A story

This one came into my head the night before last. Hmm, shall I continue on it or let it slide?

THE GIRL WHO BROKE THE WORLD
There was nothing out of the ordinary this day. It was a fine day, with high clouds, a shining warm sun and larks practicing their aerial skills hundreds of meters above my head, small specks against the blueness of the sky.
How can you do this? He asked, concern in his voice as I felt his gaze on me.
How can I not? I answered, trying to sound as cool and uncaring as I believed a girl of the world would have to sound like, or boys as handsome as him would never ever dream of talking to her, much less agree to climb the highest tree in the yard and sway lightly in the breeze while watching the sky.
Now, what I hadn’t counted on was his severe vertigo, which had almost hindered him from climbing the tree with me, and now forced his arms into cramps as he held tightly on to the branch beneath him.

....to be continued?

OK, now this is interesting

... I'd REALLY like to see this documentary - "We Live In Public" by director Ondi Timoner. "We will be trapped in virtual boxes..."

Scary. Best shut this computer now and go have some real interaction with some real people :)

Quite right

Mish Shedlock puts it to us quite nicely in his latest blogpost. "...the current generation now in high school is likely going to be the first generation in America's history with a lower standard of living than their parents for quite some time to come."

Please have a read. Over in other areas the situation might be worse, or better. Still, it's going to be a new brave world, and you'd best better prepare.

So little time...

... so no time to write any blogs. Will do though, as soon as I get some time to spare.

News - The Space Trainees is in production as we speak, which is nice. Game On, the football quiz show with cross media aspects, is gaining momentum, hoping to get it into productions soonishly. And we'll shoot a pilot on the cross media celebrity personality testing show The Naked Truth later on this spring - it's all happening! :)

Some other projects going on as well - along with our paper being accepted for the Edutainment 2009 conference in Banff, Canada... so the Rockies, here I come!

Until later

MIPTV Day One

I always forget the feeling of gearing up to MIPTV mode. It's meetings meetings meetings pitches pitches pitches, a rumbling stomach and too much coffee. Still, a lot of fun.

Weather slightly off, lots of rain - not at the moment though - but more on it's way I've heard.

A mere couple of dozen of Twitterers so far, seems like the TV industry isn't quite up to scratch yet. And the question everyone is asking - how can we make money in new ways, with ad revenues shrinking... If I hear a good solution, I'll post it here.

Still, people are interested in our formats. All good, next meeting in 15 minutes.

Jam

I must admit, this is a TV show I am not really sure if I could watch. I'd LIKE to watch it, but could I? Time will tell...

GAME - a pretty cool-looking movie

Well, this here looks interesting. Filmstalker talks about the new Gerald Butler movie GAME, this time with a leaked trailer.

It's about a future where people control other people in MMORPGS. Only thing is that the people they control are REAL people... and one of them is about to realize what's going on.

Pretty neat, check out what there is to check out here.

Hectic spring

...or, spring is perhaps not the correct term, seeing it was -12C when I woke up this morning. Still, hectic is the right adjective methinks.

The Space Trainees will go into production in some weeks, lots to do before that (and during that). MIPTV 2009 in Cannes is up next week, much to do before that as well. Then there are other projects - interactive cross media quiz shows, a green media social web thing for young people that should be initiated ASAP, a workshop in Belgium on it's way... Looks like it'll slow down sometime in July. I hope.

Will try to update this blog with interesting stuff, not promising anything though. But will probably Twitter from MIPTV, when I find the time to go to something interesting...

/S

Down, down, down....

Buy and hold, the callsign for generations of investors who couldn't be bothered with the day-to-day trade of stocks, futures, bonds etc, is definitely not the thing anymore.

Everyone, from Warren Buffett to my mother, is saying that this recession is going to last, last and last some more. This is what the ones I believe in - Mish Shedlock, Karl Denninger, Barry Ritholz et al - have been saying for the last 2 years as well.

