The finished blog can be found at Lean-Angles.com

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branding, media, web design, blog, design

Beyond communicating directly with potential customers, Social Media can be used to extend a campaign or reinforce a brand by using these outlets to publish content. This content should be bespoke web content. Created to engage viewers and build awareness around your brand, ultimately designed to turn customers into evangelists through viral networks and word-of-mouth advertising. Podcasts, live streamed events, online games: just some of the possibilities to take your brand into uncharted waters.

Branded content, the new paradign in online advertising, is an emerging form of content that presents an ad disguised as content. This is not a sneaky attempt by an advertiser to coerce a viewer into watching. In fact it is very specific content created to offer value to the viewer beyond simple “Here’s my product. It’s for sale”. From expensive, high-production value mini shows to lo-fi videoblogging, there is an entire universe of possibilities to explore. The point is to be subtle with sales proposition, avoid hard-sell “Get It Now” messaging, and focus on interesting and relevant topics that surround the brands ecosystem. The content could narrative and dramatic or comedic, with subtle product placement or subtle pre-roll/post-roll branding. Or it could take an educational tone, how to get the best out of the product, or tips on associated topics not directly related.

The gold standard in many people’s eyes for branded content is still Blendtec’s Will It Blend series. Here each week a white-coated lab tech puts various common (or sometimes, not so common) objects into one of the companies heavy duty and premium priced blenders to see it said object will, like the title says, blend. As well as being extremely entertaining and sometimes incredible, the show highlights the strength and efficacy of the industrial strength blender. Some blended objects of note include iPhone, iPad, an XBox360, glow-sticks, even Justin Beiber got the Blendtec treatment. It has been a remarkably successful foray into the medium by one of the pioneers of branded content.

I recently worked on a show for XTM R/C Cars. Two show hosts took a detailed look at the features of a new car in their product line-up. Rather than make a very dry features/benefits pitch, it was dressed up like a TV show, with a set, beautiful graphics and some clever videography. An infomercial may not sound like the sexiest ad content, but bare in mind the niche targeted audience one can reach online that TV advertisers cannot. To an R/C car fan this content hits the mark, it’s engaging and informational, and it speak their language. And after the show is over, the XTM brand is implanted and associated with some very cool media the viewer is much more likely to remember, and more importantly – share.

Well. thats this series wrapped up. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way to the end. I hope I managed to inspire you to go forth into the social web and be heard. Fire up that Facebook page, that Twitter page, that blog and start creating. If you have any questions about where to begin, or what to do next, leave them in the comments or fire me off an email. And of course if you have any interest in creating some branded content of your own, influxx is always happy to offer a free consultation.

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social media, social networking, social marketing, branding, content, twitter, facebook, youtube

Now you are ready to dip your toe in the waters of Social Marketing, the cheapest and easiest way is to add a blog to your website. Write short posts a few times a week about topics relevant to your business, offer insights to manufacturing processes or customer case studies. Keep it topical and timely. Set up a Twitter account and a Facebook page, and share your blog posts or other interesting articles you have read online. Most importantly, be honest and genuine. Be human. Interact, respond to questions, join conversations. It’s not always easy or immediately rewarding, but given time you will develop your own ‘voice’ and your personality will shine forth.

Beyond those simple beginnings, we can get a little more involved. Build a Ning community around your brand where your customers or users can commune and hold discussions and share their stories. Develop a YouTube or Vimeo channel for training, advertising, branded content or seminar highlights. Populate a Flickr account with photo’s from conferences and Expo’s your company attends or speaks at. Offer promotions through FourSquare using location based marketing. The tools are numerous and varied, but they don’t have to all be embraced at once. Take on one at a time and slowly develop an online social marketing presence that supports your overall brand personality.

