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Interview with Leo Laporte after he crowd surfs at SXSW Diggnation show
March 15th, 2010
Long time tech media guru Leo Laporte made history Friday night when he crowd surfed the 2500+ audience that attending the live performance of Diggnation at SXSW. I caught Leo right after he made his legendary journey with a complete wireless streaming backpack. We talked about his one in a lifetime crowd surfing experience which was also probably the first time anyone has ever done it while streaming live over the Internet. We also talked about the gear.
Here’s his actual crowd surf. It’s Hysterical.
And watch my interview with him right afterwards over on Tweetshare. This is one of many videos I’ve been shooting for Tweetshare at SXSW. Browse through the entire SXSW collection.
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Personal productivity tips I actually use every day
January 26th, 2010
Lifehacking, personal productivity, there is an endless slew of advice and information, much of which isn’t applicable to you. While all of this personal productivity information is interesting, it’s not always applicable. I have to admit that I sometimes offer productivity tips that I don’t adhere to myself.
So that’s why I decided to write an article about personal productivity tips I use on a daily basis. My interest in this subject piqued when I heard entrepreneur Stephen Jagger describe how he has moved many of his company’s business operations to the cloud using cheap to free Web 2.0 applications. What made his story so interesting is it wasn’t just “advice,” he was actually using these tools regularly for his business.
So I’ve decided to do the same. I’m going to walk through every element of how I’ve improved the efficiency of my work process, personal branding, and media consumption. It’s far from perfect. I can still be highly distracted and I’m always looking for new productivity tips. If there are any that you can recommend, I’m always up for updating my regimen.
Tools and tips I use for everyday productivity
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Cranky Geeks asks, “Are we living in a Googleopoly?”
January 14th, 2010
Yesterday, on Cranky Geeks, John C. Dvorak and co-host Sebastian Rupley, argued with myself and Cade Metz, U.S. editor of The Register. We complained about Google claiming that it’s going to pull its operations out of China, me getting uninvited to a press party, and my favorite, sex robots! Watch the 30 minute show.
Filed under: Computing, Mobile, San Francisco, Search, Tech debate, Video, Web 2.0 | Comments
Is Google dominating or leading the way?
January 10th, 2010
Friday night I appeared on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” to discuss Google’s announcement of its Nexus One a.k.a. “Google Phone.” As mentioned by one of the reporters on the show, so many articles about Google lead with the headline “Are they trying to take over the world?”
(Video automatically skips ahead to my segment (6 min). Watch larger version.)
Most articles don’t follow through with telling the “Google taking over the world” story. The title comes off as more of a ploy just to get people to read the article. In my appearance I talked about how any business that’s delivering digital goods can get and are getting into anyone else’s business that also delivers digital goods. We’ve already been seeing it with cable companies becoming phone companies and vice versa.
In Google’s case, they’re not just getting into other people’s business, but they’re trying to help others get into each others’ business. Because their ultimate goal is so that their business, selling ads, can be seen on more screens, most notably the ones that everyone is looking at, the new age of smart phones.
See the whole episode and more on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” site.
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Dating tech service Wuiper offers a fun way for people to meet
December 9th, 2009
Unless you’re incredibly suave, it can be difficult to impossible to meet someone you want to date. Just walking up to a stranger in a public place and thinking of a way to strike up a conversation and make a connection is not easy. That’s why we have a market for dating technologies, such as online dating sites and devices. All dating technologies have one simple goal: finding a simple, fun, and non-threatening way for people to meet.
Wuiper (pronounced “Whipper”) is a social networking site where people are introduced through physical numbered tags that you can stick on someone’s bag. Geared towards high school students, I can see this being a fun way to leave “secret admirer” messages. Messages can be sent and retrieved via an SMS or via the Wuiper site. All these tags have a code that you use to send a message to initiate a conversation. And then you can continue the conversation through the Wuiper site or take it online or offline.
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ESPN: Making Money from Podcasting
September 29th, 2009
This interview is part of my series “Making Money from Podcasting” (read summary “9 Successful Techniques for Making Money from Podcasting”) where I interview podcasters who are actually generating revenue from their podcasts. There are many techniques, and here’s one person’s tale of how his company is making money from podcasting.
Marc Horine, VP of Digital Media at ESPN
Build your own media network of programming and sell advertising against it
Marc Horine is the VP of Digital Media at ESPN, the ubiquitous sports network that has built up more than 100 podcasts (about 75 audio and 25 video). ESPN was one of the first media companies that got into podcasting in the summer of 2005, said Horine. In those early days, their podcasts began as a “best of” ESPN radio shows and some other repurposed content. Demand for additional content soon morphed into a full blown podcast network of shows, many of which are original content, separate from ESPN Radio programming.
