Helpful clues for the media industry

eirikso1 Comment

 

Okay, Doc Searls calls it helpful clues for the newspapers, but on the internet there isn’t that much of a difference anymore. So these clues are important for any media company that want success on the web. If you are going to follow one link today, visit Doc!

Eighth, uncomplicate your webistes. I can’t find a single newspaper that doesn’t have a slow-loading, hard-to-navigate, crapped-up home page. These things are aversive, confusing and often useless beyond endurance. Simplify the damn things. Quit trying to “drive traffic” into a maze where every link leads to another route through of the same mess. You have readers trying to learn something, not cars looking for places to park.

Now, if you add Doc’s clues for radio as well you have something to think about over the weekend.

(Via Buzzmachine)

Helpful clues for the media industry

Goodbye network neutrality in Norway

eirikso25 Comments

Disclaimer: I work for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. But, I find the question of network neutrality of great importance, regardless of the fact that this time I work for the content provider that have been influenced.

Update:
It seems like the customers won this battle (link, to Norwegian article). Due to bad publicity and reactions from customers NextGenTel have removed the limit and NRK is now back on full speed in their network. What should I say? Thanks to the people contacting NextGenTel and to the blogs and media that understand how this was a serious violation to network neutrality.

Original article:

In June 2006 NextGenTel, one of the biggest broadband providers in Norway decided to deliberately limit the bandwidth from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK). Meaning that customers of NextGenTel in Norway will experience a lower quality of service on content from the NRK compared to content from the providers that want to pay NextGenTel for distribution.

Because broadband customers in general don’t understand where the bottle neck really is they call the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation when they experience low quality on the large selection of free content from the NRK. To solve this the NRK have informed their users on their own web site:

A message for customers of NextGenTel

In june 2006 NextGenTel decreased the transfer capacity from NRK.no to customers of NextGenTel considerably.

This leads to a situation where you as a customer of NextGenTel will experience a completely different quality on for instance NRK Broadband-TV, compared to what the NRK actually offers their users.

This is outside of NRK’s control and any communication regarding this should be done directly with NextGenTel.

(Translated to english by Eirik Solheim)

The CEO of NextGenTel, Morten Ã…gnes tells the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten that they will give priority to the content providers that pay for better bandwidth.

Torgeir Waterhouse in the Consumer Council of Norway takes this as a serious threat to network neutrality in Norway and wants to call a meeting with the biggest broadband providers in Norway to find a solution.

He says to ITAvisen that it is critical for a digital community that broadband customers are able to choose the content they want and that the content should not be influenced by agreements of preferences by the network operators.

I couldn’t agree more. NextGenTel wants payment in both ends. From their customers and from the content providers. They want more control and who knows what kind of strange business models they bring in once they get acceptance for this kind of differentiation.

So what’s the solution then? Well, fortunately it’s an open market. If you’re a customer of NextGenTel in Norway I would recommend you to consider a change of broadband provider immediately.

God knows what they do next…

“Oh, so you like videos from that popular indie web site? Sorry, but Warner pays more, so as long as you’re a customer of us you should use them instead.”

I don’t need to explain why the issue of network neutrality is important. That has been done before. Here are some references:

We’re up for some interesting discussions here in Norway the next copule of weeks.

Please note: Initially I decided not to comment on this case, but because it is such a serious issue and of great interest for my readers I have decided to publish my thoughts.

This article is not an official statement from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. As stated on my about-page this is the private web page of Eirik Solheim and should not be read as the official opinions of my current or former places of work.

Digg this story.

Goodbye network neutrality in Norway

Understanding a new channel

eirikso4 Comments

NBC have been distributing trailers on YouTube for a while. Mostly trailers that they also run on traditional TV. Then, they get some negative comments about being commercial in a medium like YouTube.

It’s of course possible to simply put traditional videos on YouTube, and even have great success doing so. If the content is good you have the possibility to reach huge amounts of viewers.

However, the interesting stuff happens when you really use this new medium. Lonelygirl15 is an example of something that we’ll see more of. Using traditional story telling, but in a typical YouTube wrapping and form.

It’s the same old story. “Oh, we invented TV. Let’s take some radio presenters and put them in front of a camera”… And 20 years later this new medium of television has evolved.

Maybe we don’t need 20 years this time. NBC gets the message and produce this excelent promo, only for YouTube.

Link to video.

The trailers from NBC on YouTube have resulted in more than 6 million views in total so far. The most popular is the exclusives, previews and of course this one.

(Thanks, Linn)

Understanding a new channel

Sage TV looking for Mac beta testers

eiriksoLeave a comment

SageTV is a very interesting media center software for Windows and Linux. Now they’re looking for beta testers for a Mac version as well.

Sage is turning into a true cross platform media center software. My early experiments with Sage was very promising and now it seems like it’s time to give it another go.