One of the most important things to consider about Social Networking is to listen. Too many companies and individuals see these online tools as just another publishing and marketing vehicle in the old linear, uni-directional sense. Broadcasting ads and promotions to the world without listening to the inbound stream of replies and questions. Whilst it is quite okay to use Social Networks in this manner, you’d be missing an undeniable opportunity to make the most of what this medium has to offer. And many users, your potential customers or clients, are often turned off by one-way hard-sell techniques. Be conversational, address problems, offer support or feedback. Also, don’t shy away from confontation, make fans out of foes by solving problems and offering assistance.

It’s not always easy to make friends across a computer network, but once you find a handful of people who share some common interests you’ll find your connections with these people are much stronger and you’ll develop your own little clique. And that is something that is often overlooked when discussing Social Networking. It would be impossible to be friends with, converse with and be liked by everyone in your online social environment. You would never have enough time to focus on actually running your business. But once you have a dozen, or twenty, or fifty or how many people you feel comfortable with keeping up with regularly, these people can become your advocates, your evangelists. When they like you (in the real, emotional sense, not just in the Facebook friending sense) they are more likely to spread your work, pass on a reference or give a recommendation about your brand or product. The adage is people do business with people they like, and social networks facilitate that practice perfectly.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about putting the media into Social Media. Check back then, or better yet subscribe with your RSS reader and have the series delivered to your inbox.

If you have any questions regarding this article, or would like to discuss setting up a social media platform for your organization, leave a comment below or contact me through the Contact Me page.

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social media, social networking, social marketing, branding, content, twitter, facebook, youtube

So this new web-born freedom is great and all, but how does it apply to business? Why should my business use these tools, or more importantly, HOW? At first glance it may seem there is no place amongst the Facebook Werewolves and YouTube haters for any serious business to venture. What could I possibly gain from sharing web-space or associating with that crowd? Actually, there is a huge gain to be had in joining the Social Network masses. These people are your audience, your customers. Never before have you had an opportunity to communicate so directly with them. Creating relationships with potential or existing customers has never been easy. Opening the doors of your social network to your audience allows a greater level of transparency and interaction. If done well, it can put a human voice or face to an otherwise anonymous corporate entity.

A dialog can be opened between the people you have been producing print ads for, who’s mailbox you have been dumping direct mail into, who you have been writing newsletters for all this time. Not only do you now have a channel to canvas ideas and feedback, your customers now have a door to poke their heads around and offer you suggestions, complaints, praise. You may have paid handsomely for this market research in the past. Of course you have to be committed to offering the best product or service you possibly can. Opening the social network doors will only lead to a barrage of angry followers if your offerings are less than advertised. If what drives you is the desire to be the best in your field, and your attempts to garner input are sincere then this feedback should be nothing short of gold.

A quick side story. I had the misfortune to work with a client once who, in an attempt to shore up the bottom line, made a conscious decision to abandon any attempt at producing a quality product and simply ship in the quickest, cheapest manner they could. The client in question was a big name brand in music recording and sound products. We were in mid re-branding and rebuilding their website when the plug was pulled on the campaign. They decided not to market to a long-standing and loyal user base who had come to expect and demand top-quality products from this company. They opted for quantity over quality. This was very disappointing, for all the obvious reasons at the time, but for me I had some great plans for building a social network around a large, loyal user-base of musicians. A perfect opportunity to leverage user generated content and social media to make their website the place to go for musicians to share and connect with like-minded enthusiasts. And of course the marketing and promotion possibilities of such a site would have been boundless. No matter how I tried I could not get the decision makers to share my vision. A big opportunity missed.

But not all businesses are so short-sighted. There are already many consumer businesses that have a Social Networking presence. Zappos the online shoe megastore, for instance, is well known for publishing promotional offers on Twitter. The Twitter account is not the self-serving marketing spiel of a faceless bot, it is the real-time thoughts of the Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. Zappos also publish several blogs linked from the main ecommerce site, which have employees writing and posting videos about the Zappos lifestyle and other associated news. Again, this makes the company look like it is owned, run and managed by humans, real-people. Comcast has for a long time been using Twitter as an additional customer service channel. A real human being, using their real name, Bill Gerth, and a photo of themselves for the avatar, responds with very human and caring words to Comcast customers with questions and complaints about the service. This must make Comcast’s Twitter followers feel like someone is on their side helping to resolve the issues.

