A few weeks ago, my General Manger, Dan Brodnitz, asked me to create a new feature for our Digital Media site. He showed me a sample video of an online editor chatting about recent topics his site was covering. Dan wanted something like that for O'Reilly Digital Media.
"But," he said, "I don't want you to spend a lot of time on it." This is the tightwire we walk everyday in online publishing. How do you create useful, compelling content as quickly as possible? So, I took some time to figure out a system that would enable me to produce the Weekly Report every Monday along with my other responsibilities.
I know that post production time would be a deal breaker here. I would need a system that allowed me to record on one take and quickly publish. I tried a variety of recording directly to hard disk methods, but didn't find anything I liked. Sometimes, even on a powerful computer, the audio and video would be slightly out of sync. Ack!
So I decided to go back to using the DV camcorder, recording to tape, then transferring to hard disk. Even though it was an extra step, There was the advantage of having a backup copy on tape, which is easy to archive for the future. I used an external Audio Technica stereo mic on a stand just off camera, set up a couple lights, and was ready to shoot.
A few of the advantages of using a quality camcorder (Canon Optura in this case) is that I have nice features such as custom white balance, external micophone jack, manual audio control, reversible flip screen, remote control, and good glass. When I'm in town, I'll shoot the segments in my podcasting studio in Santa Rosa. It only takes me a few minutes to set everything up and record. On the road, well, who knows where these will be captured.
I then transfer the video to iMovie, trim the ends, add the web site url graphic, and output as uncompressed video. I then convert it to a Flash video file using Visual Hub, and post it on the O'Reilly server. I hang on to the uncompressed video as my processed backup, knowing that I can use it as a master if I need to compress a version in a different format.
I figure this project will run about an hour a week. I hope I've struck a good balance between quality and speed. You can watch the Weekly Report on our Digital Media home page.
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I have what may be a radical suggestion for the “always control you content” types, you should consider making a change to your show’s site: instead of providing an “iPhone friendly” version of your site, send iPhone and iPod touch browsers right to your iTunes listing. This accomplishes two things: it keeps you from having to find (or make) a good mobile version of your site, and it gives your visitors the ability to add your podcast to their device immediately and start listening right away.
For those of you who missed it, the most recent set of new features for the iPhone included the ability to download podcasts directly to your device’s iPod app without connecting to the computer. Essentially, they have provided a pre-formatted list of all of your available episodes — accompanied by “download” buttons that add those files right to the official player app on the iPhone and iPod touch. That’s way more functionality than you can provide in a mobile version, and it’s all set up for you already.
As an iPhone user, this is great: it allows me to add a new podcast directly to my phone as soon as I hear about it — not to just start streaming it, but to actually store it for later listening, which duplicates the while “timeshifting” part of podcasting that you used to need the computer for. It also lets me add the latest episodes of a show to my phone without making a trip to my desk. When I’m traveling, this is essential, as my iPhone is synced with the iTunes library on my desktop computer, not my laptop.
As a podcast producer, it gets my content exactly where I want it: on the device that a potential listener is carrying with them right now, exactly when they are in the mood to listen to it. It removes the “I’ll listen later” mental excuse that people so often forget about, and it also provides the “media instant gratification” that iPhone users are now used to (for better or for worse).
I’ve set up Boston Behind the Scenes to do this, at least partially. I don’t have a browser-detection redirect set up, but I do have an “iPhone” link at the top of the page. I also have a mobile-friendly URL set up: http://bostonbts.com/iphone (on a computer, this link will just take you to the iTunes store — try it on your iPod or iPhone). Both lead directly to the iTunes app when clicked.
If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, do you like this setup? Would you prefer to have producers do this, make a mobile-specific site, or just leave their sites alone?]]>
George Gilder once pointed out that when the availability of a given resource shifts from scarcity to surplus, a lot of wealth is created. In the technology realm, one can think of processing power, storage and bandwidth as the great “wealth exponential-izers” of first the PC era, then the Internet era, and now, the Mobile Broadband era (as these resources went from scarcity to surplus items).
