Thursday, August 07, 2008
Power in the Palm of Your Hand
(Annette Moser-Wellman) My smartphone isn't very smart. It's supposed to do fancy things but has trouble just delivering e-mail. While it was expensive two years ago, it now gets frequent brain cramps and the screen freezes. It comforts me to imagine it's possessed by an evil demon. In fact, the $279 data charge I got last month confirms it.
But some smartphones are getting smarter and new technologies are making me envy my friends and neighbors. The iPhone has ushered in a new enthusiasm for what is possible from the palm of your hand. The higher end Nokia phones also have unprecedented computing power. And if you look overseas, you'll see how the intersection of quality phones and amazing technology is changing the landscape of news.
Bhaskar Roy, Cofounder of
Qik tells me, "What you see in Europe and Asia is the power of these high capability phones at work. In countries where public transportation is important, people get their news off of their cell phones. So while they're sitting on the train, breaking news comes from SMS, video or audio transcript and is pushed directly to their phone. In the U.S., mobile content will soon become highly customized and will be designed to match a person's personality."
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Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Hey Web. Browse msnbc.com. Read headlines.
(Annette Moser-Wellman) For years, we've been waiting for the one device that will combine the "lean back" experience of TV, the computing power of your laptop and mobility of your cell phone. From
Sling Box to the
iPhone, manufacturers have been searching for the "killer application" that will solve all our needs for news, information and entertainment in one device and bridge the gap between our home and office.
In a recent conversation with Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Division at Microsoft, we talked about this holy grail of devices.
"I don't believe in massive convergence of devices. I don't think there's one device. There will be two or three devices. I tend to think about it less in terms of devices and more in terms of screens. There are screens in the home, screens in your car and screens that you take with you. I think of screens instead of devices, because ultimately that's the way the consumer is going to experience whatever content they are getting," he said.
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Watching, chatting about, clipping, annotating and sharing the news
(Annette Moser-Wellman) Here's my latest guilty pleasure: lying on the family room couch watching mildly entertaining TV while working on my laptop. Somehow when I combine the two experiences, it seems to redeem them both. I just have to be careful not to get popcorn butter on my keyboard.
I suppose this multi-tasking activity is an awkward precursor to the convergence of devices that we hear so much about in the tech community. Device convergence is at the stage of development where it has created more questions than answers for people in the news business. Will access to the Internet on a TV screen alter the way we view news and information? Will mobile devices usher in the intersection of the Web and entertainment? When we can communicate seamlessly across mobile, TV and portable computing, will the nature of news change?
Venu Vasudevan's job to think about questions like these. A senior director in applications software platforms research within
Motorola Labs, Venu is exploring the implications of convergence on media experiences.
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Monday, June 09, 2008
Bouncing back to the editorial core
(Annette Moser-Wellman) "The Internet changes everything! The Web operates on new values! Old rules just don't work on-line!" We've all heard the refrain and maybe even said it ourselves.
But in a surprising interview with
Albert Cheng, Executive Vice President, Digital Media, of
Disney-ABC Television Group, I was reminded how rapid change also creates a bounce-back effect. We realize some important things stay the same.
"We've tried a lot of things [in news]. Some have succeeded and some didn't work. We thought, for example, user generated video would be core to our success and giving consumers the opportunity to upload what they wanted would be important. But that really hasn't come to fruition. A very small percent of people actually want to upload content. The greater majority, actually the vast majority, still want to read professionally produced, editorialized content," he said.
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Monday, June 09, 2008
Moving Eyeballs and Curating Communities
(Annette Moser-Wellman) If you want to see into the crystal ball of the future of media, talk with someone who heads the business development function of a media company. These leaders get the 30,000-foot view of how the Internet is changing the landscape of news.
One of them is
Kenneth A. Bronfin, president of
Hearst Interactive Media. You'll recognize the household names of ESPN, Cosmopolitan and the Houston Chronicle in the Hearst portfolio, but have you heard of
E Ink and
Idilia? These are media ventures hand-picked by Ken, who's charged with blending a traditional print and television company with strategic new and emerging technology. It's a role not without risk, and coupled with Ken's aerial view of new media, it's given him a unique perspective about the future of news and media technology.
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Friday, June 06, 2008
Getting the Kind of Online Metrics That Advertisers Need
(Annette Moser-Wellman) We've all seen the stats. Online news is growing in popularity. But what do commonly-available usage statistics really tell us about the attitudes and behaviors of consumers on a news site? Wouldn't you love to have a deeper understanding of your online users? Better data to share with your advertisers? The future of online measurement is changing and Susan Hickey, Chief Marketing Officer of
Nielsen Online explained to me some of the opportunities and barriers in the world of online measurement.