Again, not to belabor the point, having an open channel of communication between the publisher and the follower serves to strengthen the bond between them and put a real human face where there often is none.

Tomorrow I’ll look at ways to get you started using social tools. Check back then, or better yet subscribe with your RSS reader and have the series delivered to your inbox.

If you have any questions regarding this article, or would like to discuss setting up a social media platform for your organization, leave a comment below or contact me through the Contact Me page.

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social media, social networking, social marketing, branding, content, twitter, facebook, youtube

Yesterday I claimed that Social Media was all about the conversation. But this conversation is nothing new. Since the dawn of the web people have been socializing online. BBS’s and newsgroups have been around for eons. Look at YahooGroups for evidence of that, there is an apparent group for every conceivable topic. And where would the web be without the blessed forum. Forums are a lively, helpful resource for many people to learn and help others. All of them are two-way and conversational. So why is Social Networking such a novelty? Are Social Networking and Social Media just terms coined by those web poseur types that hang around in coffee shops with their MacBookAir’s? Possibly, but it would be foolish to ignore their relevance and importance to the modern internet landscape. With the advent of Web2.0 technologies like AJAX or RubyOnRails developers were able to expand the features of old static websites into something modern and dynamic. This allowed social networks to be expandable, extensible and highly customizable, whereas the good old forum or newsgroup are the exact same experience for every visitor. Social networks allow each participant to create an area on the web that reflects their taste, interests, ideals and personality.

From Twitter backgrounds to WordPress plug-ins, you can refine your social profile just the way you like it. And this is the beauty of the new social web. It allows you to reflect the personality of your, or your brand. Add to the mix the enhanced bandwidth of modern broadband service and the speed of modern computer processors, and you can see how the web has become a monstrous media jukebox. All this media being created by it’s users, and shared amongst their own personal network of friends and associates. Families are sharing photos like never before. Friendships are struck up between distant netizens with similar interests. Content creators are able make, publish, distribute and share their work with an audience they could but previously dream of. Ideas are swapped and argued at lightning speed, in real-time crossing continents, sparking questions and concepts (and the occasional flame war). The web, along with the new social networking and social media services, democratized the channels and liberated content generators from the shackles of anonymity.

There are specific things I like about the people I follow. And I do mean people, I hesitate to say Companies even though many of the people I follow do represent Companies. After some work, I managed to weed out all the spammy one-way Tweeters that never @reply or simply self-promote. And now my social network is full of interesting individuals with real lives and interests outside of their business practice. I get a glimpse of a software CEOs family life, a professional motorcycle racer’s fitness regime, a major filmmaker’s photography tips and techniques. And whilst I may never do business with any of these individuals, it gives me a broader outlook on the world outside my office door. It keeps me in touch with current events, trends and memes.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss how social media can have an impact in your marketing strategy. Check back then, or better yet subscribe with your RSS reader and have the series delivered to your inbox.

If you have any questions regarding this article, or would like to discuss setting up a social media platform for your organization, leave a comment below or contact me through the Contact Me page.

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social media, social networking, social marketing, branding, content, twitter, facebook, youtube

Okay, so unless you have had your head buried under a rock for the past 5 years, you have likely come across the a little website called Facebook. And if you watch CNN at all you’ve probably seen Anderson Cooper inviting you to join the conversation on Twitter. And of course, who hasn’t wasted precious minutes, not to mention company bandwidth, watching dancing cats on YouTube. Social Networks. User Generated Content. Social Media. Buzz words galore. Tweetups. Meetups. Twestivals. Blogs and Vlogs. To many, it seems like an entirely new dialect has sprung up almost overnight. If it feels like everyone else in the office is hip to the scene except you, it shouldn’t. Like all trends that seem to sprout from nowhere, they begin with a vocal minority who like to think they are part of a movement the rest of us are not privvy to. Now, the trend has reached the mainstream, and its never too late to get up to speed and join the ever-growing throng of cool kids with their Tweety pages MyFace profiles.