The SageTV placeshifter and SageTV media extender is very interesting. Now, if you can start combining boxes and operating systems you have a very nice media server that can stream your media around the house to thin clients, windows, linux and mac boxes.

(Via PVRWire)

Sage TV looking for Mac beta testers

Idiots

eirikso7 Comments

I stole this headline from Jeff Jarvis. He is talking about Fox News:

FoxNews takes the Bill Clinton interview down from YouTube. Fools. They would be getting a whole new audience. They’d be even more part of the conversation.

I agree. Fools. One thing is that taking it down is a fight that they can’t win.Here is the results for the search “bill clinton fox news” on YouTube right now. And that’s only YouTube. Once it’s out there you can’t stop it.

But Fox is a commercial company. Of course they want to take their content down from YouTube. How on earth are they going to earn money from this distribution channel?

They want people to watch the clip on www.foxnews.com. In their own web-TV. A web TV with some problems:

  • less accessible
  • no discussion
  • not easy to link directly to a clip
  • not possible to include the clip on web pages where people discuss this interview
  • problems with less used browsers and operating systems

After emailing myself the link from the FoxNews player I was able to provide you with the direct link to that clip – FOX News Video: Heated Discussion. Warning: it’s a popup, so the player wil probably be stopped by your popup stopper.

So, people want it on YouTube. They want to discuss it. They want to paste the clip on their blogs and comment on it. So what should Fox do? I actually think that having the clip on YouTube will drive more people to their traditional channels. That they will earn more even if they can’t directly tie an income to the clip on YouTube.

But my suggestion right now would be that Fox take control. It should have been Fox that posted the clip on YouTube in the first place. They should have made their own submission the preferred among the YouTube crowd. By submitting it first. Maybe even before it was aired on traditional channels. They could also have added extra value to their own submission by including clips that was not aired on traditional channels.

YouTube are kind enough to provide Fox with a counter that will show how many people watched the clip on that channel. How about including commercials in the clip they post on YouTube? It shouldn’t be too difficult to price it, given that they have the number of viewers.

Idiots

Adobe Photoshop Elements and MCE

eiriksoLeave a comment

I am using Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 to administrate my images. To make collections, simple editing, tagging and organizing.

I have more than 30 000 images in my collection and Photoshop Elements is one of the programs that actually handle that amount of pictures.

 

The picture module in Windows Media Center is pretty limited. And it does not support automatic rotation based on EXIF info. That is extremely annoying. And, when I have tagged a series of images with “The best pictures from the summer of 2006” I want to be able to run that exact collection as a slide show on my TV.

Now, if you install Photoshop Elements 4 on your MCE box you will get an option in more prorgrams that starts a Photoshop Elements plugin for MCE. It has the pretty slow and boring navigation like online spotlight services and most of the other plugins for MCE, but it lets you browse tags, collections and calendars from Photoshop Elements in MCE on your TV screen.

I must admit that on my 30 000 pictures collection it is quite slow, but as long as I have made the collection in Elements first this is a nice way to look at it on the TV screen.

And, it lets you view PSD-files in MCE and rotates images based on EXIF info…

Adobe Photoshop Elements and MCE

The Long Tail in your living room

eiriksoLeave a comment

 

Oyvind answers my quick link to Fortune Magazine with a very good post on how the net will change your media habits. I decided to comment on it with a separate article here:

Moving the internet into the living room has been done before. But the big problem with the WEB-TV products of the late ninties was the fact that the companies making those products didn’t understand the living room situation at all and thought that web pages as we know them today would be a good idea on the big screen. They soon realized that it was a horrible idea. Traditional web pages are not designed for the big screen and a remote.

So, over the last couple of years products like the media center softwares you find here and connected hardware boxes like the proposed Apple iTV box, the Xbox 360 and other devices starts to bring content from the internet into your living room with a front end that is tailored for the big screen and remote control navigation.

The quality on YouTube and Google video is not at all tailored for the big screen, but that quality will be better. And I think we’ll see that the audience develop a tolerance for low quality on certain types of content combined with a need for high definition and very high quality on other types of content.

This is the long tail entering a space where the big broadcasters have been ruling for the last decades. I repeat, we’re up for some groundbreaking change…

The Long Tail in your living room

Viral Ads: It’s an Epidemic

eirikso4 Comments

Fortune Magazine’s Devin Leonard has a very interesting article on viral ads:

And here’s an intriguing question: Can YouTube and Google Video figure out a way to make this a business? If so, could they become the web’s equivalent of the broadcast networks?

These are the sorts of riddles that keep media moguls awake at night.

I have mentioned this before. When the internet really starts to shift the flow of money in the media industry we are up for some groundbreaking change…

(Via Micro Persuasion)

Update:
It’s already in the trackbacks for this article, but I want to make this one even more available and decided to put it up here in the article. Brilliantdays: It’s epidemic – soon your tv will have a zillion channels. Read it.

Viral Ads: It’s an Epidemic