buzznovation

Video Blogging..and a little help from your friends...

I may be doing a little project that would entail some Video Blogging. I am beginning to do some research as to the best digital video camcorder that I can find for say reasonable price. I probably am defining reasonable as something under say $1,500.

Also, I may be in the market for both video editing software and someone to do some finished editing, so would love some more ideas. My goal would be to do the first cut or booking marking of the video myself, and then let someone who knows what they are doing, do it right.

I would prefer not to consider anything in the Mac world yet, although maybe down the road if this turns into something, I would consider making a separate investment in Mac equipment/sofware. 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I keep telling my friends that those who read my blog, and whose blogs I read are really my intelligent agents!

John Battelle at The Blog Business Summit

“Search Engines are the new distributors of attention.”

I just had lunch with John Battelle and now I am listening to his presentation. His idea above really resonated with me. As we often have people download ActiveWords because of “Google”. I always reach out and asked them what were they looking for, and routinely they have no clue.

The issue then becomes what key words to buy, or how in the world to leverage this connection. To date only ideas, but no definitive conclusions.

More ideas from John:

“Let customers tell you how to build it.”

About FM

Federated Media's business proposition is below… 

How to support independent authors and sites, and market in conversation

“Bundle an ecology of quality sites together-10–30 per category”

Aggregate high quality audiences in the tens of millions, adviews in the hundreds of millions.

Authors gain access to expensive publishing services (technology, credit/collections, sales, business development)

Marketers gain efficient and appropriate access to robust, passionate conversations and new approaches to joining them.

Reporting, services, analysis for Marketer and Author.

The core driver of our business value is our relationship with site creators, we call them authors, and the value they create through their work.

We cultivate that relationship by bringing them revenue, or course, but although publishing services like Business development and technical support, and a membership approach.

FM differentials …

100 sites

more than 750 million ad impressions

excellent audience demographics

monthly booked business in the seven figures

Sales force of 15

Engineering staff of 4

author services staff of 4

nearly 1500 advertisers…

I almost got all his info from his slides….

I need to go look at his site vis a vis advertising ActiveWords, who knows…

 

 

 

 

Putting some of the pieces together...

Before I blog about the week past, I want to point to a drop dead simple idea.

In my prior blog posts about Skype, I have raved about Skype, and how I have used my Ety-Com to leverage it. Chris Herrot pointed out to me that I was a well meaning, but basic dummy.

On Saturday just passed I went to Fry's in Renton, WA with my wonderful friends John Dillow and Robert Scoble. Going to Fry's is one way to guarantee a separation of you, from your cash.

But I was on a mission. I had about three things that I wanted to buy, and found two. The first was a simple microphone that I could plug into my ThinkPad to use with Skype. The second a multi-card reader for my camera and my Treo. Fry's was selling a 9 in 1 reader for $9.99, and it's about the side of half of deck of cards.

For those who read this blog, you may recall that I thought that I was using my Ety-Com mic, but Chris pointed out to me that this was impossible.

I thought about his comments for about a minute, and realized that he was write.

At Fry's I bought myself a Labtec Desk Mic for $15, which you can find on line for about the same price. I just used with Skype, and it works great. I just dictated some notes...this might be even more interesting than I thought. I used ActiveWords to launch the recording software that comes with XP by typing the word "record", and I even impressed myself. Which doesn't take much! Very cool!

While in Seattle, Alan Reiter and I compared notes about how to best utilise this type of technology. Alan totally understands this stuff, and hanging out with him is like a post graduate course in how stuff works. I am and continue to be pretty dazzled by it, and after hanging out with Scoble and Dave Winer.

I am now on a mission to try "podcasting"...

It has occurred to me that I could take my ActiveWords pitch, and "podcast" it, so that when I walk people thorough what ActiveWords does, and some of the ideas behind it, that there are really no reasons not to create some content that people might listen to. Then at their leisure they could listen to what I typically talk about.

Just a thought, but one that really gets my attention....

More great stuff from Chris Herot..

Just as I was licking my intellectual wounds from being a dumb sh*t...

I got this great note from Chris Herot:

You would be amazed by how many office thermostats are not connected to anything. Giving the occupants a knob to turn does make them feel the temperature is more comfortable, however.

Sigh....