Regarding web 2.0 companies who don't get web 2.0, namely Odeo

In case I haven't mentioned it enough, I'm a huge fan of Odeo. Not only does it have a lot of potential, but it's actually not bad for a beta. That said it's got a lot of show stoppers and I keep hitting them. To me they're obvious things too. But anyway I'm going to make this about more than just odeo. What this is about is sometimes companies, even the most of progressive of companies become nameless faceless tools. Seriously, it sound bad, but it's true. I don't need another nameless, faceles tool. I'll go use an ATM, I'll shop at walmart. Anyway, sometimes these well meaning companies that fail to be more than tools they need guidaince. They need tuff love. They need someone to scream at the top of their lungs, wake up!, wake the fuck up!

It sounds harsh, but the truth is that it's just to important not to do, because it's life and death for many of these companies. Especially the new startups. No matter how genius you are, I don't care if you are Evan Williams creator of the famed (and now lamented) Blogger.com, no amount of genius can execute and create a thing of beauty and sucess in a vaccum. Why? Because markets and communities and cultures are incredibly fickle and they are completely subjective. So at some point you have to actually listen to them.. ESPECIALLY in this market where customers and community are the driving force of innovation.

Plus, I'm doing this for my own sanity, because in order to keep using a tool with so much promise and flickr that's so god damn infuriating I have to do this, or I have to leave them. I have to do it to make it fun. So, with out further adieu. I give you my "feedback to Odeo" I posted in thair crappy feedback form five minutes ago. Complete with misspelrings and gramtical errs.

An open letter to Odeo.

This should be fun. :)

Ok, not sure what "past downloads" is doing but it appears to be only things I previous downloaded. In which case I say, WTF, as in why in the hell would I want to know just what I previously downloaded!?

I donloaded them goddamit I've got them on my hardrive and on my iPod, don't you think I know that.

Here's a though. Don't you think it would be a whole lot more useful to be able to see what I missed!? As in, I was on the road for two days, now I'm back, let's see what I missed... This as opposed to your thinking... I'v been out of town for a few days.. let's go see a blank list of stuff I didn't download so I can not do nothin with it. WTF? Clue in already.

So, here, how about this, DON'T choose one or the other, just call the god damn thing "history" and put everything that crossed my queue on it and hilight those items which weren't downloaded as "not downloaded". That way I can selectively re-queue them. Wow, that woud be kickass eh!?

I've written you about this before, but I'm writing again, just to make sure I'm short sucinct and clear about it and of course just ot put some emphasis on the issue.

And on a side note where's the damn Odeo user group!? I'm going to harp about this until it exists.

Start a damn user group already! So I can stop being a dick and being bitter and sending messages into this black whole of a feedback form where who knows if the nameless faceless machine that is Odeo will respond or even register my glorious awesome and genius ideas. (I'd be more modest btw, but if I didn't think they were all important to your existence I wouldn't bother, because of this GOD DAMN USELESS FEEDBACK mechanism. Am I beling clear! Am I beling beligerent(sp?) enough? I mean common, this form is tiny and it doesn't even have a fuscking spell check. Stop shitting on my god's gift ideas already.

It's a bout a partnership with your community goddammit! What do you thing this is web 1.0?

Go flock yourself!
http://flocksucks.wordpress.com/

... and then when your done...

PUT SOME SKIN IN THE GAME! It'll be the best thing you can do for yourself. Help me, help you!

Let the users help you polish your website and help you make it HUMAN and useable. They want too... because they use Odeo, the love odeo, and they want to see it succeed. But if you keep ignoring them they're gonna get lost. I'm gonna get lost. And you don't want that, because you obviously are missing half your clue. The half of clue that makes your site usable and humanly accessible. You machine, you tool you.

Sweet! I'm glad we got that out of the way.

love, mike of mmeiser.com/blog

For more things that are broken visit thisisbroken.com They have a nice new site and snazy new domain name.

Poop. Mr. Hankey was right. Poop does make the world go around.

TV Experiments Just Keep Coming

Man, I just love techdirt.com. They're not always right, but there always up on the latest happenings, and they "get it' like noone else. I need not even put in my two cents on this, they just nailed it. We're definitely entering a little bit of a craze. I wouldn't even call it a boom, some people might call it a tech bloom.. I'd call it a new media bloom... that's creating a very rapid incumbent media panic. The market is exploding, I've lost all track of the number of audio and video podcasts. I think it's somewhere around 10,000 audio and 2000 to 2500 video podcasts.

There has been an awful lot of experimenting from TV executives lately. It mostly started about a year ago, but in just the last few months it's really heated up, from the Cartoon Network's streaming of Adult Swim to UPN and Google streaming Everybody Hates Chris to Apple and ABC offering $2 downloads of shows to be viewed on the new iPod to NBC and CBS selling extremely limited versions of shows for a dollar. Now we can add to the list that AOL is streaming free versions of classic sitcoms (well, depending on your definition of "classic"), with commercials. On the good side, it's clear that TV execs realize they need to do something. They need to change and they're trying out a lot of different things. That's a step forward. However, all of these experiments have problems. None of them really take advantage of the medium, and all of them practically scream out how afraid the TV execs are of losing "control" on the internet.

