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Open-source video marketplace
Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon is probably best known as being the creative mind behind Wallstrip, the financial podcast that was later famously sold to CBS Interactive for a tidy sum.
Through his experience in New Media production Selling-Entertainment-Online Jan-08 as well as the experience of taking a show like that from concept to completion to exit, he was made aware of the wide variety of issues that arise for successful independent video producers that we’re just not equipped to deal with. Legal issues abound, as do business decisions Neuroeconomics-How-Executives-Think , odd technical issues, and sales situations; most of the time indie producers just want to, well, produce.
Plentitube is a marketplace built with that in mind. It’s currently still in an invite only beta situation, but their goal is to take top notch producers and pair them with advertisers, resources and potential investors and owners for the content. In this interview, we explore the history that led Jon to this venture, as well as the intracies of the marketplace, and how it can benefit the New Media video producer set. Jon Labes, the founder of a new video marketplace called Plentitube (pronounced like “plentitude, if you change the ‘d’ to a ‘b’). Jon... more -
John McCain's secret plan for the Internets leaked to press
...this is hilarious
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John McCain is aware of the Internet
The first question at an excellent panel at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York today with top web folks from the leading campaign goes to McCain aide Mark Soohoo.
Moderator Andrew Rasiej asks for a show of hands on whether the panelists have had to tell the candidate not to say "The Google" or other flags of tech illiteracy, then turns to Soohoo.
"Is it proper to say I don’t do raised hand questions?" Soohoo responds.
Echoing an old Grunwald/Penn line -- though also making an accurate point -- Soohoo points out that the gap in things like Facebook "friends" doesn't bear out offline.
"There is this community of people – they just may not be on Facebook," he said of McCain's supporters.
Soohoo is getting beat up a bit before what isn't exactly a McCain audience at the tech conference.
Pressed again on McCain's tech savvy, he defends his candidate.
"You don’t actually have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country," he says.
"You actually do," former Edwards blogger Tracy Russo responds, suggesting he try to explain Twitter to his grandmother and then ask her how that applies to governing.
"John McCain is aware of the Internet," says Soohoo. "This is a man who has a very long history of understanding on a range of issues." The first question at an excellent panel at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York today with top web folks from the leading campaig... more -
Youtube hosting full-length movies and shows
Hulu is kicking ass because of a simple marketing device: The NBC and News Corp.-backed site is advertising full-length programs on YouTube to get traffic to shows on which they can sell real advertising. YouTube, rather than ban Hulu, is now angling to keep that traffic in-house by allowing partners to upload shows up to 1 gigabyte in size, enough room for full-length film and television programming (though not at great quality).
While YouTube has hosted videos over ten minutes in the past, notably including feature film Four Eyed Monsters, in-house Google videos and Charles Trippy's longest YouTube video ever stunt, and early content partners have had the freedom to push the envelope from time to time. But now it's official, and it's certainly in the hopes of garnering better content, running more ads and pumping up "engagement" metrics like average time on site. Hulu is kicking ass because of a simple marketing device: The NBC and News Corp.-backed site is advertising full-length programs on Yo... more -
Where did all the news go?
One sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canvas is blank, there is no news. And it's not just low culture. The zeitgeist at large seems to be suffering from tired blood (maybe too much vital energy spent looking at mobile porn?).
Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke was the most noteworthy book to be published so far this year, and it argued that World War II wasn't worth fighting. World War II. That's not even counterintuitive in a fun Slate-y kind of way. As for the election, we're in a massive lull until at least Labor Day, barring Israel's surgical strike on Natanz, which happened yesterday while you were updating your Tumblr.
Elsewhere the herd of independent minds has taken a collective nap: the red siren that blares in Matt Drudge's head has been as silent as the one in James Wolcott's. So what's going on?
• The Web is dead. Churchill once described a pudding as having no theme. The same is broadly true of today’s Internet; Web 2.0 has descended into bathos, which really ought to have its own 'sphere named after it. Facebook’s great advertising revenue model went bust a year ago and everyone’s already stalked everyone else on MySpace. Most user-generated content reads like a stale algorithm of pettiness, paranoia and semi-literacy. Time formerly proclaimed “us” the “Person of the Year,” and it proved too burdensome a responsibility. We renounce the title.
• The television season is over. What is there to watch now except the Real World set where it always belonged – on a Hollywood soundstage – and with revolving cast members that don’t hang around long enough to come out of the closet, smack each other in the face, or forget to load the dishwasher? Bring back House with its acerbic Bertie Wooster.
• The economy is in limbo. It’s bad, sure, but it’s not quite so bad as to precipitate a new artistic or literary movement. No one's ready to move into lean-tos on the B.Q.E., become a Trotsykist, and found Partisan Review. Speaking of which –
• There are no new magazines. What’s to overhype and then hound to an early grave? Radar’s doing fine in that unremarkable way of its. And n+1 will either lurch into neoconservatism or get bought out by Dave Eggers and turned into Zimbabwean refugee’s emo fanzine.
• There are no parties, except the one being thrown tonight by Keith Gessen, the Julia Allison of public intellectuals, who wants to take back the Internet the way Irving Howe wanted to make socialism relevant.
• We live in atomized and fragmented times. Like academia, the culture is over-specialized and only caters to microscopic – mostly web-based – niches. My Buddhist Scandinavian black metal band can beat up your vomit porn-themed ballet troupe. It’s impossible to congregate under a mass banner of anything anymore. Is this why Barack Obama is deified? Is he the closest thing we have to a popular icon? (Michael Chabon thinks so, and he’s the dean of Superman studies.) But there are no other imagos to make our hearts beat as one and give us a shared cultural experience. What’s the last stadium-venue concert you attended? (I'm seeing Mos Def with a Big Band this month and I can't even get worked up about it.) Who’s the Seinfeld of the humorless aughts, the Geldof of this age of waste?
• Politics has sucked the oxygen out of media. Fortunately, like the TV drought, this may just be seasonal and subject to change once November comes and goes and Obama Girl is cast in the next Tom Stoppard play as Béla Kun's wry housekeeper.
• It’s been an uneventful summer thus far. Might we look forward to a rolling blackout in August that will allow us all to mate in darkened stairwells and wash with tonic water for a glorious twelve hours again? One sad editrix of celebrity gossip sheet thinks her profession is living on borrowed time. It's one big void out there, the canvas is... more -
Get healthy, live strong
The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Demand Media, a social media company, are launching a Web site today with 600,000 pages of content on health, fitness and wellness. The site has a library of 15,000 articles and videos, 350,000 nutritional food profiles and 50,000 health and fitness-related questions and answers.
The site, www.livestrong.com, includes information from doctors and other experts, exercise tips on everything from flattening flabby abs to improving overall workouts, and an array of help on such topics as quitting smoking and dieting, including a "daily plate," which tracks calories for those on the path to lowering their weight.
The site is free, and unlike livestrong.org, which is dedicated to cancer survivors and their families, livestrong.com is for anyone who wants to make change, Armstrong said.
"The polls will tell that 85 (percent) to 90 percent of Americans want to change something about their life or their lifestyles, but only 40 percent of them get started doing it," Armstrong said. "The obesity epidemic, soaring diabetes rates and other unhealthy trends have America heading to a perfect storm the health care system is not prepared to handle."
The site enables people to work in groups, like the one with 100 women who tested the "daily plate" to collectively lose 1,000 pounds and got messages when they needed to step up their exercise to counteract their daily calories, said Larry Fitzgibbon, general manager of livestrong.com.
"We think this is one of the killer (applications)," Fitzgibbon said. "There are sites for this on the Web, but they cost money."
Articles on the site, such as "Four Ways to Treat Bacterial Infections," or "Five Things You Need to Know About Lipomas," are delivered in a short, simple style. The Lance Armstrong Foundation and Demand Media, a social media company, are launching a Web site today with 600,000 pages of content ... more -
Google and Blue Cross want to assimilate your medical records
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts says it will become the first health insurer to participate in Google Health, a medical records initiative by the online search engine.
more stories like this
Massachusetts' Blues plan said that it expects to begin offering the free electronic service to its roughly 3 million members this fall. Members will have the chance to open a Google Health account and authorize sharing of their medical claims data with the online service. While the initiative has raised some privacy concerns, the goal is to enable people to organize, store and manage their medical records in one secure location.
Google Health was launched last month with several health care providers, including Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and pharmacies including CVS and Walgreens. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts says it will become the first health insurer to participate in Google Health, a medical record... more -
Judge orders kids to post apology on YouTube
A judge is using YouTube to punish two boys who used the video-sharing website for a prank that ended with battery and criminal mischief charges against them.
The prank, known as "fire in the hole," has become common in the past year. It happened July 25 to fast-food worker Jessica Ceponis at the drive-through of the Taco Bell in Merritt Island, about 50 miles east of Orlando.
Ceponis handed a carload of teenagers their soft drinks. When she returned to the drive-through window to give them their change, they yelled, "Fire in the hole!" hurled a 32-ounce cup of soda at Ceponis and sped off.
The teens posted a video of the incident on YouTube.com, alongside a number of other videos showing similar pranks. Today, the teens are scheduled to post another video on YouTube: an apology that shows them facedown and handcuffed on the hood of a car.
In a statement, YouTube said it doesn't allow the uploading of videos that show someone getting "hurt, attacked or humiliated" and removes those flagged by users.
Ceponis, 23, said she thought the incident was a personal attack but learned from customers that a video was posted on YouTube. She used the YouTube video to track the boys' MySpace accounts. "They were bragging about what they had done and how funny it was," Ceponis said.
Without revealing her identity, she befriended them online. After she confirmed that they were behind the attack, Ceponis used the phone book to track down one boy's mother who provided the names of the others involved, she said.
The 16-year-old driver who threw the drink and a 15-year-old who was filming were charged with two counts each of battery and one count of criminal mischief.
The teens wrote, filmed and edited the apology video. They also were sentenced to 100 hours each of community service. In addition, they each have to pay a $30 cleaning fee to the restaurant and write letters of apology. The charges will be dropped when the terms of the sentences are met. A judge is using YouTube to punish two boys who used the video-sharing website for a prank that ended with battery and criminal mischi... more -
The Creation of the Universe...I mean, the Internet
Cool video about the creation of the internet and the issue of net neutrality.
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Google can read your mind
No, that's not what I meant ...but now that you bring it up
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Six degrees of Wikipedia
Stephen Dolan at Trinity College Dublin has found a way to show the smallest number of Kevin Bacon steps separate any article on Wikipedia from any other.
So for instance, if you want to find the shortest path between, say, the Sweetgum tree and ball bearings, just enter them on the page and check out the results (you usually have to submit a couple of times before it works):
Sweetgum --> Glacier --> Friction --> Ball bearing ... 4 steps! Stephen Dolan at Trinity College Dublin has found a way to show the smallest number of Kevin Bacon steps separate any article on Wikip... more -
Web 2.0 fails to produce cash
Many members of the Web 2.0 generation of internet companies have so far produced little in the way of revenue, despite bringing about some significant changes in online behavior, according to some of the entrepreneurs and financiers behind the movement.
The shortage of revenue among social networks, blogs and other "social media" sites that put user-generated content and communications at their core has persisted despite more than four years of experimentation aimed at turning such sites into money-makers. Together with the US economic downturn and a shortage of initial public offerings, the failure has damped the mood in internet start-up circles.
Yet that has not stopped a continuing round of venture capital fundraising and acquisition activity at high valuations as investors and corporate acquirers hunt for businesses capable of rising above a crowded field.
"If you look at some of the valuations, you wonder what fantasy of revenues they're based on," said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Hummer Winblad.
In one sign of the continued hopes for start-ups that have yet to alight on a solid business model, several financiers expressed support for the private fundraising being undertaken by Twitter, one of Silicon Valleys' most talked-about companies. The "micro-blogging" service, whose users post messages no more than 40 characters long, has yet to find a way to make money, but its early adoption by a group of enthusiastic users is seen as a sign that it will eventually be successful.
Many members of the Web 2.0 generation of internet companies have so far produced little in the way of revenue, despite bringing about... more -
Microformats: Moving along with the evolution of the Web
How many Web sites can you point at random that has valid and proper markup? Consider the complexity that goes into producing a proper Web document (i.e., (X)(HT)ML). Microformats works quite well into the equation that it can solve a greater portion of the common problems, namely the "semantic web" using the widely adapted standards on existing documents.
We have the opportunity to boot-strap our existing data with microformats. We can use (h)GRDDL for instance to transform a microformatted (X)HTML document into RDF(a). If and when the uppercase "Semantic Web" is here (in fully functional order and with all the bells and whistles with "usable", "human friendly" applications and tools both for the publishers and end-users) then we can push our existing data forward.
In the case of natural language processing, this is still quite complex today because we are bound to the limitations of a) our knowledge on solving NP problems b) digital computing.
When quantum computing becomes available at a level where we can ask a computer for instance to give a summary of an article, we will no longer need to worry as much as we do now about the machines struggling to understand the data bits. The problem is still quite complex since machines need to be fed extra information for context. Understanding humour, sarcasm, irony, and variety of emotions to name a few is necessary for a machine to get to the real context of the information and to go beyond the literal meaning.
Microformats is not tied up to any markup (one of the goals) other then a few exceptions as far as parsing is concerned, however, that is always subject to change in light of a better way of solving a particular problem. So you can take an un-semantic markup and it can still contain microformats in which a script can retrieve those identifiable components.
Microformats also allows us to reuse a single instance of data for multiple formats. Several class-name-patterns can be combined to represent the data in different contexts
Using minimal (unique) markup forces us to write redundant or hard to scale code. Since common patterns occur, it makes sense to define templates on a granular level in order to reuse them in various places.
The whole premise of the Web and how it took off as it did is because of the fact that we made data easily accessible by humans; textual markup for the win. Microformats emphasizes only marking up visible information for humans. If it is not intended to be retrievable then it would make more sense not to make it public from the very beginning. If an email address is intended to be read (without having to look at the source code) then that email address can be optionally marked and be available for the scripts. In any case, the information is already there and can be retrieved by a fully committed script regardless of any tricks to fool email harvesters. We are able to set licensing terms (e.g., creative commons) on the data that we share; it helps the reader understand their rights with the information and what they are allowed to do with it.
Microformats is part of the natural evolution of the Web. Simply there is a need for it and the solution is reasonable enough to adapt to. How many Web sites can you point at random that has valid and proper markup? Consider the complexity that goes into producing a proper... more -
Ten ways the Chinese Internet is different from yours
Pros: there's less spam, It's based on IPv6, it's safer, it's growing faster
Cons: it's slower, blackouts are common, it's monitored, access to foreign web sites is limited, it's censored, there's less porn Pros: there's less spam, It's based on IPv6, it's safer, it's growing faster ... more -
new media, two girls, one cup
is .tv good enough to replace the real thing?
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Web has no standards
A GREAT piece of video created for IFC
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related topics
A Series of Tubes
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A Series of Tubes
