Playstation 3 + PlayOn! = Killer Home Video Setup?

Posted on September 27, 2008 by Mark Cahill

I’ve had a glimpse into the future of home video and it surprisingly comes from a device I already owned, the Sony Playstation 3 (and it works on the XBox 360 as well, but I haven’t tested). By downloading and installing a small app to my windows machine, I am now able to access online content from Hulu.com, CBS.com, Youtube.com, ESPN.com and soon, CNN.com and Netflix.

The software is PlayOn! which is currently available as a 60 day beta trial, and when released is expected to cost $30.00 when it reaches full release. It’s made by a company called MediaMall who’s got the tantalizing mission statement: “MediaMall Technologies enables Low-Cost & Widely Available Media Services, delivered over Broadband to the Entertainment System, via the PC.” Now how can you possibly go wrong?

The software isn’t completely perfect yet, but it still gives me a better picture than I get with my standard, non-HD cable line. I have occassionaly had some jerky delivery, but I’ve found it I pause for a few minutes, go make some popcorn or something, and come back, whatever I’m watching runs fine. Navigationally, I find the PS3 controller a bit challenging to use, but my 9 year old daughter is getting around like a pro. Continue reading →

Post Olympics Reviews from Lenovo

Posted on September 25, 2008 by Mark Cahill

When a project ends, good companies do post-mortems to determine what worked, what didn’t to help them improve institutionally, while identifying possible opportunities created, and mitigating any risks exposed. Great companies do this and they do it in a way that the rest of us can benefit as well. Such is the case of two excellent post Olympics assessments from Lenovo.

Esteban Panzeri

First off, I’ve got to call attention to Esteban Panzeri’ post “End of Madness Recap” from his blog, “The Challenge”. Since I spend a lot of time in the trenches shoveling bits and bytes around, I naturally gravitate to the folks that turn the dreams into reality, and on this project, Esteban was apparently the guy.

He comes up with an excellent list of lessons learned and among them:

Ideas will flow like rivers, it is execution that matters

One must learn to focus and discard things quickly

Anything can be done

Outsourced stuff does not always work as it should

Distributed content is the future

“Ideas will flow like rivers, it is execution that matters” – a line I am printing out in 72 point type to hang in my office. Yes, indeed, ideas are important and without them, there is no innovation, but too many of us forget that at some point we need to stop talking a start doing. Only a select few ever truly learn this lesson. Continue reading →

Old Media Lessons for New Media

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Mark Cahill

Just because you’re new media doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few lessons from old media. As we’re so fond of saying, new media is all about changing delivery channels of old media, hence I think it’s implied that the old school journalism rules have a place in our lives going forward.

First off, we need to think about what type of journalism we’re doing. In almost all cases for bloggers we’ll fall into one of the following three categories: Continue reading →

NY Times: I Got the News Instantaneously, Oh Boy

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Mark Cahill

(For our newer readers, I used to work for the premier supplier of newspaper software systems, and in the dim and distant past was a writer with the Worcester Telegram – so I still follow what’s going on in the print world quite closely)

The Sunday New York Times had a very intesting article this morning entitled “I Got the News Instantaneously, Oh Boy” which was written by Media Writer Tim Arango. In it, Tim takes on the issue of how United Airlines had 1 Billion in market valuation disappear due to a simple error that republished an old article from 2002 on the Internet. Continue reading →

How Technorati Gave Away Their Special Sauce

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Mark Cahill

I used to use Technorati to find compelling blog posts to share and comments. It was rather convenient to be able to go to one spot and find out what people were saying in blogs around the globe and to easily search. One of the most compelling features, for me, was that it was an application designed with blogs only in mind.

This morning I was looking a set of compelling blog posts on the anniversary of 9/11. So I fired up my Google Chrome browser and headed over to Techorati. Strangely, the homepage was infested with non-blog newsources such as cnn.com, time,com, etc. The ration of mainstream media to blog posts on the homepage was around 3 to 1, with blogs drawing the short stick.

So I did a search on my topic, and once again, tons of mainstream media results, although they were at least clearly identified, once again my results bore lots of topics from big media.