Interview (Time: 15:12)
ESPN’s presence is impressive with a full blown ESPN Podcenter hub on ESPN.com, a featured podcast provider button on iTunes, along with a page to display all their podcasts.
All of this content is categorized and sold to sponsors. They do pre-roll and post-roll advertisements. While pre-rolls are hugely popular for advertisers because they’re guaranteed listens, post-roll ads don’t do nearly as well. According to Matt Cutler CMO at Visible Measures, twenty percent of the people don’t watch a video all the way to the end (see my short video interview with Cutler on this subject). When I asked Horine that question he didn’t offer up any statistics but rather explained that sports fans are a unique and passionate bunch and he believes they listen to shows all the way to the end. While he didn’t have any statistics in front of him, he didn’t think his listeners fell into the “quit and run” viewing/listening category.
Sponsor branding can go beyond just a pre-roll and a post-roll. ESPN can offer a completely integrated ad experience as they do with their sponsor Subway who has ads in podcasts, on the ESPN site, and also in iTunes on the ESPN Podcenter page where podcast sponsorship can be seen in the icons for the specific shows.
ESPN works with the ad insertion company Ando Media to place all the podcast ads. Ando Media delivers detailed reports to ESPN and their advertisers.
Sell an iPhone application along with your podcast
Two weeks ago ESPN launched a podcast iPhone application ($2.99) that has been incredibly successful. It’s currently the fifth best selling paid iPhone application. The application has scores, live streaming, breaking news, and access to about 40 podcasts all within the application. Stats of usage are showing that people are gravitating most towards the live stream. That’s bad news for the satellite radio industry where ESPN also has a presence. But once you have a live radio stream on an iPhone with a 3G network, there’s no need for satellite radio. Access to radio programming far exceeds what any satellite network can provide. Horine described a colleague who drove the two hours from New York to Bristol (ESPN’s headquarters) listening to the live stream the entire way, and it never cut out. And that’s on the AT&T network! And we all know how much that sucks.
The success of the iPhone application flies in the face of a massive ESPN flop, the ESPN phone which back in February of 2006 was selling for the ludicrous price of $499 at launch, dropping down to $99 two months later. It appears this new iPhone app along with ESPN’s other sub-$5 iPhone applications offer all the same capabilities as the ESPN phone did, but they’re doing it a lot better, and obviously with a much more reasonable and digestible price.
For more, listen to my interview with Horine as we talk about the success of the iPhone app and what works and what doesn’t for advertisers on their podcast network.
More episodes of “Making Money from Podcasting”
- Never Not Funny (Technique: “Partial show for free – full show paid”)
- Personal Life Media (Technique: “Build your own media network of programming and sell advertising against it”)
- Pregtastic (Technique: “Get your own sponsors”)
- Elsie’s Yoga Class (Technique: “Sell an iPhone application along with your podcast”)
- Mac OS Ken (Technique: “Give away five shows for free, make them pay for the sixth”)
- Alaska HDTV (Technique: “Get your own sponsors”)
- Duct Tape Marketing (Technique: “Build your brand to sell your services”)
- ScreenCastsOnline (Technique: “Give away every other episode. Make them pay for the rest.”)
- Izzy Video (Technique: “Give away every other episode. Make them pay for the rest.”)
- Slate Gabfests (Technique: “Integrating sponsorship with the show’s editorial”)
- Wizzard Media (Technique: “Got audience? We’ll get you sponsors. Or, get sponsors on your own and we’ll insert the ads” PLUS “Sell an iPhone application along with your podcast”)
- Premiumcast.com (Technique: “Build an audience and sell premium podcasts”)
- Manager Tools (Technique: “Build your brand to sell your services”)
- Mevio (Technique: “Motivate your audience”)
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Cranky on city-wide wi-fi and iPod Nano video
September 17th, 2009
Do you think city-wide wi-fi is dead? Do you think the video camera on the iPod Nano is going to open up a whole new world of family movies?
Those were just a couple of the topics discussed on today’s episode of Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvorak. I was on with Martin Sargent who co-hosts “This Week in Fun” on TWiT.tv and co-crank, Sebastian Rupley. I think city-wide wi-fi is dead simply because all the attempts in this city failed miserably, every time I’ve tried city-wide wi-fi the connectivity has been horrible, and there are plenty of other technologies like WiMAX and 3G that supersede the need for the patchwork coverage that would be necessary for city-wide wi-fi.
