Author Archives: Kevin Anderson

08.09.07
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X|Media|Lab Melbourne: Brian Gruber, Fora.tv

Brian Gruber is doing an overview of online video, and “as a Jew, I’ll do the 10 commandments of online video”.

He introduced Fora.TV. The site starts with a very simple premise: We aggregate the best public event content in the world whether business conferences, arts and culture events. The content started off with mostly US content but is increasingly international. They have some impressive content partners including C-Span, indy bookstores like Politics and Prose, publications like Foreign Policy magazine and think tanks.

10 rules for online video:

  1. Banality will win out – Paris Hilton, YouTube, 50 years of LCD. There are 4000 videos of YouTube of men lighting their farts. We have 50 years of building our schedule around the idea of scarcity.
  2. Filters make the good stuff easier to find. Search engines. Forwarded (or recommended) content. Content aggregator sites. “Infinite Choice=Overwhelming Confusion
  3. Shift in value to aggregators. Declining production costs has led to a vast increase in content sources. Need for new filters.
  4. Technology drives down costs. The cost of shooting, posting and delivery are in decline.
  5. From destination to hyper-syndication. There is a shift from ‘my site’ to being an open presence. We’re going from control of the user to a viral network. Fora.tv have developed a range of content partners.
  6. My competitors are my collaborators. We were worried about YouTube. They put a three-minute clip of their longer form content on YouTube. Take a bit, put it on YouTube. They do ad revenue sharing with YouTube. C-SPAN (the US cable industry’s public affairs network). TED distributes their content on Fora. Media sites, such as Salon, give them free promotion.
  7. Go Global. We don’t want to be a US-centric site. We want global audiences because we’re going after global ad brands. On Christmas week, their highest sources of traffic was Teheran and Riyadh. They are looking to global sources and ‘ideas that transcend borders’.
  8. Media consumption is not only about viewing but also about participating. They show you related content so if you find content that appeals to you. They also chapterise the content. He showed a presentation of a conversation between Brian Eno and Will Wright about Spore. (Suw wants to know what’s happening with Spore. Anybody know?)

    They also have a transcript search. Click on the search results and the video jumps to that spot. Wow. You can download video formats such as mp4 for iPod or PSP or a PDF transcript. You can also, of course, link or embed the player. Even the embedded player has the chapter, search and transcript features.
  9. The FORA Ecosystem. Brilliant ideas. Content partners and tools for participating and navigating.
  10. It’s a wonderful life. He studied interactive media years ago but only now is the reality that his professors promised becoming real.

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08.09.07
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X|Media|Lab Melbourne: Jason Roks, the Real News

Real News is a non-corporate, non-government funded news organisation. They rely on a $10 a month donation. I’m just going to link the video on YouTube. There are some pretty heavy hitters behind this project: Gore Vidal, Tom Fenton and Robert McChesney, just to name a few.

Jason is a technical advisor, and instead of talking about the editorial proejct, he wanted to show the technology that makes this possible. RealNews is done by print journalists with video elements added to the stories. Distribution is an important part of the equation. Jason mentioned about the network caps, and there was a knowing laugh from the audience. It sounds as if the models in Australia is similar to the UK in that you can have fast broadband, but many accounts are capped at only a few gigabytes per month.

Flash 9 video and peering help RealNews, and MPEG-4 has become the standard.

He then touched on User-Generated Distribution. The next step beyond user-generated content will be recommenders or as Malcolm Gladwell called them, the connectors. He demonstrated an XML feeds and a service called OnYa. (Jason e-mailed me to let me know that Onya was just an internal code name. A similar service is set to launch soon.) They have built scrapers that go through 200 video sites online. People can search those sites and create a custom channels via XML. They can publish the XML files to Apple TV or Windows Media Player.

He finished with a video about Net Neutrality. SaveTheInternet.com

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08.09.07
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X|Media|Lab: Kim Dalton, head of TV with Australian Broadcast

There is a tectonic shift, said Kim Dalton, head of TV with the Australian Broadcast Company. At ABC, we are in the business engaging audiences of creating communities. Audiences come together around content, and communities come together around ideas. (The ABC press office has the full speech online.)

In the analogue world, Australians saw Australian content. In the digital world, the analogue model is under threat. He returned to this threat not only to the analogue model but also the public policy that had supported it and Australian content.

We have three ideas around TV. There is the TV as a device. The device is the centre of battle between broadcasters and telcos. Alternative devices are proliferating with PCs, PVRs and DVDs, but the TV still holds place.

The second idea is TV as content from documentaries and drama and new forms like reality-based shows. The third idea is TV as a revenue model. Australian public policy has created and maintained a specific revenue model, a model that is under threat.

Time and place shifting is tipping the balance to deliver a very personalised TV experience. A significant part of networked content will be delivered online. There are those who question the place and role of a public broadcaster in the new digital world.

He rigorously defended the public broadcasting model and the ABC as part of the national conversation. He said it was part of the social glue. Public broadcasting provided a place for Australian voices and stories across platforms. The ABC played the role of the trusted guide and voice and also an innovator. He said that there have have been 5.3m downloads of ABC content this year. Online was especially good for children’s programming.

