Filed under: Feature | Tags: Anthony E. Zuiker, Crime, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Halloween, iPhone, Level 26, Murder, Serial Killer, Video clip
LEVEL 26: SCARY NOVEL TO SCARY DIGI-NOVEL
Being a fan of serial killer dramas like Epitafios and Itchi the Killer, I’m always on the hunt for something new to scare the crap out of me especially around Halloween. Level 26 was written by Anthony E. Zuiker from CSI fame. The book is about a serial killer who fancies a plastic white suit and apparently takes more yoga than I do.
Apart from the story itself, the special sauce is in the interaction of traditional read meets online video interaction. Every 20 pages or so, the reader is directed online to watch a 3 minute piece of content meant to bridge from one portion of the story to the next. Not having the book in hand, I can’t comment on the effectiveness but I can say that the concept is pretty intriguing. Just announced today, an iPhone app has been released which marries the text and video together. Most found the process of entering the codes to access the associated video tedious so this alleviates a bit of that frustration.
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Filed under: Feature, ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Arts, Beastie Boys, Endtroducing....., Music, Music Video, Video, Video clip, YouTube
ONLINE VIDEO OF THE WEEK: YOU TUBE MIX TAPE
From zero views to over a million over 8 video tracks in 7 days, Kutiman has become the latest online video sensation. The project, called Thru You, stitches together video samples found across the breadth of material on YouTube. These 8 tracks were created over 3 months of time. To promote these, 3 people e-mailed 20 friends and thus became viral. Ah, the power of the internet. And just like the project’s title, the tracks were really created through you…if you in fact were one of the people playing music in one of these videos.
In the past, it was Paul’s Boutique from the Beastie Boys or DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing that blew my mind in the mixing department. There’s now a new order in town. I think the genius in these tracks comes not only from the masterful mixing but in the added video element. I once saw RZA scratch the audio and video of old school cartoons in LA and watching these videos leaves me equally intrigued.
Click here to head to Kutiman’s site masterfully designed to look like a remixed version of a YouTube page.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Kutiman Killed the Video Star (techcrunch.com)
- Kutiman Remixes YouTube on Thru-You (laughingsquid.com)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Facebook, Flash Gordon, HBO, Myspace, Sex and the City, Twitter, Video clip, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
HBO just launched a sweepstakes leading up to the premiere of Sex and the City The Movie on HBO. Get your Manolo on all over again with Sex and the City: The Movie Girls Night In Cross-Platform Sweepstakes. The grand prize is a $10,000 ultimate shopping spree plus daily instant win prizes. Create your Sex and the City Fashionista and post her to your Facebook page. Unlock new must-have accessories by watching short Sex and the City videos on HBO on Demand, HBO.com, HBO on Broadband, Comcast.net, Fancast, Road Runner.com, Cox.net and various other sites. Or join the Facebook fan page and upload a pic of your Fashionista there.
To rev up for the premiere of The Watchmen, Joost has put together a compendium of comics-themed video clips dating back to the original Flash Gordon shorts from the 1930s. (Cynopsis 3/2)
Many U.S. Christians are swearing off Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other new technologies for Lent. Thousands of Facebook users are signing up for “Giving up Facebook for Lent” groups on the site, posting notices that they will be gone for the next six weeks. (Iwantmedia 3/2, http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/most_days_you_can_find.html 3/1)
After a couple of false starts, 2009 just might be the year that interactive television begins to fulfill its potential for the cable TV industry. According to this report, the country’s largest cable firms have upgraded about 20 million set-top boxes to make them more amenable to interactive applications and, as Comcast Chief Operating Officer Steve Burke said, “Clearly, there is a huge, huge business out there if you can get the interactivity that you currently get when you advertise on the Internet married with television spots.” Multichannel News (3/2)
Nielsen released its January Video Census numbers revealing that total video streams topped 10 billion in the U.S. for the first time. Live streaming of President Obama’s inauguration helped increase the overall internet video audience increased to 135 million. After a basically flat Dec., YouTube increased its traffic by a measurable clip to 5.8 billion streams from 92 million unique users, up from 5.5 billion streams/84 million users in Dec. Following its Superbowl ad campaign, the aliens at Hulu rolled past Fox Interactive Media to the #3 ranking in terms of total streams while ABC nearly doubled its video viewer base from 3.5 million to 6.2 million. CNN also saw a huge boost from its Facebook inauguration integration, delivering 152 million streams to 5.6 million unique viewers in Jan., up from 95 million streams/8.3 million uniques in Dec. (Cynopsis 3/2)
Overall Online Video Usage (U.S.)
Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Percent Change
Unique Viewers (000) 124,262 124,611 135,617 +8.8%
Total Streams (000) 9,548,267 9,593,320 10,457,785 +9.0%
Streams per Viewer 76.8 77 77.1 +0%
Time per Viewer (min) 177.9 170.7 178.6 +4.6%
Source: Nielsen Online VideoCensus, Includes progressive downloads, excludes video advertising
Top Online Brands ranked by Video Streams for December 2008 (U.S.)
Brand Total Streams (000) Unique Viewers (000)
YouTube 5,810,271 92,563
Yahoo! 273,968 24,518
Hulu 232,444 7,238
Fox Interactive Media 213,351 16,318
Nickelodeon Kids and Family Network 204,212 6,268
MSN/Windows Live 171,909 14,468
ABC.com 163,503 6,221
CNN 152,780 11,444
Turner Sports and Ent. Digital Network 143,481 5,698
Megavideo 90,952 4,439
Source: Nielsen Online VideoCensus, Includes progressive downloads, excludes video advertising
Top 10 Parent Companies/Divisions for January 2009
Parent Unique Audience (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1. Google 140,202 2:13:20
2. Microsoft 128,870 2:35:34
3. Yahoo! 120,032 3:32:25
4. AOL LLC 88,989 3:52:12
5. News Corp. Online 82,746 1:26:10
6. InterActiveCorp 67,670 0:17:25
7. eBay 66,942 1:51:31
8. Amazon 65,374 0:28:08
9. Facebook 62,459 2:50:02
10. Wikimedia Foundation 60,852 0:19:28
Source: Nielsen Online
Top 10 Web Brands for January 2009
Brand Unique Audience (000) Time Per Person (hh:mm:ss)
1. Google 135,613 1:31:58
2 Yahoo! 118,824 3:33:04
3. MSN/Windows Live 105,900 2:24:41
4. Microsoft 99,169 0:46:59
5. AOL Media Network 88,989 3:52:12
6. YouTube 84,240 1:02:19
7. Fox Interactive Media 71,244 1:26:05
8. Facebook 62,444 2:50:04
9. Wikipedia 60,382 0:19:26
10. Apple 59,482 1:24:16
Source: Nielsen Online
Average U.S. Internet Usage, Combined Home & Work, Month of January 2009
Sessions/Visits per Person 62
Domains Visited per Person 115
Web Pages per Person 2,580
Duration of a Web Page Viewed 0:00:55
PC Time per Person 74:45:35
Active Digital Media Universe 168,734,519
Current Digital Media 229,254,813
Universe Estimate
Source: Nielsen Online
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Academy Award, Hulu, NBC Universal, News Corporation, Recording Industry Association of America, Video clip, Wall Street Journal, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
While people are watching video in ever-increasing numbers across all media and screens, the largest growth came in mobile video and on time-shifting devices, according to Nielsen’s report on fourth-quarter viewing habits. Internet video logged twice the gains of traditional television in terms of time spent watching and number of viewers, while mobile viewers increased 9% compared with the third quarter. The Wall Street Journal (2/23)
Hulu, founded by NBC Universal and News Corp., has become a better online video moneymaker than Web darling YouTube. But Hulu’s real victim might be cable companies: “Why pay $100 per month for a cable subscription when you can get so much great stuff online for free?” (Iwantmedia 2/23, http://www.newsweek.com/id/185790 2/21)
A video clip of Academy Awards host Hugh Jackman rehearsing his Oscars shtick in advance of the ceremony allegedly was “leaked” online by a production assistant. But the organizers of the awards are believed to have produced the clip, intending it to go viral. (Iwantmedia 2/23, http://goldderby.latimes.com/awards_goldderby/2009/02/sneak-peek-see.html 2/20)
That leaked U2 album
is causing all sorts of trouble. The unreleased album, which is due out on March 3, found its way onto BitTorrent and was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. That, apparently, sent music industry lawyers over at the Recording Industry Association of America into a fit. As a result, word is going around that the RIAA asked social music service Last.fm for data about its user’s listening habits to find people with unreleased tracks on their computers. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/did-lastfm-just-hand-over-user-listening-data-to-the-riaa/ 2/20)
If Facebook has one standout application it has to be Photos. Measured on its own, it is the largest photo site on the Web. A full 69 percent of Facebook’s monthly visitors worldwide either look at or upload photos, based on comScore data. And more than 10 billion photos have been uploaded to the site. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/22/facebook-photos-pulls-away-from-the-pack/ 2/22)
Online photo editing site Picnik is quickly climbing the ranks of photo sites from seemingly nowhere. In January, according to comScore, the site attracted 6.6 million unique visitors worldwide, a tenfold increase from the year before. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/23/picnik-is-emerging-as-one-of-the-fastest-growing-photo-sites-on-the-web 2/23)
Late last week, Microsoft Research shared a couple of things about Social Desktop, a prototype of which they are debuting at TechFest 2009 in a couple of days. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/23/microsoft-research-a-look-at-the-intriguing-social-desktop-prototype 2/23)
