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Watching Tweevee: Old & New Media Use At The Same Time

March 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

If you’re engaged with multiple forms of media–both ‘old’ or traditional media like TV, newspapers and magazines or ‘new’ media like social networks, blogs and real time communications like Twitter–then you are probably one of a growing number of us who use both old and new simultaneously.

When I wrote the post, “MSNBC’s awesome Super Tuesday primary coverage” and started off the post with “This, my friends, is the future of television” I believed it then and believe it even more now. It’s just that the connections to traditional TV weren’t exactly what I expected when using the multimedia platform delivered by the gang over at MSNBC, and that emerging technologies would make TV watching a shared experience similar to the “old days” when many of us would hang around the water cooler at work the morning after some TV event or show and commiserate about it.

The crew over at the Nielsen Company just released a new report that is revealing more about how people are watching “Tweevee” (my made up name for a combination of Twitter use and TV watching):

Americans increased their overall media usage and media multitasking according to The Nielsen Company’s latest Three Screen Report (PDF), which tracks consumption across TV, Internet and mobile phones.  In the last quarter of 2009, simultaneous use of the Internet while watching TV reached three and a half hours a month, up 35% from the previous quarter. Nearly 60% of TV viewers now use the Internet once a month while also watching TV.

“The rise in simultaneous use of the web and TV gives the viewer a unique on-screen and off-screen relationship with TV programming,” said Nielsen Company media product leader Matt O’Grady. “The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different.”

It went on to talk about DVR use (surprise…more of us are timeshifting our video use!) and then in to online video consumption:

Online video consumption is up 16% from last year. Of note, approximately 44% of all online video is being viewed in the workplace.  The research shows that Americans watch network programs online when they miss an episode or when a TV is not available.  Online video is used essentially like DVR and not typically a replacement for watching TV.

Active mobile video users grew by 57% from the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009, from 11.2 million to 17.6 million.  Much of this increase can be linked to the strong growth of smartphones in the marketplace.

Here’s the deal: No question in my mind that connecting socially makes it more fun to watch a live event (e.g., Academy Awards, Grammys, Super Bowl) and see what our friends are saying about it, almost like they’re in the room with us. But what’s more intriguing to me is that more of us are consuming information, connecting socially and engaging online while doing something else. Is TV too boring? Is it the ability to share with our friends and acquaintances? Are we more capable of multitasking then we thought? Maybe all or some of those, but we’re also discovering that for every hour of TV watching we do, the increase odds we’ll die go up 11%.

One this is certain though, the way we connect with others and consume media has already changed forever.

Filed Under: Internet, IPTV, Media Shift, Television

Why Wikileaks Matters

March 26, 2010 By 1 Comment

If you’re not paying attention to what is happening on the internet — warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, Google pulling out of China — then you should feel ashamed unless you’re an ultra-conservative who just loves to see autocratic or dictatorial governments in power doing whatever they deem necessary, regardless of the rule of law.

The reasons the framers of our US Constitution were so careful about ensuring there was a checks and balance in place with our three branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial) was to thwart attempts to seize or consolidate power. The problem? The internet is creating a cross-country, cross-cultural and cross-legal platform that is causing all sorts of angst among the intelligence agencies, militaries and governmental bodies throughout the world.

But if you believe (as I do) that sunlight is the best antiseptic, it’s an imperative that there are places like Wikileaks, Cryptome and groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that are willing to stand up for transparency, freedom, justice and legality in the 21st century and be places where whistleblowers can be confident of help in bringing to light injustices, crimes against humanity or violations of our basic freedoms or privacy.

The video below is one of the best snippets I’ve seen yet on one of these organizations, Wikileaks, that is a repository for leaked information and, in my and other’s view, a key place to ensure information needing to be leaked is leaked.

These leaks are submitted by whistleblowers anywhere in the world, people that would usually be too fearful to come forward. If you don’t think leaks and whistleblowing are important, then just remember that one led Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to break the Watergate story, ultimately bringing down President Nixon and forever changing the level of trust the citizenry has in the executive branch.

Apparently there is significant surveillance and covert activities focused on shutting down Wikileaks being done by the US intelligence apparatus because of a “…a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5th” and, most likely, because Wikileaks is a thorn under the saddle of several countries, not just the USA.

If you knew that I did this, you might ask why I just donated to Wikileaks or am a consistent donor to EFF. It’s because of my deep desire to ensure that liberty, freedom, democracy and justice prevails…no matter what the cost. For all I’ve received from living in a country for which my previous generation fought and died to keep these at the forefront, it’s the least I can do for them and for my children…

…let alone for oppressed people in other countries to whom we’re increasingly connected via the internet that is making a Wikileaks possible!