Part of the problem is that lots of big media is now using blogs as a part of the content strategy. The New York Times is blogging using WordPress MU and many other papers and news channels are as well. Hence they get submitted along with the rest of the unwashed masses. And since they’re big media with big readership, they jump to the top of the authority heap. Authority is one of the measures that Technorati uses to rate your blog – in my case, an authority of 9, which used to be 40+ when I blogged at Vario, and a rating of 705,000 or so, vs. the Vario rating somewhere under 100,000k when I was active there.

I guess blogging has come to the big time and media’s realized it finally. I just wonder if there’s going to be any room for the rest of us when all is said and done.

Resources:

Technorati. Old Tools Don’t Die. They Gather Dust. – Global Neighbourhoods

What’s wrong with Technorati – Neville Hobson

Technorati and Me – Thornley Fallis

The Worm Turns for Big Media

Posted on August 12, 2008 by Mark Cahill

There have been two big events in the media world in the past couple days, and to some extent, I think both have gone largely unnoticed. The first is that the 2008 Olympics have become a real social media event, such to the extent that it’s been written about almost as much as Misty May’s tattoo or Michael Phelp’s speedo. From the NY Times (pointer via Churbuck.com) article by David Carr:

“On Friday, NBC spent the day trying to plug online leaks of the splashy opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in order to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. There was a profound change in roles here: a network trying to delay broadcasting a live event, more or less TiVo-ing its own content.”

(Read Churbuck’s commentary on this here…)

It’s true. I’m running YouTube videos from Beijing on Cycling.com and reading all manner of blogs, tweets, etc. about the festities. If you want a good look at what Web 2.0 can do for you, look at what Lenovo’s accomplished. Their SummerGames.Lenovo.com site has 100 athlete bloggers taking us right inside the story. How cool is it to see video and pics of the opening ceremony *from the inside looking out* or to hear someone like Robert Gesink from Denmark discuss the strategy he employed in the Men’s Road Race (cycling).

Lenovo didn’t stop there, they have a twitter account (Lenovo2008) which has kind of taken the next step from “getting the converstation started” to “keeping the dialogue going” (beware, they do tweet results – and they tend to come 6-10 hours before NBC shows the events). Then you’ve got their Interactive Podium – which has become my first go to site for Olympics info

So yes, the way that we’re getting our info is changing dramatically – and I’d urge anyone that’s not reading David Churbuck’s blog to do so right now – he’s posting from Beijing and covering the proceedings in a way that is truly unique and utterly motivating.

And meanwhile, back in mainstream media..via Valleywag

That which the newspapermen had been warning us about has finally happened. Last Friday when the Russia went into Georgia (actually South Ossetia, a mountainous region with around 128,00 70,000 inhabitants – note that Worcester, MA has more than twice as many residents at 175,000) , we were treated to a Google page on the war, with a pin in the map over Georgia. Savannah, Georgia, in fact.

We’ve been told by mainstream news that if we allow Google to be our newsource, our news is only going to be as good as their algorithm, and in this case, it put Georgia on the opposite side of the world.

The point is that as we push away from the main stream, this is exactly what we lose. When the story is machine made, rather than vetted by a surly old copy editor, it’s going to get gamed, and it will sometimes be wrong. In this case, it’s *REALLY* wrong.

On another note, I suggest we all take a look at some foreign news sources today to find out what they think about the Russia/Georgia war – I think we will find their take wholly contrary to that which we are getting from AP which has almost been a single source for US news reporting on the issue. (Here’s a good bit from Reuters…)

One is the Loneliest Number…Community Building 101

Posted on August 11, 2008 by Mark Cahill

Technically, building a community platform is easy: you just get a fist full of developers, hand them a spec, give them a blank server and turn them loose. At some point in the not so distant future you have your new community site ready for testing. Soon there after, you’re ready to welcome the real users.

The problem is, you quickly find, even if you’ve got a premium domain, that the world isn’t sitting around waiting for you to open your new site. It’s time for the real building work to begin; and if you’re in the position most of us end up, there’s probably little or no budget for the community development.

It’s time to go guerrilla!

I’ve decided to take a site with great potential and adopt it as my own for the purposes of proving the guerrilla community building tactics I’m about to share with you – so this article will actually come in a series of installments; think of it as a lab experiment.

The site I’m using is Cycling.com which I’ve chosen as it’s a likely candidate for a bump from the Olymics. You’d expect that you’d be able to discuss cycling events at a site like cycling.com, right?