Comcast has confirmed that its thePlatform unit will provide backing technology for a new online video initiative that would allow cable customers to access “more content in more places.” The company, which previously has powered online video for the BBC, PBS and Fancast, said the move “is also good for cable programmers because it doesn’t put subscription fees at risk, and gives them the ability to give their audiences the experience they want and expect.” The New York Times/GigaOm (2/20)
Filed under: WIRELESS | Tags: Amazon.com, Apple, Flickr, Handhelds, iPhone, iPod Touch, Smartphones, Video clip
Infectious
, a startup we covered earlier this year that creates tough vinyl stickers for people who want to customize their cars, now offers the same product for walls, laptops and iPhones. For $10 you can change your phone into a piece of art. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/05/if-customizing-your-car-with-infectious-is-too-big-a-job-start-with-your-iphone-instead 12/5)
Amazon.com has launched an iPhone/iPod Touch application to streamline browsing and shopping on its site. The application includes an “Amazon Remembers” service, which lets users identify products they’d like to buy by saving a photo of the product taken using the iPhone’s camera, with the pics stored on both the app and Amazon’s Web site. San Francisco Chronicle/SF Unzipped blog (12/4)
Flickr has released a new version of its mobile site that affords several new features, most notably the ability to stream video clips up to 90-seconds in length. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/flickr-revamps-mobile-site-adds-video-streaming-support 12/4)
Virgin Mobile USA rolled out two new features for prepaid and conventional customers. “Connect” is a new social networking dashboard designed to give Helio members (recently acquired by Virgin) access to the latest updates from popular social media and networking sites including Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. “Mobile Lounge,” provides a social network for Virgin Mobile USA customers to share ideas and opinions, offering microblogging capabilities, discussion boards, chat rooms, profile creation and contests. (Cynopsis 12/5)
SK Telecom has struck a deal with Warner Bros. International Television Distribution (WBITD) to launch the original shortform digital series Sorority Forever on its mobile platform in Korea. The series is available to SKT users via the Nate and June services on their mobile devices. (Cynopsis 12/5)
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Dunder Mifflin Infinity, Google, Google Labs, Search, us, Video clip, World Wide Web, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
Planning to expand upon past successes NBC.com announced a new digital line-up of programming built around the fall television season. Here’s a sampling of what’s to come:
- Heroes will feature more micro-sites delving into secrets revealed on air, more graphic novels, more cast commentaries and more webisodes beginning in December. A special heroes vs. villains social network launches in October
- Knight Rider fans will be able to investigate the back stories of some of their favorite characters, play an all-new KITT game and interact in Attack KITT and the KITT cave
- The Dunder Mifflin Infinity social network built around The Office will feature new branches, new tasks and new prizes. New features include Meredith’s blog, Angela and Andy’s wedding planning microsite, a Serenity by Jan microsite and a second installment of webisodes slated for November
Twitter recorded 2.3 million unique U.S. visitors in August, an increase of 422% from the same period last year. Visitors to the microblogging service spent 55% more time on the site on average. The new numbers point to rather robust growth for the site. (Iwantmedia 9/17, http://mashable.com/2008/09/16/twitter-traffic-growth 9/16)
Time Inc. launched Maghound, a new web-based magazine subscription service hoping to do for magazine consumption what Netflix did for DVD rentals. Maghound’s 3 tiers of service are priced as such: $4.95 gets you 3 titles per month, $7.95 for 5 titles, $9.95 for 7 titles and every title beyond that costs an extra $1 per month. The best thing about the service is that you can switch titles at anytime. There are 240 magazines to choose from initially from the vaults of Time, Conde Nast, Rodale and other publishers, but don’t look for any Hearst books such as Cosmo or Esquire. (Cynopsis 9/17)
As the Web becomes more sophisticated and audio and video becomes a more important part of our online lives, we need something that will help us sift through the junk and find what we’re looking for in all that content. To address that, Google announced
Wednesday that it has launched audio indexing in Google Labs. Dubbed GAudi, the new service is designed to work with YouTube, and will catalog all the words uttered during an audio or video clip. Once collected, the transcript will be added to a searchable database that can be accessed in much the same way you search for text-based websites. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/17/google-launches-audio-indexing 9/17)
I’m guessing this indexing feature has the same challenges as others especially when it comes to background music or noise. Therefore, in terms of accuracy, news clips should be more accurately indexed than series. But that, is indeed a guess. That said, the current selection of videos indexed on the site would tend to support this assumption.