They are moving to multiplaftorm content and communities. And he returned to this idea of Australian content. Australia is a small, English-speaking country that might not support domestically-created content without public policy support. The media debate is dominated by commercial interests, he said.

And he seemed to be arguing for an extension of that public policy model into the digital world to maintain the availability of Australian content on digital platforms.

He presented some interesting statistics that showed that TV viewing was up with the over-40 audience (zTam figures). With youth, they were doing a lot of activities concurrently such as listening to music (their number one leisure time activity) and going online (the fifth most popular activity). Their second most favourite activity was watching TV and hanging out with friends.

He argued for a continued role of the ABC as a provider of free, national content, but he said that ABC needed to change how it measured success. Their content was available on a number of platforms including airports, airplanes, DVDs and on demand. Silos had to be broken down in the organisation. People had to think and cooperate differently. Where do they need to save money, where can they make money and where can they allocate resources.

Quoting publicity material for the X|Media|Lab, he said, of content is king, the king is dead, and the audience is a new sovereign, but he said that this was an over-simplication. The analogue public policy model that ensured Australian content had to move forward and keep the same assurances in the digital era.

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08.09.07
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X|Media|Lab Melbourne: Shekhar Kapur, film director

Some very interesting comments coming out of this discussion with film director Shekhar Kapur. He was asked what would happen in the near future when 15% of the world’s teenagers will be in India. He predicted that in the near future, 75% of new media revenues will come from Asia. He said that a future installation of the Spiderman series would gross a billion dollars in its first weekend with $750m of that from Asia, and when Spiderman takes off his mask, he would probably be Chinese. The future YouTube’s of Asia would have one billion users.

He is putting together a major media fund to take advantage of the huge opportunity he sees in Asia. He says that the fund will invest in a cross-Asian media eco-system. He wants to unlock working capital to go into research and development. The West sees Asia as a market and a cheap labour market, but he was talking about using this billion dollar fund to create a value-added economic engine.

Virgin Comic and Animation, which he co-founded, is now working to develop comics based on Asian heroes and stories. Once they develop successful comics, just as Marvel has done, these comics can be spun off into movies and games.

He is advising the government of Singapore, and he asked: Can Singapore become a hub of entertainment of the East? He can’t see an Indian director feeling comfortable in Shanghai or a Chinese director comfortable in Mumbai, but with the multi-cultural nature of Singapore, he can see directors from across Asia coming to Singapore.

To predict the future, he said that the question is not to worry about the direction of technologies but the future of social behaviour. The world is flowing, and the business models need to adapt to this.

You can’t be outside the community and form businesses.

Closing note from me: I had never travelled in Asia until recently, but in my two trips here in the last month or so, Asia sees itself as the future.

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08.09.07
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X|Media|Lab Melbourne: Dale Herigstad and new television

There was no WiFi in the hall at X|Media|Lab so I’m going to tidy up these posts and publish them over the next few days. The day started with Dale Herigstad with Schematic.

Dale Herigstad, the Chief Creative Officer with Schematic, has done with work with the BBC and iTV, and he wanted to talk about the ‘new television’.

Rich digital content on any screen, any where.

He talks about distance in terms of different types of video experiences, from the 3-10 foot traditional experience to the 2-foot experience on computers, iPhones or personal video players. He also talked about the 200 foot experience on large screens – either movie screens or large public spaces.

He moved through different types of paradigms from print, photography, television and film and now interactive media. Schematic works with EA Sports in Vancouver. He talked about pre-game space – the things that happen before the game actually loads. They are bringing in live feeds from ESPN ticker and video streams on an internet connected XBox 360. Broadband content is always in the game space. On the left hand of the basketball game is the interface for the game itself, but on the right hand is broadband-delivered, real-time ESPN sports content. The line between the game and traditional video content is blurred.

Dale talked about ‘new time’, about navigating not only by channel but also the line between now and next, between programming that is on air at the moment and ‘catch up watching’. Further back there is the archive, and further in the future, there is the promotional material.

He showed the blending of programmed content on discs – whether that is games or HD-DVDs – with dynamic IP content coming in over a broadband connection. He showed off the Miami Vice HD-DVD, which featured a live interface to Google Earth embedded in the player so that you could track the characters as they moved through the real world of Miami. But he emphasised that this was not simply embedding a web browser or web application into the DVD or cable TV experience. This was elegantly placing live, real-time information objects in the interface.

The content can also be advertorial content, and he showed off Matt Damon as Jason Bourne. You could ‘click’ on the phone that he was using in the film and see ordering information. At the end of the film, you could see your shopping cart or bookmarks in the film.

Schematic also did work with Microsoft Surfaces and a connected XBox 360 to navigate programming. The programmes all had additional information such as who had been ‘fired’ from the Apprentice. He showed off some prototypes for ABCs on demand player. They not only had the programmes, but they also had interactive ads embedded in streams, understanding that people using on-demand video also would expect interactive ads.