It’s time to join the world of the Social Network.

Heck, you may even already write a blog about your pet, or cupcakes, or rebuilding early Kawasaki motorcycle engines. There’s a good chance you already friended all your high school buddies on Facebook. And there are undiscovered species of South American wood beetle who already find YouTube passé. The world of YouTube is so vast and fascinating, its rise to ubiquity is nothing short of monumental. It’s a much published fact that YouTube is currently the second largest search engine on the web, after Google, it’s parent company. But look closer at YouTube and the real action takes place below the video; in the comments, the like/dislike and the share options. This is where media gets ‘social’. Admittedly, YouTube has a bit of a reputation for some abusive behavior in the comment section, but look beyond YouTube to Vimeo, Flickr and Disqus, to countless blogs, to the current fad of live streaming services like Stickam and UStream, and you will see media creators sharing work and their audience sharing their feedback in a responsible and passionate manner.

Social Networks and Social Media simply refer to a new breed of website. What makes these websites, or services, so special? It is the ‘social’ element in Social Networking that is the big differentiator. Previously, websites, like most ‘old media’ were uni-directional – they delivered information to us on a one way street.. As consumers, viewers and readers we would passively sit and absorb what was being put in front of us. The new, social web is all about The Conversation. Media is now about being bi-directional, from creator to consumer and back again.

Tomorrow I’ll take a closer look at what exactly Social Media is, who is using it and how it works. Check back then, or better yet subscribe with your RSS reader and have the series delivered to your inbox.

If you have any questions regarding this article, or would like to discuss setting up a social media platform for your organization, leave a comment below or contact me through the Contact Me page.

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branding, media, podcasting, social media, web design

Final Cut Pro X has a bold new User Interface

After NAB everyone interested in FCPx had a pretty good understanding of these top level features; the magnetic timeline, the one-click colour correction, the background rendering and ingest, the Auditioning feature, the multi-format timeline and the Precision Editor for trimming clips. And of course the drastically renovated User Interface built around a solid metadata foundation. This was not your father’s FCP.
FCPx uses Grand Central Dispatch to make the most of your multi-core computer, allowing it to do more, faster. You can now ingest in the background, and FCP will balance colours, stabilise video, clean up audio and identify shot types while you get on with editing. Constant background rendering uses all available processors, so that final rendering should be a thing of the past.

And yet, with all the excitement about what FCP was going to offer, there were more questions about what was left out of the presentation, about what we didn’t know about the new product. Many dyed-in-the-wool editors had little good to say about the X version, apparently writing it off as iMovie Pro even before the product had shipped. But the rest of us were reassured that the best was yet to come, not to dismiss the product prematurely, that all the questions would be answered in good time and we would not be disappointed.

This was Final Cup Pro after all. The little NLE that Apple brought us in 1999 that was slowly adopted by pro editors in Hollywood, indie filmmakers worldwide and individual video producers. Before Final Cut, Apple had no ProApps division. It was in Final Cut Pro that Apple finally found itself some credibility as a serious post-production company, challenging Avid for the title of Best NLE. Apple wasted no breath using Walter Murch to promote the fact that FCP was used to cut Cold Mountain So with that heritage, we trusted Apple to not let us down. That this entirely new, re-written from the ground up app, despite it’s unfamiliar looks, would be everything we had come to know and love about FCP7 and much much more.

