Our most ’snarky’ client, D Magazine, just reported in their blog that Lisa Loeb is on the hunt for a mate. For those of you not in the ‘know’, Lise is from Dallas and attended Hockaday. So in keeping with the times she has her own reality show titled #1 Single to document her search. WTG FB for breaking this news!
Alex asked me to reblog his post on PodServer here. So here goes:
This afternoon we had a Big in Japan meeting and the guys presented several new features, a couple of which were interesting enough to share. So I have explained PodServer here. So if you need to catch up do so. For the rest of you, here goes:
Feature One: PodServer makes it easy to create, store and share your podcast by simply uploading an mp3. Each time you create a new ’show’ you upload it to your podcast and it becomes available to anyone subscribed to your feed. The relationship is simple - 1 person per podcast. What if the relationship model could be broken wide open? That is exactly what the Big in Japan guys have done.
Imagine that you are a member of the Book of the Month Club. Now you and the rest of the club can get together once a month to review your thoughts of the book, but what if you could time-shift the meeting? Each of you could record your thoughts in an mp3 and upload it to the Book of the Month Club Podcast (i.e. anyone in the club could upload their mp3) and the podcast would be a combination of all of your thoughts. This could work for public debate on topics (maybe not as well), but for limited groups it might be interesting. Thoughts?
Feature Two: FrankenFeed for podcasts. Imagine that you are a fan of three different VC podcasts and you want to share them with your friends. You could send all three RSS feeds (in their long URL glory) to your friends or you could use FrankenFeed to combine them into a single VC Podcast Feed. As you found new VC podcasts you want your friends to listen to you could simply add them to the original VC Podcast Feed without bothering your friends - they would just get the new content in the original feed. Neat, huh?
PodServer is written with Ruby on Rails and features touches of Ajax. Today it is deliverying ‘alpha’ podcasts and should be launched (in beta) as part of the Big in Japan toolbox next month.
Another project I am involved with is the production of a HD television series called MotorSport Ranch. I blogged about my experience producing the pilot on a TypePad blog found here. I have decided to continue the project "The making of…blog" and started posting again detailing the production of 13 additional episodes for VOOM.
Interestingly, I barely had time to close the TypePad editor on my second post before my phone rang. The calls started coming in from the talent who appear in the pilot asking to appear in the series, the original director, the director’s agent, prospective talent, the track owner and so on. Make a TV series is a lot like beating yourself over the head with a hammer - no one is happy until the final tape is in the can.
Why? It seems like communication is the hardest part about production - everyone wants to know, "what is going on." I think 50% of a producers time is taken up explaining the current situation. Now I just point everyone to the blog.
Remember Gahbunga? It was a neat little application for teenage girls, a hot-or-not for their camera phones. Basically, you could take a picture of your date, send it to Gahbunga and get a rating from your friends or the entire Gahbunga community. Our WebWork Team recently decided that there was not enough room on the boat for several of their current projects including Gahbunga. The team is almost completely focused on the development of a set of Web 2.0 tools they are calling Big in Japan: Web 2.0 Toolbox.
No one on the WebWorks Team wanted to ‘own’ the project by promoting or adding features to it. The team decided that the best solution would be to sell it on ebay so here is a link to the auction. Own a dating service? Own a dating website? Want to start a cool little online dating business? Maybe Gahbunga is for you. Wonder if they will get any bids?
There are two airports in Dallas, but you can only fly out of state from one of them due to the 1979 Wright Amendment. Southwest Airlines has been fighting for the repeal of the amendment, while American Airlines and DFW airport have lobbied to keep the amendment in tact. Both sides have websites (Keep DFW Strong, Set Love Free, and Fight Wright). Recently they moved their fight to the people’s encyclopedia called Wikipedia. American denies any involvement, but a supporter with access to American Airline’s computer network added the following sentence to the Wikipedia:
"a notoriously litigious company constantly seeking to change laws to gain an advantage."
Next another user deleted the phrase. and then about twenty minutes later the user with access to American Airline’s computer network added this phrase:
"Known for its PR machine and litigious nature."
This sort of editorial editing has been going on for months. American claims they cannot find the user who is making the entries. It is unclear who is deleting them, but it is common practice for Wikipedia users to remove editorial comments.
Technorati Tags: americanairlines, dallas, dfw, fortworth, setlovefree, southwestairlines, wright, wrightamendment
Why blog if you publish your own magazine? Just ask D Magazine, they run one of the most visited blogs in the South called Frontburner. Many call it the best blog in Dallas, check it out!
Doernberg created the D&O Insurance Blog. Imagine making a subject as boring as D&O insurance interesting. That is what Doernberg is doing with his blog. Could a blog work for your insurance company? Weblogs work for Doernberg…
[via]
In a previous entry I detailed the FedEx Furniture Guy and offered FedEx the idea of embracing his use of FedEx boxes instead of threatening to sue him. They decided on the latter. Once he was forced to remove his site I recieved thousands of visitors to this blog to catch a glimpse of the FedEx Furniture Hack. I followed up on my first entry with a second update regarding an email that I recieved from a friend of the FedEx Furniture Guy clarifing some details that I got wrong. Next I was contacted by a group calling themselves the FedExaminer Administration. They offered to help the FedEx Furniture guy with his legal woes. So I recieved around 20 emails, 10,000+ visitors to the blog entry, and nothing from FedEx despite my direct contact via telephone and email.
Imagine how much goodwill could have been generated by FedEx by listening to all of this communication. Perhaps even Ikea could have been involved - i.e. FedEx could have bought the kid an apartment full of Ikea furniture and made him a spokesman. Even the tree huggers like the idea. The ideas are endless. Blogging can work for your business or against it.
HP conducted a survey of small businesses and determined that 10% have included blogs in their marketing plans and 16% plan to invest in blogs over the next three years.
[via Small Business Pipeline]
Podcast goes mainstream with Apple’s newest release of iTunes version 4.9 according to an article titled Podcasting for Dummies in the Wall Street Journal. The article revealed Odeo’s plans to offer tools for advertisers to insert audio commercials into podcasts. The other interesting tidbit from the article was the fact that Apple has obtained a license from music companies that allows podcasters to play 30-second song clips in their shows.
Previous Podcasting entries:
Podcasts - 22 million Americans have MP3 players today - 6 million have already tried a podcast.
One of the many projects we are involved with is the production of a television pilot called MotorSport Ranch. Once we sold the pilot to INHD (a cable HDTV network) we needed a way to generate interest in the program so that they would pick up the full series. HDTV viewership is so small that a little buzz might turn our niche reality show into a modest HDTV hit.
First, I created a blog to detail the process of making a television program from concept to sale. The blog generated a modest amount of traffic and a little buzz in the HDTV community. We had a website for the program, but it did not seem to index well and had very few visitors - on the other hand the blog averaged a couple of hundred viewers per day.
Recently we received an air date for the program (8PM CST on July 2nd) and we wanted to get the word out to the HDTV viewers across the US (INHD is available in 47MM homes across North America). I decided to issue a press release. First I drafted a release about the show, how great it was, where it would air, when it would air and so on. I threw up all over the release. Next I wrote another draft and made the subject the blog about the making of the show (oh and fyi here is the time and date of the premiere). This generated a HUGE amount of traffic. Typepad (the home of the blog) had a hard time keeping up with the requests and we surpassed our bandwidth allocation.
So the story was about the Blog about the making of the show, instead of the show itself. We have had write ups about the show in various online outlets, magazines (including MyBusiness Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Black Enterprise Magazine) and several other publications yet to be released. So we got what we wanted - buzz about the show and a bigger story about our blog.
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