Well, here we are. With the dismal news of the biggest banks in the US and their economic state of affairs coming out late last week, the Asian markets are at this moment some 3-4% down, Europe is opening in the red and I do not believe the bailouts of AIG and the banks by the US government will do much to help US confidence and the Dow Jones later on today.

We're looking at a stock market that has lost more than 50% of it's value in 1½ years. It's going to lose a lot more. the S%P 500 is projected to land at about 250, from the 700+ it's now on. If you have stocks, either you're in for the LOOOOOOONG haul (2015-16 or something) or you should cut your losses now.

These are interesting times. I do hope we'll all get out unscatched in the end - singed, but not burnt, hopefully. Although I'm not betting on it. The last time the outlooks were this bleak, a chap named Adolf saw hos opportunity...

The Twestival

If you're on Twitter, you could do worse today than follow the Twestival. All good, all fun, all for charity... and all bringing together the Twittersphere in a whole new way (I think :)

(is it just me, or is anyone else already looking for the next thing - what will happen after Twitter?)

Interactive music videos ... well...

hat tip Ms Paeonia :)

So, the interactive music video is finally here. The music video that - as interactive television was hailed as - allows you to watch a video and click your way to all the products you see in the video, be they cars, clothes, sunglasses or whatever.

First out is the Irish band The Script - here's their MySpace page - where you during 255 seconds can click on 242 different articles. From a marketing point of view, it is a bit interesting. But to call it "enriched music video"... well, let's just say it might be "annoyingly distracting music video".

As with all new technology, it's all in how you use it. There's no point just slapping on these clickable things (well, for The Script there was a point, seeing as they were first and got their fair amount of publicity) as they don't contribute to the whole, instead just act as a distraction. Once the novelty wears off, it's no use.

My suggestion would be to carefully develop a music video where this marketing tool is a natural way of the story in the video, supporting the music, supporting the visuals, and in turn being supported by them. THAT'S something that would keep them coming back, methinks.

Anyone want to hire me to do it, gimme a pm :)

Interactive television breakthrough?

Well well well, what do we have here?

InformiTV informs us that this will be the year for interactive television to make it's big breakthrough in the US. Why is that then, when this breakthrough was promised some 7-8 years ago the first time? Well, apparently television networks are now feeling the pressure from online and telcom competition, and have decided to embrace interactive television offerings, and the estimated amount of iTV-connected people is somewhere close to 50 million, by the end of the year. This, then, really could be it.... or can it?

We still have the problem of different standards available - Tru2way and EBIF being a couple of them - and the question of what kind of content can be offered that would be good enough to lure the consumers to interact.

As William Cooper on InformiTV states - "Despite, or perhaps as a result of, the dominance of cable television in America, interactive services are around five years behind those in Britain, where ironically most of the action has now moved on to the web."

Quite :)

Well, I suspect we'll see. I, as a developer, will not yet go rushing off trying to create formats for iTV in the US. I would dearly like to see a sound market and some ratings first...

Some stuff about the global economic crisis

Today, Monday, Geithner of the US Treasury will put forth the "rescue plan" that will "save the US economy". Problem is, there really is no way to save the economy - not as such an economy as it has been for the past 20 years at least.

This housing based credit bubble has been the largest credit bubble ever. The crash in the economy will therefore be, and actually IS already, the largest crash ever. To try to prop it all up with hundreds of billions of US taxpayer money is just plain silly.

The reason I'm interested - and you too should be interested - is that the theory of decoupling (the theory that it doesn't matter what happens in the US, the rest of the world will continue to trade with each other or internally and will not be affected) has been proven utterly wrong. Everything is connected, and the better I, and YOU, know the real deal, the better we can prepare for what will come.

Here are some links to my favourite pages to keep track of what's happening. Have a look, have a loooong good read, and make your choice.

Ticker Forum, Mish's Pages, The Big Picture, Calculated Risk.

Well.

This blog might be a bit hard to keep updated regularly (which you may have noticed) this coming month. This due to a LOT of deadlines approaching FAST. Trying to evade them is to no avail, as I've realized.

Be getting back, but infrequently, as I said.