The cold light of day

And here we are in late June, the release of FCPx 1.0 finally behind us. Installed versions finally in the hands of users getting a good work out. Questions finally being answered. Or were they? Not from Apple, as the release came with very little fanfare. No big announcement. Just a new page on the website and a press release. Word was spread organically over the internet and social networks. And quite quickly it was obvious the word was not good.

The high-end video post guys were proven correct, in that the features they were concerned would not be included, were indeed not included. There is no tape ingest or output, so laying off for TV broadcast is impossible. XML, EDL and OMF import/export are absent so large facilities where many editors, colourists and finishers share files and work on projects collaboratively are left out in the cold. FCPx is unable to even open project files from previous versions of FCP, so anyone anywhere who has used Final Cut will have to keep a legacy Mac around just in case an old project gets woken from the grave, as clients are wont to do sometimes.

Absent is any native RED support, which Adobe has worked hard to provide in PremierPro. Also absent is any means of displaying output on an external broadcast monitor, an impossible omission to comprehend in a professional NLE. The way it handles media requires hard drive storage to be local which causes all manner of problems for RAID systems.

One disgruntled editor on the Yahoo! Group put it this way:

FCP X is unusable by editors at the highest level as you can’t even send an XML or an EDL to a high level online tool like Flame / Symphony / Smoke / Scratch or Baselight etc etc.

So FCP X is not usable at the high end as an online tool for assembling shots from other tools (as no XML import) and it can’t be used as an offline tool for cutting and then finish in an online suite (no XML or AAF export).

So it’s an isolated dead end purely useful to solo editors who finish inside FCP X and don’t need a broadcast monitor or output to broadcast devices.

And another says:

11 years of FCP, thousands invested in third party plug-in effects, all flushed down the toilet. We produce broadcast content not just YouTube videos.

Other concerns I’ve heard include lack of Multicam, XSAN, tape transport controls, plug-ins, FXplug support. And the biscuit-taker happens to be that Apple in it’s infinite wisdom has taken Final Cut Studio off the shelf and out of circulation, encouraging it’s resellers to return any old stock. Look for deals on eBay, you may not see FCP7 anywhere else again. By vowing not to support FCP7 Apple has instantly alienated a large percentage of those users unable or unwilling to move to the new paradigm immediately. Given time, and given a couple of updates cycles to FCPx to add the missing features, those FCP7 stalwarts would eventually likely follow along. Why anyone would having been treated in this manner it’s hard to imagine. It would be very easy for Avid to pick up a slew of new users in that circumstance.

The most troubling thing about erasing FCP7 from existence is the End Of Life of some very useful Final Cut Studio programs. While Motion and Compressor get new versions on the App Store, Soundtrack and DVD Studio Pro will not get a reprieve. I have found Soundtrack quite useful over the last year and have come to depend on it as my most trusted audio multitracker. And while DVD’s are not as popular as they were at one time, it’s still necessary to output a disk for a client review, for a show reel, or for certain projects. Adobe Encore to the rescue here.

So, where does that leave me?

I’d like to create a separate boot drive with Snow Leopard as a sandbox to install FCPx so I can play with the app and see just how good or bad it is, if it fits with my workflow. It’s entirely likely someone like myself could really benefit from FCPx. It would require a new drive (more expense) and a separate instal of all the other apps that support an NLE, like Photoshop, Illustrator etc. Yet all of this is moot as there is not a demo version available, a huge oversight by my reckoning. In Apples world, you either like it or lump it. If the program does not or will not run on your system then get out your checkbook once again and UPGRADE.

And it is this kind of strong-arm sales and marketing tactic that can only serve to lose Apple so much respect and credibility with it’s users. The very people that helped revive it’s flagging sales and credibility. Apple expects everyone to upgrade to the new app, but inevitably this requires updating every other component in the workstation. The processor and graphics requirements of FCPx mean all but the most recent MacPro’s and MacBookPro’s are able to run it out of the box. I’m unsure about iMacs at this stage but it would not surprise me if they were supported considering the target market. My early 8-core MacPro will need a graphics card upgrade if I want to play. Not to mention the software is only available through the App Store, which means Snow Leopard. Upgrading an OS is no trivial matter either, and usually requires updates and upgrades to drivers and app’s throughout the system. And busy working professionals are loath to make these kinds of upgrades mid-stream, that’s productivity disaster.

