual games such as “Who Has the Biggest Brain?” on Facebook, has been testing the in-game ads for months. In their adaptation the Google software rolls a 30-second video at the end of a game session that includes a game character saying that the free game was brought to you by a sponsor.
Besides Playfish, other game publishers that will also incorporate AdSense for Games technology include Zynga, the hot social gaming company, and Konami, one of Japan’s biggest game companies. The latter will publish a line of Flash titles — including “Track and Field,” “Frogger,” and “Dance Dance Revolution” — with the Google in-game ads.
Google launched Lively, its 3D rooms and avatars, earlier this summer. It looks very much like a natural vehicle for AdSense for Games, which could insert ads into the rooms of users, for example. Just what we all need....
ezSEO is the first comprehensive search engine optimization (SEO) solution for connecting video (and audio) content on your site to the major web search engines – Google, Yahoo, MSN, and others. EveryZing’s patented technology wraps every piece of video and audio from your site in a rich layer of metadata, including a full text output of the spoken word track. This rich metadata is then pumped into EveryZing’s publishing system to create search engine friendly web pages as part of YOUR site.
What’s more, you can use the metadata, generated for each piece of your content, to create contextual targeting for any ad serving environment, including text, display, and pre/post-roll video.
ezSEO works automatically, “behind the scenes” of your web site, making your multimedia content easily discoverable to the search engines. In this way, your online video and audio become part of the multibillion dollar search economy. It accomplishes this feat through:
1. Comprehensive metadata production
They automatically extract the keywords, topics, and other information from your web content. This ensures that whenever a consumer searches a term or phrase that relates to any multimedia files on your site, the search results point directly to the relevant audio and video content, as well as text.
2. Deep content analysis
ezSEO automatically and continuously “learns” what your multimedia content is about, enabling it to optimize the new pages published to your site to bring the best qualified traffic from the major search engines.
3. Natural language processing
Once the text output has been generated, it is processed by EveryZing’s proprietary natural language processing technology to identify key terms, concepts, people, places and other valuable entities to create automatic “tags” for your content.
4. Automated publishing
Whenever you add new multimedia content to your web site, ezSEO automatically learns about it, analyzes it, and publishes new, highly “searchable” pages instantaneously so that consumers searching topics related to your content won’t miss a thing.
5. Building and hosting your content collections and associated web pages
EveryZing builds and hosts all of the content collections and associated web pages it generate to your design specifications. These pages can then be accessed via a subdomain on your website. Our turn-key solution means you can be up and running in a matter of weeks with no effort required from your tech teams.
ezSEO is provided as a web service, delivering completely built out templates to your specifications. It continuously processes your content to identify new topics for publishing, all of which you can control via your web management console.
Cool - but NOT cheap. I think you should check it out and wait (if you can afford to) till the competition catches up, for the price to become more affordable.
Verimatrix, located in San Diego, CA, has developed software and equipment to keep ITV a.k.a. IPTV, digital video broadcasting (DVB), cable TV, and mobile delivery from being illicitly intercepted by non-paying customers. Don’t you just love this politically correct verbiage?
It uses "forensic watermarking," that resides in the video stream itself, so that a source can be identified in case of leaks. Ohhh -- those BitTorrent kindda leaks in the broadband pipe I assume?
So what does this fancy wording hide?
According the MPAA, worldwide revenue loss for the motion picture industry was more than $18 billion in 2005. In response, a variety of techniques have been developed and are now being deployed to help address content piracy. One of these techniques is called “forensic watermarking,” an off-shoot of digital watermarking of online images, ebooks, web pages, etc.
Verimatrix claims it can securely, robustly and imperceptibly hide serialization information inside your media content. This way you are able to establish a virtual "chain of custody" for your content that accurately identifies the source of unauthorized copies, thus aiding legal actions against the source of such copies.
Unlike encryption, which creates an envelope around content that can effectively secure delivery from point to point, a watermark is embedded in the content itself and remains even after a video is decrypted, decoded and possibly re-encoded to another file.
The most robust watermarks also survive the transition from digital to analog and back. The approach of re-recording an analog playback is called the "analog hole." Robust watermarking can survive this passage through the “analog hole,” enabling identification of unauthorized copies of, for example, camcorder captured material.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind my camcorder footage getting mashed-up who-knows-where-and-by-whom. With so much competition, giving away a low-res duplicate of your video is a viable -- I’d say necessary -- way to stay in circulation. NO watermarking, much less “robust watermarking” for that kind of content. However, don’t forget to GET CREDIT FOR YOUR WORK, by requiring Creative Commons Attribution and link-backs from the mash-up artists’ own and syndication sites.
There is a lot going on at the other side of the Atlantic! Now that we have about five more months or so to worry about black holes to be created by the Large Hadron Collider, due to a malfunctioning superconducting magnet, I can go on scaring you here for at least that long....
Soooo ... according to DiracVideo.org, "Dirac is an advanced royalty-free video compression format designed for a wide range of uses, from delivering low-resolution web content to broadcasting HD and beyond, to near-lossless studio editing." This is achieved by utilizing wavelet transformation functions.
The Dirac Project
Originally created by the BBC Research department, the Dirac project has expanded to include companies providing hardware equipment and software for handling Dirac video, as well as an active open-source development group.
Origin of the Name "Dirac"
The name "Dirac" is a reference to Paul A. M. Dirac, British physicist and winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize was shared with Erwin Schrödinger, for whom the Schroedinger implementation of Dirac was named.
Dirac 1.0.0 has already been used successfully by BBC during the Beijing Olympics. Now they are pushing it into more general use both within and outside of BBC.
