The musician Moby has created a free music download site called “mobygratis” for independent and non-profit filmmakers, film students, and anyone in need of free music for independent, non-profit films, videos, or shorts. You can listen to the available music and download whatever you want to use. The music is free as long as it’s [...]
I just reported last month on the success of asap. Things change fast! According to a story on Yahoo! Finance from Seth Sutel, AP business writer, the AP is closing down its 2-year-old multimedia service on October 31. asap emphasized nontraditional methods of storytelling to help newspapers reach the 18-to-34 age group. AP sources stated [...]
In a recent report from the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), 62 magazines announced digital initiatives in the second quarter of 2007. That’s a 139% increase over the same time period in 2006, and the highest number ever tracked by MPA. Some of the new initiatives announced by magazine publishers are integrated marketing [...]
In an article by Dane Hamilton from Reuters (Apple co-founder backs Internet video venture) a new Internet startup called “Hotswap.com” has created a new compression technology for Internet video that can make common digital camera movie clips mimic high-definition television on Web sites. This technology is going to be used initially for e-commerce sites, specifically [...]
The NPPA has the beginning pages up for this year’s Flying Short Course. The first stop is in Washington D.C. on October 26-27 at the Frank E. Gannett Auditorium on the campus of USA Today. Stop two is in Chicago, IL, October 27 & 28 (location TBD), and stop three is in San Jose, CA, [...]
American Journal, an online magazine published monthly by American Journal Publishing, has some great content. They are also always looking for more. This would be another outlet for stories that may have been sidelined in some way, but that you want to still present to a major audience. The one thing I didn’t see was [...]
According to a story from BizReport, online newspaper readership is on the rise. Also increasing is the amount of time readers are spending on each page. The report credits this increase to, “The increasing inclusion of engaging content such as blogs, video, polls and online debate.” Multimedia content is having an effect on readership. Hopefully [...]
Last year Michelle Seelig, Ph.D., from the University of Miami School of Communication conducted a survey to see what the perception of people in mass media, specifically visual communicators, is of the use of sound with still images. Michelle is still working on the results and implications of her study, but you can see the [...]
A nicely done piece from the Onion on the loss of all data. In all seriousness, what would we do if the content we have so lovingly created is lost due to a server meltdown or other calamity? We rarely think about the archival quality and lasting power of multimedia content. Today we can go [...]
Hillman Curtis on Creating Short Films for the Web
Text and images by Hillman Curtis.
New Riders Publishing, Berkeley, 2005
An excellent book, Curtis offers a look into his filmmaking process. He takes you through the ideas that drive the story, through setup, shoot, and the assembly of a rough cut, to the final edit. Hillman also offers [...]
Mindy McAdams is attending the Travel Channel Academy in Silver Spring, Maryland, this summer. Check out her post from the first day and go to her blog, Teaching Online Journalism, to keep up on her experiences.
Boot camp for VJs
I’m attending the second Travel Channel Academy, in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. It’s a [...]
(What the Duck)
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism will soon unveil their new multimedia curriculum. The move is not without criticism. School Dean, John Lavine, has emphasized marketing as part of the new curriculum, a move that has irked many journalists, faculty, and students. I agree, we have to be very careful that we keep [...]
From Josh Cantone at Read/Write Web, Buffalo Rising is quickly becoming one of the more successful hyperlocal media sites, with more than a 10% growth rate each month. Their site is very well designed and uses video and other multimedia very well. They are also going to produce a print product in the future which [...]
For all you Robert Frank fans, from August 3-5 at the “Center” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, all the Robert Frank films will be shown. Plus it’s a good excuse to go to Santa Fe. Here’s the press release:
Center and the Film Center at Cinemacafe are thrilled to present the Robert Frank Film Festival, a [...]
For you bloggers out there - take a break! Another great What the Duck cartoon from Aaron Johnson
In this report from the Baltimore Sun, the paper is going to start partnering with local television media and working with broadcast reporters to co-produce multimedia content.
