Robin Good

The celebrated openness of the Internet in which internet providers are not supposed to give preferential access or treatment to any Internet traffic keeps quietly losing powerful defenders.Photo credit: Norma CornesInternet providers are still free to sell higher-speed traffic and better overall service levels, but letting big companies like Google get an unfair advantage in distributing their content online just because they can afford to pay more, represents a big threat to the democratic and egalitarian approach independent web publishers have been vouching for.Net neutrality boils down to one basic concept: Don\'t make audiences pay for artificially-created scarcity. That means that Internet providers of all kinds can be still free to sell "bigger pipes" and better overall service levels at higher prices. What should instead not be allowed anymore is for artificial cartels of content and Internet bandwidth providers to gang together and create preferential access routes to their own content by virtue of reserving faster and broader chunks of their bandwidth to their commercial gang partners. Here is John Blossom reporting on this story:

Net Neutrality Spin: WSJ\'s Take on Google\'s Caching Plans Draws Fireby John Blossom

WSJ vs. Google on Net NeutralityTalk about a bad hair day forWSJ tech journalists.When The Wall Street Journal ran an article on a Google plan to add "edge caching" servers at key internet service provider facilities, this fairly common practice to accelerate content delivery to audiences via the Web was mangled into a political imbroglio. To wit, their lead:"The celebrated openness of the Internet - network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic - is quietly losing powerful defenders.Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers."Google was quick to correct the WSJ\'s outlook, as noted on their public policy blog and in a subsequent AFP story. Their point:"Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday\'s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open."Intellectual property guru and net neutrality proponent Lawrence Lessig noted that his take on Google and the political ramifications of this move were a bit off-key in the WSJ article as well:"The article is an indirect effort to gin up a drama about an alleged shift in Obama\'s policies about network neutrality. What\'s the evidence for the shift? That Google allegedly is negotiating for faster service on some network pipes. And that "prominent Internet scholars, some of whom have advised President-elect Barack Obama on technology issues, have softened their views on the subject."Who are these "Internet scholars"? Me... I\'ve not seen anything during the Obama campaign or from the transition to indicate it has shifted its view about network neutrality at all."

Is the Open Web a Possible Future Scenario?With more moving pieces than a Swiss watch in Washington right now, the current political environment surrounding net neutrality and other Web access issues during a transition in Washington\'s power brokers is bound to be subject to as much jockeying and bullying as possible. Today the U.S. Federal Communications Commission canceled a vote on making radio frequencies available that would provide free Internet access as a public utility, bowing to pressures from both industry advocates and politicians. There\'s a big push for open Web access, but plenty of pressure from all points of view keeping things comfortably in neutral for now.Net Neutrality and related issues such as public Web wireless frequencies seem to boil down to one basic concept: Don\'t make audiences pay for artificial scarcity. Carriers are still free to sell "bigger pipes" and better overall service levels, but artificial cartels based on reserving audience-facing Internet bandwidth for private use will only create more challenges for publishers in the long run. If you want to have proof that this is so, just take a look at the balkanized state of mobile service carriers that lassoed content providers for many years into deals for distribution on their private networks. What publishers now confront are scattered and overpriced deals for growing but underperforming mobile markets, even as the carriers now reach for ad revenue shares to sweeten their take.

Net Neutrality and Its Implications for Online PublishersProprietary mobile breakthroughs such as theiPhone and the Amazon\'s Kindle are great for publishers in many ways, but they represent a relatively small share of the potential marketplace for mobile content and ultimately just continue the myth that artificial network scarcity can benefit the publishing industry as a whole. All these devices do is lock publishers in to proprietary networks that are bound to make it harder to reach their audiences cost-effectively.The truth is that the fastest-evolving, most cost-effective technology changes are best for publishers, making it imperative to enable an environment in which mobile and Web technology providers are not resting on proprietary laurels that hinder the development of Web and mobile markets for publishers. Without these breakthroughs, the audience reach that content producers need to make mobile networks a highly profitable distribution medium is not likely to materialize. Let\'s keep the future of publishing out of the hands of companies that still can\'t tell us whether to dial "1", an area code or nothing extra to make a phone call to the next town.Net Neutrality will ensure that there is a cost-effective, rapidly evolving electronic distribution infrastructure that serves publishers best.

Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published on December 15, 2008 as "Net Neutrality Spin: WSJ\'s Take on Google\'s Caching Plans Draws Fire".

About the authorJohn Blossom\'s career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including major financial publishers and financial services companies, as well as earlier experience in broadcast media. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and consumers of content services.

Photo credits:WSJ vs. Google on Net Neutrality - Olga DemchishinaIs the Open Web a Possible Future Scenario? - Alfredo AngelesNet Neutrality and Its Implications for Online Publishers - Wikimedia Commons ...