Seattle based iLike just expanded their recent streaming music deal with Rhapsody to allow any website or web application to add streaming music to their sites. Integration is dead simple (I’ve done it below). A long list of partners launches with them, including Google, Evite, TypePad, SGN, Flixster, Watercooler, Connected Weddings, Slide and Mesmo TV. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/16/ilike-music-platform-launches-music-streaming-anywhere 9/16)
Jaman.com struck a distribution deal with Starz Media’s Manga Entertainment, making a number of feature-length and episodic anime titles available to viewers for download rental. Genre classics such as Ghost in the Shell, Robotech, Astro Boy, Street Fighter II-V, Noein, Karas and Tactics are available for $2.99 for feature length and $1.99 for episodic length. (Cynopsis 9/17)
Web show studio For Your Imagination unveiled its own comedic video portal Axis of Comedy at the New York Television Festival’s Digital Day yesterday per tubefilter, bringing together 8 popular shows under one roof. Anchoring the lineup is Hayden Black’s Abigails X-Rated Teen Diary and Goodnight Burbank, rounded out by FYI’s Break a Leg, The Patrice Oneal Show and Kyle Piccolo. (Cynopsis 9/17)
CBS stayed atop of Hitwise‘s website broadcast network rankings last week and The CW increased its market share by 4 percentage point but NBC’s America’s Got Talent grabbed the top spot among the broadcast network show sites. Political commentary (both faux and “real”) proved to be the biggest draw on cable sites as The Daily Show site ranked #1 among cable network sites, The O’Reilly Factor came in at #2 and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann Show moved into the top 10 for non-children’s programming. (Cynopsis 9/17)
Top Visited US Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Sites (Week ending Sept. 13 2008)
Rank Network Website Market Share of Visits
1 CBS www.cbs.com 30.20%
2 NBC www.nbc.com 24.01%
3 ABC www.abc.com 19.97%
4 FOX* www.fox.com 16.59%
5 The CW www.cwtv.com 8.40%
6 MNTV www.mynetworktv.com .83%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise, *includes traffic aggregated from stand alone websites americanidol.com, amw.com, familyguy.com, thelot.com and thesimpsons.com.