Be well! Hope the Credit Crunch don't hit you too hard.

Power up Ideas, captain!

Ah, almost forgot to mention this one - the annual Content 360 competition, to be held at this years MIPTV festival in Cannes on the 30.3 - 3.4. This year the people holding the competition - the BBC, the KCC, MSN, NFB, Ogilvy and OpenAd.net are looking for ideas on some interesting topics.

The BBC are looking for ideas like "TV Entertainment over Broadband" and "Factual content via your mobile" whereas MSN wants "Original Comedy for Multiple Platform" and the KCC wants an "Interactive Educational format for Cross Media", amongst others.

Deadline is 19th of January for the BBC categories (that's next Monday! Get going!) and for the others 2nd February...

Best of luck!

The future of Interactive Television??

...or, rather, one POSSIBLE future for iTV.

This year it looks like it's all about forgetting tv to PC:s and laptops, or digital interactive set-top-boxes. No, what you want to do now is connect your 42" flat screen full HD television directly to the Internet. By then offering a host of widgets you're on your way to real real interactive television.

But, of course, this would be just too easy. So instead we have as many solutions as there are tv-manufacturers - "Sony announced support for widgets in its latest Bravia displays, referring to them as Bravia Internet Widgets. Samsung refers to its version as the Internet@TV Content Service. Vizio calls it Connected HDTV."

Good for them. Can't you all just gather around ONE solution and then us contentmakers could do great content for THAT solution, not a hundred different versions of the content for hundreds of different technical solutions.

Still, it sounds kinda neat. I don't have the time to delve into it atm, but it sounds like something that could have potential. We'll see.

Long Tail Fail Alert!

I've been an advocate of the Long Tail-theory - you know, Chris Andersons theory that if you have a near unlimited amount of virtual shelf space, you can offer all sorts of niched content, and the amount of niched content sold will exceed the amount of the most popular items sold. I.e., you can make money out of obscure stuff, as long as you have enough of it. This, to me, sounded entirely plausible.

Now, though, recent studies from the UK show that this just might not be the case. InformITV reports that the studies, conducted by the MCPS-PRS Alliance, showed that of all music sold in the UK, 0.4% of the songs made up 80% of the revenues. That's totally contradictionary to the long tail theory... On the other hand, might music be a species apart in this, seeing as people download, LastFM-listens etc, to the music they like? I don't know.. but read up on the report here, and be prepared to ditch the Long Tail from your next marketing-powerpoint, ok? :)

Have a good 2009!

..unlike the Palestine people of Ghaza, that is. Now, I do not have anything against Israel, and definitely no prejudices against anyone of Jewish heritage. But goddamit, that lunacy HAS TO STOP.

Now a whole world is clamoring for Hamas to stop firing rockets at Israel, injuring two people at the last instant - while Israel is carpetbombing the Ghaza strip killing hundreds... anyone else see a slight discrepancy here? Or is it just because the Palesine people are "terrorists"?

Dear me, someone talk some sense into these people. Here's hoping... and hope no more children have to die. Foolish hope, I know.

Happy 2009 everyone.

How to use YouTube

Just read this article from The New York Times, a real sunshine story amidst all the doom and gloom of failing companies and huge national debt. Just goes to show that it doesn't matter who you are or where you are, as long as you have a good story to tell - or good content - and a way to distribute it, you will make it.

So, what are you waiting for?? Go do it!

Adobe or Silverlight?

News in from the UK, where both Sky TV and ITV have been relaunching their online tv players with new versions based on Microsofts Silverlight. At the same time BBC are trying, and succeeding to a certain extent, to get people excited about their Adobe-based iPlayer. William Cooper over at informitv has more on the subject, but I can't help but thinking that there are just too many options whenever we're talking about online or mobile video - and it won't be resolved until one company has grown big enough to buy up all the others... Which then again leads to that company becoming too big to be efficient, and new open source etc projects jumping up, and then we're here again.

My point? Well, the only one worth making is probably that it was easier back in the old days, without alternatives. But a whole lot more boring as well!