First, an overview:

Cycling was relaunched on a new platform, vs. the old park page that had inhabited the site, sometime in late February, and since has had little or no attention from either the site editors, or anyone that could be considered a community builder. It is built on a hybrid platform of WordPress and BBPress, with pretty much all of the community functions you’d expect to see:

Forum
Personal profile page
User generated content, including articles, videos, photos, blogs, etc.
Groups – which also leverage the ability to create private group articles, photos, videos, etc.
Friend capabilities – add a friend, see friends activities, personal messages, etc.

For the Olympics, we’ve added an RSS feed of the Lenovo Bloggers that gives us access to the cyclists who are blogging. Very cool (big thanks to David Churbuck at Lenovo). This gives us a steady flow of new content, which I don’t have to write. I’ll also be putting up summary articles of the cycling action as the events unfold. This evening, I’ll be writing up both the men’s and women’s road race events.

Where we are now:

We’ve got the classic problem: no one wants to be the first, and there hasn’t been enough forum traffic to get any gravitas going. Yes, we get traffic, but it’s almost all unique, meaning that we’re not getting the return traffic. In short, it isn’t working.

Guerilla Community Building 101:

At random, here are some of the techniques I will be using to try to jump start the discussions:

I’ll be posting on the forum under a couple of different user names, so that it doesn’t seem that anyone is “the first” to join the community.
I’m looking to enlist some friends who are avid riders to get things going. I may resort to bribery by making it a condition of my sponsoring them for the Pan Mass Challenge (benefit for cancer) although they all know I’ll contribute no matter what.
I’ve added a tag line to my email sig as well as the sig I use on my established, successful sites.”Join me on Cycling.com for 2008 Olympics Cycling News, Videos, Athlete Blogs, and Discussions”
I’ll keep the discussion going by adding new content daily.
I’ll have an email sent whenever anyone posts, and will make sure that any question is answered within a reasonable time period (to me, that means within 2 hours during the work week and 24 on weekends, but I will aim to be better.
Graft – I’ll have some gimmee stuff done up to hand out, and put a bounty on best post of the week (once I have some posts).
Stickers – I’m getting some bumper stickers to both hand out and put on my own vehicles.
If I were truly an expert, I’d be participating on other cycling sites, acting as the expert, answering questions, and I’d have my url in my sig.
I’ll be commenting on cycling blogs and you can bet I’ll be using my own url.
I’ll enlist help wherever I can get it - Within the company I know there are some pretty serious riders. I similarly have friends who are riders and I will ask all to give me a couple posts a week for while.
Early adopters will be cherished – I will find ways to make them feel special and to show them they are truly appreciated.

As such, I’m also asking for *YOUR* help! If you’re a cyclist, join the site and let’s start talking. Since you’re coming from this blog and this post, you then no doubt have some community building skills to add, and I’ll be happy to have you on board!

I’ll be reporting back on what’s working and what isn’t. Of course, as with anything in community development, your mileage may vary.

Top Ten List of Apple IPhone Apps used by Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton while they were Eaten By Sharks

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Mark Cahill

Traffic stats – the red headed step child of statistics, damned lies cloaked inside a slathering of untruth and then wrapped in that un-Godliest of file formats, xls and used to bludgeon all that is sane and rational out of your web strategy. This is the stuff that reduces grown webmasters, those mastadonian throwbacks of an earlier tech era, to tears, and enables the airline magazine reading, conference attending execs to think they actually have a handle on what’s happening.

The truth is that the only true measure is cash. The cold, hard green stuff, the only thing that slays the monthly mortgage beast, or allows us to consume fossil fuels with reckless abandon.

Now the stats for this blog have got me completely befuddled. Yes, I can see what is happening, and I see that all too clearly. The problem is that I have little notion of how I should react.

From the top:

I notice from from MyBlogLog Stats that I’m getting 300 or so readers a week, up from 50 or so a couple months ago. Google confirms this.
The primary referer for those users is Google Images, specifically if you search for “sharks” which will show an image from one of my posts from June in the #2 spot.
My “One and Done” rate is (the site bounce rate) is threw the roof. I have lots of traffic that simply isn’t engaged. They’re coming to the wrong site and leaving.
That image is in danger of being hot linked all over the web. Google images is the place people generally go to find image for use on their blog, and frankly, it’s where I found the image in the first place. I am worried someone will live link, and I’ll end up getting a huge bill for bandwidth (this site is setup to withstand a visit to the Digg homepage or slashdotting).