Sun to share content with WMAR, MPT
By Nick Madigan Sun reporter July 18, 2007
Expanding its reach into other media platforms, The Sun has struck partnership agreements with WMAR and [...]
And once again from MediaStorm a great piece by conservationist J. Michael Fay and National Geographic photographer Michael Nichols who traveled to Zakouma National Park in Chad in 2006 to document the problems that threaten the refuge’s existence. There is also a very interesting interactive map you can link to at the National Geographic site.
Great new multimedia piece about the illegal trade of animals in Asia by photographer Patrick Brown and put together by the pros at MediaStorm. Brown has been working on this story for the last five years. Check it out!
According to new research from Nielsen for the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing an estimated 81 million people, or 63% of the 129 million people who access the Internet over broadband in the U.S., watch broadband video at home or at work. Some key findings that relate to some of the work we do [...]
From Beet.TV here are the latest online video growth rates with the comparison from 2006 to 2007. Yahoo! Video had amazing growth over the past year at 405%.
| Site | Jun-06 UA | Jun-07 UA | % Change |
| YouTube | 19,618 | 51,378 | 162% |
| Google Video | 7,486 | 17,759 | 137% [...]
I just stumbled on this. Newsmap is a news aggregator, but the way it visually presents the data is pretty cool.
Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally [...]
Alex Iskold at Read/Write Web is quickly becoming my favorite writer. In this recent article he looks at the growth of widgets and the importance of this growing phenomena to media companies. “Media companies see widgets as an important new method of reaching audiences both inside and outside their domains. It seems that widgets cover [...]
The American Press Institute is putting on a workshop, “Storytelling Innovations“, in October at the University of Minnesota. Regina McCombs, Multimedia Producer at StarTribune.com, is listed as one of the discussion leaders.
October 2 - October 5, 2007
Early-Bird Discount Deadline: August 3, 2007
For more information on this seminar, please contact Steve Buttry at sbuttry@americanpressinstitute.org.
Who Should Attend?
Successful [...]
In this article by Jennifer Woodard Maderazo at PBS’s Mediashift, most smartphones are classified as not very smart. One of the culprits according to her are media companies that aren’t stepping up to the plate to create content that is compatible with the over 70 million smartphones sold last year. Her hope is that the [...]
The dates for Cutting Edge IX have been released. And while this is geared toward television news, it could be a great opportunity for multimedia producers to learn advanced editing techniques. News announcement from the NPPA:
DURHAM, NC (July 14, 2007) – Shawn Montano, director of the Cutting Edge IX: Order of the Edit workshop, announced [...]
Here’s a link to Angela Grant at News Videographer and her article “Make your videos searchable” that relates to a recent post of mine concerning video search techniques. Thanks Angela!
Every year Editor & Publisher selects the top newspapers that have. “…through excellence or innovation, shown the way in one area or another, such as news coverage, circulation, design, diversity or online.” The Roanoke Times was lauded for their coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. The paper used its Web site to get out images [...]
Andy Plesser on Beet.TV recently interviewed Fred McIntyre who heads AOL video (”Forget Viral Video, It’s All about Search“). McIntyre talks about how to make video easy to find for search engines and, of course, customers. The article is slanted toward public relations and business video news releases, but the recommendations make sense for [...]
Recently, Mark Glaser on PBS’s Mediashift blog wrote about the 10 Reasons There’s a Bright Future for Journalism. Make sure and read the entire article, but one thing I come away with is that access and the shift of power from the few to the many in the form of citizen journalism is the driving [...]
An interesting development from the Publishing Group of America in a post from Editor & Publisher, the company is going to start pushing paid content from their magazines to each subscriber through their cell phones.
PGA Extends Content to Mobile Phones
By E&P Staff July 10, 2007
NEW YORK Publishing Group of America (PGA), the company behind the [...]
NPPA The Digital Journalist