Read the rest: Techdirt:TV Experiments Just Keep Coming

POD people - Audio and videocasts are a big hit

Well you can't really complain about a headline like this from the New York Daily News now can you? I'll just worry about reading it later. ;)

POD people - Audio and videocasts are a big hit (New York Daily News)

I'm please, but I won't consider that we've actually "arrived" until the New York Times and Washington Post come out with similar headlines.

Furthermore I won't be truely happy untill everyone in the world, including people in third world contries have access to portable network connectable devices at rates well below $100 dollars.... plus sub $100 network connected cameras that can automatically push video, photo and audio directly to web based video blogs. Perhaps they'll one day be a sub $100 device that goes both ways. :)

These devices don't need to be "always on", they just need to be able to independantly connect through open wifi or highspeed cellular services or even wimax. Perhaps just at a cybercafe.

What's important is that we need to quicken the pickup on the other side of the digital divide. That's going to be where it really gets tough, but it's also the most promising. I'm not going to repeat myself about exposing inhumanities in every dark corner of the earth to many more times. Nor even begin to conquer the privacy issues here.

Furhtermore... Almost on a side note, I want to see every fat cat politician in Washington DC and every Wall Street trader embracing portable media and portable media devices as closely as they clutch their Blackberries. I hear government workers were 10% of the Blackberry market. Crazy.

Here at M. M. and Eiser .com we're developing the systems for piping media from anywhere to everywhere,

...and we won't stop untill everyone, and we do mean EVERYONE is in the game.

Current TV is video podcasting, but are they 'getting it'

Current TV has finally started to deliver some of it's content via RSS enabled video feed. They have custom feeds for iTunes, Quicktime, and WinMedia format. All powered through Feedburner.

Current TV video blog

Current TV Quicktime RSS feed

Via: Current TV // Blog // Feeeeed me

The promise of Current TV...

Unfortunately there are no comments or conversational mechanisms on Current TV's video blog so it's really just a one way conversation. Current TV talking to you and not the other way around. It may be on the internet, but it's still just more broadcast.

There's so much more potential here! Current should be an advocate in helping their community make media, because in addition to all the indirect social benefits in the end that citizen made media will become a pool of content on which Current TV can draw.

There's three things Current MUST do.

1) Current should be promoting media education, educating people on how to make their own media through workshops, conferences, and other programs.

2) Current should be partnering with not for profit and community groups like OurMedia.org and Node 101 whom will help provide these facilities and training.

3) Current should then encourage people to not only submit their individual videos to Current, but videos from their vlogs or even submit their whole video blog! That way Current TV will have an ever growing pool of content to draw on. A pool of content that will come from a community that's both self sustaining and growing.

Without these three things Current is working on an unsustainable model. It's unsustainable because it's "one way".

Current's submission system is NOT sustaining. Who has time to create one video to submit just to Current TV? Especially when the majority of the time that work will simply be rejected and will never be seen by public eyes? If people want to create something bad enough that they'll create it and submit it to Current, then they want it SEEN. While current doesn't have enough time on it's cable channel or even website to showcase every piece of media submitted, they can help people to help themselves.

By stopping to think about what it's customers need which is a community, some visibility, and a voice (NOT just to see their videos on TV) Current can light a fire in the community. It's not even a big step, it just involves implementing a strategy that is a little less selfish and a tiny bit more altruistic.

Video blogs are a great source of citizen made media with benefits for both Current and the individuals that create them. By encouraging Current viewers to create their own video blogs as well as submit media directly to Current everyone wins. On the one hand there will be an established and growing independent, self sustaining community which will not only entertain itself through social interactions, and on the other side Current will in so facilitating this community build a huge base of content and a community of media creators from which it can readily draw on. A community of media makers who've "partnered" with Current by saying "my creations are available to Current TV to use."

Some details...

I could see an "I video blog for Current TV" badge campaign by users who've successfully submitted videos to Current TV. I could see Current creating a standard creative commons like license by which media creators can openly deed the work on their video blogs so that they have a pre-established legal relationship with Current TV where by they'll be compensated.

I could see Current tracking the popularity, comments and "interestingness" of those video blogs to mine for potential videos, stories and leads.

Best of all I could see current living up to and creating a new standard in TV where those such as CNN or MTV have before.

So how about it Current?

It's time to not just talk the talk, but walk the walk. MTV and CNN showed how to take niche markets like 24 hour music videos and 24 hour news world wide... The hallmark of this new revolution in media will be that network that can position itself to really feed upon and take advantage of the tremendous amount of independent citizen made media bursting forth from the internet. It will be that network whom connects to this, the new generation whom demand something more than the weekday sitcom.

Instead of 24 hour news bits or music video bits the next big revolutionary TV cannel will be 24 hour citizen media bits.

