Yearly Archives: 2009

World’s first Bluetooth webcam

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webcam“The new Ecamm BT-1 combines high-quality video and sound with complete freedom from wires. The new webcam integrates advanced technologies to allow video and sound to be sent through the air to most any Mac. The BT-1 streams 640×480 H.264 video and AAC audio to video applications such as iChat and Skype, taking advantage of Mac OS X’s rich media capabilities to provide a seamless wireless webcam experience.”

This rascal is about half the size of an iPhone. As for video and audio quality? We’ll take her for a test-drive in the morning down at the Coffee Zone.

Video fastest-growing media platform in history

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So says a new report from social media research consultancy Trendstream and research firm Lightspeed. From story at MediaPost.com:

“In one week in January, 97 million Americans viewed a streaming clip online — as many as are tuning into any major broadcast network — according to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. active Web users ages 16-65. What’s more, with 72% of U.S. Web users watching clips online, Web video outstrips both blogging and social networking, and is now the leading “social-media platform.”

The “broadcast mode is dead,” said Tom Smith, managing director of Trendstream. “Now is the time for co-creation, user distribution and a true democratization of video content.”

And the new video-ready iPhone will just accelerate this trend. (via @malloryglosier)

Searching smays.com

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If you’ve used the search feature here at smays.com since the move, you’ve probably noticed it’s not working very well. We’re hoping this straightens itself out as the Google bots crawl find everything again. If there’s a particular post you can’t find, email me (link in sidebar) and I’ll go up in the attic and try to locate it for you.

UPDATE: Just switched from Google search widget to WordPress widget and it seems to be finding everything fine. Gotta love that WP.

Press 1 for disappointment

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This is a short but sad story about a once-great radio station. Let’s call it KXXX. It was, for many years, “the voice of” the community. Had as many as four or five full time news people back in the day. This morning one of our reporters called the station regarding a pretty good story in their community.

“The phone rang and rang and rang. No answering machine. Nuthin.’ So then I called the main office number. I got one of those automated answering systems. It told me to push this or that number for this or that person. There was no number to push for news. And when I automatically got the system operator, it was automated too. And it asked me to leave a message.” (sigh)

Press 1 for disappointment
Press 2 for despair
Press 3 for pessimism

Twitter in sports about message control

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“Twitter lets athletes speak on their own terms. “It’s going to be useful during the season, because after a game, I’ll be able to say my piece instead of just allowing different media outlets to portray me how they want to portray me,” said St. Louis Rams running back Steven Jackson, one of football’s prolific tweeters. Talk to any athlete or coach about the benefits of Twitter, and they’ll put message control at the top of the list. “In this world we live in now, everybody becomes media,” said Shaquille O’Neal, whose enormous following of more than 1 million has fueled Twitter fever in sports. “If something is going to be said, hey, it’s coming from me, it’s coming from my phone.” Journalists may lament athletes passing over the middle men. But honestly, what’s more interesting, a “we gave 110 percent” from the postgame podium, or a tweet like this from Shaq: “Dam manny ramirez, come on man Agggggggggh, agggggggh, agggggh.” — SI.com

 

On the bedside table

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The Increment, David Ignatius

“The CIA has zero assets in Iran until a message is sent to the agency’s Web site that indicates that the Iranians are making real progress toward a bomb. It falls to veteran spy Harry Pappas to identify the sender and weigh the validity of the information, while the bellicose White House gears up for war. Pappas is disheartened and disaffected; he knew the Iraq War would be a disaster, and he lost his marine son there. To carry out his assignment, he must go rogue and seek the aid of British intelligence.”

Life, Inc., Douglas Rushkoff

“In the twenty-first century, we continue to consider corporations as role models and saviors but engage other people as competitors to be beaten or resources to be exploited. Our lives are overextended, and there is no time, energy, or commitment to do anything but work and perhaps consider family.”

“How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”

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That’s the title of an article by Steven Johnson in this week’s Time Magazine. Here are a few snippets:

  • “This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it’s just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit.”
  • “Instead of being built by some kind of artificially intelligent software algorithm, a customized newspaper will be compiled from all the articles being read that morning by your social network.”
  • “It used to be that you compulsively checked your BlackBerry to see if anything new had happened in your personal life or career: e-mail from the boss, a reply from last night’s date. Now you’re compulsively checking your BlackBerry for news from other people’s lives.”

But the real money-shot of the piece (at least for me) is Johnson’s prediction (is it still a prediction if it’s already happening?) on Twitter’s influence on advertising.

“Today the language of advertising is dominated by the notion of impressions: how many times an advertiser can get its brand in front of a potential customer’s eyeballs, whether on a billboard, a Web page or a NASCAR hood. But impressions are fleeting things, especially compared with the enduring relationships of followers. Successful businesses will have millions of Twitter followers (and will pay good money to attract them), and a whole new language of tweet-based customer interaction will evolve to keep those followers engaged: early access to new products or deals, live customer service, customer involvement in brainstorming for new products.”

This is the best thing I’ve read on Twitter to date.

Desk Calendar (June 1984)

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I’m pretty sure June 4, 1984, was my first official day at Learfield Communications. And since 25 years feels like something of a milestone, I’ve been trying to come up with something to post here to mark the date.

June, 1984

The calendar [larger image] above was on my desk that first month and means absolutely nothing to anyone that wasn’t around back then. And not much to the handful that was (Clyde, Roger, Bob), so I’ve annotated a few entries to jog their memories.

With good jobs hard to keep and harder to find these days, let the record show I am one lucky web boy. Can’t wait to see what the next 25 brings.