Archive for October, 2006

The news earlier this week about Riverdeep merging with Houghton Mifflin is largely a financial out for Riverdeep. Still, the combination of content and technology assets makes a lot more sense than Houghton Mifflin’s previous hookup with Vivendi. At the least it wakes up the ed-tech space, at best it will increase competition by putting pressure on the other players in the market to increase educational technology product development investments.

Demonstrating the growing corporate interest in using virtual worlds like Second Life to extend and hone their brand image, Reuters has opened an “in-world” news bureau in October that is publishing news from the outside world for Second Life members and news of Second Life for real world readers who visit a Reuters news site at: http://secondlife.reuters.com/

Echoing the move by Reuters and expanding on an article in the New York Times on the same subject, paidContent.org reports that in-world branding is becoming big business: “For brands, Second Life is appealing because it’s a place where people ‘immerse themselves in their products’, making it ideal for getting feedback as well as promoting products directly. Sun Microsystems, Adidas, Reebok and American Apparel all have retail spaces and IBM held a global alumni reunion. Starwood Hotels this week opens Aloft, its prototype hotel; Ben Folds will play at the opening and later at Sony BMG’s building on Media Island. The building has dedicated rooms for Sony BMG artists and sells music downloads. MTV has built its own Virtual Laguna Beach as an extension of the TV show Laguna Beach: The Real OC bringing in advertisers as partners.” Story continues here…

As reported by CNN this morning The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) have released a comprehensive report based on the Summit on Educational Games.

The report states, “Modern video and computer games offer a rich landscape of adventure and challenge that appeal to a growing number of Americans. Games capture and hold the attention of players for hours as they struggle to operate a successful football franchise, help Romans defeat the Gauls, or go through the strict regimen of Army basic training in virtual landscapes. People acquire new knowledge and complex skills from game play, suggesting gaming could help address one of the nation’s most pressing needs — strengthening our system of education and preparing workers for 21st century jobs.” Download the report here…

Which are you going to be, distinct or extinct?

Business guru Tom Peters puts it bluntly when he asks that question, but he’s right. You can either stand out in your uniqueness or stand by as your job is commoditized and out-sourced. So, how do you become “distinct”?

Executive blogs are the hottest new way to stand out, tell your story and start conversations that can turn colleagues, staff and customers into fans. But even with all the free text, image and video blogging services today who has the expertise to build a professional website and blog and really get it right?

Brand wizard and graphic designer Brad Szollose and I are combining our insights in a book called Executive Secrets of Branding on the Web based on a series of seminars we’ve been teaching for Right Management Consultants.

Through the end of the year we’re also offering a custom website, blog and branding services to develop a portfolio of examples of what we advocate in the book. If you’re interested in having us pump up the volume of your personal or small business brand click here to learn more or call me on 718-858-8858 so we can evaluate your needs and get started.

Now that the impact $1.65 billion Google/YouTube deal has begun to sink in there’s plenty of serious commentary to ponder and strategic planning to do if you’re in the web-video business. Meanwhile here are a few lighter observations.

First from Slash/dot: “Google’s acquisition of online video sharing site YouTube.com resulted in massive traffic headed to uTube.com, “the number one supplier of used Tube & Pipe equipment in the world!”, according to the site. CNN Money reports: “The company, which sells used machinery for making tubes to clients worldwide, has seen its site utube.com knocked off line by millions of online searchers looking for video site. “It’s killing us,” said Ralph Girkins, president and owner of the 22-year-old business.

The final word goes to two readers of the Onion. Curt Havermeyer cuts right to the bottom line, “That’s nearly a dollar for every video of a cat falling off a bed.” And Elisa Leonard more ascerbic observation: “The beauty of YouTube is that it takes entertainment out of the hands of morons in suits and puts it into the hands of morons in sweats.” Tell it like it is, Elisa.

