Posts
Saturday, December 31, 2011
How to Tell a Great Cowbird Story· 9 Simple Steps & Some Extras
via cowbird.com
Love how workable Jonathan Harris has made Cowbird.
You can also add character images, profiles and role tags. Adding a location will trigger an interactive map and you can add an email address it seems to include others as storytellers in your story.
"4. Add an email address.
Adding an email address is a really thoughtful and courteous thing to do. When you add an email address for the character you create, that real-life person will be able to "claim" that character when they sign up for Cowbird. Don't worry — the email address will never be displayed to other people."
Shakespeare is Better with Popcorn (Mozilla that is) - demo video
Shakespeare is better with popcorn
This project proposes an alternative way to learn Shakespeare interactively and comprehensively, which combines video, text, and glossaries through jQuery and popcorn.js.
You can see an example of the data structure here.
start: 15 end: 17 orig: [defn]why > Wherefore[/defn] art thou Romeo? modern: Why are you Romeo and not someone else?The format allows for teachers to encode cue times for blocks of text using popcorn, as well as two separate translations (
origandmodern) and in-line definitions (defn) for difficult terms using a simple syntax. The application grabs definitions and puts them in a sidebar.Any location in the video can be accessed with a unique url (try clicking a term)
Very very cool: Nimble - Augmented Reality book-based library
via vimeo.com
Description from vimeo.com
"One of the places where the tension between searching and browsing is readily apparent is the library. We go to search for a book, do research, or just read and work. However, we often find ouselves getting lost among the shelves of books, spending time browsing, and hoping for a serendipitous discovery or two.
Nimble shows what a mixed touch, digital, projection, and book-based library might look like. This is relevant because people still like the tactile feel of books and other printed media and they also like to browse. The project also allows to collect and sort out notes and highlights from the books you are reading.
Rather than trying to find a book in the x^-15 decimal place with the Dewey decimal system, you can navigate spatially and orient yourself in the direction of your search using the digital search compass."
For more info: sureskumar.com/?p=134
Friday, December 30, 2011
Knowledge is the new start-up capital: Networks, Mentorship & New Ecosystems – by Jon Bradford – The Kernel
via kernelmag.com
Excerpt from a longer original post:
"...Investment capital is controlled and distributed by a very small number of people, and it comes with a series of terms and conditions. Intellectual capital, on the other hand, is widely distributed, and individuals can choose the terms on which it is shared. It can be given away freely, or charged for.
In our fast-moving society, the free exchange of information creates more value to both the provider of the information and the recipient than a proprietary approach. We are moving from a time when knowledge distribution was restricted and proprietary to an open source, collaborative future.
This is the fuel on which Silicon Valley has operated for decades. Now, others are cottoning on..."
read the full post here:
http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/opinion/2011/12/its-the-intellectual-capital...
Very Very Interesting: Could ‘Watched On’ Facebook News Feed Stories Save Netflix? | Excerpt from TechCrunch
via techcrunch.com
Original post bey Josh Constine:
"After a disastrous Q3 2011, Netflix stands to replace some of the 800,000 subscribers it lost. It’s savior? The Facebook news feed. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a revised bill to change the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 to allow people to opt in to having their movie rental activity shared. This Act had delayed the Netflix Facebook app‘s launch in the US. Now the Facebook news feed is beginning to show “Josh Constine watched The Walking Dead on Netflix” stories that point back to the Netflix site. After being enticed by something a friend has watched, Facebook users might sign up and pay on Netflix.com so they can watch too.
So far we’ve only spotted these stories coming from Facebook employee profiles. Above you can see how they look (ignore the Netflix logo I added). They would appear in the Ticker, news feed, and Timeline. They may just be tests in preparation for the official US launch of the Netflix Facebook Open Graph app. Regarding the roll out of the news feed stories, Facebook declined to comment and we’re awaiting a response from Netflix.
The Facebook Open Graph platform launched at f8 in September has helped Spotify gain millions of daily active Facebook users. This contributed to the 1.5 million new paying subscribers it pulled in this year. That kind of growth could help Netflix bounce back from a price hike that scared off subscribers, an embarrassing scrapped move to spin out its DVD rental business, and its plummeting stock price...."