"We have a lot of metrics about how consumers use the Web, but when you are thinking about brand impact or consumer involvement you want to be thinking about the quality, not just the quantity. We are spending a lot of time working with clients to define engagement metrics, which may differ by industry - for example, e-commerce, media, health and consumer packaged goods," she said.
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Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Democratizing the tools of TV
(Annette Moser-Wellman) I visited the
Newseum in Washington DC, a permanent new museum dedicated to the role of news in our culture. Beautiful building and some great exhibits. But one exhibit (for which you had to pay $8) was called "Be a TV Reporter." It involved standing behind a large television camera, talking into a microphone while reading a script from a teleprompter. My first thought was, "Couldn't we get a bit more up-to-date on the art of reporting?" Surely gathering and distributing the news has evolved since ancient times of one person behind one camera?
I recently interviewed Max Haot from
Mogulus. Talk about a new way to gather and distribute news. Mogulus is a company that enables you to produce your own 24/7 TV channel and broadcast it via the Web. Mogulus provides the tools so that you can broadcast live from a camera anywhere and then mix in live reporting with video from a play list of many online sources, develop a storyboard, customize your graphics and even invite others to collaborate live with you.
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Monday, April 14, 2008
Microsegmentation and the Opportunity Under Your Nose
(Annette Moser-Wellman) If you have a presence on the Web, your most pressing concern should be consumer engagement. How do you get people coming back again and again and remaining interested and involved? Wetpaint's
Ben Elowitz has some ideas.
Consumers come to
Wetpaint, a free wiki service, choose a template and build their own forums, from fan sites to hobby clubs. Since Wetpaint started in June of 2006, it has grown to host 700,000 user-generated sites. Elowitz credits the success of Wetpaint to one of the benefits of the Web 2.0 movement: microsegmentation.
Elowitz told me, "What we've found is there's a whole other category of media the Web enables which is more topic-focused. People are using technology to create a kind of replacement for the traditional magazine. They're looking at all sorts of new resources, opinion and information that they're able to share with others who care about the same topics."
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Finding That Photo, Targeting That Consumer With Image Recognition Technology
(Annette Moser-Wellman) Does your Web site allow users to upload their photos? Or do you have a large photo and video inventory? If you answered yes to either of these questions, read on. Recognition technology is rapidly evolving in ways that could create new opportunities for your media organization.
So, first off, when I hear 'recognition software,' I immediately think of Tom Cruise getting his retina scanned in
Minority Report. But the technology to recognize people is quickly moving beyond security screening and launching into applications that offer fresh ideas for managing video and photos and even extracting value from them.
Eyealike is one such recognition software company, which seeks to take recognition technology to a new level. President Greg Huess told me about his firm's histogram technology, developed in partnership with the
University of Washington. By grabbing four or five bits of information from a photo or video, Eyealike creates a "fingerprint" that allows a server to understand its content.
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Monday, March 03, 2008
Storytelling and Community
(Annette Moser-Wellman) When we peer into the crystal ball called "news," one thing we're sure to see more of is imagery. Audiences will expect more still pictures and video in news coverage and more people will want to share theirs. How can news organizations prepare for some of these changes ahead?
I decided to check-in with David Hobby, a 20-year veteran photojournalist and blogger of
Strobist.com. Less than two years ago, David started writing online about lighting techniques for photojournalism students and young pros. His following has grown to 200,000 regular readers and he is so busy tending his 'flock' that he is taking a leave from the Baltimore Sun.
"The one thing you can't deny is that we are in an increasingly visual society," Hobby claims. "You probably get more of your news in a visual form that you do in a print form on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not. There are more and more and more outlets for visual journalism and visual content than there ever were before."
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Standing Out with Mobile and Video
(Annette Moser-Wellman) Mobile and video were top of mind for most of the media executives we interviewed recently for
Media Management Center's recent report on
innovation and the news media.
But, of course, watching video on news sites can be a less than satisfying experience. You name the problems - takes forever to buffer, disappointing quality once you get it and no easy way to explore related content. And watching video on most mobile devices? Forget it.
Fortunately, both technologies are morphing quickly. So we thought we'd 'scout out' what's happening at the edge of the horizon and what changes might be in store for news media organizations. I caught up with Cameron Brain, CEO of a promising start-up called Open Box Technologies - a Web and mobile commercial video solutions provider - to talk about some of the opportunities and challenges media companies face when it comes to optimizing video - on mobile and off.
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