And the immediacy of the Internet grows

Mobile live streaming backpack for video...Who needs a live truck anymore?

Jenkins is a very very smart guy on media users

If you don't know about how people are using media these days, you might as well make steam engines from the 19th century for the 21st. Learn some media literacy by watching this video.

Henry Jenkins on Transmedia - November 2009 from niko on Vimeo.

Making Art from the web

Here is a very cool idea to take individual musical elements -that happen to be YouTube videos- and allow a user to create something new. It's called remix and it's pretty damn great.

Have a play...

Told you photo/video convergence was past tense

They used the RED One to shoot the cover of Esquire magazine.

Bring on the Scarlet!!!

The NEW LIFE.com

All the stories and images of LIFE yore in an online space.

One more time suck to play with.

Technology and trials

There are starting to be more and more trials that are being tossed out as a result of jurors using technology to research from their iPhone or Blackberry resulting in mistrials. Because people have become so accustomed to using technology for so much of their daily lives, I bet many don't even realize they are breaking rules stipulated to the jury. How often do you automatically do some form of a search about something to have a better understanding?

Imagine if you are a juror on a trial and the prosecution or defense uses a term or talks about something you have to understanding of and you want to know more to be able to make a better decision as a juror. Or even when you are overly connected, much like myself, and you decide to send a Tweet out about something you are doing. It just so happens that you are in jury deliberations when you do send out a message as an instinctual process. You broke the rules of being on a jury.

I'm sure we'll see more instances of this as we go forward. What if it ends up altering the way in which trials are carried out? Might be something interesting to watch as we go forward with technology that becomes more omnipresent in our lives.

Newsprint is REALLY expensive

"...we're trying to say is that as a technology for delivering the news, newsprint isn't just expensive and inefficient; it's laughably so."

The Kindle retails for $359. A rough estimate for the NYTimes's delivery costs would be $644 million per year. Do the math and selling a Kindle to the 830,000 loyal subscribers would cut delivery costs in HALF.

Cellular Obscura

Love this notion of getting back to making interesting photos and away from the hellbent technical and technological drive to have perfect pretty pictures.

Finally a step in the direction

I get asked all the time what I intend to do when I get done with graduate school at the University of Denver. I really haven't been able to show anyone an example and I struggle to constructively describe the creations in my skull.

Here is one of the few examples I can point someone to when they ask that question again. The Las Vegas Sun has been making some of the most complete and creative multimedia experiential productions that I have seen. Many outlets seem to feel that putting video, text, audio and photo galleries into a page will be effective enough. And while that could be argued, they are all just stand-alone elements in the same coral. Thirst in the Mojave takes all those elements and makes each one act and react from the others.

One of the producers, Zach Wise who is now at the NYTimes, posted on his blog about the production as well. He was the brains behind Soul of Athens as well.

Lawrence Lessig vs. Stephen Colbert

Really interesting argument about copyright from a recent show. It's funny as hell.

I see aspects of both sides of the battle. I'm not sure that one side or the other is absolute, the future is most likely a blend of something in the middle. And it will be based on the type of the content and the content producer.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Found this via a photography business blog that is hellbent on copyright protections.

Tools for News

A pretty good beta database for all kinds of journalism tools to use. Register and you can add to the growing list. 

10 Questions for Journalists in the Information Age and info-overload

Here's some great notions to consider in this overwhelming era of easily accessible information. Having the right information available in functional and engaging access points will be a major component of successful journalism. Too bad most newspapers just shovel all their content into a big bucket on the web and expect readers to "find" what they need to know. Newspapers were barely able to accept the notion that television was a competitor by the time the Internet began to steal even more of their audience. Glacial pace won't work in the instantaneous realm of the Information Age.

Minority Report meets 2008

Very interesting video showing physical computing and design. And we all thought Tom Cruise was living in a futuristic time.

Umm, WOW! That's a lot of viewers.

NewTeeVee put together an interesting post about the volume of people consuming information on the web during election night. The numbers are staggering.

Check it out.

Convergence and an election

Here's a good NYTimes article about how the various platforms of media collided while following the presidential election.

After this is all over –thankfully– it will be interesting to compare the results of the American votes to the investments in the various media platforms used to campaign.

We all know Barack Obama was able to build a media empire with his dozens of sites, YouTube channel, Twitter, Facebook as well as applications within FB and others. McCain did as well, but not nearly to the degree of his rival. Did all of the media platforms and the mainstream media outlets play as much of a role in generating interest in the election as the challenges that our country face?

I guess we'll have to wait and see and give all the talking heads a day or two to find new things to fill all those channels with the next big story.

Experiential multimedia

I'm a skiing nut. So when I was looking at my daily digest of New York Times headlines I noticed a little box highlighting a multimedia piece about how to ski the most treacherous downhill course in World Cup skiing.

The Hahnenkamm in Kitzbühel, Austria, is a torture fest of skill, speed and human limits. In an effort to explain how and what it takes to ski this ice glazed course at 80-plus miles an hour they recruited a former downhiller to be the voice for a multimedia experience.

This is a fantastic way to present information and data about a unique topic. The limitations are falling away in ways to share information and educate. So many more ideas are bouncing around in my brain now. Including wanting to take a couple of runs on the course.

Breaking the rules

Fifty People, One Question: New Orleans from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

A fantastic idea that destroys all the limitations of rules in documentary and journalism to create a unique piece. I really want to see the camera setup. A Canon HV-20 with a Nikon 50 f/1.8.

I'm still thinking about what my answer would be.

Convergence might as well be retired as a word

Power photographer Vincent Laforet was tasked with putting the new Canon 5D MkII through its paces earlier this month. Well, this video nearly made my soil my pants. The rich visuals and complete command of the lighting are something dreamlike. Then we can talk about the camera and the absolute thrashing of the notion of a DSLR.

Also check out the behind-the-scenes video.

Nikon better react very very fast with an upgrade on the D700 –the D90 was going to be good until Canon did this– or they will be stuck at the back of the pack with Olympus, Sony and Fuji in the digital camera market.

All this being said, I'm still waiting for Scarlet. With the announcement of the 5D MkII it looks like the Scarlet will also be radically different.

All of this rapidly changing technology is just getting rolling. Hold on tight, just like Miss Budweiser it's going to get fast and rough.

Red is going hunting

Nikon has announced the release of the D90, which is a DSLR with video capability. Well RED has already been turning the motion picture world on its head with his proposed 5K RED Epic camera and now plans on snaring the DSLR world in his spiderweb. 

I may just wait another year to buy any kind of camera.

Wired article on the RED

Wired piece on the 4K RED HD video camera. Convergence progresses...