In this issue of the Media Literacy digestGeorge Siemens deals with the predominance of advertising in Web 2.0, usage statistics of social networks, alternative approaches to teaching, and the need to improve existing learning platforms.Photo credit: RogersFurthermore, today digest points to an interesting MIT experiment devoted to try out new teaching approaches. MIT is gradually dropping long lectures, and focusing on smaller classes where learners can collaborate and interact with each other more actively. A small and intimate learning environment is the best way to let students improve their skills.And from such a view it should appear as comforting news that such a long-established and respected academic institution decides to try a different solution where teachers and learners can truly share their knowledge, instead of being just put together in the same room following the sterile approach "I teach, you learn".If you want to know more on alternative teaching approaches, and understand better the disruptive changes that our educational system is facing, this weekly digest with George Siemens is a good starting point to get more involved.Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Web 2.0 Called; It Says It's Just an Ad Platform NowI've whined before about howweb 2.0 was / is a threat to open source software. Open source is an ideology (although watered down from Stallman's initial version) about openness, democracy, and participation.Web 2.0 is about free of cost. It's a soul-less version of open source that relies on certain external conditions for its existence. Ideologies can outlive many waves of change. It's too early to say that web 2.0 is on the wane due to economic pressures, but a concept tied to external realities (markets, politics) will always be challenged to live in tumultuous times.Web 2.0 Called; It Says It's Just An Ad Platform Now: "Time and time again, many of the most innovative services online today run out of money before the huge number of potential and diverse users that could find value in them end up discovering them. Those services end up serving instead the world of advertising, or as is the case with many of the most awe inspiring research technologies - financial services professionals."

Adults and Social Network SitesPew Internet's recent report - Adults and Social Network Sites (.pdf) - doesn't offer anything dramatically new for those who have been active in online social networking sites. Of greatest interest is the growth over the last three years - 35% of adults have a profile, four times the number from 2005… but significantly less than the 65% of teens with a SN profile. As is often the case with new technology adoption, the percentages decline with age (down to only 7% for those in the 65+ category). The adoption of SN sites does reveal some interesting distinctions by race and income: non-whites are more likely to use these services and use declines as income increases.

Time to End "Courseocentricism"Aside from winning the most awkward new term - courseocentricism (why not just course-centricism?) - this article makes a compelling case for the limitations of current views of courses. The author appeals for ending course silos as a way to improve consistency across curriculum and thereby produce a more integrated or connected body of knowledge. From the article:"At a time when amazing new forms of connectivity are made possible by new digital technologies and when much of the best recent work in the humanities has made us more aware of the social and collective nature of intellectual work, we still think of teaching in ways that are narrowly private and individualistic, as something we do in isolated classrooms with little or no knowledge of what our colleagues are doing in the next classroom or the next building and little chance for each other's courses to become reference points in our own."I like the idea of thinning our classroom walls and allowing connections to be formed between concepts from other subject areas. But that responsibility shouldn't rest on the educator. "Getting on the same page" (author's words) seems a bit at odds with opening up class rooms. We need to all get on our own page, form our own connections, our own understanding of different fields. It seems that the desire still runs high for educators to apply increased organization when problems become intractable. What is really needed is a complete letting go of our organization schemes and open concepts up to the self / participatory / chaotic sensemaking processes that flourish in online environments.

The Season of PredictionsThe season of predictions is upon us. I've never been fully convinced of the value of predictions (if someone says 2009 is the year of the mobile phone, what does that mean to me? What should I do differently? Use my phone more? Text more?). Ironically, the value of predictions is less in what they predict… and more in how they provide a framework for existing trends. Predictions that only look one year into the future are really a "pause and reflect" activity. A few recent articles / predictions:

• eLearn magazine's 2009 predictions (short statements from numerous well known elearning personalities)
• Top Trends and Technologies (from a librarian's perspective)
• Top Teaching and Learning Challenges

At MIT, Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the BlackboardIt's encouraging to see universities adopting different approaches to teaching. While research on the so-called learning sciences is not fully settled, enough is understood about learning to warrant significant reconsideration of how teaching occurs in universities. At MIT, Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard:The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.Changes of this nature still occur within the existing structure of universities. The next, somewhat obvious, question to tackle is "how should universities be structured when access to information and ability to create learning networks shift from instructor to learner control?".

Frustrating Conferences…Conferences are terrific opportunities for meeting colleagues, encountering new ideas, and getting as sense of what's happening "over there". For dissemination of knowledge (information, really, but knowledge is the term most people relate to), few processes are more valuable. But conferences can be frustrating. Very frustrating. Who hasn't encountered the joy of sitting in a conference room, listening to droning presentations, feeling as if though they've lost the "which session is going to be the least bad" lottery from the program brochure?Several years ago, I was asked to join the ED-MEDIA steering committee. As a group, they have been very willing to entertain different approaches for improving the conference.Now, under the umbrella ofAACE, we're pleased to announce Spaces of Interaction: An online conversation on improving traditional conferences. (Ning site for the event). The discussion happens February 18-20, 2009. It's free. It's online. And it's open. If you're a conference organizer, sit on a conference committee, or attend conferences, we'd love to hear your input on how the experience can be improved.You may find this article - Conference Connections: rewiring the circuit - to be a useful lead up to the online event.