Watch this video about Wikileaks and decide for yourself:

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Internet Tagged With:

The Man Who Planted Trees (On Video)

March 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My third podcast in May of 2005 was a reading of the story The Man Who Planted Trees, based on the short story by Jean Giono, which I’d read some years earlier. It tells the tale of a man hiking the Alps who comes across an old man planting trees on a barren landscape. I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say that this story really hit me since at the time, I was really struggling with whether or not I was making any type of positive impact in the world. It helped to shift my thinking about how any one of us can change the world (or some spot within it).

Here’s my original May 2005 post with the full text and me reading it as an mp3…but the video below is much better and the visuals are what BoingBoing lauded today on this post. It seems the Canadian Broadcasting company produced a film version (which I never knew existed) using the sketch animation done by Oscar-winning animator Frédéric Back. It really brings the story to life. Christopher Plummer narrates, (Phillippe Noiret does the honors in the original French version).

As you know, YouTube limits a video to 10 minutes and this 28+ minute video is thus broken into three parts. Part 1 is below and 2 & 3 are after the jump. It is definitely worth watching:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

Is Your Favorite Product Homeless?

March 17, 2010 By Leave a Comment

What happens when one of your favorite products sees sales dwindle and it, in effect, becomes homeless?

My favorite coffeemaker, the Senseo®, uses coffee pods that are becoming increasingly difficult to find at retail and when I do, it’s usually for a flavor I don’t drink (like the Dark Roast pictured above). Any smart techie and ‘net user like me would just go online and order them in bulk, right?

The answer is “yes” but in a strange twist on the “I can buy that cheaper online” phrase many of us use when trying to negotiate while shopping in a bricks-n-mortar store, the online purchase of coffee pods are much higher ($.50 – $1.60 more per pack) than I could buy them at Target, Cub Foods or other outlets.

What’s driving this lack of inventory at retail? I’ll boil it down to one development over the last several years: choices in coffeemakers. From traditional percolators to drop-in little ‘cups’ to several different types and sizes of coffee pods, for retailers it would be like trying to stock DVDs in half a dozen formats so they just don’t and they’re bound to be out of one of them at frequent intervals.

But it’s not just specialized coffeemaker coffee that is homeless. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Commerce Tagged With: ,

Will Your Photos & Digital Media Survive?

March 15, 2010 By 5 Comments

Doug and Alice Lamb in 1950

My father-in-law’s passing this month has seen my wife (and her six sisters) realizing that there might be only one of a specific family photo. Since my bride had built a collage of photos when she was a young girl living at home, I offered to scan and retouch them so everyone could have a copy.

The issue? There are hundreds more where those came from and how do we create them digitally so 50, 100 or more years from now some offspring of ours can even see them?

Most of us have hundreds (if not thousands or like me, 20,000+) digital photos sitting on hard drives, at Flickr, or on some old and obsolete media? In my home office closet I have Syquest, Jaz, Zip, Mac OS 7 formatted CD’s, DOS CDs, and other media I can’t read NOW…and it’s been less than 15 years. My grandchildren or great-grandchildren will pick up a Jaz cartridge and say, “What the heck is this!?!” Viewing the photos on that cartridge? Not a chance.

But it gets worse since most of the digital media we’re creating today may not survive the media it’s on, let alone if it’s in a proprietary format. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness, Media Shift, Open Media Tagged With: ,

White House Screening of “The Pacific”

March 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My respect for Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks has never been higher and I’m looking forward to seeing their new project, The Pacific. It’s on HBO which I currently don’t subscribe to, but will just for this miniseries.

I follow the White House blog and came across this post. It seemed interesting enough to blog about since it gives Spielberg & Hanks’ motivation behind the making of this miniseries and is kind of a fun peek behind the scenes.

Filed Under: Current Affairs, Television

Be VERY Careful Using Social Media

March 10, 2010 By 4 Comments

After being the recipient of tweets, email, comments under blog posts, and other online communications that miss-the-mark, I’m constantly struck by how often I take things the wrong way and end up calling someone to ensure I didn’t misconstrue what they were intending to say and to gain a better understanding of the point they were trying to get across.

This sort of miscommunication is becoming more problematic…not less…especially as real-time communications occur with services like Twitter. Add to that a limit in the number of characters these services allow us to use and you can see how challenging it is to convey any kind of deep meaning using real-time communications.

My son had an assignment for English class that had the following thought provoking table showing how easy it is to make a statement and have it come across COMPLETELY WRONG depending upon the emphasis of one specific word within that statement. You’ve probably seen this sort of stuff before, but it never hurts to be reminded how ONE WORD can completely change the context of your communication.

Think about this the next time you’re ready to click “send” on that tweet.