I heard one reseller complaining vociferously how the App Store will likely cannibalise the sales of turnkey system builders and resellers of Apple hardware and software. It was these people that built the support network for professional editors when Apple needed them, training, plug-in development, 3rd-party hardware

Apple has decided in one fell swoop that it no longer needs anyone. Look at the dearth of plug-ins at release and you can readily see that Apple talked to almost no one in the community about coming up with plugs that support this package. The lack of XML at release of a supposedly professional package shows they don’t think that playing nice with other packages (Resolve anyone?) is required. The negative reaction to how 3rd party equipment works with FCPX (the Kona paper released yesterday) makes everyone wonder about how Apple values their allied hardware manufacturers.

The new app was written from the ground up, so its all new code, nothing was carried over from FCP7. As such the bulk of the disgruntled sentiment comes from what was left out that once was in, that we were expecting an UPGRADE, not a back-to-thebeginning 1.0 product. There is a feeling that the high-end users that built up the Final Cut name and reputation have been completely ignored with this release. These users and studios have invested monumental amounts of cash building workflows around FCP and simply cannot abandon them overnight. Many are expecting to continue running FCP7 unsupported for years to come, if necessary. Reminiscent of how a lot of Mac OS9 systems were kept around long after OSX just for legacy Avid Media Composer systems.

It is possible to keep your install of FCP7 and install FCPx over it. The best of both worlds is never a bad option. However, even Apple recognises the pitfalls of doing this and has some strict guidelines for anybody wishing to do so.

Looking ahead, it has to get better

Apple has clearly put all it’s eggs into the tapeless, disk-less, all-digital cloud-based ecosystem. While it’s important to embrace the future, and where the bulk of video content is getting created today, it’s pretty harsh to ostracise the past so singularly. With support for GoPro, Vimeo, YouTube and Facebook, Apple has shown where it’s allegiance lies, yet it offers these without native support for RED or Alexa footage, two very high-end tapeless solutions. AJA was quick to announce some support for FCPx that allows use of an external monitor, but only for preview purposes, no print-to-tape yet. And that’s an additional expense again to do what was possible out of the box with FCP7.

The handful of users who have installed it, played with it and have good reports really are impressed. They do say the things FCPx promises to do well it does extremely well. I love the look of the new UI, and the core features sound impressive. I can’t wait to have a play with it. It’s just unfortunate that there is no demo to evaluate like almost every other pro app. I’ll have to wait until my workload permits and plunk down the cash and hope for the best. It’s important to remember this is a 1.0 release, updates will likely come thick and fast as holes in the feature set get filled. And in a year or so this will all have been a silly storm in a teacup.

It’s unfortunate Apple feels the need to be so intractable and exclusive. The whole episode leaves me a bit cold and the soft veneer of our favourite computer company is wearing very very thin. As one Yahoo! Group member puts it, this burst the bubble of enthusiasm and anticipation that was created in Vegas.

Have you played with FCPx yet? What are your first opinions? Will you be using it in production soon, or will you hold off for updates? Please leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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video, final cut pro x, apple, fcp, pro apps

Playing many new video podcasts requires an additional transcode in iTunes

My old iPod supports resolutions of up to 640×480 which translates to a widescreen 640×360. Of course many video podcasts are recorded widescreen these days and 960×540 is a popular size to publish at. It is 50% of 1920x1080HD resolution and offers a good balance of bandwidth and quality. It is also compatible with AppleTV playback. It is not compatible with the older iPods unfortunately.

