TechAddress

Brightcove 3: Released and Reviewed

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:30:15 +0000

Today marks the announcement and release of Brightcove’s Platform 3, the latest release of their online video distribution service. They’ve rebuilt the service completely and comes with the promise to “empower website producers to be successful in the era of pervasive video.”

They do look like they’ve got a bunch of interesting and usful new features. We’ll focus on that to start.

One of the most problematic parts of the Brightcove player in the past has been the slowness to load, something I’ve been particularly sensitive to personally since I don’t have the absolute fastest broadband connection in the world. Those like me will notice their new “dynamic delivery” updates, that automatically adjust the bit rate of the video streams so that the viewer will get the highest quality video stream their connection will allow.

For producers who use the system, they’ll notice a number of new updates that will hopefully work towards streamlining the production and distribution phases. As I’ve talked about before, the Brightcove system has always been one of the more advanced online publishing systems, with some of the most detailed media management tools.

The only problem that is systemic to any online publishing system like this is that the media management can sometimes get labor intensive and tedious when it comes to classifying and tagging every icon and clip in the system. Platform 3 includes new media management and publishing tools that hope to aide in this.

Additionally, they’ve made more extensible their media API, so that the player and content can be more seamlessly integrated with the producers text content and rest of the website.

These tools have appealed to a wide variety of producers, mostly those in the mainstream sector who don’t have the in-house technical teams to put together a custom solution or utilize some of the more common pro-sumer platforms out there, many of which have just as much customization options that Brightcove currently has even in this new release, and are quickly catching up on the production side as well.

When Brightcove first announced that they were coming out with their new platform, I wondered whether or not it would live up to the hype. Brightcove has lost a little bit of the magic for me over the years. They’ve been de-emphasizing a lot of their tertiary initial promises and slowly focusing more on tailoring the player for long form content. They’ve cut back on sales efforts almost entirely at this point, and have long since closed down their user generated content portal.

In their interest to tailor their service for mainstream outfits that seek to find a distribution method outside the established portals like Hulu, YouTube, iTunes and Joost, Brightcove has completely ignored a large component to online video distribution - media RSS. Granted, due to licensing and DRM concerns of current clients like Showtime, Time, Lifetime, and video on demand service FearNet, this isn’t probably a feature in high demand.

For veteran Internet content producers, though, podcast feeds are key to monetization and brand management. Distribution is key, and without the ability to lead folks into a central place to lock in viewers, all the viewers their branding and online marketing accrues will be transient at best.

In the end, Brightcove ends up being a great solution for mainstream outfits looking to have the look and feel of systems like Hulu while maintaining their own branding on the player. Those looking for a more robust solution that provides similar player customization might be interested in offerings from CastFire and Episodic.

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Joost Launches Their Website Early; Will It Be Enough?

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 06:30:07 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Joost, earlier today, debuted their Flash, web-only attempt this morning. This comes hot on the tails of the news that CBS, an investor in Joost, will begin releasing full length shows on the Google-owned video sharing network. The launch comes five days ahead of schedule, according to Gubatron this morning.

Previous to the launch, Joost was only accessible by way of a downloadable client that functioned a little like a PC based PVR, allowing mainstream content to be viewable on-demand. The project was almost universally panned by reviewers when it was announced, but truth be told, I always thought it was a good idea in theory, but lacked a great deal in its execution.

As it stands now, Joost is set to blend in with all the other competition on the web, competition that’s by no means thin and weak. As I’ve said for years, the problem with digital video is that the veg-factor just isn’t there in most systems, and for those systems where it does exist, it’s rather shoe-horned and antithetical to the rest of the user experience.

I explained the veg-factor a while back in a discussion about the state of modern DVRs:

To illustrate the veg-factor, think about the type of media consumption you do in the morning, while you’re getting the kids ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the morning while you’re getting ready for work. Morning show format news-ish programs are designed for this low-engagement, veg-factor consumption. They’re, in large part, designed to be background noise that delivers some entertainment and utility to your morning.

Likewise, in the evening, you come home from work, you switch on the TV and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of Fortune or whatever reality program du jour is on this season. Most people won’t even touch the remote until prime-time starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.

This is something Joost could have tackled, and in so doing made big inroads on tackling the living room Internet video viewing experience. Unfortunately, they created a piece of software that required far too much processing power for the average person to afford, at least in terms of what they’re willing to spend on their home entertainment unit.

At this point, with Joost fading into the scenery in terms of delivery method, their content not looking too much different from their neighbors at Netflix, Hulu and YouTube, it doesn’t look like they’ll be doing much to pull themselves into any sort of a leadership position.

