AU Blogspot

Trend Description:

Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways of social bonding. New technology enables people to come together online to to create and share stories, art, and other media related to their favorite movies, television shows, and books. In cooperation with media companies, publishers, and sponsors, the biggest social media company in the US, FanLib, also creates special online events where fans can interact with the producers and creators behind some of their favorite books, TV shows, and movies. Those sponsored promotions and contests are used to finance the site. FanLib services are free to the public and their stated goal is to spark creativity — FanLib calls itself the “People Powered Entertainment™ company”.

Cases:

HarperTeen Fanlit

After the success of the first collaborative E-book Reflection Perfection, Harper Collins is now incorporating a teen-focused web strategy in their program. The strategy enables teens to “Create & Share” fiction with Harper Collins authors and their peers, get sneak-peeks of upcoming titles, and get behind-the-scene info. 30,000 teenagers registered for the HarperTeen FanLit online writing contest, contributed, reviewed, and voted on chapters of which six were chosen for the final short story, “Reflection Perfection.” The contest, which is a collaboration with social media company FanLib, generated more than 6 million pageviews on HarperTeen and drew a community of more than 200,000 visitors. The final story is published as a HarperTeen e-book and is free for participants to share with their friends. Prizes included a US$5,000 college scholarship and a Fox TV studios-produced webisode based on the winning entry.

Suave: In The Motherhood

In the Motherhood is the first online video series by moms, for moms and about moms. All stories are based on contributions from real mothers. While professional screenwriters develop the characters and story lines for each of the webisodes, the online mom community votes and nominates the best entries. Sponsored as a multiplatform campaign by Suave and Sprint, In the Motherhood launched on MSN.com, on suave.com, on Sprint TV, as well as on broadcast TV, and features a lively forum of moms who want to share the joys and challenges of being a mom.

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           Thanks to Monica Semergiu  for permission to use this Photo.

After my previous post, Doug Johnson asked me to explain the economic model of a DRM-free world. This has been done by others on numerous occasions, so what follows should only be thought of as a summary.

Today, the demand that someone (not necessarily the artist) be compensated for the creative act is driving the demand for digital rights management. Because it is today so easy to make copies of content, the idea is that any access to content must be compensated. Otherwise, we are told, the creator (or, more accurately, the rights holder) will not be rewarded.

But we have had free content since time immemorial. Not always in the form of television, obviously, but from the days the first stories were told around the campfire and the days the first paintings were drawn on the walls of caves, listeners and viewers could access that content for free.

It is important to recognize this. It is important to see that free access to content has, though history, been the rule, not the exception. That the commodification of content, that the charging of access fees, subscriptions, or some other form of tariff, is a recent invention for almost all forms of content.

Yet, somehow, through history, artists and authors and musicians managed to ply their trade. How was this possible? It was rarely through sale of recordings or reproductions. Here are some ways authors, artists and musicians can support themselves in a post-DRM world. (more…)

 
               Thanks to Lori Tingey for permission to use this Photo.

“The challenge for Microsoft is not the ability to do much of what Google does. Instead, the company faces a business quandary. The Microsoft approach is largely to try to link the Web to its desktop business — “software plus Internet services,” in its formulation. It will embrace the Web, while striving to maintain the revenue and profits from its desktop software businesses, the corporate gold mine.”

I personally enjoy the increased competition in software and technology. After over a decade of Microsoft dominance (and as a result, decreased innovation on the desktop and the experiences of end users), the last few years have been exciting. Innovation after innovation has opened options for software use. (more…)

 
                Thanks to Jason for permission to use this Photo.

Communications provider KDDI is now displaying one of its latest achievements called Intra-Body Communication which can use the human body to transmit high-volume data such as video and music! This is done at a frequency less than or equal to 40MHz (which has less transmission loss). The video on the monitor in the picture below is going right through the woman from her hand to the glasses and out to the monitor!

We checked out the Intra-Body Communication setup today, and were surprised at the ease of use and quality of data. The video glasses are equipped with a copper coil that touches the skin on the user’s temple. When the metal heart on the table is touched, video transmits through the body and in through the glasses as well as to an external monitor. (more…)

 
              Thanks to Manny Diller for permission to use this Photo.

Google’s chief evangelist, Vint Cerf, recently wrote a fascinating article for The Guardian in which he discusses the future of the Internet, technology, innovation, new trends, etc. with some of the world’s brightest tech minds.  If you’re interested in hearing what people like the myspace and YouTube creators see ahead, and you should be, check out this article and let me know what you think.  Click on the image above to read article.

Ryan Rode
Interactive Services Manager
Ashworth University

 
               Thanks to Duncan Hull for permission to use this Photo.

What gets me about these is not how neat and forward-thinking they are but rather how ordinary they are. That’s not to say they are ordinary (I know, I know, bear with me…). What I mean is, all this semantic goodness is now so common-place, it’s impossible to see any distinguishing features.

Freebase, for example, wants to “open up the silos of data and the connections between them.” Well who doesn’t? I can name a dozen applications off the top of my head trying the same thing. (more…)

Awards such as the Open Web Awards are a great way for members of a community to show support for the free services they find valuable, and giving something back to the people who run them.

What’s In It For Me?

Honestly… nothing directly, unless the community owner pays you to vote for them, either directly or with prizes.

I must admit I am not a big supporter of offering prizes and gifts to encourage participation. As an example I can encourage you to join the Collective Thoughts Community on MyBlogLog, but I am not going to offer a specific incentive.

I have found that most sites offering prizes to achieve a specific marketing goal, having achieved their objectives, abandon the communities while moving onto other targets.Have you gained benefit from using the community? If so you should think about giving something back freely. (more…)

              Thanks to RPArena for permission to use this Photo.

Japanese writer, blogger and game designer Shigesato Itoi’s site, Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, is running a series of articles taken from a conversation with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. Eleven pieces are up on the site, and there’s some good stuff there, not just for game designers, but for designers of software in general, especially at a moment when more and more people are coming to recognize the importance of game mechanics to user engagement. Whether you’re interested in Nintendo’s perspective on game and software design, or you just want to hear from “the world’s number one researcher of Miyamoto studies,” this is pretty much required reading. (more…)

               Thanks to Kenny for permission to use this Photo.

This somewhat satirical article - The Outsourced Brain - proclaims: “I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.”

As Dave Snowden has indicated, it’s tough to determine the level of irony intended by the author. I assume it is at least somewhat ironic/tongue-in-cheek. (more…)

Virtual games are being transformed into real world games and marketing campaigns.

Our prolific trend scout Zuo Xuan from the Beijing CScout office recently featured another interesting trend on our China Blog.

Trend Description:
There seems to be no definite line between a real world and a virtual one anymore. Virtual websites like Second Life have caused a lot of hype by turning real life into a virtual one; but if one thinks in a reversed way - to transform part of real life into virtual games, there might also be opportunities for innovative business.

Cases:

In July 2007, China Youth Travel Service Co., Ltd and Sohu jointly released a travel package based on the plots of a popular internet game: the Semi-Gods and the Semi-devils (天龙八部，Tianlong Babu). The game was adapted from a well-known martial arts novel by a Hong Kong novelist Jin Yong. In 2002 Taiwan-based Soft-world turned it into a RPG internet game and received enormous success on mainland China. The new travel package covered plot-related legendary places such as Hainan Island, Sichuan, Nanshao etc. and included real-world games similar to the internet games. The “Tianlong” fans, most of whom are in their twenties can also get VIP cards to play with the internet games after they go back home.

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