Category: content strategy

Three items happened in the past week that made me think that I stepped out of a time machine rather than the bus.

1. The Beatles had their albums reissued on CD
2. The iPod Nano update included a FM radio
3. The Chevy Volt electric car will now include a hitch so that it can be pulled by horses

OK, one of those things is silly. The other two are just bewildering.

The Beatles catalog of albums was reissued on 090909. [Yes, clever, Revolution No. 9]. This is of interest, from my perspective, for two reasons.

First: In the late 1980s, the Fab Four’s albums were all issued on CD, just like all of the other rock giants – Elvis, the Stones, etc. And there was mixed response. That was fairly early in the world of the CD; people were starting to get the hang of properly mastering for the medium. Prior to that, things were mixed and mastered with LP or cassettes in mind, leaving the CDs sounding thin compared to the old LPs everyone was used to hearing.

The record companies and artists [or their estates] realized this, and reissued the entire catalog of other major selling artists once again, twice, or even three or four times over. While working in a record store in college, I witnessed on a few occasions complete reissues of all of the albums of both Miles Davis and KISS [to mention a couple of disparate examples]. Add a bonus track, add a new set of liner notes, better the sound, and you have money in the wallet. Easy peasy. Not so with the Beatles.

The Liverpool Lads had to wait for quite some time before the catalog was given a more just edition. The audiophiles and Beatlemaniacs will be buying these, and folks that missed them the first time around, but there is another group that will not. THE KIDS.

We have talked about it here in the past, and album sales reinforce this time and again. Kids consume tons of music. Kids aren’t lining up for CDs anymore. Kids will, however, buy the video game that features those songs. Smart move with the Rock Band thing.

Even Apple is feeling the heat when it comes to the decline in music sales. In a bid to remain relevant, they announced, also on 090909, that the iPod Nano would now include an FM tuner. I thought it was a nice feature on the Zune, when it rolled out. I am sure it was a selling point for the seven or eight people that bought Zunes. But for the newest iPod? Seems a little late for the party.

Paid Content ran a piece about this very situation, citing a Forrester study.

I am well aware that the user base for the iPod Nano is larger than non-CD-buying teens, but Apple is a company that has staked its claim on the cutting edge.

All of this leaves me as bewildered as if Chevrolet would have actually put a horse hitch on the Volt.

The Beatles catalog should have been reissued properly years ago. And the iPod should have included an FM tuner from the start. The question remains — why now?

I like to take things slow sometimes.

I never bought a VCR – the one I used for years was won at the University of Northern Iowa Jazz Band concert. It was a door prize. The grand prize.

I did spend three bills on a DVD player back in 1999, though. I am not always behind the curve.

Fast forward [ha! pun intended! OMG!] to 2009. I have canceled both my OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSEIVE Comcast Digital Cable package and all of its on-demand video capabilities. Also on the scrap heap is my Netflix membership, victim of one too many scratched-beyond-playable DVDs delivered [and more often, simply unwatched].

Some family is visiting, so what am I to do? Time to make good on that promise of being moderately technologically literate and use the internets to entertain my guests. I had two options, as far as I was concerned: iTunes or Amazon. I like both because I have established accounts with each. One click or two, no need to fetch my wallet, and I will soon be viewing.

After looking at iTunes, it appears that I will need to wait until the 1.21 gigawatts [or GB, if you must] completes downloading before my viewing can begin. Moving along…

Amazon has the option for download, but also the on-demand feature. [I got used to the on-demand feature with Netflix — one of the reasons I kept that subscription for so long.] I clicked and we were off.

Picture quality was fine for me and my 9-year-old non-HDTV. As a matter of fact, the quality was as fine as my DVD player through an S-Video cable, a feat that still boggles the mind.

Is there a parable here?

When it comes to something as fleeting as rental entertainment, the on-demand is going to win out in many households. Downloads will have their place where connectivity is lacking or portability is priority. But, as long as people are plopping down in their living rooms, this will be the pick.

Have you ever been witness to some piece of technology, earlier dismissed, that now proves to be a an obvious chunk of awesome?

Count me in on the streaming live video front now.