Beyond wealth creation for entrepreneurs, part of the miracle of surplus-powered markets is that they are generally a great boon for consumers as well, yielding them a greater diversity of offerings to choose from and democratizing markets by broadening accessibility and lower relative product costs.
By contrast, scarcity markets are kindred spirits of the toll road; they are all about pricing controls, and limiting both choice and access (think: cable/satellite TV, gas-powered cars, etc.).
While the entrenched incumbents understandably love scarcity markets, surplus markets are the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats for consumers and upstarts alike.
iPhone Developer Success Stories: Not Everyone is Happy
It is with this backdrop, that I felt compelled to say, “Get a life” to some of the commenters to the post, ‘iPhone Developer Success Stories’ at MacRumors.com.
Why? The basic upshot of the piece was to share a couple of success stories of how small developers were/are creating multi-million dollar business successes on the backs of the iPhone 2.0 Platform (which powers both iPhone and iPod touch) and its tightly coupled App Store marketplace.
Consider the heartening story of Pangea, a long-time Mac developer, who was able to parlay several of their existing titles into popular iPhone apps, catalyzing a $5M business this year, and more income in just four and half months from iPhone apps alone than in 21 years of writing for the Mac…COMBINED!
Needless to say, Pangea’s Brian Greenstone is now dedicating his company fulltime to the iPhone, cheerfully noting, “Some kid in his bedroom can literally make a million bucks just by writing a little app."
Ah, but this story of true “overnight” success was treated with more than a trifle number of complainers about how such stories of "fools gold" would only lead to more crap apps (actually, that’s the Pull My Finger app), lowering the quality, increasing the noise, making it harder for the little guy to make a buck..wah, wah, wah, wah!
Get a Life, Okay?
So let’s agree that most iPhone App developers won't become millionaires from the App Store marketplace, just as most devotees of the eBay economy didn’t either, but let’s also get a clue. What was the better alternative before?
Do a deal with Verizon, AT&T and Sprint, and port your application to 27 different device platforms? Try and find consumers that you can lure to your web site at great marketing dollar costs, and hope against all logic that you could get them to give you their credit card?
Know this; my friends in the iPhone Developer universe that sell/sold their products through retail and other channels consider the iPhone App Store model to be manna from heaven in terms of margin, reach and control. To be clear, an imperfect channel, as all things are, but manna nonetheless.
After all, the current world sucks and the grass is always greener elsewhere, until you have had to live with the alternative, and then it doesn’t look as good in comparison.
The truth of this one is lain clear almost daily when my six year old wonders where are the good apps on my Blackberry 7130; you know, like the fun ones on my iPod touch.
Not a Paean to Apple, it’s a Salute to Surplus
The truth is that some developers will find the balance between compellingness and quality, and some won't. Some will gain (or already have) marketing savvy and some won't.
The best will build brands and become sizable businesses (as in: "Oh, I am going to grab the Freeverse bowling game instead of the SGN bowling game because I like their stuff and all of my account/social data is integrated").
Over time, more App Store variants will proliferate on other platforms (Blackberries, Apple TV, Playstations, XBoxes, Androids, Palms, etc.), growing the addressable market and driving competitive-factored innovation.
Give me a choice between surplus and scarcity, and I will choose surplus every day. Give me ample supply and better tools to filter out the crap or stuff that I am not interested in, and I will be happy.
It's the same story that played out with the PC (hello, crap apps!), the Web (hello, because Pet's can't drive!) and thankfully, will again play out in the Mobile Broadband realm (hello, Pull My Finger!).
Or, as one sage commenter puts it, “The App Store is like any other market and there is a difference between putting your app there and selling your app. Apple is not there to market your apps; it is there to distribute them. It is up to developers to find ways to market their apps.”
Amen, Brother!
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I keep waiting for the magical convergence box in my living room. You know the one; it’s the Web TV that actually works.
In Boxee (social media center), Apple TV (iTunes in my living room) and Square Connect (iPhone/iPod touch based Universal Remote), I finally see the framing for a Smart, Connected Living Room to emerge.