Top Visited US Broadcast Network TV Show Sites (Week ending Sept. 13, 2008)
Rank Network Website Market Share of Visits
1 NBC American’s Got Talent 15.70%
2 CBS Big Brother 14.81%
3 NBC Deal or No Deal 6.19%
4 ABC Dancing With The Stars 5.41%
5 FOX America’s Most Wanted 4.37%
6 FOX Fringe 3.84%
7 FOX American Idol 3.11%
8 The CW One Tree Hill 2.62%
9 CBS NCIS 2.02%
10 NBC Heroes 1.83%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise
Top Visited US Cable Network TV Show Sites -Excluding Children’s Programming (Week ending Sept. 13, 2008)
Rank Network Website Market Share of Visits
1 Comedy Central The Daily Show 6.30%
2 Fox News O’Reilly Factor 4.30%
3 Food Network Paula’s Home Cooking 4.07%
4 Comedy Central South Park 3.73%
5 MTV The Hills 3.60%
6 BET 106 & Park 3.10%
7 CNN Lou Dobbs Tonight 2.49%
8 Food Network Everyday Italian 2.34%
9 Bravo Project Runway 2.24%
10 MSNBC Countdown w/Keith O. 2.20%
Source: Custom report from Hitwise
Filed under: ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA | Tags: Barack Obama, Fox Interactive Media, Google, Google Video, Myspace, us, Video clip, YouTube
ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA
If you look at YouTube’s numbers, one thing is clear: It completely dominates online video. YouTube accounts for 37 percent of all videos watched on the Internet and attracts about half of the audience, according to comScore. (And if you add in Google Video, that brings the total to 38 percent of videos watched). The No. 2 player, Fox Interactive Media (i.e., MySpace), accounts for only 4.2 percent of videos watched. And as the Forbes chart above shows, YouTube is still growing at a faster pace in terms of traffic than Google overall. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/30/is-youtube-building-market-dominance-at-the-expense-of-building-a-business 5/30)
Google had a 20% jump in clicks on its U.S. text advertisements in April, a reversal from slowing growth the month before. Also: Google is the biggest recipient of Barack Obama‘s online ad dollars. The Democratic presidential hopeful is said to prefer “performance-based” ad buys. (Iwantmedia 5/30, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601204&sid=az_wRHyfCE94 5/29, http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3629685 5/29)
With the Olympics set to start in Beijing in August, Chinese officials are vowing to crack down on online video piracy. Billions in broadcasting fees are at stake. NBC and other rights holders plan to use new technology from Silicon Valley to flag unofficial clips that end up online. (Iwantmedia 5/30, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_23/b4087073685542.htm 5/29)
Revision3.com, home of Web TV show “Diggnation” and other tech shows, shut down for three days after its computers were overwhelmed by traffic sent by the anti-piracy company MediaDefender. Both Revision3 and MediaDefender are claiming the outage was accidental. (Iwantmedia 5/30, http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-outage30-2008may30,0,976031.story 5/30)
AOL announced it will be supporting Google’s OpenSocial platform as part of a broader integration, beginning with the adoption of Google Gadgets on myAOL.com. (Cynopsis 5/30)
Comcast Interactive Media (including sites such as Comcast.net, Fancast, Fandango, Ziddio and now Plaxo) is on target to turn a profit later this year, according to an interview in Reuters. Apparently ad revenue sharing partnerships with Google and Yahoo are bringing in more cash than expected. (Cynopsis 5/30)
Hackers took over and defaced Comcast’s Web portal for several hours Wednesday night, leaving a cryptic message on the site that the company’s 14.1 million subscribers use to access e-mail, news and technical support. Hackers posted that they had “RoXed” Comcast. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080529/ap_on_hi_te/tec_comcast_web_hack 5/29)
Local online advertising should deliver an eleven-figure payday to site publishers, according to a forecast from Borrell Associates. Also, yellow pages companies, despite the relentless assault by myriad competitors, appear to be the “big winners.” (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/05/29/borrell-local-sites-to-earn-131-billion-in-2008 5/29)
Sci Fi Channel’s SciFi.com has got game fever. After launching a successful casual Game Center the division rolled out a stand alone gaming blog called Fidgit on Thursday featuring reviews, galleries, news and insider dope. (Cynopsis 5/30)
Redlasso is refusing to be hogtied by that decease and desist letter set by the TV networks. The company pledged it will continue to collect footage for its video embedding service, and it has recruited former Westinghouse and CBS CEO Michael Jordan (not the Bull) as an advisor. (Cynopsis 5/30)
New York-based MenuPages.com, an online compendium of restaurant and take-out menus for eight major U.S. cities, is rumored to be close to being acquired by an unknown buyer. The advertising-supported MenuPages pulls in some 300,000 visitors per month. (Iwantmedia 5/30, http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-9954617-36.html 5/29)
Polly Blitzer, former assistant editor at Time Inc.’s In Style magazine, is starting her own site, BeautyBlitz.com, which she is marketing as the first national beauty magazine to be published entirely online. The site will feature celebrity guest editors and blogs. (Iwantmedia 5/30, http://www.wwd.com/memopad/article/125321?page=2 5/30)
Daily Marauder 