WHAT I SAID WHAT I MEANT
I didn’t say she stole my money Someone else said it
I didn’t say she stole my money I didn’t say it
I didn’t say she stole my money I only implied it
I didn’t say she stole my money I said someone did, not necessarily her
I didn’t say she stole my money
I considered it borrowed, even though she didn’t ask
I didn’t say she stole my money Only that she stole money
I didn’t say she stole my money She stole stuff which cost me money to replace
Filed Under: Media Shift, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

The Happiest Slaughterhouse!

March 9, 2010 By 1 Comment

From the company that brings you Spam®, Hormel, comes this 1965 video showing meat processing in all it’s glory (save for the killing of the animals, blood, and e-coli). Makes you want a little bacon after watching it (not really).

Watching this video, I was a bit taken aback at how happy everything seemed but with a lack of joy on the faces of Hormel workers, cutting apart pigs and knowing that today, most of these workers are Hispanic and not the 40-something white males of European descent depicted in this happiest of slaughterhouses in southern Minnesota.

Bonus feature: see Spam being made but alas, no factory worker falls in to the hot dog grinder nor are any social media people shown at a breakfast pleased that bacon has arrived:

Filed Under: Current Affairs Tagged With: ,

Comcast’s Oscar Fail

March 8, 2010 By 14 Comments

Though the problem seemed to begin on Friday with our Comcast cable TV service, we didn’t much care until the family sat down to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and the video stuttering and audio dropouts were so horrifically bad that it was almost unwatchable.

Rebooting the device during a commercial break was a mistake since it took forever and didn’t fix the problem, so I grabbed my iPhone and did a search on Twitter for the word “comcast” to see if it could possibly be a network issue others were experiencing rather than my cable DVR failing.

I was stunned to see that there were dozens of people tweeting about the “stuttering” and “pixelation” of video and audio and it appeared that most of the problem was in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the surrounding metro area (see SheilaBird; KeinKernMusic; DFRevert; CSWebGrl).

But in further investigation this morning, I’ve discovered that many of the people tweeting were in Illinois (e.g., JoshMeans) so this might’ve been a regional problem. During the Oscar telecast I reached out to Frank Eliason via Twitter (@ComcastCares and he’s Comcast’s “Twitter man” according to BusinessWeek) and he was, with his typical Johnny-on-the-spot follow up, checking into the issues but nothing has come of it yet. I’ve reached out to him this morning to ask for a statement about what went wrong, what Comcast did and is doing about it and he responded by asking for a DM with my email, so we’ll see what Comcast says about the issue and I’ll update this post if-and-when I receive something.

I suspect that this sort of “fail” is going to become more frequent rather than less so. Especially with more and more of us maximizing the use of our wired and wireless internet connections and with the cable companies trying to shove more services down a pipe that — while admittedly fat and robust with seemingly high capacity — is still a finite resource.

UPDATE 4:07pm: This morning’s post was one that’s received a fair amount of traffic today and in it I promised I’d update you, so here you go. [Read more...]

Filed Under: IPTV, Television Tagged With:

Coffee is for Closers

March 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Do you deserve coffee?

At least a dozen times at sales meetings over the past 15 years or so, many sales leaders have trotted out this video snippet from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross and then expounded on its virtues, clearly using it as a great kick in the seat of our pants as salespeople.  I’m here to point out how that this clip (after the jump and NSFW, by the way) is relevant to anyone who has to produce…whether you’re a developer/coder, factory worker, farmer, call center or support person, or in any field where results matter.

Alec Baldwin is on screen for less than seven minutes and, in my and many other people’s views, his is the defining performance of that movie and incredibly powerful. The premise, according to the Wikipedia article about the film, “Early in the movie Blake (Alec Baldwin) is sent by Mitch and Murray (the faceless owners of the real estate office in which the main characters work), to motivate them by announcing, in a torrent of verbal abuse, that only the top two sellers will be allowed the more promising “Glengarry” leads, and everyone else will be fired.“ This confrontation sets up the rest of the film: the motivations that the characters feel that this rainy night is a make-or-break one; the reason the incident with the Glengarry leads that occurs later on; and the promise that — if only each salesman was better at closing like Blake — that they could achieve the same sorts of results as a guy that made $920k, drove an $80k BMW and sports a $25k gold Rolex.

Anyone whose been in sales for any length of time knows that there are many variables that enable one to achieve wildly successful sales numbers. An enterprise software salesperson in New York, L.A. or Chicago has more opportunity than one in Kansas City, for example, and top performers are usually in major markets. Same thing holds true for those who sell into vertical markets where they canvas accounts across many geographies.

But any salesperson who has been even modestly successful also knows one fundamental truth, and it’s a truth that cuts across all professions and labors.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Commerce, Current Affairs, Innovation, Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness Tagged With: , , ,