Read the original here:
Thursday, December 29, 2011
TY Greg Landgraf! Museum Game Thought Experiment, part 2: ARG Examples | Excerpt via Museum Beyond Post
REXplorer: A mobile cultural heritage game at the Rex Regensburg Explorer Museum in Regensburg, Germany. The game encourages exploration of the city: players use a Wiimote-like device to interact with the city’s monuments, solving puzzles along the way. The game’s story involves helping a professor understand and research Regensburg’s “perpetual magic.” (In reality, exploring the history of the city.) The game also automatically blogs the experience for players to revisit as a memento of the experience.
Jewel of the Valleys: A mystery puzzle from the National Civil War Museum that could be solved using Civil War communication technologies and museum documents. Sadly, the game’s not still online; the link goes to a wiki of all of the game’s clues.
An Expedition with Mr. Mirrors: A one-day game at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, a Victorian-themed game where amnesiac players met strangers in the museum and solved puzzles in hopes of regaining their memories.
See the original blog post for more examples & links to earlier and following post:
http://museumbeyond.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/museum-game-thought-experiment-p...
“Twitter has fundamentally changed the way I make films,” Edward Burns and the Socialization of Indie Cinema
Excerpt from an excellent interview on mashable.com
"The Growing Importance of Social
Edward Burns credits Ted Hope for convincing him to join Twitter. Hope, a prominent independent film producer in New York City, explained to Burns it was crucial that he find 500 followers to share and promote his message. Hope’s thesis — which he has since revised to include 5,000 fans — is that connecting with the people that really care about your work is the most effective way of getting things seen.
Hope was right. Since joining Twitter, Burns has found numerous opportunities to answer questions from fans, share insights about his filmmaking process and, of course, promote his projects.
For his last project, Nice Guy Johnny, Burns was able to crack the top six in iTunes the week it was released. “This was a film with no budget, absolutely no money for marketing — outside of traditional morning show press stuff — that appeared next to major box office hits.”
via mashable.com
Top 10 Most Pirated Movies of 2011 | TorrentFreak
Most Downloaded Movies on BitTorrent, 2011
rank movie downloads worldwide grosses torrentfreak.com 1 Fast Five 9,260,000 $626,137,675 2 The Hangover II 8,840,000 $581,464,305 3 Thor 8,330,000 $449,326,618 4 Source Code 7,910,000 $123,278,618 5 I Am Number Four 7,670,000 $144,500,437 6 Sucker Punch 7,200,000 $89,792,502 7 127 Hours 6,910,000 $60,738,797 8 Rango 6,480,000 $245,155,348 9 The King’s Speech 6,250,000 $414,211,549 10 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 6,030,000 $1,328,111,219
via torrentfreak.com
Really interesting numbers when you look at what's not on this list: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Like - ZINK | Zero Ink Printer - Technology–How it works
via zink.com
From the site:
"How it works.
ZINK® stands for Zero Ink® - an amazing new way to print in full color without the need for ink cartridges or ribbons. ZINK Technology encompasses both the ZINK Paper® and the intelligence embedded in every ZINK-enabled device. ZINK enables a new category of color printing devices and paper that work as a system to print in a whole new way.
Based on advances in chemistry, engineering, physics, image science, and manufacturing, the development of ZINK has generated an IP portfolio that includes over 180 patents and patents pending. At the heart of the technology is ZINK Paper which looks like regular white photo paper before printing. Heat from a ZINK-enabled device activates the color-forming chemistry within the ZINK Paper, forming all the colors of the rainbow. The printing process is now radically simple. Just add ZINK Paper™."
Janko Roettgers on: Will 2012 be the year of hypermedia? — Excerpt from Tech News and Analysis
"Radiolab and Al Jazeera
The Hyperaudio Radiolab experiment is an interesting mashup between audio, text and pictures that is based on Soundcloud's API and the Popcorn.js HTML5 media framework.
Boas started playing with synchronizing text and audio in HTML5 about a year ago. A few months later, he stumbled across a blog post by Henrik Moltke about the use of open web technologies to advance radio, an idea Moltke coined Hyperaudio. The two of them started collaborating, got some support from the Mozilla Foundation, and soon after, they had done some really interesting demos that show how powerful the combination of audio, text and the web can be (make sure to take a look at the demo for WNYC’s Radiolab if you haven’t seen it yet.)