The only thing that could save them at this point would be if they continue to pull in unique and noteworthy content producers from both the mainstream and the Internet. They look like they’ve been on this track recently, as just a few weeks ago they announced a content partnership with podcast giant Wizzard. They’ll need to be looking for many more partnerships like this to continue to compete with the likes of YouTube and Hulu.

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9 Audio Ad Networks for Websites, Blogs, and Beyond

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Source:Mashable!

If you’ve heard about Berlin, Germany a lot recently, it’s because it’s a growing technology hub in Europe that many people are calling Europe’s next “Silicon Valley.” There are a lot of web companies opening offices all over Berlin, like eBay, Nokia, and Wikimedia, and they already have their own “Facebook,” the social networking site studiVZ.

Berlin is certainly Germany’s internet capital and quickly rising in the ranks as Europe’s top technology-oriented city (behind only London and Paris).

In order to attract American and global companies to Germany, Berlin Partner, a business development agency, partners with companies looking to expand to Europe and offers them reimbursement grants of up to 50% of a company’s investment.

At New York City’s Web 2.0 Expo I sat down with Alexander Kolpin of Berlin Partner to talk about why Berlin is so hot, what exactly is going on in Europe in terms of social media, and how Berlin plans to host their own European Web 2.0 Expo in October. You can watch via the embed below or download the MP4.

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Source:Mashable!

A new report was issued today by eMarketer that showed a distinct pattern of growth in video advertising spending over the next five years, with percentage increases year over year between 5% and 12%. In dollars, they predict that video ad spending, which amounts to around $505 million this year, is expected to top $5.8 billion by the year 2013.

Rather than key in on the fact that the amount of money in the pool for producers will be increasing by a factor of fourteen, many editorialists are keying in on the fact that ad rates on a CPM are likely to decrease over time.

There was a single sentence that has been used all over the place (I first saw it at Wired today):

Part of the pricing for professional-quality online video is based on scarcity.

Master videographer Nalts weighed in with a few pieces of advice for the people in the various parts of the online video equation (viewers, amateur creators, advertisers, online studios, and heritage media nuts). Almost all of it is indispensible, but most interesting to me is the advice he gives for producers:

It may seem initially upsetting, but of course supply/demand will take care of things. If you attract audiences that marketers want to reach, then you’ll command a decent CPM. If not, then you’ll either have lower CPMs or no ads at all (or worst yet, Google Adwords). And for the love of video, go for non CPM revenue models like sponsorships or custom promotions. There’s a fertile market for advertisers looking to engage without paying hundreds of thousands in ad buys. Again- this has been far more profitable than checks from a YouTube partner program (which are really welcome but I could work at Taco Bell for a better hourly wage).

It’s important to note that Nalts is entrenched in the YouTube culture (but not at all ignorant of the rest of the online video world). According to the eMarketer report (and fleshed out by my own experience), there are many online publishers (Mashable included) that are spending a good deal of effort growing their online video offerings because quite simply, you can monetize it at much higher rates than the rest of the content.

The average video CPM amongst the seven Web publishers surveyed by eMarketer were about three times higher than the average display ad’s value at $43. The rest of the same publishers’ content averaged at about a $15 CPM.

Certainly CPMs will be driven down by lack of scarcity by 2013, which is the reason why now is the time to jump into video (or any time that’s sooner rather than later). The real money in video is the ability to move beyond CPM ads an into brand advertising and other forms of sponsorship. The return for both advertiser and producer tends to be a lot greater, but these relationships are generally only available for those who’ve established a track record and reputation in their content production.

Source:Mashable!

While some have slammed Internet audio ads as annoying, some marketers admit that having a bit of sound can be a good way to bring readers’ attention to one ad amongst half a dozen banners. Do you like audio ads? Would you consider putting one on your site or blog? Or would you prefer using an audio ad for your online ad campaign? Below are 9 audio ad networks for websites, podcasts, and beyond.

Tell us how you feel about audio ad networks in the comments.

Podtrac

Podtrac is a popular ad network for podcasters. It basically acts as a sales representative for podcasters to advertisers. It also provides demographic analysis and targeting, third-party measurement, content ratings, planning and purchasing, creative rotation, and multiple advertising delivery options. Podtrac boasts of hundreds of top podcasts in its network including many from the iTunes Top 100 list.

Kiptronic

Kiptronic positions itself as “the first and only provider of downloadable media ad insertion to offer built-in support for DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers and Microsoft’s Atlas Publisher Suite.” It insert audio and video ads on podcasts, which work online as well as offline on iPods, smartphones, Internet-enabled TVs, game consoles, and more.

