Wednesday, December 29, 2010

GoPro HD camera

Log

Got this new toy delivered on my doors steps. It is GoPro Hero camera for extreme situations. I really need to go scuba diving now. Shoots HD, is really small, 30/60fps and the best part you can take it to 60m depth!

P1040978

P1040972

Below are a couple of videos what you can do with it.



And this is what I am going to do with it.

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The State of Online Video [Infographic]


http://www.clicker.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/YOUTUBE-NATION-12-2.png

Thanks to Jeffthomastech.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Monday, November 08, 2010

Style the City Launched

Creativity

We launched Style the City today. It is the one the first street fashion blogs on video in the world. a Vlogazine as we call it, with features from San Francisco and Helsinki at the moment. We are super excited about this so go check it as. Built on Videoflow.



Monday, September 27, 2010

Traditional TV ad has it's place online

Business

(image source: Techcrunch)

Accoring to a research conducted by Dynamic Logic, reported at Adweek.com, that TV spots perform just as well as video ads created specifically for the medium when it comes to several brand attributes.

"It was my thesis [that] made-for-Web [ads] will be more effective than [repurposed] TV ads," said Chris Bian, research analyst with Dynamic Logic's custom-solutions team. "In the end, I found it wasn't necessarily the case that repurposed was inferior. Each had their own place."

Dynamic Logic found that repurposed TV, often done as the cheapest way of running online video campaigns, works well when tactics mimic the wide-audience approach of TV. Original video works better, Bian said, when the Web's targeting capabilities are put to full use.

Dynamic Logic culled the findings from 59 campaigns and 75,000 respondents for repurposed efforts and 135 campaigns and 150,000 respondents for the made-for-Web content. It examined online video shown in streams and in banners.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Meaningless Online Video Can Kill Your Credibility

Creativity


The majority of independent online video content being created is mostly unwatchable. I'm the first to admit that I am guilty of creating some of this unwatchable content as well, but as the Internet matures, grows and brings in new audiences something has got to give. Do I mind when someone I know and admire just riffs off of their built-in laptop video camera? Usually no, it depends on who that person is and how relevant the content is. Do I ever think that the content adds to their credibility? Hardly ever.

If you care about how much impact your video can have, remember Content is King, Context is King Kong

I quite often say this aloud. What I mean with it is that if you are looking for relevance, it is not the HD quality or how much your camera does not shake (or does for that matter). It is all about the fact, that you need to think before you shoot. Even the lousy phone cameras works well, if that has a meaning in the context you are working with. And please, learn the basics of editing. You do edit your texts while writing, so why not take all the unrelevant stuff off your videos as well.

- Think why are you shooting it?
- What is the context your viewer will see it?

Here are 5 ways to produce online video that will not kill your credibility (from someone who knows nothing about it):

1. Audio balance. Whenever there is more than one person speaking, please ensure that everyone's level is equal prior to publishing your final piece. All too often, I have to watch the video and work my volume control like I'm doing a final mix on Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon.
2. Eye contact. It's hard and awkward to speak into a camera. That's why great broadcasters make the money that they do. Take some media training or do some pre-publishing practice runs. Letting your eyes wander, not looking into the camera or not being one hundred percent comfortable makes the viewer uncomfortable too.
3. Speak. Way too many "ummms" and "ahhhs." It takes practice not to stammer and stumble over words. Don't just read off of cue cards and don't try to improvise either. Find a healthy balance by writing out a script, but knowing how to speak it instead of just reading it.
4. Backgrounds. Do you really think that recording in your basement with a broken bookshelf in the background or cat pee stains on the couch is screaming, "hire me!"? Find a background that fits the feeling you are looking to tell. Well, if it is the basement, then go for. I would suggest outdoors whenever you can.
5. Edit. Think about how you can better edit your final product. Keep the information tight and be ferocious with what makes it to the final cut. The audience will thank you for not wasting their time or letting the content wander too far off of topic.

Finally, remember these 3 when filming. Background tells you where you are, middleground is where the subject is, and foreground tells the feeling you are looking at the subject.

Thursday, September 02, 2010

The value of curating online

Business

Machine Head

A good friend of mine has launched a curated online news media Topiikki, which aims to give you the most relevant news items, whether in blogs or in a more traditional news sites.

This makes me think about the slow transition towards curation in online media, as opposite to rather than just aggregating content. It is nothing hugely new, but just as in arts, the importance of value and meaningfullness found within a huge mass of content rises to the top. This is in the heart of the move on from web 2.0, where people and content are more connected.

The Digitalisation is not about move from analog to digital, it is a move from scarcity to surfeit. The best curators are nodes and connectors, guiding you to a more insightful understanding of what you are seeing (or reading) around the world. Like art curators have for centuries, great online news curators have a knowledge to balancing content and value.

Edit: Mikko Järvenpää blogged about the same theme, going a bit more indepth with this issue.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Flow Festival 2010 - 5 Styles in 3 Minutes

The Future of TV Is Not On Cable

I re-post the blogpost on NewTeeVee. This just hits the spot.

The $100 cable bill is dead. The cable industry just doesn’t know it yet. What killed it was not just a combination of ad-supported online video sites and cheap subscription video services, but a fundamental inability on the part of TV programmers and cable companies to reach the next generation of consumers.

It’s still heady days for the cable industry. Cable, satellite and IPTV companies have continued to draw in new consumers to their pay TV services, and have even been successful in convincing existing subscribers to pay more for premium video content. But one needs only to look at audience demographics to see that big cable’s ability to draw in new viewers is waning, and that spells trouble for the TV industry as a whole.