Both Boas and Moltke come from the intersection of audio and HTML, which explains the moniker Hyperaudio. But that doesn’t mean that the Hyperaudio Pad and the ideas behind the technology will be restricted to radio programs only. “This can be applied to video as well as audio,” Boas assured me, and there’s a good chance that we will soon see some of the first hypermedia use cases for online video in action..."
via gigaom.com
Read the full post here:
http://gigaom.com/2011/12/27/hypermedia-hyperaudio-mark-boas/
WITCHFACTORY PRODUCTIONS | Transmedia Franchise: Adore
via witchfactory.com
Excerpts from the site - see http://witchfactory.com/projects/adore/ for more details
"Adore is an original 360° Transmedia franchise, composed of interwoven narratives that are told through multiple media platforms designed to immerse the user in a unique and magical universe....
Adore is an innovative transmedia franchise currently in the packaging and pre-production phase of development. Adore will release core internet interaction, graphic novels and merchandising and evolve into film, musical theatre, toys and gaming. We have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the media and online technology industries and an agile business model where each transmedia franchise will be its own legal entity consisting of Witchfactory Productions, strategic partners and investors. In this model funds will flow back into Witchfactory Productions through original rights assignments, licenses, royalties, consultancy fees and share dividends...."
TorinoFilmLab | Transmedia Project for Kids| The Tower of Fables
via torinofilmlab.it
See Torino FilmLab's site for a full description of this transmedia project for kids:
Excerpt describing the transmedia elements!
"Animation movie
At the core of the project lies an animation movie. The story will revolve around Tim Tom’s efforts to save the Tower of Fables, Storyville and its inhabitants from the clutches of Utrek, the evil wizard.
Interactive website / App
However the project will start with the creation of a web based portal where kids are introduced to Storyville, its inhabitants and most of all to the magical Tower of Fables.
Children will be asked to create an avatar... Once this is done, children are allowed to roam freely around the whole of Story Town. They can play free games and meet many of the characters of this universe. The mythology and the back story of the place are introduced slowly. Children will be able to understand the history of the place by playing various games with many of their favourite characters... Like helping Little Red Riding Hood cross the woods etc.. However the children will always be directed towards visiting the magical tower. There they can read, listen and even write their own fairy tales.
Publishing
A series of books about the history of the Tower and the inhabitants of Story Town will be released in conjunction with the site...
Live Events
Various events will be organized where a PHYSICAL TOWER is taken to various schools where children will listen to stories as actors act them out but also they will have the possibility to leave the books they have finished reading for others to make use of.
Game
A Wii game will bring the story arc to a conclusion as children will be able to don the uniform and go on a quest to defeat the evil wizard who has returned and is keeping Little Bo Peep hostage...
Very cool use of Arduino in Shop Window Installation: All Eyes On You
via vimeo.com
Description on vimeo.com:
"First edition of Britzpetermanns shop window installation project.
The series is starting with “All Eyes On You”, a bunch of different sized eyes who follow the passers-by. Simple concept, but the effect was immense. The passers-by loved it especially the kids react with the installation without any inhibitions."
Social media: Have we finally hit the peak of the hype cycle? Excerpt from Ted Sapountzis' post on smartblog.com
Growth is slowing down: The New York Times reported that growth in Facebook visits was a “mere” 10% in the 12 months ending in October, down from 56% a year earlier. Meanwhile, Facebook is preparing for an IPO early next year. As George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, said at the LeWeb conference, “Social is running out of hours. Social is also running out of people.” Companies are not able to generate value (aka return on investment): I wrote about the holy grail of social media ROI more than a year ago, and eMarketer published a flurry of research this month. Some of the mind-numbing statistics are that only 8% of marketers could attribute ROI for all of their investments in social media, while 60% still count fans, followers and “likes.” This translates to 2 in 5 marketers having little confidence in their ability to measure social media campaigns, according to a Chief Marketer study. Corporate investments are decreasing: According to a University of Massachusetts Dartmouth study, “social media use among America’s largest companies is losing steam.” Their study, which focused on the Fortune 500, found no growth in corporate blogs, while use of Facebook and Twitter grew only 2%. This certainly is consistent with discussions with my peers in the industry.
via smartblogs.com
Read the full post for Ted Sapountzis' recommendations:
http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2011/12/27/social-media-have-we-finally-hit...