RadioTail

RadioTail is another podcast advertising network that provides podcast stats through its service called Ripple. Some of the features RadioTail provides to publishers include insertion of ads at specific times during the day, automatic insertion and rotation of ads, customized podcast statistics reporting, and more.

VoloMedia

VoloMedia boasts of some of the largest media houses as its clients, such as MSNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fox News, etc. VoloMedia adds ads on video and audio content online and on portable devices while providing statistics on the consumption of media. Ad targeting can be done geographically, demographically, and by time of day. It also provides publisher plugins for the iTunes Media Player and Adobe Flash to capture usage metrics.

VoodooVox

VoodooVox says phone calls are the new page views. What it does is insert short audio ads in phone calls generated by its network, which consists of hundreds of call publishers including calling card companies, 411 services, call centers, radio stations,VOIP providers, and Web applications. Each of these call publishers generate “approximately 300 million calls monthly.” According to VoodooVox, inserting audio ads in phone calls is better for the advertiser than Web banners since the ads are “delivered directly into the ears of the intended audience.”

Audio ads are something we take for granted when we call up a company’s customer service, like our mobile phone operator, bank, satellite TV service provider, etc. But can these ads can be served without interfering much on our phone experience?

NetAudioAds

NetAudioAds claims to have more than 46 million participating webpages and that seems like quite an impressive number to start with. The service’s ads are short 5 second audio ads, known as adlets, that are played whenever a visitor opens a participating webpage. Listeners can be targeted by demographic and by location. NetAudioAds also says that its ads are measurable, and audited and verified by accredited third party auditing companies. You can run the ads on your blog or on your MySpace page as well.

Google Audio Ads

According to Google Audio Ads, “22% of Internet users make purchases after searching for something they learned about on the radio,” and so it might be a nice idea to run a radio ad campaign for your online business or site. Success stories include Gifts.com, which “received 23% more visits and a 34% higher conversion rate in markets which ran radio ads.”

To learn more, simply login to your Google Adwords account and choose the audio ads tab. You can choose to run ads on 1,600 terrestrial FM and AM radio stations across the US, choose the top stations only, or choose by location or time of day. You can also search for a specialist at the Google Ad Creation Marketplace to create a custom radio ad for your campaign.

TargetSpot

TargetSpot starts off where Google Audio Ads finishes. It lets you run audio ads, video ads, and banners across hundreds of Internet radio stations. You can select stations by location and format, and target your ads by time of the day, region, or specific market. Will running an ad on an Internet radio station be useful? TargetSpot quotes Arbitron and Edison Media Research that “33 million people tune into Internet radio each week, and the at-work audience has grown from 12% to 20% in one year.” Also, “57% of users reported listening to streaming radio while buying at a website, according to RAEL’s Radio and Internet: Powerful Compliments for Advertisers.”

LocalVocal

LocalVocal is an audio ad network that places audio ads across free directory assistance services, radio, Web telephony, IVR systems, and calling cards. Setting up an ad campaign is very easy from the LocalVocal site and can be as low as $5. You can choose to target locally or across the US and pay only when your ad is heard or when you receive leads.

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Hey! You’re Not Supposed To Do That

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:30:05 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Mark Evans wrote a post a couple of days ago that asks a simple question that as far as I am concerned every single web service start up should be asking: “What’s In It For Me?”

While his central point was more about developers asking this question to see whether they were creating something because they could or whether it actually served a real need,I was struck by something else he said. In his post he notes that developers need to watch how people are actually using the site.

The reason for this is that in a great many cases what you thought would be the killer aspect that everyone would want to use the site for turns out to be exactly the opposite. Instead they find some other way that - as Mark says - resonates with them.

The best example of this of course has to be Twitter. Twitter was never intended to be what it is today. Where the company saw a mini-CMS application, the users discovered a dead simple real time communication tool and this almost killed Twitter.

The only thing that really saved them was that what they - or rather what the users saw was something totally new and they were willing to put up with all the problems that Twitter had as it made what turned out to be a massive transition. I don’t think that something like that will be repeated again as users are being geared to the idea that companies can basically turn on a dime and provide what the users want and have it work.

I also saw this same sort of thing happen on FriendFeed but they had the benefit of the Twitter Experience and very quickly added; or improved, features that the users wanted as they began using the service for something beyond what FriendFeed may have envisioned. Where FriendFeed had thought that a well featured personal lifestream aggregator with a very simple way for people to be able to leave comments on other members posted items, the users found something much more important to them.