Eugene and Tom, tell me I should be flattered. I’m not so sure. Perhaps it’s experience, perhaps its just my inbred belief that things tend to go from bad to worse, not good to better. So what are my options:

Do nothing – my wife’s beliefs aside, this is not my strong point. I hate inaction…
Throw in an htaccess rule protecting the images, then sending an adverisement for my site to anyone who links live. Nice idea, but frankly it’s hypocritical. I live link…a lot. I know it’s bad, but darn it, I like having images.
Go with Tom’s suggestion: start doing more shark content. Darn it, if they’re coming for sharks, then sharks they’ll get. I guess this is a good one, except for the fact that I have little access to shark content. Even though I once was almost shark food…and wear a mako shark tooth around my neck, and have a set of mako jaws on my wall above this very computer, that was caught on my boat while I was captaining, by my father.
Delete the image and wait for it to drop from Google.

Sadly, here is what I see:

Writing about sharks = actually making something out of this blog.
Writing about Social Media = sending lots of smoke up the chimney, and getting readers who’d never, in a million years, click on an advertisement
Writing about the Death of Print Media = talking to myself – its a dead issue, and no one is reading my posts about it anymore.

I guess if I really thought I wanted to monetize this blog, I’d start writing posts like “Top Ten List of Apple IPhone Apps used by Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton while they were Eaten By Sharks.” Then wait for the diggs to roll in…

That, I think I might be able to do…and for the record, I miss the days when I used to get paid to write stuff like this (and paid well, I might add…)

Social Media – Participation Rates Much Lower Than We Thought…

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Mark Cahill

Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester has a great post up entitled ” Why Some Don’t Need to Join the Conversation“. The basic premise is that even though social media has been so very hot in the past year or two, actual participation by users remains at a relatively low percentage of overall visitors.

To prove my point, let’s start with data: In most markets, (even youth) there are no bars that span 100% for creators. In fact, 18-24 year olds in United States only are creators 39% of the time. 45-54 year olds in UK only create online content a paltry 6%, although they are critics 11% of the time.

So what does this tell us? Not everyone is part of the online dialog exchange. Not everyone will ever be part of the online conversation.

This point has really been driven home lately to me as I’ve become more directly involved in the Reel-Time Community again. In discourse with a few readers, I’ve mentioned “well, you’ve only been a member for the past two years,” only to be told that they were actually lurkers back well into the last decade. In two distinct cases, that means they waited at least 8 years before registering or posting on a site they use almost daily.

So what’s it all mean? My feeling now is that you’ve got to assume that the active participants on your site are the tip of the iceberg. They’re responsible for helping to make the experience rich and vibrant, but you’ve got to realize that many of your dedicated users may actually never really contribute.

New information? Not hardly…we’ve been discussing the lurker factor on online bulletin boards since pre-internet days.

Media Deathwatch: Tampa Tribune

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Mark Cahill

Jessica DaSilva posted last week right after the Tampa Tribune Editor in Chief Janet Coats announced a major round of layoffs, and their embarkation for a trip in an entirely new direction:

Then she dropped the reality bomb:

“People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune,” she said. “The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”

(Bold added for effect)

The questions from much of the newsroom apparently were the same old saws: “how will this affect profits” and “How will we compete with the other local paper” (quotes not verbatim, I wasn’t there, but are true to what Jessica posts).

I’m glad to hear they got it. Stop chasing a model that obviously isn’t working anymore. Instead of trying to support print as the end all and be all, with it’s incredibly costly delivery mechanism, start thinking about yourselves as content development. Find *all the delivery streams* that can make you money and optimize them. Forget about the ones that don’t make you money.

All Things Cahill

The online home for Mark Cahill, and indeed, all things Cahill!

Category Archives: Online Media

Old Media Lessons for New Media

NY Times: I Got the News Instantaneously, Oh Boy

How Technorati Gave Away Their Special Sauce

The Worm Turns for Big Media

Media Deathwatch: Tampa Tribune