Summary of My Story Architecture Talk with Karine Halpern @StoryWorld 201 « Grazie! Christine Wietbrecht
StoryWorld 2011 in San Francisco: Day 3
Written By: Christine - Nov• 03•11DAY 3:
Talk: Story Architecture – Crafting Transmedia Design
Siobhan O’Flynn, Karine Halpern with Scott Walker
- How to lead audiences across different platforms is still a challenge of transmedia, and it is a crucial question for experience design.
- Stories are so popular because they communicate experiences and emotions.
- Design principles for transmedia stories:
- Non-linear spatial storytelling – whilst keeping the coherent and cohesive.
- Break the 4th wall: augmented reality. Transmedia offers tremendous opportunities for individuals to enhance their own experience of the story, to play with the content on their own terms.
- Social (relationships, sustainability, social media marketing): The sustainability of communities surrounding storyworlds becomes increasingly important. It takes a huge amount of commitment and energy to foster and maintain fan communities, and stopping this fostering and maintenance is a seen as a betrayal of the audience by the fans. Producers must be aware of this from the very beginning.
- Participatory and/or UGC: Both allow the audience to move from passive to active by offering opportunities to ‘touch’ the canon.
- Transmedia allows for a shift towards spatial design:
- Non-linear narratives open new narrative spaces for audiences
- Fans can move between multiple platforms (spaces)
- Characterss and story archs extend over time and across platforms
- There are multiple points of entry into the story universe
- There is increased room for interactivity
- Producers need to ask themselves what the audience experience is supposed to be - thrill, threat, excitement, competition, for example – and base their narrative design on this experience type throughout all platforms.
- Your story and the technology are only two tools in transmedia storytelling. Your audience also becomes a tool in itself, particularly through interactivity and participation. This means that as a producer, you must understand people’s behaviors, their instincts and needs, etc. and use this knowledge to shape the transmedia experience.
- The 5 “E’s” of experience design:
- Entice – You have to find a way to invite your audience into your experience, and to lead them across the different platforms involved. Often, teasing them helps to accomplish this.
- Enter – Once the audience enters your transmedia experience, you must make it clear to them what they have to do and what is expected of them. Direct them through the use of appropriate sign posts; genre, familiar story archs, and characters are very strong cues as well.
- Engage – Now that your audience is invested in your experience, allow them to engage with it and to derive satisfaction from the engagement.
- E-motion – Even if your audience is invested in your experience, they can still leave easily. You have to find ways to prevent audiences from leaving and to move them deeper into the experience instead. Once one sub-set of the overall experience is finished, help them to move to the next.
- Extend – Help your audience to share the experience and to draw in others.
- Designing a transmedia narrative doesn’t mean there is no ending to the story. There has to be a grand narrative composed of many smaller narratives, and all of them have satisfying endings in themselves.
Activity: Interactive Storytelling
Grazie to Christine Wietbrecht's Thoughts on the T Blog for reposting!
Doc Channel Blog, Interview: Wim Wenders on "PINA" & Why 3D is the Future of Documentary
A very small excerpt from the Doc Channel Blog Interview:
DCB:
ARCHITECTURE IS AN INTERESTING SUBJECT TO TACKLE WITH 3D NEXT. BETWEEN YOUR FILM AND WERNER HERZOG’S CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS AND EVEN CONCERT FILMS IT SEEMS 3D IS A GREAT TOOL FOR DOCUMENTING DIFFERENT AREAS OF THE ARTS.
WW: Most architects build this stuff and they already have 3D representation. They can enter a building before they even build it. But I think especially with modern architecture, to make a film that really deals with the sense of place and how it changes the way people use buildings and are shaped by cities and buildings, that could not really have been done before. To feel what the room does to you, that is something that you could describe almost better in words than in a two-dimensional film. It is really about a sense of place. That’s a feeling that many architects share with filmmakers and that’s a common thing the two professions have. I’m really excited to have this tool now that gives this sense of place, and so I am quite excited about my architecture project."