What the users discovered was that FriendFeed was another communication community. While FriendFeed had thought the simple comment system would be enough the users suddenly began using the service as a meeting place where they could all hang out with friends and chat up a storm.

This wasn’t something I believe that the FriendFeed team believed that their service would be used for; but to their credit when they saw it happening they very quickly started reacting to feature requests that the users were making in order to make the service an even better communication hub.

However it is not just the new boys on the Web 2.0 block that can take this kind of lesson to heart. Even the companies that have been in the software business for as long as the web has been around need to listen and watch - maybe even more so. One company that many people might not expect to do this is Apple and before anyone starts laughing too hard, stop and think about their whole iTunes and iPod infrastructure for a moment.

When the iPod first came on the market it was meant as strictly a music player and iTunes was to be its supplier of those music files. However at some point podcast producers figured that this would be an excellent way to get their podcasts out to a wider audience and the users liked the ease by which they could keep up to date with their favourite podcasts.

Apple could very well have put a stop to the whole idea as quickly as it started. After all it’s not like they are known for anyone using their products for ways that Apple doesn’t want them used for. In this case though Apple went with the flow and now podcasts are an integral part of the whole iTunes/iPod ecosphere.

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Drag and Drop Game Development with Gendai (video)

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 10:30:05 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Gendai Games has released a free drag and drop game development platform called GameSalad Creator that lets you create games that can be played on the Mac, Web and even the IPhone. They have plans for versions for the Windows and Linux platforms. Initially they will produce 2D games but the ultimate goal will be to create 3D games.

They are currently in closed Alpha and accepting applications from anyone that wants to become a test developer for their platform. The thing to keep in mind is that GameSalad is strictly for the Mac OS platform at this point in time. However, you can create games for the web which means players with any OS can play your game online. Also, you’ll be able to create games for the Iphone with the same drag and drop platform.

The ultimate goal is to establish a kind of “YouTube for Games” where members can upload and share their new creations much like YouTube members do with video. However, Gendai wants to help its developers make a little money in the process by allowing them to monetize their games online and on the Apple AppStore for the IPhone.

We got a chance to sit down with Yoshi over at Gendai during our Austin stop of the SummerMash tour. The full interview is embedded below (or you can grab the MP4).

As he spoke about with us in Austin, GameSalad Game builders will also be able to share their games on other social networks such as Facebook and MySpace. The cool part is that developers can actually share any part of a game, such as graphics or audio elements, with other developers, not just entire games! This modular aspect means developers can create and share a vasy library of re-usable components in an already easy platform.

Gendai’s game plan (no pun intended) is to allow their community to create only 2D games in the beginning in an effort to streamline and perfect the process. Eventually, they will allow them to start building 3D games for the Mac, Web and even the IPhone. They’ve already revealed that they can support 3D games today but will stick with 2D games for now until the time is right.

The timing is perfect for such an easy development system for games, especally for the IPhone or any mobile platform for that matter. Many have made the same ambitious statements about ease of use but Gendai Games appears to be the real deal. The real test will be when they launch their public beta. That’s when we’ll truly find out exactly how easy it is to create games on their platform.

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PlasticLogic and the Role of e-Ink for New Media

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:30:18 +0000

Source:Mashable!

Sean and I were chatting the other day over IM, and though it’s been a few minutes since DEMOfall08, we were still talking about how cool we thought the PlasticLogic device was. Sean comes from, previous to Mashable, a number of traditional magazines (that is, the kind that are printed on actual paper), and I’ve been working with electronic magazine or some incarnation thereof since before the web was invented.

In the view of Sean and I, there’s been a collision course between what’s now being termed “heritage media” and New Media for a while, and we’re now convinced that eInk and digital readers are finally entering the stage where they’re becoming a viable device for regular media consumption, and online news sources are formatting their data in a manner both visually condusive to magazine stylings as well as making available full RSS feeds, which work perfectly in these sorts of digital devices.

In today’s Mashable Conversations, Sean and I spend a bit talking some of these trends as well as show off some of the video we’ve shot and collected of the relevent devices (the Sony Reader, the Amazon Kindle, PlasticLogic’s device and the Esquire 75th Anniversary e-Ink). You can see it all by watching the embed above or by downloading the MP4 directly.

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—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:The Digital Magazine Vs. the Digital Magazine

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TechAddress

Brightcove 3: Released and Reviewed

Joost Launches Their Website Early; Will It Be Enough?

9 Audio Ad Networks for Websites, Blogs, and Beyond

Hey! You’re Not Supposed To Do That

Drag and Drop Game Development with Gendai (video)

PlasticLogic and the Role of e-Ink for New Media

More Questions for Early Adopters (Video)