What Not to BuildI met with an individual today who is creating avirtual world for young teens. The project is conceived as serving a niche market. Of course, we all feel our ideas are unique or our particular circumstance is different from others. I left the meeting with a sense of "why are people still building these things? why not take advantage of infrastructure that is already in place?". Operating systems and platforms that are used as the base of innovation are increasingly free. The value is in the creativity and innovation unleashed by many contributors. Google gets this. That's why they announced OpenSocial. And Android. Competition based on openness.Stephen Downes continues his reflection / future thinking with What Not to Build (this follows his important Future of Online Learning: 10 Years On). In this (shorter) paper, he offers advice to the elearning industry on what not to build… what is being built… what is a fad… and what might be worth building. I don't agree with all of his statements. iPhones are hyped, but I don't think they are a fad… though Android and RIM may impact their market share. Cloud computing will not be noticed because, well, that's the point. The technology becomes transparent. People are already "using the cloud" without being fully aware of it. This may depend on how one defines cloud computing - i.e. if it includes Google Docs, Gmail, MobileMe, and other hardware / software applications that don't confine computing to a particular device - then I don't think it's a fad. Those two small points aside, Stephen has written a good article that will make edtech professionals rethink future / emerging projects.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on January 15th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:Web 2.0 Called; It Says It\'s Just an Ad Platform Now - Eric IsseléeAdults and Social Network Sites - Cathy YeuletTime to End "Courseocentricism" - mooriThe Season of Predictions - Andrei KiselevAt M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard - Luis LouroFrustrating Conferences… - FleyeingWhat Not to Build - xavigm ...

Make tons of money online with my internet marketing secret formula! At one time or another you have probably already landed on a sales page claiming to be able to make you become another Internet millionaire only by reading and applying a few simple tactics, "anyone" can use. Haven\'t you? And ever since you have been wondering if there is really a secret to be discovered to make fast money online.Photo credit: Aspen CountryThe answer to that question is: yes, there is a secret to most of the apparently successful internet marketing offers you increasingly see online.It may not be the secret you expect to hear about, but it is nonetheless a quite well kept secret. The unique thing is that the secret is in front of everyone and yet many can\'t see it.In this article, Enrico Madrignano, a true internet marketing expert explains in a simple and direct way why internet marketers are so effective in selling you their secrets and why you may be deeply disappointed with the results you are going to get.Here all the details:

Make Money Online or Doing Web Marketing?I believe that whoever consciously mixes "making money online" with "Internet marketing", does it more to increase her revenue than to help others better understand how things really are. As a matter of fact, the phrase "make money online" helps catching many more fishes and it\'s not strange that the keyphrase "money online" is often among those most searched on internet marketing blogs. One of the basic marketing principles is: "give people what they want." The trick works simply because the phrase "to make money" triggers desires and impulsive attraction much more than the word "internet marketing" does.The new "internet marketing" gurus have well understood this and they also know that mixing the idea of "internet marketing" with "making money online" creates the perfect mixture. It has worked for a long time in the US and it also works well in Italy.Can we say it\'s their fault? I don\'t think so: just like you, they want to make money. Can we scold them? Absolutely yes: if those two concepts are not clearly and distinctly explained, then you are playing a cheating game.

Creating ValueDoing "internet marketing" means creating value that is built around the needs and desires of the customer or the market. And this value must be discovered by doing extensive analysis, tests, and experiments."Making money" only means selling something to someone who is willing to buy, even in a short time, and even if no additional value is created.To provide an example, I could make money going to a crowded beach and selling ice-creams with a cart at the hottest hours, when the sun is high in the sky. I have a product that sells itself automatically, no matter how good or bad it really is (my customers can only find out after they buy it).But if I want to transform my ice cream cart into a multinational ice-cream corporation, then things change drastically. Now I really need marketing to take my business to the next level, otherwise, in one year I will still be at the same beach, selling ice-creams to the beach-goers.

A Gambling Card GameThe cheating card game of these "internet marketing" gurus is built specifically around the idea that marketing is actually that ice-cream cart.Here is how they do it:

1. They make the whole thing look as simple as possible and accessible to anybody out there. Do you need an astrophysics degree to sell ice creams on the beach? Anyone can do it, you too! Just think of this: While you are reading this page, thousands of entrepreneurs are already out there making billions of money by selling ice-creams on the beach, while you...
2. If I write a 500-page ebook to tell you how you can buy the ice cream cart, where you can buy it, which wheels you need for it, what kind of ice cream refrigerator you need to install on it, and so on... I won\'t need to waste my time explaining you the strategies to distribute, promote and add value to your product (that is "marketing"). Why? There is nothing better than having an ignorant customer. They let you believe that they hold the key to success, while the reality, is they are just selling you information to setup an ice cream cart.If you understand the problem, then you get mad and you stroll around discrediting the guru or, if you still buy into the cheating card game, you fall into the final trap, which is this.
3. You have understood that with the ice-cream cart you can make money, but you have also understood that to make real, significant money, you need something much more advanced than an ice-cream cart. And it\'s now, that the guru suddenly pulls out from his magic hat a secret envelope and lets you sniff it. Obviously, you have a hard time resisting to such offer, and you buy the expensive envelope with the secret formula. You open it slowly, excited and curious... and what do you find inside it?