As for the iPod Nano opening up a whole world of new family movies. I argue that people still freak out when a camera is turned on them, and Martin cogently pointed out that no one ever edits or posts any of those home movies they shoot. Watch the episode.
And as a bonus, here’s a short video I shot just before we all went on air. Watch in full HD.
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Cranky about #followfriday, Skype, Apple, and The Beatles
September 3rd, 2009
On this week’s episode of Cranky Geeks, John C. Dvorak wakes up and we talk about the tech news of the week including:
- Is Twitter going to fade away like CB radio?
- How can we make #followfriday suck less? (see my article)
- Apple’s big announcement next week. New iPods, yes, but will they finally start selling Beatles music?
- Did eBay make the smart decision to sell Skype? Or should they have done something with it? And what about investors? What should they think of companies like eBay and Google who buy companies and then do nothing with them?
Watch and let me know what you think. Also on the show, Garnett Lee of 1Up.com and Sebastian Rupley, of PCMagCast.
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14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media
August 4th, 2009
This article is part of a road show presentation series I did in Toronto for Intertainment Media, owners of Itibiti Systems.
Social media is far from prescriptive, that’s why I sought out stories of people who succeeded in creating their own industry voice using social media. The result of my research is this article, “14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media” (view on docstoc, download PDF). Check out the summary below, read the article, and/or watch an audio slidecast of the live presentation I did in Toronto. Let me know what you think. Do you have any stories of your own to tell?
Summary
Get inspired to capitalize on social media for your business with these successful tales of building industry voice.
- Ride current hot news and cultural memes: Mobile gaming company capitalizes on the Bernie Madoff scandal by launching a “create your own Ponzi scheme” game.
- Build your own memes: An unexpected Internet entrepreneur starts a new celebrity tracking trend.
- Connect an existing brand or talent to your brand: From complete nobodies to big product brands, more and more companies are using celebrities and entertainment to connect audiences to their brands.
- Focus on content, not social media: An unbridled focus on content and not gaming social media technologies is what made Alec Saunders a thought leader in Voice 2.0 communications.
- Use your own product to tell your story: Alec Saunders demonstrated Calliflower, his company’s free conference calling application, by hosting a daily roundtable podcast in which anyone could participate.
- Manage your industry’s community: An SEO entrepreneur launches his city’s professional networking community. With no revenue model, the connections and recognition have built invaluable goodwill with potential and existing customers.
- The community is the best help desk: Intuit is helping customers find answers quickly by building social networking capabilities right into its applications.
- Take care of your best resource, super users: Like Tom Sawyer did with painting the white picket fence, Boxee turned the arduous task into manning a booth at CES into something customers competed to do.
- Convert potential buyers into a word-of-mouth advertising network: Unknown book author becomes a New York Times best-selling author by podcasting his book for free.
- Feed everybody’s needs all along the sales cycle: In order to sell a new product, Microsoft engages with decision makers, and tries not to fall short of satisfying everyone.
- Own a word: With laser-like intensity and determination, The RFP Database focuses its energies on owning one word and succeeds.
- Customer’s perception of what they get must be greater than what they give: General Mills’ Yoplait Kids asks customers if they’re willing to trade personal information for a coupon.
- Own more real estate: NBC extends its reach to every screen, but also uses itiBiti to get prime placement on the user’s desktop.
- Do the opposite of what everyone else is doing: If everyone follows the same advice, social media becomes very crowded. Sometimes, as Harry McCracken of Technologizer discovered, it’s best to do the opposite.
What’s wrong with your current solution or why haven’t you chosen one yet: Most companies haven’t made the leap into social media because they’re either still trying to uncover social media’s ROI or they lack the necessary structural change in company communications.
14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media –
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Build Your Industry Voice with Social Media
August 4th, 2009
Above is an edited version of a presentation I led in Toronto as part of a social media road show sponsored by Intertainment Media, owners of Itibiti Systems.
The companion article to this presentation is entitled “14 Successful Techniques for Building Your Industry Voice with Social Media” (view on docstoc, download PDF, Summary of article). The article includes many more examples than you’ll see in the presentation (Time: 38:44).
During my research I was inspired to adopt many of the techniques for myself. I hope you find the same is true for you as well. Please watch and let me know what you think. If you have any stories of your own, please let me know as I’ll be writing a lot more about this subject.
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