In closing, Dale said: New time. New space and new opportunities.

Postscript: Dale works with Ball State University on design for new television interfaces. He says that he also has a lot of ideas about news projects and presentation. I’m going to try to catch up with him over coffee and brainstorm.

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08.08.07
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Speaking at X|Media|Lab Melbourne

Ideally, I should have blogged about this earlier, but I wanted to mention that I’ll be speaking at X|Media|Lab in Melbourne Australia this Friday. The theme is Digital Worlds: Social, Mobile, Virtual. Good news if you are able to make it, they have changed venue and have some more tickets available. I’ll be speaking about how what mass media companies need to do to become social media companies. I’ll be blogging the conference here and also on the Guardian’s Organ Grinder media blog. The rough schedule on Friday is:

9.30am Session One: Digital Worlds

Kevin Anderson

Head of Blogging and Interaction, The Guardian

(London)

Kim Dalton

Director of Television, Australian Broadcasting

Corporation (Sydney)

Dale Herigstad

Four times Emmy Award Winner, and Winner of the

inaugural Interactive Emmy Award (Los Angeles)

Shekhar Kapur

Film Director, Co-Founder Virgin Comics and Virgin

Animation (London/Mumbai)

11.30am Session Two: Online Video

Liz Heller

CEO and Co-founder Buzztone Inc (Los Angeles)

Marcelino Ford-Livene

General Manager, Interactive Content, Services

and Advertising Development, Intel Digital Home

Group; Governor of Interactive Media, Academy of

Television, Arts and Sciences (Los Angeles)

Brian Gruber

Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer,

FORA.tv (San Francisco)

Jason Roks

Advisory Board Member, The Real News

(www.therealnews.com) (Ontario)

1.30pm Session Three: Mobile Communities

Francisco Cordero

General Manager Australia/NZ, Bebo

(London, Sydney)

Jennifer Lewis

Editor, STOMP (Singapore)

Martha Ladly

Director, Mobile Experience Design, Mobile

Experience Lab (Toronto)

Tom Kennedy

Director, Digital, Belong Group, Australia’s Leading

Digital Interactive Communications Company; Chair

of the Digital Content Action Agenda Experts Group

and Australian Film Commissioner (Australia)

Martin Hoffman

CEO, Loop Mobile (Sydney)

3.30pm Session Four: Virtual Worlds

Dr David Liu

Founder and President, Cyber Recreation District

(Beijing)

Jason Romney

General Manager, Innovation, Telstra BigPond

(Sydney)

Lizbeth Goodman

Director, SMARTlab Digital Media Institute, University

of East London (London)

Keren Flavell

Executive Producer, SLCN.TV (Melbourne)

Bruce Joy

Founder, VASTPARK, Australia’s own virtual worlds

platform (Melbourne)

08.06.07
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Let’s get ready to rumble

Let’s get ready to rumble

“Religion causes all wars.” Not my words, but only one of a number of provocative statements in a new series of ads Sky News is running to promote its online discussions. After these ‘fighting words‘, they ask: “Looking for an argument?”

My question to Sky News or any news organisation for that matter: Do you want an online community or fight club? Many online community experts use the pub as a metaphor. In this case, if Sky News was a pub, would they advertise: Come to Pub Sky. It’s a great place to fight.

But this seems to the be the strategy of a number of news organisations. They shout fire in a theatre, and then are strangely surprised and shocked as the audience turns into a mob. As news organisations, we bear some responsibility for the conversations we create. We cannot lay the blame solely at the feet of commenters on our sites when the conversation devolves into a shouting match, when we started the argument in the first place.

I’ve spoken with too many editors and online managers asking for technical solutions for crowd control while they never consider modifying their editorial approach. As I’ve said before, shiny tools won’t save you from the trolls, and they won’t save you from chatroom brawls of your own making.

Now, in the binary world of journalistic arguments, I can hear editors saying that I’m advocating bland conversations. No, no my black-and-white-world friends, there is a huge range of possibility between blandness and the type of simplistic provocation that I see in these adverts and in so many shout-y headlines.

Just think of how you would respond if someone came and shouted in your face. What would your likely response be? Most likely it won’t be a pleasant conversation or interesting debate.

08.04.07
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links for 2007-08-04

08.03.07
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Instant visualisation for bridge data in the US

I was looking for a way to map the connections to Strange Attractor, and I stumbled upon this visualisation tool from IBM called Many Eyes. A couple of clicks later, and I found this amazing visualisation looking at the status of bridges in the US, an interesting and dynamic way to look at data in the wake of the Minnesota bridge collapse. I’ve often thought that news organisations are missing a trick by not making greater use of data visualisation and rich information graphics. Give it a click. The graph dynamically changes as you roll over it. I also think it’s an interesting way to have people look for patterns in large sets of information, and I think graphics like this could be a great launching point for discussions. (Only one thing I might suggest to the folks at IBM, another go at their Blog This button. Maybe it’s just Ecto being a bit weird, but the formatting could be a little more straightforward.)