As the McCain/Palin ticket graced the fringes of the Twin Cities metro on Friday I had a unique opportunity to witness some of it live. Not in person, not on the television, and not on a mainstream media news site. Instead, it was on www.theuptake.org.

The Uptake is an aggregation of citizen journalists, using a central site for coordination and distribution. We can now say that citizen journalism is nothing new. However, the critical difference is now that technology allows them to stream live video from their compatible devices [ a hacked iPhone in the clip I viewed, as the cameraman described it to an interviewee. ]

These streams are available on theuptake.org live as they happened, and also in archived form after the fact. They use the service Qik for the live video back-end, and blip.tv for archived/produced pieces.

I have been aware of the technology since Qik’s release, but thought that it might be an answer looking for a question. The tech itself seemed sound enough, but the missing link to me was in notification to potential viewers. How would people that wanted to see the video know to visit The Uptake to partake?

The answer was now simple, as it was how I found out. One of my Twitter followers, @noahkunin, is a correspondent for The Uptake. He sent out tweets that preceded the event, and while it took place.

Now, the picture is complete. The tech to harness the moment live to teh Internets is in place, an aggregator like The Uptake is in place to coordinate the coverage, and, a suitably viral method to notify people about it is also in place. The archive in is place; it is the last and oldest piece.

What does this mean?

It means that now things will be covered in a way that they haven’t yet been covered. Citizen journalists are not only equipped with a phone/camera/video camera in their pocket; now they are packing what is just shy of a complete news studio. And that is a big deal.

I had to read that a couple of times. Microsoft Midori.

Microsoft is now looking into the world, post-Windows. This BBC story tells us that MS has become aware that many people are no longer tied to a single machine; rather, they are promiscuous with the devices they use to consume data.

To cope, they are set to create an OS that will accomodate such behavior. And the project shares its name with a melon-flavored liqueur. Midori. [it also means “green” in Japanese, tells me the Wikipedia entry.]

Microsoft names projects after alcoholic drinks, and the BBC tells me that I am promiscuous. Somebody had a good weekend. Wow, it really is Monday morning…

Our friends at Amazon.com this week announced a Beta of their video on demand service. It has been described by the EVP of Amazon, Bill Carr, as an outgrowth of their Unbox video download service. People were bummed they had to wait for the video to download to begin viewing.

Netflix just announced that their streaming video service, originally offered on their website and then through a dedicated set-top box, will now be available via the XBox 360 this fall. This of course means that Netflix and Microsoft are now in partnership. That seems like kind of a big deal.

These two items in the same week? Good thing it wasn’t last week, amid the destroyer-class hysterics of the iPhone. Which brings up a good point — people are still going to go home to sit in front of a screen. Granted, wireless personal devices are going to be the major focus from here on out, as this article from Information Week indicates. But, not everything will be consumed on a personal device. From Apple.

The floods of 2008 have been covered in a way that those of 1993 and 1999 were not. This has been close to my heart, as I have family that was affected by these floods. My grandparents’ home was rendered uninhabitable by the flood waters, so naturally I wanted to know what was going on in the state.

I turned to the site iowaflood.com upon the suggestion of Public Radio International’s morning news show The Takeaway. Andy Brudtkuhl, a consultant from the Des Moines area, set up a site that drew upon the strengths of citizen journalism and user generated content [UGC]. [In two hours, no less.]

Rather than exclusively posting content of his own, he tapped major media sites [TV, newspaper], services like releases from government officials & the National Weather Service, and feeds of user-generated content from YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter to create a much more comprehensive resource. Other tools included Yahoo Pipes and WordPress. He gives the full details here.

This, to me, represents what citizen journalism can really be. In situations where people need up-to-the-minute coverage of events that change as quickly, custom aggregators like this have no peer. The local TV stations don’t have the manpower or editorial jurisdiction to place unedited feeds on their sites. Conversely, the average Joe doesn’t have a helicopter for those aerial views of the flood damage.

At certain times like this, the power and resources of the masses, with their cameras and mobiles, comes to the fore to complete the coverage. The media goes on about its business most of the time, with UGC trickling in to augment coverage, but switches gears when significant events deem necessary. I don’t think one will not supplant the other; we have proof of a symbiotic relationship in iowaflood.com.

This may well prove to be a model to be followed for future catastrophic events.