Never confuse 'Chicken Parts' with a living, breathing Chicken
First, a disclaimer. While Boxee, Apple TV and Square Connect are conceptually designed to work together, and while I am optimistic that the user experience will get better, today the gestalt is more ready-made for techies than less technically proficient types.
And to be clear, the user experience matters a heck of a lot here because, let’s face it, you only want to build and manage one media library.
For one thing, you need to gracefully support modal “tune-ability” and informational “volume controls” so that users can easily shift from lean forward (social and interactive) to lean back (passive-viewing) mode.
From a usability and workflow perspective, this implies that I can make a few wizard-type of customization decisions and combine Broadcast channels with Internet Media and my Personal Libraries (photo, music and video libraries) in a few clicks.
Structurally, it means unified media access, archival and playback mechanisms; namely one player engine that is skin-able and customizable via well labeled “knobs and levers” that are template-driven where practical.
Fundamentally, this is Programmable Media. I can channel-ize it into segmented content containers, rate it, review it, enrich it (via Service Overlays) and give it the dewey decimal categorization treatment.
By Service Overlays, I mean that there is a messaging layer that runs coincident, but out-of-band, to my media. Messaging data can be simple URL links, information feeds, data repositories, email messages, tweets or service specific events, such as who else is watching this content Right Now.
Imagine a message that is able to contain a “payload,” and that payload can be information, media or conversations/discussion threads.
Moreover, the envelope that this message is stored within exposes a set of contextual “handles” so that decisions such as ignore, archive or elevate can be proactively handled for you based on simple rules.
Built on top of this model is social interactivity. With pretty much no effort, I can broadly see What’s New, Popular, Talked About, Related and Right Now filtered by friends, local distinctions, special interests and/or on a network-wide basis.
I can then plug in to it (e.g., watch video, join a conversation), grab it, tune it, re-tweet it or just give a shout out - all without leaving the couch.
Where the Rubber meets the Road
At this moment, the Social Media Center’s potential and reality are not quite one and the same. Much of this is functionality is in the composite wish list bucket versus being robust, well integrated and fine tuned.
As such, I am left to hearken back to a quote from Federico Faggin, whose critical contributions at Intel led to the game-changer that was/is the microprocessor.
Faggin once spoke to the ‘inevitability’ of certain innovations, noting that, “Because these inventions have a certain inevitability about them, the real contribution lies in making the idea actually work.”
So how does this apply to the Social Media Center? While I believe that the advent of the Social Media Center as a mainstream extension to the living room is inevitable, If done wrong, or poorly integrated, the experience becomes a bit like the Radio Shack 100-in-1; novel, but not compelling and certainly not engaging.
After all, the typical consumer (and even most early adopters) is not willing to perform unnatural acts to improve the way they experience media. This stuff just has to work (and work together).
Someday soon. Until then, what follows are thoughts on each vendor's offering.
Boxee
Fred Wilson (the VC who backed Twitter) has a good explanation for why he chose to invest in Boxee, but suffice it to say, they are not lacking for ambition.
In addition, give them props, as they appear to be natural communicators and good listeners, which suggests both a rapid product improvement path and solid entrepreneurial muscles.
Plus, Boxee is designed to run on top of a Mac Mini or Apple TV, which suggests market awareness and industry realism (i.e., they are pragmatically picking their battles, and which wheels need re-invention).
And Fred Wilson is a smart guy, so from where I sit, that is an important vote of confidence.
At the same time, the system is decidedly at the Alpha stage (as it is labeled, to be clear). Case in point, it wrecks utter havoc on my MacBook Pro. Probably not the optimal system for running a media center application, but truth be told, for a lot of us, that will be the first staging ground for Boxee before moving on to a dedicated box.
The user experience is a bit cluttered for my taste but it’s easy to see where tons of user and usage data will accumulate via this model, and there are all sorts of interesting ways that that data can be sliced up and presented to users to catalyze new discoveries.
In fact, this data-centricity is a great way of maximizing stumble upon factors without requiring a user to have lots of friends using the system, avoiding a potential chicken-and-egg that a lot of social powered solutions face.