Establish the infrastructure...

So Current, come join the vlogosphere and use it as a pool on which to draw. Take the time to establish those connections, educate and facilitate. Give a little something to the community and it will give back to you a thousand fold. Take the time to establish the infrastructure by which you can fit into your communities lives, and they can fit into yours. Infrastructure that will allow you to interact with each other on a higher level than just a form on a website. Help build the infrastructure with legal frameworks, blog mechanisms, and media creation facilities by which we can better interact with you.

It's time for the "great debate" to be elevated to the next level. We're not just screaming at TV's anymore or writing letters to editors. We're making media. We're establishing the legal groundwork and we're communicating with not just text, but video and audio. And we're not just talking on our cell phones either. We're having personal conversations in open forums. Though it may seem odd to all the old school crowd, we're talking openly because we're inviting each other into our personal conversations, we're you in. Just as I'm inviting others into this conversation though it's become a personal message to YOU. Come work with us on a new level. That's the promise. That's the vision.

Enough of the silly forms and your bureaucratic systems... stop being so hierarchical and elitist... stop being the judges... and come join the hive. Once you establish the relationships you can then "curate" your channel. We're a lot more sophisticated and ready for you than you think. Take the leap of faith. It's a very small one. We're spelling it out, what more do you want? Do want us to do it all for you? Because we're pretty much doing it.

Doing it: 20051109_ToraBora2.mov
(video/quicktime Object)

Via: Current TV // Current International // The Caves of Tora Bora

An open invite to David Cross and the Arrested Development Crew

You know, I may not be one of those crazed fanatics that has watched every episode of the TV show Arrested Development multiple times, but I do believe David Cross hits the nail on the head in this clip which seems to be a tailor made reponse to Fox who yesterday pulled the plug on the critically acclaimed show.


watch it (Quicktime)

Dear Dave and the gang,

Please consider this an open invite.

You're just our type of people here on the internets and we love your odd sense of humor. Please, don't throw in the towel just because Fox cancelled its order, just ditch those dudes and come on down to the new game in town.

You can call it internet TV, Video On Demand, IPTV or whatever you like, but it's a great time to jump in the game. Everybody's doing it. And some are doing it well.

I'm sure we can hook you up with a few hundred thousand paying subscribers since the internet reaches a hare more people than the WB network. And if you're worried about protecting your IP, well I'm not the biggest fan of DRM, but if it'll make you feel secure in the transition, well I'm sure Apple would be happy to bring Arrested Development to iPods, computers, and TV's everywhere via iTunes and the Apple Store. It's a wining combination and a sure bet.

Just follow the lead of those not so desperate 'Desperate Housewives' and the not so poor 'Lost' souls. I hear they made a million or so in their very first week. Not bad for a first week, eh?

So call me! ;)

PS. Long live internet TV! There's enough channels and a big enough market for all of us. Not to mention a lot less commercials. Not that I have a problem with commercials. I just think there should be a little more "show" in the average TV show than there are commercials. Is that so much to ask?

-mike of mmeiser.com

Via: Raishad.com - There is/are no god(s) :(

BTW, the video clip interestingly enough comes as an extra on the Season 2 Arrested Development DVDs.

Official Google Video Blog

I love it. I just noticed google has a video blog to go with their new(ish) video search. It doesn't have a full RSS 2.0 video podcast feed because all the links point to google's website for video playback in their Flash player, but it does at least have an atom feed.

Link: Official Google Video Blog

Some side notes: Google has some VERY significant legal issues with their video search. It's spectacular but unbelievably they re-compress and re-compress and redistribute EVERY video so it can be played back in their standard Flash player. Not just a legal issue, but also a HUGE logistical undertaking. I can't imagine them re-compressing videos in real time to stream to you, but I also cannot imagine them caching what appears to be every video on the web!?

Personally, I think we have to rethink what it means to "redistribute" content. I'd not consider codec shifting (aka. format shifting) to enable playback on different platforms to be redistribution as long as it doesn't break any DRM, but I highly doubt the rest of the world sees this as fair use. One thing is certain though, we need this type of forward thinking innovation to push the resolution of copyright issues in this digital age.

That said Google is way to progressive for the current legal climate. By moving videos into their interface they could arguably deprive video creators of traffic and ad impressions. I'm also a little curious as to why google provides no links back directly to the video, nor information about the original format making it at times very hard if not impossible to find the link to the original video. I thought this was a search engine. If I can't actually find the original video exactly what is the point?

Now, just for the hell of it I'm going to try re-blogging one of google's Flash videos. I doubt this will work in iTunes, but hopefully it will work in FireAnt.

Watch it in Flash: Sandboarding in Chile (.swf)

Well, I couldn't find the original from google's site. (Great search engine eh.) So enjoy this video of Cameron Diaz going sandboarding in Chile instead of the non-flash version: Cameron_Diaz_trippin_in_chile_sandboarding_HQ.wmv
(23.3mb)

(via google's video blog