THE TERRY GILLIAM SCHOOL OF FILM: 10 LESSONS FOR DIRECTORS TODAY | The Filmmaker Magazine Blog
Excerpt from Ariston Anderson's original post - December 19 2011:
read the original for the full list - I like this one:
"3. Auteurism is out. Fil-teurism is in.
Being an auteur is what we all dreamed of being, as far [back] as the films of the late ‘50s and ‘60s, when the idea of the auteur filmmaker arrived on the planet. And people kept using that term, and they do with my movies because I suppose they are very individual and they give me all the credit, so they say I’m an auteur. And I say no, the reality is I’m a ‘fil-teur.’ I know what I’m trying to make but I have a lot of people who are around me who are my friends and don’t take orders and don’t listen to me, but who have individual ideas. And when they come up with a good idea, if it’s one that fits what I’m trying to do, I use it. So the end film is a collaboration of a lot of people, and I’m the filter who decides what goes in and what stays out."
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Social or Cultural Entrepreneurship: An Argument for a New Distinction | Stanford Social Innovation Review
Excerpt from an excellent essay on the Stanford Social Innovation Review site:
"...Think of cultural entrepreneurship as social entrepreneurship’s little sister. Social entrepreneurship has gotten considerable attention in the last decade in terms of resources, investment, and analysis—and deservedly so. Some of the most exciting new innovations in social change are happening under the ever widening big tent movement of social entrepreneurship, fueled by organizations like Ashoka, Acumen Fund, and Echoing Green. David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World, has founded the blog Dowser that focuses on “solution journalism,” giving voice to innovators who pursue the much-coveted triple bottom line: people, planet, and profit.
As social entrepreneurship has come of age as a field, it’s become more and more apparent to us that a new distinction must be made between innovations that focus on changing markets and systems and those that change hearts and minds. Building on the work of entities like the Santa Fe, N.M.-based Global Center for Cultural Entrepreneurship, we argue that cultural entrepreneurship is different than social entrepreneurship, because it is focused primarily on reimagining social roles and motivating new behaviors—often working with and in popular culture to reach the widest possible audience. Social entrepreneurs solve problems by disrupting existing systems, as microfinance has, or through breakthrough product design, like the solar powered lights from d.light design or Barefoot Power. Cultural entrepreneurs, on the other hand, solve problems by disrupting belief systems—using television shows like Glee to initiate viewers into the disability or GLBTQ rights frameworks or the Twitter campaign #mensaythingstome, designed to expose anonymous misogyny online..."
via ssireview.org
read the full essay here:
http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/social_or_cultural_entrepreneurship_an_ar...
Edward Burns, Director of Newlyweds, on the Changing Face of Indie Film Distribution & VOD Platforms - The Daily Beast
Edward Burns on indie film distribution - Excerpt from a longer post on thedailybeast.com "...As all indie film distribution companies will attest, the economics of a theatrical release for smaller budgeted films just don’t really make sense. And many of these companies have gone out of business clinging to this old model. The few specialty distribution companies that are left are exploring different models, with a greater emphasis on VOD and shorter windows between theatrical release and digital release. These companies even regard the theatrical release as a loss leader, a way to market the film for its more significant ancillary revenue to follow.
Slaven Vlasic / Getty Images
To be fair, bypassing the studio forces you to make some significant compromises, but as a filmmaker, these are things I am comfortable sacrificing. While I may not get the comforts of a big production—the fancy equipment, the big set pieces, working with huge movie stars, I also have complete creative freedom to tell the story I want without any outside interference. Any decision, from casting to script to music, is made between me and my creative collaborators. When the terrifically talented (but largely unknown) actors that I’m able to work with come on set, they know there won’t be a spread from craft services waiting for them. Or a stylist and makeup artist on hand to fix them up between every scene. We’ll likely have early mornings and late nights, and without a giant machine to move after every set-up, we are shooting about 10 pages of dialogue a day. The actors get to act, and typically love the liberating, creative environment we have created. But that is what I love about filmmaking. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to make successful films on small budgets. And now I’ve found the best way to distribute these films to an audience—using digital platforms...."
Tis the List Season & this is a Good One! Innovative Interactivity (II) | Top 50 multimedia packages of 2011
Top 50 multimedia packages of 2011
Listing Tracy Boyer Clark's categories:
Journalistic Multimedia:
Advertising Multimedia:
Student/Training Multimedia:
Philanthropic Multimedia:
Documentary Multimedia:
- One millionth tower
- Africa to Australia
- Mindstorming
- A matter of decency
- Brain games
- Half-Lives: The Chernobyl workers now
- The Denali experiment
- Surviving the peace
- Almost there – the Muir project
- Balloons of Bhutan
Find the full list here: http://www.innovativeinteractivity.com/2011/12/23/top-50-multimedia-packages-...
This work, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.
The year in mobile apps: Where we’ve been, where we’re going: HyLoMo & NFC - got it? — Tech News and Analysis
via gigaom.com
Excerpt from gigaom.com projections for 2012:
"In 2012…
More HyLoMo everywhere. “HyLoMo” is a cutesy, shorter way of saying “hyper-local mobile,” a concept that’s already being infused into apps, but should take off in a big way next year. The basic concept: Much of our activity is reasonably local — we tend to shop, eat and travel in the areas near to where we live and work. Smartphones already know where we are, so apps and any service can now take advantage of the river of information that’s now available from a variety of sources about where we tend to go, what we tend to buy and what we want to do. “The amount of real-time data that’s available can change apps into being infinitely more useful,” says IMMR analyst Phil Hendrix, who’s researched this HyLoMo trend at GigaOM Pro. Whether that’s searching, making purchase decisions or looking for travel information, both consumers, businesses and advertisers should benefit...."
Jeff Gomez' Keynote at Storyworld 2011 - Inspiring! TY Simon Pulman on Transmythology.com
Excerpt from the full transcript - well worth reading the whole
"...In essence I was writing them into the mythology.
This is what is possible now on a colossal scale, on a global level. What I created was the Land of Corondor, a fantasy world, and I would tour these friends of mine, then later my college classmates, through this world. I made it feel real and relevant and I allowed them to explore every nook and cranny of it. There would be a dozen or more people sitting around the table playing roles like fighters and wizards and elves and participating in this narrative.
It became a kind of communal narrative that was actually shared by multiple groups because it had become so popular. That made me a tiny bit popular, at least among the nerd elite at college. I ran games every other day so there would be two or more entirely separate groups of players who were exploring different parts of this fantasy world. There would be dozens of separate plot threads, and then there would be that big epic story line (usually right before finals) where all of the groups met one another and clashed, and then had to band together against a common enemy…and it was amazing! Climactic battles, old rivalries settled, romances meeting tragic ends – it was really cool..."
QUESTION BRIDGE: Black Males #Transmedia Art Project on Identity in America
Question Bridge: Black Males is a transmedia art project that seeks to represent and redefine Black male identity in America. Through video mediated question and answer exchange, diverse members of this "demographic" bridge economic, political, geographic, and generational divisions.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
TheFWA Interview with Pietro Gagliano of Secret Location
via thefwa.com
a small snippet of the interview:
"... There is perhaps a shift in web use these days. We are seeing a decline in the purely experiential sites in flash with huge production efforts, to a relationship with clients based on tools and services, that many times have simples interfaces. How do you see that trend developing? Will Flash suffer?
We see this happening for sure. Especially when tablet and mobile sites are driving performance and creative decisions. However, we don’t feel this is because Flash as a technology is suffering, but rather, it’s a move towards what is appropriate for the audience in helping to meet both client goals and user needs. Rich interactive experiences can deliver powerful messages in an entertaining way, and there will always be a market for this, but there is also a greater need to deliver utility and value to users as well. We feel that it’s the properties with a lot of smoke and mirrors for the sake of an “exiting experience” that will become a rarity, because by nature they are over-engineered and less usable...."
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Edward Burns on 'Newlyweds' and the Future of Indie Filmmaking - The Moviefone Blog
Excerpt from Christopher Rosen's interview with Edward Burns:
"MF: You have been a champion of VOD in recent years -- do you really think that's the future of independent film?