If the Google/YouTube marriage wasn’t enough web-video news for one week, PBS announced today the launch of PBS content on the iTunes Store, making it possible for users to now purchase and download documentary specials and episodes from popular PBS prime-time and children’s programming. Episodes are priced from $1.99 each. Story continues here…

Only kidding, Google didn’t buy the planet, but after the markets closed today they did announce the acquistion of YouTube for a cool $1.65 billion. In the brave new world of Internet Video that’s amost the same thing. There’s a good discussion of this deal on PaidContent.org who have also compiled this list of posts about Google and YouTube leading up to the merger:

About YouTube:
– Google Nears Deal With YouTube; Could Be Announced Today: Reports
– Google-YouTube: Closed Process?
– Speculative Report: Google In Talks With YouTube; Google Beds New Projects
– YouTube Pins Profitability On Creative Advertising
– Warner Music, YouTube In Ad Share Agreement; Template For Future Deals
– UMG CEO: Time To Deal With Infringers Like YouTube, MySpace
– YouTube: Home Page Video Ads, Sponsored Channels
– CEO: YouTube Is Generating “Significant Revenues”
– YouTube Sued Over News Video Upload; Site’s Balancing Act
– YouTube: Let The Backlash Begin
– Marketers Latch On To YouTube, Other Viral Video Sites
– YouTube Ties Up Wth MTV; First Formal Media Company Agreement
– YouTube Gets $8 Million Funding
– Networks Grapple With YouTube; CBS’s Turn
– NBC’s C&D To YouTube For SNL Video Clips; YouTube Complies
– YouTube Gets $3.5 Million Funding

About Google:
– Google’s Approach To (Some) Content Matures; Google Video Gets Home-Page Boost
– Viacom, Google To Test MTVN Clips with AdSense; MTVN Downloads For Sale
– Google Video Rolls Out Country-Specific Sites in Europe
– Google Starts New Video Trial
– @ NATPE 2006: Google Video: Managing Expectations
– CES: Google Launches Premium Video Store; CBS, NBA, Charlie Rose, ITN Content For Sale

The computing power and storage capacity of the Internet information factory is ubiquitous, enormous, and harbinger of continuing change in how we create and consume content.

George Gilder explores this meme in his article for Wired 14:10 where he writes, “The desktop is dead. Welcome to the Internet cloud, where massive facilities across the globe will store all the data you’ll ever use. Just last century – you remember it well, across the chasm of the crash – the PC was king. The mainframe was deposed and deceased. The desktop was the data center [...] Today Google rules a total database of hundreds of petabytes, swelled every 24 hours by terabytes of Gmails, MySpace pages, and dancing-doggy videos – a relentless march of daily deltas, each larger than the whole Web of a decade ago. To make sense of it all, Page and Brin – with Microsoft, Yahoo, and Barry “QVC” Diller’s Ask.com hot on their heels – are frantically taking the computer-on-a-chip and multiplying it, in massively parallel arrays, into a computer-on-a-planet.” Story continues here…

Blogs, wikis, social networking, folksonomies, user generated content, websites as application platforms… with all the hype surriounding Web 2.0 these days a little clarity is welcome.

Logically you can start with Tim O’Reilly’s definition since he’s the ones who coined the the term. For an update, the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s October 5th, 2006 report Riding the Waves of Web 2.0 puts it in perspective: “Web 2.0” has become a catch-all buzzword that people use to describe a wide range of online activities and applications… As researchers, we instinctively reach for our spreadsheets to see if there is evidence to inform the hype about any online trend… Let’s get a few things clear right off the bat. 1) Web 2.0 does not have anything to do with Internet2. 2) Web 2.0 is not a new and improved internet network operating on a separate backbone. And 3) It is OK if you’ve heard the term and nodded in recognition, without having the faintest idea of what it really means.” Article continues here…

Of course all this talk about Web 2.0 begs the question is Web 3.0 next, and if it is what is it? According to Tim Berners Lee, “People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics - everything rippling and folding and looking misty - on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource.”

eSchool News has published an excellent resource called 21st Century Learning that offers both new stories and reprints of ones that are still relevant. When you dig in to it you’ll find:

• How the success of the gaming industry has inspired college curriculums
• How a Catholic high school went completely digital
• How a webcast has addressed the IT gender gap

“We’re living in the 21st century, so by definition every classroom must be a 21st century learning environment, right? Wrong. Just as educators were often accused of teaching with 19th-century methods in the 20th century, many are still not changing with the times. For some schools, the biggest challenge is understanding the true nature of 21st-century learning. Once this transformational concept is embraced, technology becomes a means to help boost achievement across the board.” Story continues here…