Good or Evil Gurus?If the guru is an evil one, then in the envelope you\'ll find some marketing strategies. But, to be put to use, these strategies require you to buy a new, motorized, 12-wheel ice-cream cart that your guru is going to sell to you, or yet worse, you will have to become a reseller of his motorized 12-wheel ice-cream carts, s/he has been selling for years that will make you a millionaire in a very short time... I guess you have understood how the story goes.On the other hand, if the guru is a good one, then in the envelope you will find some real good marketing strategies. Too bad that on the way to get there your good guru had you spending all your life savings. And not taking into account that now, if you really want to make money online, you will need to roll up your sleeves and start working very hard for quite some time.

ConclusionThe two concepts, "making money" and "internet marketing" go perfectly hand in hand as long as they are clearly distinguished by whoever promotes them. Whoever consciously mixes these two concepts, creates an inviting dish that is as poisonous as venom. This approach can be valuable at a first stage, but in the long run it bears only disgraces.I have seen this mix utilized for many years in the American market, almost in every field, but firstly in "internet marketing", where marketing gurus grow faster than mushrooms.It is always the same story, with the same plot being sold over and over again. "How to make money online with the superninja formula", "find the ultimate web marketing secret", are the typical slogans that characterize this ambiguous universe.As a matter of fact, there would be nothing intrinsically bad with all this, if it wasn\'t for the fact that these slogans and tactics are always the same, copied over and over again, and promoted by supposed gurus who have never tried and experimented them for real in their own strategies.Here in Italy, it is a little bit better, because culturally we are much more prepared to sniff out situations where someone wants to take advantage of our ignorance. But I don\'t know if this will last.Making money online is something that sometimes can happen fully naturally, in a short amount of time and without excessive efforts. On the other hand, to do effective marketing you need real dedication, perseverance and a lot of time to try and experiment all possible venues. To say it in simple words, in marketing you really need a lot of experience gained by having experimented lots of strategies in a real world situation. Who has gotten this experience through lots of efforts and over many years, out of respect to you or by being coherent with his hard-learned skill, will never sell it you as the magic formula to become a millionaire in 24 hours while selling ice-creams on the beach. Many understand all of the above right away, while others need to be caught in the trap before they start realizing how this internet marketing magic works. And this is part of the game too.

Originally Written by Enrico Madrignano for Web Marketing Forum and first published on January 11, 2009 as "Il Web Marketing NON è il guadagno online".

Photo credit: Make Money Online or Doing Web Marketing? - RidoCreating Value - Eduard Härkönen A Gambling Card Game - Visual 7Good or Evil Gurus? - PikselConclusion - Xiao Fang Hu ...

Theonline video advertising market could not look any brighter according to the new LiveRail report for Q4 2008. During the past year, online video advertising has shown not to be affected by the global financial crisis, with average CPMs growing at an ever higher pace, and internet video consumption experiencing a massive growth of 40% and more.Photo credit: CornishmanThese figures clearly indicate that online independent publishers should look without hesitation at creating additional revenue channels to their existing content lineups by working on developing new and effective video marketing and advertising solutions.Moreover, next-generation TV sets and mobile phones are slowly becoming valuable vehicles for video content delivery, creating new, highly personalized market niches and more opportunities for monetizing custom online advertising venues.If you are looking to understand more and better where the online video advertising market is going this report is definitely a must-read.Here all the details:

Online Video Advertising: State Of The Internet Marketing Industry Full Report Q4 2008by LiveRail Research Department
Highlights:

• Internet Video Overtakes TV Consumption for 18-24 Year Olds
• Next-generation TVs Hint at Future of Ad Delivery
• Time Spent Watching Online Video Up 40% in 2008
• Video May Be Immune From Advertising Downturn; Average CPMs Up
• Q4 Sees Volume of Unique US Online Video Viewers Surge Past 125m
• Will Mobile Video Be the Breakout Ad Product of ‘09?

Internet Video Overtakes TV Consumption for 18-24 Year OldsQ4 2008 saw the valuable 18-24 year old demographic spend more time watching internet-distributed video content than "traditional" broadcast television, according to a survey conducted by LiveRail in December.LiveRail CEO Mark Trefgarne commented, "We were genuinely surprised by the results of our survey. We polled several hundred under-25 year olds, and an overwhelming majority are now watching as much or more video content online as on regular TV. For advertisers seeking to reach this valuable demographic, it's clear that online video is the place to be".As younger viewers shift increasingly online, TV is steadily becoming the medium of choice for advertisers wishing to reach an older audience. According to a study released by Magna Global\'s Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast networks\' average live-viewer median age reached 50 for the first time last season - this marks the first time ever that the major networks\' median age has slipped outside the vaunted 18-49 age group.Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox's average audiences. The CBS audience age, traditionally the oldest-skewing network, has remained fairly steady.LiveRail's survey included over 400 respondents in the 18-24 category and was conducted online (via popular social networks such as Facebook and Myspace). Of these respondents,

• 53% stated that in an average month they spent "More time watching online video than TV",
• 19% said they watched "About the same" and
• 28% said they watched "More TV than online video"

Next-generation TVs Hint at Future of Ad DeliveryNext-generation TV sets, dubbed by their manufacturers as "broadband-enabled", have begun to hint at the future direction of internet video, and with it, the very future of video advertising. Recent announcements from manufacturers have shown that in the near future, internet-based delivery of video content will become a mainstay for content distribution, opening new opportunities for ad insertion, optimization and personalization.Manufacturers such as LG have begun by building-in support for premium subscription services such as Netflix On Demand, which are of course ad-free. For ad-supported content channels, technology vendors such as LiveRail and BlackArrow can provide ad insertion tools to enable the true, dynamic serving and reporting that advertisers have become accustomed to on the Web, which should aid the transition to new video viewing environments.Whereas traditional TV advertising has relied on per-show and DMA targeting, broadband-enabled TV and IP-based content channels can tailor advertising delivery on a per-user basis, according to the interests, viewing habits, demographics, time and / or location of every individual viewer. Internet video delivery also allows insertion parameters to be adjusted and optimized to maximize performance on the fly.

Time Spent Watching Online Video Up 40% in 2008Consumption of online video has grown dramatically in 2008. According to statistics from Comscore, frequent viewers are now consuming an average of 273.1 minutes of online video content per month, up from 195 minutes during the previous year. Our own figures suggest this number may be even higher, with viewers on LiveRail-enabled sites spending an average of 51% more time watching video content than at the start of the year.This trend is being driven primarily by an increase in the availability of quality long-form content. Sites like Hulu and TV.com are delivering full-length television episodes, with many younger consumers now watching as much video online as on traditional television.This time last year, content was dominated primarily by short-form UGC content on sites like YouTube, where average user sessions last a matter of minutes.

Video May Be Immune From Advertising Downturn; Average CPMs UpDespite the recent negative economic climate, and concerns over a drop in ad spending, online video appears to have weathered Q4's economic slump. According to a recent survey of its online video publishers conducted by LiveRail in December, average CPM values appear to be rising, with publishers reporting an average payment rate of $16.40 per thousand in-stream impressions.PermissionTV also conducted a survey of advertisers to gauge the "tactics on which US marketers plan to focus their online marketing budget in 2009", with the top response being video.

• 66.8% of marketers suggested that video would be their among their priorities for 2009,
• versus just 22.8% for banner advertising.

Despite the optimism in the market and the growth in average CPMs, there does appear to be evidence that campaign distribution strategies are shifting, resulting in smaller total buys and an ever-growing focus on acquiring "premium" inventory, versus broad media buys.

Q4 Sees Volume of Unique US Online Video Viewers Surge Past 125mDespite early indications of slowing growth in October, the number of overall unique online video viewers rose again in November, according to Nielsen's VideoCensus. The number of unique viewers in the US during the month grew to 124 million from 120 million in October, with 9.5 billion streams served (up from 8.89 billion the month before) in October.YouTube and Hulu unsurprisingly led the market growth, with YouTube serving 5.56 billion streams in November, (up from 5 billion the month before), and its number of uniques growing to 84.5 million (from 82.5 million). Hulu served an estimated 220 million videos in November (up from 206 million the month before), but Nielsen estimates that its unique viewer count dropped to 7.5 million (from 9 million during the month of October), primarily due to a drop-off in interest in political content after the 2008 presidential election.

Will Mobile Video Be the Breakout Ad Format of ‘09?In the fourth quarter of 2009, the ad industry has seen tentative, but compelling, forays into video advertising within mobile content. With an increasing number of premium content producers (like Cnet and NBC) beginning to publish entire video libraries on their mobile destination sites, and mobile application developers (read iPhone and Android) seeking new revenue sources, this is the first quarter that has seen both high levels of mobile viewership and significant volumes of premium mobile inventory.Mobile-specific ad serving products like Videoegg's Mobile Ad Frames (currently for iPhone and soon for Android), AdMob for iPhone and LiveRail's iPhone AdManager have recently been released to take advantage of this emerging market, providing innovative ad insertion and display tools for publishers. Given that mobile video viewership is still in an early growth phase, the relative success of these technologies will likely depend on their ability to work within existing workflows (i.e. to support cross-platform delivery of campaigns), and to provide the level of reporting that advertisers and agencies have come to expect from digital media. We anticipate this will be a quickly evolving space in 2009.

Volumes and ValuesQ4 2008 has been a surprisingly successful period for online video advertising, despite the increasingly difficult economic climate. With ad spending overall showing clear pressures, online video has proven to be relatively resilient.
Overlays

• Average overlay click-through rates: 1.2%
• Close-out rates for overlays: 69.0%
• Click-through rates for standard overlays: 0.9%
• Animated overlay click-through rates: 4.2%
• Completion rate for overlay-initiated video ads: 90.0%
• Click-through rates from overlay-initiated video ads to advertiser websites: 11.5%
• Average CPMs for overlay ad campaigns: $7.40
• Current market size for overlays: approx. $138m

In-Stream (Pre / Mid/ Post Roll)

• Average completion rates are 79% for 15 second in-stream units
• Average completion rates are 84% for 30 second in-stream units
• Click-through rates for in-stream ads to advertiser websites: 1.9%
• Average CPMs for in-stream ad campaigns: $16.40
• Current market size for in-stream ads: approx. $540m

Industry-Wide

• 27.3 billion US video streams estimated for Q4 2008
• Estimated calendar 2008 US online video advertising revenue: $565m

Given our overlay and in-stream ad unit data, and assuming each monetized video asset contains 1.2 billable ad units, we find the average monetized video asset nets an eCPM of $15.77. At this rate, we estimate that 39% of video streams are currently being monetized.

Forecasts*2008-2010 entries are projections - (Source: eMarketer, November 2008)

DisclaimerThe figures, statements and statistics contained in this report have been gathered and compiled by LiveRail through observing activity on its own network, collating data / reports from third parties including ad networks, advertisers, publishers and technology partners both formally and anecdotally, statistics gathered from third-party white papers and by general observance of the industry. Statements in this document are accurate to the best of our knowledge; however, LiveRail makes no guarantee as to their accuracy for any purpose.

Originally written by Niccolò Pantucci for LiveRail and first published on January 19th 2009 as "State Of The Industry - LiveRail's Q4 2008 Review of Online Video Advertising".

About the authorLiveRail is a venture capital-backed startup providing technology products and services for online video advertising. The company's video-focused approach allows it to deliver superior advertising technology tools, empowering publishers and advertisers to make the most of the opportunities of online video. LiveRail is based in San Francisco, California. For more information, please visit www.liverail.com.

Photo credits:Highlights: - Lars ChristensenInternet Video Overtakes TV Consumption for 18-24 Year Olds - aarkangelNext-generation TVs Hint at Future of Ad Delivery - Paul BoutinTime Spent Watching Online Video Up 40% in 2008 - Dimitry RomanchuckVideo May Be Immune From Advertising Downturn; Average CPMs Up - petrolQ4 Sees Volume of Unique US Online Video Viewers Surge Past 125m - Rio Salado CollegeWill Mobile Video Be the Breakout Ad Format of \'09? - LeonVolumes and Values - Ann Triling ...

It\'s now official: Online advertising rates for websites of all sizes and categories have gone through a significant decline in Q4 2008.If you had been wondering what you have been doing wrong to have your advertising revenues decline month after month, relax. It\'s not been your fault. According to the newAdPrice Index released by PubMatic, it has been the economic recession which has significantly influenced online advertising prices and rates for the last few months. Photo credit: PubMaticBad news for online advertising rates also when it comes to specific vertical categories, which have also dropped from Q4 2007. The category Business & Finance underwent the biggest drop, falling from an average price of $2.13 in Q4 2007 to $0.83 in Q4 2008 – a 61% drop. In this climate of general discouragement for ad revenues, good news come from the just ended holiday season which surprisingly showed no significant change from Q3 2007 to Q4 2008. Under such circumstances online ad rates appeared to remain steady and may actually see some price boost in the near future.Here all the details:

The PubMatic AdPrice Index Q4 2008
Executive SummaryThe data reflected in this report shows a significant decline in Q4 2008 online display ad pricing compared to Q4 2007 for all sizes of websites and all vertical categories, underscoring the fact that the US economy is in a recession and that the online advertising sector is not immune to it. However, the news isn't entirely negative and shows some promise for the online advertising sector.While the ad price averages across most sites also dropped in Q4 2008 from Q3 2008, the quarter-to-quarter drops were not significant by website size or vertical category; this may be an indicator that holiday ad sales helped stave off the consistent bigger drops that happened from quarter to quarter throughout 2008. Some vertical categories even showed improvement from the previous quarter.It is clear that growth in online display advertising is slowing consistent with other advertising sectors, but not to the same magnitude. In the coming quarters the average pricing for display advertising may continue to drop consistent with seasonal cycles. However, with overall advertising budgets shrinking, the need for marketers to have more accountable advertising could bring more advertising dollars online in 2009 and start an upward trend as some vertical categories have already experienced.

Key Takeaways

• All sizes of websites (small, medium, and large) were down dramatically from Q4 2007; small, medium, and large sites dropped 52%, 23%, and 54%, respectively, from the previous year.
• All sizes of websites were also down from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, but the drops were not significant, bucking the trend of larger drops from quarter to quarter throughout 2008; this may be an indicator that the online ad sector got just enough of a boost from holiday advertising to keep ad rates steady.
• Similar to sites by size, all vertical categories also experienced significant drops in their ad pricing from Q4 2007; the biggest drop by a vertical was Business & Finance, which fell from an average price of $2.13 in Q4 2007 to $0.83 in Q4 2008 - a 61% drop.
• Also similar to sites by size, no vertical categories dropped by a significant amount from Q3 2008 to Q4 2008, and some verticals even improved from the previous quarter; the Technology, Sports, Entertainment, Gaming, and Music verticals all had higher ad price averages in Q4 of 2008 than in Q3 of 2008.

Quarter-to-Quarter Trends by Website Size

Quarter-to-Quarter Trends by Website Vertical

Q4 2008 AdPrice Average by Size

Overall Ad Price Average (All Site Sizes)

• -48% from Q4 07
• -3.7% from Q3 08

Quarter-to-Quarter Pricing by Website Size
AdPrice Quarterly Average for Small Sites

• -52% from Q4 07
• 0% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Medium Sites

• -23% from Q4 07
• -3.2% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Large Sites

• -54% from Q4 07
• -5.6% from Q3 08

Q4 Ad Price Averages by Vertical

Quarter-to-Quarter Pricing by Website Vertical
AdPrice Quarterly Average for Business & Finance Sites

• -61% from Q4 07
• -3.5% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Entertainment Sites

• -40% from Q4 07
• +15.2% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Gaming Sites

• +31% from Q4 07
• +6.3% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for News Sites

• -36% from Q4 07
• -5.6% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Sports Sites

• -54% from Q4 07
• -4.8% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Social Networking Sites

• -8.7% from Q4 07
• +59% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Technology Sites

• -41% from Q4 07
• +3.5% from Q3 08

AdPrice Quarterly Average for Music Sites

• -61.5% from Q4 07
• +3.4% from Q3 08

Segment DefinitionsSmall Web site segment: Less than 1 million page views per month.Medium Web site segment: Between 1 million and 100 million page views per month.Large Web site segment: Over 100 million page views per month.Aggregate Index: Data for All Web sites is computed using a weighting of 65 percent large Web sites, 20 percent Medium Web sites, and 15 percent Small Web sites based on an estimate of overall traffic in the online publishing market.(Note: The pricing data reflects net publisher monetization via ad networks and excludes ad networks\' share of ad spends as well as inventory sold directly by publishers to ad agencies or advertisers.)

Originally written by Albert and Michele Madansky for PubMatic and first published on January 14th 2009 as "AdPrice Index - The Q4 2008 - The Original Online Ad Pricing Report".

About the AuthorsPubMatic is an ad network optimization service that automates and optimizes ad inventory decision-making for professional web publishers.Albert Madansky is a Ph.D., H.G.B. Alexander Professor Emeritus of Business Administration at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and recipient of the 2005 American Statistical Association Founders Award.Michele Madansky is a Ph.D., media and market research consultant, former VP of Global Market Research for Yahoo!

Photo credits:Executive Summary - PubMaticKey Takeaways - Bora UcakSmall, Medium, Large Sites - Robyn MackenzieAll other images by PubMatic ...

If you are trying to make your site more visible inside Google search engine result pages, here is a great set of Google-recommended tools to help you increase the findability of your site inside the SERPs.Photo credit: hypermaniaFrom proper indexing, totitling, link popularity, keyword analysis and proper HTML coding everything adds up when it comes to getting greater visibility inside major search engines result pages.Luckily it is the AdSense Google team itself who has picked and selected the ultimate list of visibility, SEO and traffic driving tools to help you stay on top of the search engine traffic game.Here all the details:

Light Up Your Site

1. The Command "Site"Not sure if all your pages are being seen by Google? Search for your site\'s address after the command "site", like [site:example.com]. When you see your pages in the results, check your snippet content and page titles. Include information that matches the topic of a particular page. If anything is missing or you want more details, you can also use the Content Analysis tool in Webmaster Tools.

2. SitemapIf you upload new pages or topics faster than Google crawls your site, make sure to submit a Google Sitemap and include a refresh rate.

3. Image SearchLabel your images appropriately. Users searching in Google Image Search will more easily find the image on your site. Don\'t miss out on potential traffic because of [001.jpg] instead of [NintendoWii.jpg].