EB: Two things that I just heard. Comcast is about to release something that says in the last 12 months, indie film viewership on VOD has jumped 75 percent. So, that tells me the message we've been preaching for the last couple of the years ... people get it. That the audience is there. They are in their living room. They used to go to the art-house theater. It isn't that they're not interested in these stories anymore, they just aren't interested in shlepping out and paying the extra bucks when they have a nice system at home. I absolutely think it's the future -- especially for the smaller independents. Because you can get out there and with a very small marketing budget. Depending on how much money you're going to spend on your film, you can now create a business model where you're not losing money. I don't wanna say you're going to get rich. Some films aren't going to make money. But if your'e smart about it and tenacious, there's a chance to break even. It costs so much to release a film theatrically just by P&A costs that you're always behind the 8-ball financially. You're almost guaranteed to lose money.
The other thing is, by going out on VOD and iTunes, especially, you can go out with an aggregator as opposed to a distributor. There's now a way for you to retain your copyright -- or just lease it to them for a couple of years -- and actually participate in the money that's coming in. Theatrically, I can tell you, we've had films where we should have seen some backend, and however they do their accounting, I guarantee you don't get it..."
Crazy Cool: So Twine, A Tiny Gizmo That Holds The Internet's Future | Co.Design
It's "the simplest way to get the objects in your life tweeting or emailing."Here's the basic idea behind Twine: Software and physical stuff should be friends. You can program webpages, data, all kinds of apps to do whatever you want them to--and even use awesome tools like IFTTT.com to hack them together without knowing how to code. But making that software talk to stuff in the real world--especially stuff that's just laying around your house, and not pre-designed to be a "smart product"--takes PhD-level skills. And that, according to Twine creators David Carr and John Kestner, is just plain wrong.
via fastcodesign.com
read the full article on fast company.com - fascinating idea
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665571/twine-a-tiny-gizmo-that-holds-the-interne...
Love Love Love Love: The Best Data Visualization Projects of 2011 from flowingdata.com
via flowingdata.com
some of my faces are in here - I love the one above
"9. See Something or Say Something
The way that people use web services has gotten a lot more interesting with the growth of mobile tech. People aren't just interacting via a standing desktop anymore. Eric Fischer compared Flickr and Twitter usage in this series of maps. White indicates where people used both, blue is just Twitter, and orange is Flickr."
Transmedia Is the New Black: "Media That Matters" Conference Explores the Future of Storytelling | International Documentary Association
via documentary.org
Excerpt from a longer post on the Media that Matters Conference:
"...This year's theme for Media That Matters was Storytelling Across Platforms, the goal of which was to demystify the concept of transmedia. Aufderheide says they wanted to "bring it down to earth and practice, and demonstrate creative approaches to using all the media available to support documentarians' objectives." And the speakers at MTM did not fail.
The most compelling panel was a look at three successful transmedia projects--Jacqueline Olive's Always in Season Island, a Second Life outreach accompaniment to her Always in Season documentary currently in production; Roland Legiardi-Laura's new media project Power Poetry, which grew from his documentary To Be Heard; and Luisa Dantas multi-platform documentary project Land of Opportunity. What was remarkable about these projects is that while each uses a different media platform, they are all engaging and activating the audience outside of the documentary viewing experience. And for many in the documentary community, that is the ultimate goal...."
Must Read: Danny Lieberman on Digital Content Distribution Vulnerabilities #infdist
Excerpt from a much longer & very detailed analysis:
"HD content protection – fundamentally flawed....
”The AACS design prevents legitimate purchasers from playing legitimately purchased content on legitimately purchased machines, and fails to prevent people from ripping the content and sharing it through bittorrent. The DRM people wanted something that could not be done, so unsurprisingly they winded up buying something that does not do it." ~ James Donald.
Now you understand why BitTorrent is so popular.
A popular TV series like Heroes is available for download on BitTorrents worldwide in AVI format within a few hours after airing with the commercials edited out. OK – Heroes is SD, not premium content like ” The Bourne Ultimatum” but so far I reckon the quality of the AVI download is not deterring users from watching Heroes off BitTorrent.
In world of download-only distribution, studios have an opportunity for expanding business using the Internet and a huge digital asset protection challenge. From the perspective of piracy (protecting intellectual property of the studio) and revenue assurance; being able to download HD content to a PC or PVR disk is an ugly threat, especially considering how easy it has been to crack or bypass AACS content protection in Blu-Ray and HD DVD until now. Once the content is stored on a hard disk on a Windows PC, you’ve lost control for ever.
The software and algorithms for Premium HD content protection are fundamentally flawed as Peter Gutmann shows in his article: A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection
Alternatives for a download world
As the consumer Internet moves towards a download-only distribution model, the motion picture industry needs to find answers to their digital asset protection challenge without biting the hand that feeds them.Network PVR may conceivably be the most effective method for protecting digital movie content from the perspective of both the studios and the consumer.
There is no such thing as a single silver-bullet, optimally-effective countermeasure to the vulnerabilities of flawed content protection schemes, flawed software implementations and vulnerable PC operating systems. That is the mistake of an over-reaching scheme like HDCP.
Gutmann’s analysis is outstanding in its breadth and depth but he doesn’t propose a system of countermeasures which would help the studios protect their intellectual property. In order to identify the most cost-effective set of countermeasures to the threat of piracy, we start off by examining risk profiles of different digital content distribution implementations.
Digital content distribution vulnerabilities...."
Nuno Bernardo: How to use Transmedia to develop a Comedy project |Excerpt from Original Post on MIPBlog
Comedy on the internet is obviously very popular. It is entertaining for the viewer and just a three-minute laugh can engage the audience in a very simple way. It is also accessible anywhere on YouTube or other social media services, and if you want to laugh at something you can access humorous material quite easily. Comedy tops the YouTube charts, whether it’s a talking dog, a laughing baby or someone having a domestic accident.
You will notice that most of this comedy is not character-driven; rather, it is sketch-driven and therefore you don’t have to connect with the characters in order to be amused. Most of these so called viral videos are one-offs. Like the 80s’ one-hit wonders, they achieve huge success with their first single but are not able to repeat that initial success and sustain a continuous audience.
This is one of the reasons that sitcom writers and creators develop strong character-based stories. Audiences connect with characters, even in comedy. As with drama-based stories, it is crucial that the audience has an empathetic connection with the characters. But the level of engagement with the majority of comedy content available on the internet is actually quite ephemeral and once consumed, people will move on from it. The point is that this transitory engagement makes it quite difficult for a comedy-based product to connect with an audience using transmedia.
full post here:
http://blog.mipworld.com/2011/12/nuno-bernardo-how-to-use-transmedia-to-devel...
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Greenpeace unleashes potent multi-platform protest :: Idealog :: the magazine and website of New Zealand creative business, ideas and innovation
By Cath Winks, December 16, 2011 @ 2:25 pm
Powerful, emotive and starkly original, Publicis Mojo‘s latest multi-platform campaign for Greenpeace is a simple yet stunning piece of PR, incorporating everything from pop-up art galleries to support from Radiohead.
via idealog.co.nz
Very Cool Kickstarter Campaign: An Ever-Changing Game, Designed and Written By its Players? Sounds Good.
via kotaku.com
Excerpt from kotaku.com post:
"The idea of user-generated content is nothing new, and success at implementing the concept has ranged from the niche (inFamous 2) to the wildly successful (Minecraft). Just this week, game designer/Carnegie Mellon professor/all around interesting and smart guy Jesse Schell launched a kickstarter campaign to support the latest project from his studio Schell Games (geddit?) called Puzzle Clubhouse.
Over at the game's Kickstarter page, you can check out a video in which Schell pitches the concept. It sounds fun enough in theory, but the the execution should be both interesting and educational, mainly because Schell is the man behind it.
From the Puzzle Clubhouse press release:
In the pursuit of that collaborative vision, Schell Games created Puzzle Clubhouse. The idea is to produce silly, fun, casual games as quickly as possible, with the help of the players, by letting them contribute artwork, music, stories, jokes, game ideas, and more. "Our long-term goal is to let the players create as much of the games as possible, with our professional developers there to help guide them," says Schell. "We're going to start small, having players submit and vote on artwork, but with each episode, we plan to push the envelope of player collaboration more and more."
Very Cool Idea: Puzzle Clubhouse: Crowd Designed Episodic Game Dev by Schell Games — Kickstarter
via kickstarter.com
From the site:
"Crowd-designed?
That's right. We're trying for something a little crazy. The idea behind Puzzle Clubhouse is an online community for a new kind of game development process, one that is crowd designed, and crowd supported. It's a creative experiment and we need your help to get it started!
Want to know more? Keep reading!.."
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