Archive for March 9th, 2007
Once again, the wisdom of the citizens of the colonies outweighs that of the colonial fleet. And if that’s too geeky for you, too bad. The rest of us will have fun with the Battlestar Galactica Videomaker Toolkit. You can download a bunch of video and audio files from the show, mash ‘em up with your own stuff, and re-upload them if you want. Can’t wait to see the results. Empowered Sci-Fi fans? I’m guessing they’ll be kinda creative, yeah. Lesson for locals: Give your viewers this kind of simple access and see what sort of videos they’ll make about your community. UPON FURTHER REFLECTION: I don’t like that I couldn’t, say use this stuff to do a promo for LR and then embed it on LR. I couldn’t upload a finished video to YouTube (or SciFi) and then embed it on my site? A missed opportunity for further marketing. If we’re going to do all that work, let us showcase it. Doing the work and then not being able to share the results? Frakked. (via Brand Flakes for Breakfast.)
So say we all.
March 9th, 2007
Columbus, OH
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The newest entry into social bookmarking is coRank, which Michael Arrington describes as “a cross between Digg and Bluedot.” (Bluedot being best described as a cross between del.icio.us and MySpace, I think.) So what you have now is the ability to:
- Bookmark pages you like and access them anywhere
- Share those bookmarks with friends and others
- Vote on those pages (that’s the Digg part)
- Have a personal page (a la MySpace)
And some other social features. I think. I start to get confused when features add up like this. It’s getting crowded out there in the social bookmarking/networking space. But the costs of entering it aren’t that high, so any new twist on the theme probably isn’t that expensive to try. I can see newsrooms taking advantage of a tool like coRank to share stories of interest among themselves and their community. coRank has a blog you can check out, where they discuss what they’ve launched and what they’re still working on.
March 9th, 2007
NBC.com is gearing up to expand its online store from DVDs to downloads of NBC TV shows. The downloads will be priced $1.99 in most cases, just like iTunes, but NBC.com plans to experiment with other price points. “The current pricing structure is not equitable,” said Shelli Hill, SVP for NBCU Television Distribution, “when a five-minute video and a 74-minute episode of Saturday Night Live each sell for $1.99.” Launch date is TBA.
March 9th, 2007
The Washington state Senate voted in favor of a shield law, 41-7, Thursday. The House unanimously approved a similar law last month and it’s up to the pols to decide which version to pass on to the governor. This would give reporters absolute privilege from revealing confidential sources, but limited privilege on such items as unpublished notes and tapes. Here in Massachusetts, a shield law is being considered. (So it looks like I’ll be going to jail before Cory. Raise your hands if you’re surprised.) 32 states (and DC) have a shield law for journalists right now. As to the question of whether bloggers are journalists, the Seattle Times writes:
The bill defines a member of the media as anyone who is in the regular business of news gathering for publishing or broadcasting. Generally, authors of occasional opinion pieces or Internet bloggers would not be covered.
Whether bloggers will be protected under shield laws and under what circumstances will be a fascinating one to follow in the years ahead.
March 9th, 2007
In a new segement called “Face 2 Face,” the primetime CNBC show Fast Money is encouraging viewers to hook up their webcams and ask a question live on the show. “For the first time on primetime television, you can go on air via your webcam to ask your question,” reads CNBC.com. “Straight from your bedroom floor you can ask your question to the trading floor.” Viewers who want to participate send in an email, and producers then decide which to pop on the air. The technology is powered by WebEx Meeting Center, and the segment is sponsored by webcam-maker Logitech.
March 9th, 2007
Just a few days after launching a bold new design, thousands of people a day are signing up as members on USAToday.com’s social networking engine. “The people are reacting, everyone is thrilled,” said SVP Jeff Webber. “We’ve got some consumers that liked the old design and tell us we’ve gone too far. But 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 people a day are creating personae, commenting and coming in. We’re five days deep.”
March 9th, 2007
A student videotaping the transfer of military equipment bound for Iraq at the Port of Tacoma was detained by police and ordered to turn off the camera after he refused to move out of the area. “You better show me before it gets broken,” a Tacoma Police officer said. The student maintained that he was standing in a public area in the same place where mainstream media crews have videotaped in the past, but police officers singled him out. Of course, it’s all caught on tape and posted on YouTube here. The student said he was detained for an hour, then released. The Tacoma Police Department is now investigating the matter. This will become a growing challenge for law enforcement in the years to come, as I imagine it won’t be long before citizen journalism photographers outnumber TV photographers at news events, especially controversial ones. Shouldn’t they have the same access?
Adds Safran: “We don’t license the media. Anyone can shoot anything from a public vantage point. The first reaction of government is to suppress speech, no matter what our rights are. Now, it’s not pragmatic for 50,000 people to show up at the White House with camcorders and demand access to Tony Snow’s briefing. But one guy shooting from a public vantage point? Seems like an over-enthusiastic cop, and hopefully a clarification of the First Amendment will be in order.”
March 9th, 2007