CNET reports that the average age for broadcast TV viewers has risen dramatically over the past two decades. Marguerite Reardon writes:

Twenty years ago, the median age for ABC viewers was 37; today it’s 51. Fox’s median age has also jumped, from 29 to 44. And NBC and CBS, which have always had older viewers, are also seeing the median age of their viewers rise.

Even the NY Times, which took on the cord-cutting phenomenon with the headline “Plenty to Watch Online, but Viewers Prefer to Pay for Cable,” couldn’t ignore the obvious. Despite the fact that 677,000 new subscribers signed up for pay TV services in the first quarter, the number of young people that are willing to pay for cable continues to decline. According to a Times/CBS News survey “found that people under the age of 45 were about four times as likely as those 45 and over to say Internet video services could effectively replace cable.”

In other words, cable companies and broadcasters aren’t bringing in new customers. They’re just selling more stuff to existing customers.

Some companies have tried to remedy the model, with new services that are meant to appeal to the on-demand everywhere demands of the next generation. Comcast, Time Warner and others are pushing hard to make their cable programming available on-demand through broadband TV Everywhere services so that their subscribers can watch shows online at their leisure.

But so-called TV Everywhere services miss the point: the existing audience paying $100 a month for TV doesn’t care about watching True Blood on a laptop. And the people watching True Blood on a laptop aren’t going to shell out $100 for a cable subscription.

Consumer behavior is fundamentally changing, and it starts with the young people who don’t see the need for cable.

Today, there’s an entire generation of consumers that has grown used to turning to Netflix and Hulu for their video entertainment. You think you’re going to sell them a $100 a month cable subscription, when they’ve been doing fine just paying for broadband? The TV industry is going to need to find a way to reach those consumers — because there’s only so long you can cater to an increasingly aging audience.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Content Creators "Have No ROI" in Producing Videos Just for Their Own Destination

Business

We at Videoflow have been working heavily on this opportunity. Truly, on web you are connected by nature, therefore there is no reason to produce content just for yourself or for you own properties. As a content owner you should distribute, distribute and distribute!! And use Videoflow to help you distribute and monetise your content. I believe this way you are able to reach more and wider audience for your kick ass content. Makes sense, right?

Lets say you are a wineblogger producing high quality content. Or you are a production house creating a 15 episode show for TV. Would it be nice to get access to different medias by someone else working for you without fee. Thou taking a cut from your advertising sales. Cooperation on the distribution benefits the whole ecosystem.

Here is a link to the Beet.TV article about it.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Videoflow beta phase (sample video)


As some of you might know, we have been busy developing Videoflow, an online video distribution and monetization platform. For more, go check out www.videoflow.com (in Finnish at the moment). We are currently testing the service out with certain bloggers.

Here is a link to Pupulandia lifestyle-blogger, where you can see the service in action. http://pupulandia.indiedays.com/2010/06/22/pikavisiitti-my-o-my-putiikkiin/

Monday, May 03, 2010

Content's Three Pillars

Business

Video content involves production, publishing and distribution. More dedicated followers, viewers or fans you have, the more you should focus on Production and less on Distribution

Production is a commodity and expensive; hence why both companies are trying to inject more science into the art to drive down the price of production. A low cost approach can maintain a high enough quality with text content, but with videos it’s more challenging. Moreover, a totally freelanced production team can also have some iota of consistency across text content, but with videos, nothing looks alike and marketers don’t feel any confidence in running ads. Quality content requires consistency. If a media planner agrees to spend $1M on a website running ads next to certain content, it assumes that the content the publisher produces tomorrow will be as good (and similar) to what it sees on the site today. A freelance model does not guarantee consistency and a UGC platform guarantees that it won’t be, especially with video.

Publishing (i.e., building a destination) is a challenge. Demand Media doesn’t have a destination but has a lot of eyeballs through its many sites; AOL meanwhile still has oodles of traffic and in addition to the AOL.com portal has many smaller niche sites with the potential to drive traffic too. Here, we see a divergence between Demand Media and AOL. On the one hand, AOL really does not need to focus purely on search traffic because it has traffic from its sites. Demand Media, however, has a more byzantine traffic pattern on its many sites, so I can understand the focus (and need) to focus on search traffic. However, search traffic is “in and out” and not the kind of engagement that branded marketers look for.

Distribution is increasingly fragmented, to the extent that even AOL is migrating from the one size fits all portal to the multiple web properties, and Tim Armstrong citing “fragmentation is our friend”.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/10/aol-demand-media-content-farm/#ixzz0mqXnuM7L

Friday, April 30, 2010

Online Video Advertising to increase 35% in 2010

On Beet.TV blog they say, online video is the fastest growing sectors in advertising, with spending expected to be up nearly 35 percent this year, says Geoff Ramsey, CEO of market research firm eMarketer.

This poses some interesting points. Online video is really the fastest growing sector in online advertising and has some real meaning for paying customers. Still, despite the rapid rise, the medium faces challenges in technology and content quality.

According to my own knowledge, I have learned that the challenges are:
- How to produce quality content
- How to distribute the content to generate good enough reach
- How to develop more intuitive technology
- How to target your target group better

Two latter ones are on acceptable level by know. Currently media are wondering how to solve the two first points. Well, we are developing a service this, check it out: Videoflow

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Freedom

Creativity



There is always pain
To struggle for freedom
If we don't get it easy
It would not feel good

If we success we probably
Sue each others in the end
Still, that is cool
Just feel the vibe

What I am looking for
Is the beauty
To feel the moment
And finish the journey

That is freedom for me