According to Apple’s tech note iTunes can play a variety of .mp4, .m4v, and .mov video formats encoded using either the MPEG-4 or H.264 codecs, but only provides specs for iPod Touch, iPhone 4, iPhone 3G/3GS, iPad and Apple TV. It seems the trusty old iPod Classic has been dropped from the developer support reference.

This is surprising for a couple of reasons. First, Apple still sells the Classic so there is clearly a market for it, there are still units in circulation all requiring content. I could not find any indication if the specs for video content has been updated for Classic iPods compared to the pre-Classic 5G models. So I have to assume that the video podcasts that are not compatible with my 5G will also be incompatible with Classic models.

Secondly, the old style iPods (Classic, 5G etc) are perfect portable video devices due their increased capacity. My 80GB is full of feature length movies for long trips with my son, dozens of video podcasts, music videos, as well as audiobooks, music and audio podcasts. The newer flash-based iPods simply can’t compete for carrying all my video content around with me.

Now, why all of a sudden I’m finding several of my favourite shows will not sync with my 5G? It was common for producers to push the 1.5mb/sec data rate beyond the limit and perhaps some of them have gotten lazy in their QC. But its more likely that publishers and producers are standardising on one of the newer specifications that work with the later models. This is unfortunate, but understandable. Producers have to offer the best show they can to their audience, and the increased resolution of newer devices is unquestionably better. It would be nice to have the option of a version-specific download, but that could double or even quadruple the export time and storage requirements for the publisher.

And my podcast viewing these days is split between the iPod and the AppleTV, so i need multiple formats too. The line has to be drawn somewhere and the future of media is clearly higher definition. For now I have to transcode iPod compatible episodes directly from iTunes, which takes time and space on my media drive. Once the iPod episodes have been viewed I simply trash them, keeping only the original for later viewing.

I guess what I would really like is for a single downloaded file to contain the data up to AppleTV spec, but for the software on iTunes to be able to sync only the image required by the output requirements of the player. For example a 1280x720HD AppleTV show would be able to be played on an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and legacy iPod models because iTunes would be able to discern the target player and only sync the necessary data.

Of course I’m out of luck expecting the older iPods to ever get this support. Flash memory prices will fall and iPod Touch’s will get larger capacities making the old disk-based iPods obsolete once and for all. But as media continues to converge and we are all consuming our media in multiple location on multiple devices, I hope we start to see some intelligent software and hardware capable of offering the best possible viewing experience with player-optimised file sizes, negating the need for constant management of our media.

What do you do to manage your portable video? Do you subscribe, or publish, in multiple formats? How have your viewing habits changed? Please leave a comment below, I’d love to compare notes. I’m sure there are lots of differing opinions on this topic.

Sources:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/the-complete-guide-to-ipod-video-formats-and-display-resolutions/

http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/specs.html

Technorati Tags:
podcasting, video, itunes, ipod

Image credit : VFS Digital design on Flickr.

It occurred to me the other day, while reflecting on a couple of business opportunities that didn’t pan out as expected, that as freelancers the ball is always in our court. No matter what phase of a project we are currently involved in, no matter our role in the team, it is up to us to stay on top of things.

Now, that could mean calling a client to check on feedback, or the whereabouts of some promised assets. It could be sending an email to confirm a 1099 was mailed out yesterday as promised. Whatever task we feel we have ‘batted into our client’s court’, it does not necessarily mean that task is getting it’s due attention. It is in our interests to act like the ball is still in our court.

I’m not suggesting we need to pester and bother our client’s every hour on the hour. Yet, we don’t have traffic managers to keep an eye on projects for us. We don’t have project managers to chase down assets for us. There are no account executives to sweet talk the client in my office. All of these responsibilities fall on our shoulders.

So while it’s much more fun, and way more rewarding, to refine a cool particle effect or typographic technique, I have to force myself to take a look at the uglier side of the freelance business. To make sure business is moving forward and in my favour.