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Sanna Annukka (Illustrator)
Posted in Visual, Illustration on February 26th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
Half Finnish-half English, Sanna’s work is heavily inspired by Findland’s nature and folklore. She set up a company right after her studies, thanks to her very first and successful commissioned work: illustrating (more…)
Paying (or at least reciprocating) the user first
Posted in Internet, Radio, News on February 26th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Tim O’Reilly and Phil Torrone give their opinion on terrestrial radio and point out how the industry completely forgot the most important key principle of success in business: to focus on your customers. This fact, as mentioned in the article, is increasingly true for other industries such as television networks or cell phone carriers. The problem for all this non customer focused industries is that disruptive technologies and trends are becoming a viable alternative for this customers, thus forcing traditional industries to evolve.
Many times, it’s the customers themselves who are behind this alternatives, built on OpenSource, OpenContent and free to share concepts. As Samuel Rose of SmartMobs points out, the future might actually be based on a SharingEconomy. Under it, the very same concept traditional industries are having problems with today remains the same:
…”the market” will eventually drive people towards creators and providers and facilitators who really start to think about “How can i reciprocate back real value to these people who are sharing with me?”
MTV’s comeback plan
Posted in Television, News on February 26th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
GigaOm’s Robert Young wrote an excellent article about MTV and how it is poised for a comeback. Viacom, MTV’s owner, may have the richest collection of short form, professionally produced, high quality entertainment contents. Perfect for Internet consumption. MTV’s potential comeback will depend then on how Viacom decides to release their video assets onto the Internet.
We may already know the answer to how: Joost. Marshall Kirkpatrick from TechCrunch (based on a Wall Street Journal article) reported that Viacom is to sign a deal with Joost for the distribution of their contents on this platform.
The remaining question would then be, do they still want their MTV?
BitTorrent Entertainment Network launching today
Posted in IPTV, News on February 26th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Today the BitTorrent Entertainment Network will start to rent films and sell TV shows, under the soon to be renamed Zudeo client. The blogosphere reacted to this news with skepticism. Hollywood studios are enforcing DRM and pricing schemes that stand little chance against competing free pirate alternatives.
The BitTorrent Entertainment Network might also be offering independent content producers an alternative way to distribute their contents, like Joost is planning to do. This would once more strengthen the direct connection between consumers and content producers and lessen the dependence on traditional content broadcasters.
Web TV’s Top Rated Acts
Posted in IPTV, Internet, News on February 26th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
This Business 2.0 article is very good overview of video online today. While not too long, it overviews the “web TV’s top rated acts”, pointing out their business models, the ideas behind them and the challenges they face. The article includes many links to other related contents profiling companies and ideas changing the world and the industry today.
More reactions on Jobs Open Letter
Posted in Music, News on February 19th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Steve Jobs open letter about music (and DRM) kept on making the news with opinion and reactions from bloggers to music industry and technology executives last week. Articles on how music sales would explode without DRM (Via Digg), or how P2P sharing is “not statistically distinguishable from zero” were highlighted in Digg and in the blogesphere in general. As Thomas Hawk (Via Digg) points out, it would seem Jobs letter has become a catalyst for change regarding DRM, or at least for companies to stand by it or against it.
Publishers leading video online
Posted in IPTV, Publishing, News on February 19th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
The publishing industry is leading the way in video online, and thriving on on the net. This is what several blogs such as Lost Remote, Micro Persuasion or Cyberjournalist pointed out last week. And just as last week we highlighted some of the New York Times efforts in this area, several news items reinforced the idea that newspapers are indeed leading video online. For example, the Wall Street Journal tools for citizens or Time’s determination to produce video contents under their brand name.
Related: Norwegian newspaper publisher finds the secret to profiting online.
The 3GSM World Congress 2007
Posted in Mobile, News on February 19th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
The 3GSM World Congress was held in Barcelona last week so it was a very busy time for anyone involved in the mobile world. From a general trends point of view, news such as the fact that some Nokia phones will be able to play YouTube videos, or that Second Life comes to mobile phones are right now more interesting that the dozens of technology announcements made at the Congress. Some of these announcements may soon grow up to become disruptive technologies and ideas, and maybe even trends, so here’s a round up article form Engadget Mobile about the 3GSM World Congress highlights.
Finding a successful User Created Content formula
Posted in Citizen Journalism, News on February 19th, 2007. By Eduard F. Vinyamata.
Ideas such as “User Generated Content”, “We the Media” or “Citizen Reporterism”, as powerful as they are, and as well as they match what we understand the Internet to be, haven’t been truly successful with traditional media. What’s wrong?
The following two articles highlight a couple of ideas of what might be happening. At their core, the articles are about truly understanding what people generated contents are, why they are created in the first place and why they should be treated traditionally created contents regarding basic things such as content authorship recognition and compensation. In this regard, the Associated Press plan on Citizen Journalism is much better than Reuters and Yahoo’s “You Witness”.
User Generated Content isn’t free (CyberJournalist)
One thing everyone forgets about “We Media” (The Long Tail)
William Lamson (Photographer/Artist)
Posted in Visual, Art, Photography, Video on February 19th, 2007. By Ona Vinyamata.
Selected as part of the “New Photographers 2006″ in Cannes 2005, William Lamson is much more than a photograpger: he creates unexpected and beautiful “visual toys” from pictures or video.