Under the hood, a preset could express a default set of network-wide views until you have at least N number of friends or Y amount of programming history.
On the data visualization front, this screams out for there being a natural use of "leader boards" and tickers of all kinds (i.e., information feeds - tweets, quotes, scores) as a way of spotlighting Local, Right Now, and Related information flows pertaining to available media options. This again increases stumble upon and enhances the information richness of the media services themselves.
One simple example is to enable within the system a “short post” extension to media items so that Boxee users can extend programming notes with comments, ratings, tags and links to related resources, as well as share them if they desire.
Over time, the meta-information surrounding the media becomes as valuable as the media itself.
Logically, Boxee might consider building a Facebook or Flash-based user badge that can be embedded in blogs etc, to showcase a user’s last N number of programs watched on Boxee, Favorites, Recommended content, etc.
Ala DirecTV’s great DVR Scheduler feature that allows you to schedule programs to record from your mobile or PC/Mac, Boxee should seriously consider enabling users to open up a portion of their playlist to friends: A) so they can share programming WITH you; and B) so they can grab programming FROM you.
Plus, it’s not too hard to imagine where such a model might serve for enabling synchronized “social” viewing activities with live/broadcast media, such as sports related content.
All in all, Boxee has a lot of promise, but also, a lot of work ahead to realize the hard part of making their many ideas actually work, caveat-free.
Apple TV
On the one hand, Apple seems to have settled on Video Rental Store and iTunes in your living room as the primary “jobs” that Apple TV is designed for.
And in the most recent earnings call, Apple CEO Steve Jobs asserted pretty firmly (in response to an analyst question on the topic) that Apple TV would remain just a hobby of Apple’s versus a strategic and material revenue-producing cornerstone business for the company.
This raises serious questions about Apple’s commitment to drive innovation in the platform during the year ahead, especially since they did only limited enhancements over the course of this year.
That said, Jobs has thrown many a head fake before so I would take his assertions with a grain of salt.
My skepticism frankly is fueled by the fact that Apple has built up a thriving ecosystem around its iPhone and iPod touch platforms, and the premise of scaling that ecosystem to include the Apple TV sandbox just makes sense.
Along these lines, part of me wonders if there is any path for Apple to embrace Boxee and fold their efforts (either via business deal or outright acquisition) into a formal platform play on Apple TV and Mac Mini.
This would give their developer base an opportunity to choose to develop for any combination of iPhone/iPod touch, Mac and Apple TV.
This assumes a long-term convergence of iPhone and Apple TV code bases, defining explicitly supported workflow models, extending developer tools and adding App Store integration, but it would allow Apple to leverage the same set of relationships over and over, and leverage is generally a good thing.
It’s a great way to accelerate their hobby into the next gear, IMHO.
Square Connect
So where does Square Connect sit in this equation? Square Connect’s vision is to leverage the iPhone and iPod touch as a Universal Remote, not just for controlling your iTunes library on your Mac or Apple TV (as Apple’s Remote application does), but for all of your living room and media center peripherals as well.
As the iPhone/iPod touch does not have infrared controls built into it, the way Square Conntect’s DOTCONTROL solution works is by placing a Wi-Fi powered hardware gateway that converts between the iPhone/iPod touch’s Wi-Fi interfaces on the one hand, and the infrared interfaces of peripherals on the other.
One bit of goodness around such a model is that your iPhone is now programming aware (thanks to the gateway), meaning it knows when you are watching the Laker’s game on TNT and when you switch over to ‘Dancing with the Stars.’
This opens up the door to your universal remote being able to automatically serve up to your iPhone live feeds, scores and other social functions (e.g., who is watching now) when you are watching the Lakers, and audience scores and dance impressions when you are watching DWTS.
The Social Media Center. It’s coming to a living room near you. Just in time for cocooning season. ☺
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Electricity flows. So does information.
This is an attempt, to describe a metaphorical 'socket,' light bulb and currency flow by connecting the dots between three potent technology trends:
