Media

YouTube pass CNN

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I know that the traffic charts from Alexa have to be read with caution and a knowledge about the fact that they can be unreliable. But for highly visited sites they are a good indication of usage and traffic.

I am currently working on an article about the long tail of content consumption and how the internet is about to change our habits and the way we spend time on different media.

During my research a friend pointed me to this nice comparsion.

YouTube and CNN

Two very different companies indeed, but an interesting trend…

YouTube pass CNN

Commercials gone wild

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The norwegian website Propaganda has an article out (norwegian) on how commercials now can be distributed through the net and can reach millions of people without the need of televison stations or cable companies. I used the fantastic Volkswagen commercials featuring Peter Stormare to illustrate this fact in my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival, and Propaganda asked me some questions. They have summarized the issues nicely in their article, but I have a couple of points to add…

Last year I posted a short article on the BMW commercial featuring Kermit the frog. A friend of mine, John Andreas Andersen was the cinematographer and I posted a couple of details from the production. At that point John Andreas had a very cool “making of” movie on his web site, but had to take it down after a cease and desist from Disney. Owners of everything regarding the little green celebrity frog.

Ever since, the search “BMW kermit” has been one of the most frequent searches that drives traffic from Google to my blog.

People have a genuine interest for this commercial. They miss the behind the scenes movie and want to know more. BMW hasn’t done anything about this fact. They have a huge audience that want their commercial. Seems like a dream for any marketer.

The making of is up on YouTube (at least at the time of writing this).

BMW had a huge success with BMW Films. A true example of how it is possible to reach out with commercials that people really want. The movies was made for distribution through the internet. They were so popular that they ended up screening them at cinemas in the US and selling a DVD with a collection of all the movies.

What happened to the Kermit spot? Why didn’t they buy the rights to the “making of”? Why is there no information about this spot on bmw.com? What should they have done?

Do like Sony

Their beautiful Bravia advert has been debated and praised by highly trafficed web sites. There is a big interest in the commercial and Sony has done something to meet this interest. They have put up www.bravia-advert.com. A web site with one mission, information and downloads regarding this particular ad. A look at the traffic rank for this site on Alexa reveals that making this site probably has paid off hugely.

I have never seen this commercial on regular TV. Still I know everything about it and have seen it several times on the net. Right now it has 3,4 million views alone on YouTube.

Welcome to a new world of distribution, marketing and the art of getting attention… More on this when I reach that chapter in my series of articles from my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival.

Commercials gone wild

The convergence that makes things difficult

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The next chapter from my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival. You find the rest of the chapters here.

Better quality

People have been talking about the convergence of devices for a long time. And if everything is melting together into one universal device this sounds like something that will be very easy to handle. Problem is that this is not the case. The convergence leads to an abundance of devices that can be used to recieve rich media like video and sound. The computer is turning into a video recorder. The mobile phone is turning into a media device. The TV is turning into a computer. And so on.

Better quality

This leads to huge amounts of new user situations. Broadcasters have to face the fact that people will watch their program in new settings. At work. On the go. At new times. In a foreign country. At their hotel room. While travelling.

Better quality

And then you have these young people that are able to do several things simultaneously. They surf the web while watching the TV. And I must admit that the illustration here is kind of old school. I have a remote in my hand in the picture. It should have been my Nokia. A browser, the TV, messenger, skype and the mobile for sending and recieving SMS. All at the same time.

The broadcast industry should start taking this serious. Do tests with synchronized interactivity on the net during a television program. Behind the scenes. Extra information. I must admit it. On several occations I have used IMDB during a movie to find extra information. Now start exploring this possibility.

And, did anyone question my headline “…that makes things difficult“? I hear that way too often. How on earth could hundreds of new devices for playing content make problems? For the broadcaster that has any tiny bit of foresight this is no problem. This is one huge possibility. The surface where you can show your content just quadroupled.

It’s like an airliner that suddenly got huge amounts of new planes, helicopters and space shuttles for free. Not difficult. Not a problem. Slightly challenging, but loads of fun and opportunities.

What’s next?
In the next chapter from my presentation we will revisit my one year old cartoon about Bob the Millionaire and have a look at what the industry has done to meet that absurd situation.

The convergence that makes things difficult

Predicting the future

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Whatever happens...

This is my first in a series of posts from my presentation at the Nordic Media Festival. I will tag them all with “NMF”, so that you can easily find all of them through the “Category Cloud” in my right sidebar.

I start the presentation talking briefly about how difficult it is to predict the future of technology. Using an example from the fantastic commercial in an old computer magazine that I found. Saying anything close to “whatever happens in the future, it’ll fit into this space” is bound to look ridiculous after a couple of years.

But is there something that is easy to predict? Something that we can take for granted when we try to figure out what will happen? I think there are.

Better quality

The quality will be better. If you can stream video over the internet today you can stream it with better quality tomorrow. If you can snap pictures with your phone today you can take pictures with a higher quality tomorrow.

Forcing us to think about issues like “what will happen when everybody can record broadcast quality video on their mobile?”. Following this rule, of course “broadcast quality video” will also be better. We will go from standard definition to high definition. But at some point the quality is “good enough”. An important factor to watch as well. Sony and Phillips failed to understand that CD quality is “good enough” when they decided to spend huge amounts on Super Audio CD.

In the quality discussion you should always keep an eye on what people really want. With the audio question they did not want better quality. They wanted higher availability. And started buying MP3-players…

More possibilities

If you can listen to audio on your computer today you can watch video tomorrow. If you can snap pictures with your mobile today you can record video tomorrow. Simple and very obvious. Still quite difficult to predict. Not the technical part, but again – what people really want.

Better knowledge

People will know more. They will demand more. It will be verry difficult to fool your audience. They will redesign your webpage and build services with your content before you can spell greasemonkey.

Globalisation

Region codes for DVDs was a bad idea in 1996. Dividing the internet into different countries is simply ridiculous. Know your audience. Know your local advantage. But don’t try to lock people out. They will break your virtual border.

Next chapter
In my next post from this presentation I will discuss the convergence of devices. The fact that this convergence of devices leads to an abundance of user situations.

Feel free to comment or contact me if you have more factors that you find easy to predict.

Predicting the future

The Amen Break

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Record

Pearse points me to an excellent little story about a very familiar drum beat:

You might also want to listen a great peice by Nate Harrison on the Amen break (you definitely have heard this, unless you’ve been living in a sound proof cave for years)
http://nkhstudio.com/pages/amen_mp4.html

It’s also a real nice example of bringing a great story alive in a simple yet compelling way.

Indeed! If you’re interested in music this is mandatory information. Thanks!

The Amen Break

Cool easter egg in an audio CD

eirikso1 Comment
Waveform displaying an image from audio

Apparently it is old news and was hot in the late nineties. I haven’t seen it before, and having worked as a sound designer I find this fascinating.

Aphex Twin has hidden an image of himself in the audio waveform of track 2 on Windowlicker. You need some software to find it and display it.

That’s what I call a cool easter egg on an audio CD. You know, like the easter eggs found in software, on DVDs and in movies. If you want to try this on your own productions here is a windows software that can help you out. Or you can use the Mac software that Apex Twin used to create the image above.

I haven’t found any cool examples of people doing the opposite, hiding audio in an image, but if you want to start implementing all kinds of data into other files you could try one of the following: Hide and Encrypt or Hider 1.1 (Both of them for Windows)

(Via Between Thought and Expression)

Cool easter egg in an audio CD

How to waste your company’s money and make an utterly stupid audio format

eirikso3 Comments
SACD

1. Be careful about timing.
Find an exact point when the majority of the users of existing formats are willing to change their habit. Around 1999 something happened to the way people wanted to consume music.

2. Analyze what this change is all about.
At this point people clearly moved towards more availability and was actually willing to sacrifice quality for the availability. Uncompressed audio was compressed and moved quickly between devices. Welcome MP3, Napster, iPod etc…

3. Now plan a format that is exactly the oposite of what people want
Welcome Super Audio CD (SACD). It was released in 1999. Most of you haven’t even heard about it. It is a very high quality audio format that is so insanely well protected that it won’t play on any of your existing devices.

It’s five channels but it won’t play on your new five channel home theatre. It’s digital but it won’t play on your new media center PC. Or Mac. Or Linux box.

This is just as stupid as it would be to launch a digital version of the good old Compact Cassette at the point when people got used to portable CD players and the professionals that wanted recording capabilities already had the high quality DAT system.

Oh. Wait. Someone did exactly that.

Or failing to understand that a special little disk with very low storage capabilities is not the way to go when people are used to carrying around their complete music library. Eh. Someone did that too…

How to waste your company’s money and make an utterly stupid audio format

Dagbladet today

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Dagbladet

Today there is an article about media centers in the norwegian newspaper Dagbladet. They have asked me about different solutions and give a quick overview of what all this is about.

I will also attend to a net meeting at dagbladet.no on tuesday 14th at 1300 CET. This meeting will be in Norwegian.

Please also feel free to post any questions or comments on this post in my blog.

To make it easier for Dagbladet’s readers I will give you a quick roundup of some media center links and advice:
– The complete list of software solutions
– A quick roundup of some of the systems I have tried
– An update with links to other articles as well
– Converting DVR-MS files from your media center
– Placeshifting, your media everywhere!
– Remote control your music collection in MCE
– Everything in the HTPC category

Update:
The Goatse joke was already taken, so I chose to wear my BoingBoing tee. 🙂

Update2:
Link to the story on dagbladet.no (Thanks, Jon)

Dagbladet today

The ultimate Apple remote control

eirikso3 Comments

More wishful thinking. More Apple rambling. And a description of the ultimate remote control. No doubt about it. I was disappointed in the remote control that Apple made for Front Row experience. For a second I was thrilled. Fantastic! A remote control with a scroll wheel! But no, it has six buttons. Period.

It looks like this:

Apple Remote

It’s IR. It’s one way. It has no screen. It has no scroll wheel.

Throw this away. Apple has already designed the ultimate remote. They only have to change some parts inside the iPod Nano.

In other words, the ultimate remote looks like this:

Apple iPod Nano

Remove all the memory. Remove the audio part. Throw in a bluetooth chip. Make a two way communication with Front Row Experience.

Voila. The coolest remote ever built. For listening to music from your Apple media box in your living room you don’t have to turn on the big screen. Just navigate with the remote and music plays from Front Row. When watching movies etc. you turn on the big screen. The LCD on the remote still gives you navigation info etc…

Then Apple makes an add on for the existing iPods. An accessory like the photo connector. A little something that you clip onto the bottom of your iPod Video or iPod Nano that turns it into a bluethooth remote for Front Row.

Dream on…

The ultimate Apple remote control