The Economics of Giving It Away

Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson on how the advent of digital bytes has changed several business models and the need to find new models in the now land of free on the Internet.

In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?

Found via Macloo on Twitter

Sometimes it's all about timing

You gotta check out this sequence of frames capturing a suicide bomber detonating himself in a crowd of Sri Lankan Muslim men during a religious holiday in Akuressa.

Wow

POYi Documentary Project Winners

The Roanoke Times beats out the likes of Los Angeles Times and National Geographic for first place. Lots of other interesting outlets in the honorable mentions.

Will have to come back to this and get a better sense of all these productions. Too much to look at right now, holy crap.

Flickr Clock

Pretty cool visualization of Flickr video postings.

Found via Journerdism

Documentary Advertising, the future?

Pretty well done production from Honda. The cinematography is nice and the lessons behind the veil of the ad are good too. So do you feel like watching an eight minute video ad makes you want to consider buying a Honda the next time you need a car?

JL's Blog of Blogs Turned 1 year-old

It was a year ago, March 8, that I started posting all kinds of these – in my humble opinion – interesting links.

At the start of the blog it was more about the imminent destruction of the newspaper business. I used it as a self-medicating soapbox. I didn't really advertise this blog for quite some time. Just figured it would be found by a few people sometime. It was mainly for myself in many ways.

Since then it has morphed a bit into more of a catch all of digital media nuggets and unique stories with my at times senseless musings. Many of my opinions have changed since the inception of copying and pasting hyperlinks and HTML. Some for the better and some that have ultimately driven me away from the notion of what I hoped to accomplish as a visual journalist.

The future is evermore unknown, but that is also of a major benefit. There are so many possibilities with digital media, as seen in the ramblings and linkage of the past 266 days. Where things go, who knows, all I do know is there will be some fantastic things that develop. Both for the realm of journalism and for me.

Might have to get some new wheels like this

The Google Way

This is a very good read and poses some issues that many are fearful to face or comprehend.

Simply put, photography is becoming a devalued practice because of the simple prevalence of imagery.

Then you can follow that up with a rant about the notion of Creative Commons licensing eating away at the value of photography.

Where is the industry and the craft heading? Who knows, all I do know is that pricing for photography was stuck in neutral for over a decade before the flooding of the market with cheap digital camera equipment and tools and photographers. I'm thinking the yoke for the photo plane is pretty much stuck in the forward position and picking up G's.

Seattle P-I could be an interesting test

Seems as though one more two-newspaper town will soon see a drastic change in the media landscape. Hearst only offered a select few of present staffers opportunity to work on an online-only version of the historic newspaper. Those offers don't look at that appealing, regardless of the market trends and current national and local economies. You'll have to take a peek and see what you think.

According to Castro, Riddick said Hearst plans to start the site the day after the paper quits publishing, which Hearst has said will occur on a date not yet specified if no buyer has emerged by March 10.

The P-I site has already been evolving towards the notion of a news portal rather than a news source of information for Seattle and King County, by linking to alt-mags and other news outlets in the area. Could be an interesting science project.

Still haven't heard much on the media radar about the experiment in Detroit with the reduced home delivery days. At least those to markets are trying something that spineless Scripps Howard didn't even want to attempt in Denver.

Stewart calls out the media so easily AND so well

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

CNBC's Rick Santelli – the "reporter" that went ape on the trading floor complaining about bailouts – was supposed to be a guest on The Daily Show, but was a no show. Well, like when McCain bailed on Letterman, you don't bail on high profile talk show hosts. Jon Stewart opens up a can of whoop @ss on Santelli and the entire network. Still find it amazingly saddening that it takes a comedian and parody show to reveal any freaking honesty in the media-on-the-media realm about issues that are impacting every single one of us, everyday now.

Transform

'nuf said.

Multimedia Stock Agency

Aurora Photos is launching a multimedia production company. The voracious appetite on the web for video and other multimedia elements could open up a very good opportunity here. Be interesting to see who mimics and who makes the model work effectively. Maybe there's a future there for somebody I know...he'll require he telecommute though. There's not enough open land and mountains in L.A. for the guy I'm thinking of.

Functional Photography Art Project

Photog JR has been creating a unique project in Kibera, Kenya - on of the largest slums in all of Africa.

Really cool idea and functional in how it helps the community the project is literally on. Check it.

Web 3.0?

Pretty interesting tool under development at Mozilla for better web usage. Should be interesting to see the lines start to blur more and more between web spaces.


Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Ira Glass and storytelling

Pretty interesting video of the This American Life producer and host explaining storytelling and the important elements needed for good stories at the Gel Conference.

Too bad it's not embeddable.
Found via Journerdism

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.

Colbert Report spoofs NPPA and Amtrak

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

Nailed 'Em - Amtrak Photographer

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
More Funny Videos

Gotta love it when a real issue gets turned into comedy. I guess you can always laugh at it all. Here's the NPPA story with links to the real issue.

Fantastic stop motion video

Serious pre-planning here and attention to detail, but very cool production. Lots of possibilities with these cheaper tools (digital cameras, NLE video suites, etc.) to make content.

Life after newspapers

Pretty lengthy article about a non-scientific survey of former newspaper journalists. Lots of things to pick through in there. Some things are tough to take.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' count for all newspaper jobs -- from reporter to delivery truck driver -- shows the payroll shrinking from 336,000 at the start of last year to 313,600 through October, a drop of 22,400 positions. What happens to all of those laid-off and bought-out journalists?

Some folks are certainly struggling to find new work, even more so in the present economy. But there's also the seemingly consensus that most of those that were forced out of the newsroom, they might miss the idea of what it was to be a journalist at a newspaper, but that there is life after newspapers and it can be pretty rewarding.