4. SiteLinksManage yourSiteLinks. Your most valuable links may not be the ones that Google chooses as SiteLinks, so remember you can remove any that you don\'t think users will find useful.

5. Diagnostic ChecklistCheck for errors and keyword traffic inWebmaster Tools and consult the diagnostics checklist.

6. HTTP Status CodesServe accurate HTTP status codes.

• If you\'ve retired a page permanently, serve a 404.
• If you\'ve simply relocated it, serve a 301.

The more Google knows about your old pages, the faster it will find the next best page on your site for a given query.

7. Organic ContentUsers and search engines likeorganic content. Make some of your own!

8. SEO Starter GuideRead the recently releasedGoogle SEO Starter Guide.

9. Webmaster TutorialsWatchGoogle Tutorials for Webmasters.

10. Webmaster ToolsFind out what information Google has about your website in Webmaster Tools.

11. Webmaster Central BlogGet the latest updates from theWebmaster Central Blog.

12. Webmaster Help Center / GroupFind answers to your questions inGoogle Webmaster Help Center, or ask your questions in the Webmaster Help Group.

Additional Resources

• How To Name Your Blog Site And Domain URL - SEO - SEM Beginner\'s Guide
• How To Name Your Site: Beginner\'s Guide To Search Engine Optimization
• Write Great Titles For Your Blog Posts - SEO - SEM Beginner\'s Guide
• How To Get Good Links: SEO - SEM Beginner\'s Guide
• Online Video SEO: How To Make Your Video Content More Visible On Major Search Engines
• The Social Media Optimization Manifesto: Key Social Marketing Principles To Increase The Visibility Of Your Web Site

Based on the original work by Julie Beckmann for Inside Adsense and first published on December 22, 2008 as "Light up your site".

Photo credits:Sitemap - WritemapsSiteLinks - Get Found NowDiagnostic Checklist - Ljupco SmokovskiHTTP Status Code - Raymond McleanSEO Starter Guide - Vinicius TupinambaWebmaster Tools - mchudoWebmaster Help Center / Group - mipan ...

How do you market an independent film / DVD online? Fascinated by a direct email invitation to watch the full version of a new independent full-length self-help movie entitled "The Wheel of Life" (remember "The Secret"? The typology of movie is the same) I have promptly emailed the producer Robert Anthony, to ask for his availability to be interviewed. Photo credit: norebboMy initial interest was to find out more about how a movie like this can be produced without being inside the traditional commercial movie system, how much effort and money required and what was the trigger that had pushed this Australian gentleman to spend his lifetime savings to produce such an ambitious project.But as I interviewed and discussed with Robert Anthony his story, I realized how critical and even more challenging is going to be the marketing and distribution strategy that will be needed to make this DVD into a memorable success.Today, even if you have a great product, the road to great visibility and viral distribution takes a lot more than just slapping a price on it and finding a few affiliate partners for distribution. Word of mouth, search engine visibility, and possibly a community of raving fans are the key ingredients to get an online in front of the right people in the most effective way.But how do you that?In this double-video article, you will see first my interview with Robert Anthony, the producer of the movie, as I get the inside story of why and how the movie was produced. After that I recorded a separate video where I suggest what I see as the ideal marketing strategy for getting a product like Robert Anthony\'s movie to become an online success.Here both videos with a full text transcription for each:

The Wheel Of Life - Video Interview With Director / Producer Robert AnthonyDuration: 17\'
Full English Text Transcription
IntroRobin Good: Hi everyone here\'s Robin Good live from Rome, Italy, recorded for most of you who are watching this interview, but still live at this very second, and bridging the oceans across the world for... what is it? Twelve hours time zone difference, Robert? How much do we have?Robert Anthony: I think it\'s 11, but yeah, 12. Who wants to argue between friends?Robin Good: No, I just don\'t know! But in any case, my friend here next to me is Robert Anthony. We\'ve become friends over the course of the last 48-72 hours because we have tried to make our setups work together. We weren\'t the luckiest pair this time, and so we\'ve become friends in the process of doing it. But let me introduce officially to you Robert Anthony, who I\'ve invited here today from Australia, because he\'s the producer-director of a new independent movie.
Robert, would you like to introduce yourself? What is the topic and what kind of movie you have produced recently?Robert Anthony: The movie is called "The Wheel of Life - What if", and it asks the question to people about what we would do with their lives, if we had a better opportunity.
Robin Good: So, if I understand correctly, and I did watch quite a bit of the movie, which is a full-length feature of about 120\', correct?Robert Anthony: That\'s right, yes.

What the Movie Is AboutRobin Good: The movie really covers all the components of life that, in one way or another, we forget about, we do not give enough fuel as other parts of our life, and so get out of balance.What Robert has done, he has gone out to reach people who are some kind of real scholars, in different parts of lives, people who have kept asking good questions about why things are one way and not another, and have come up with solutions that have helped many many people. People who have written books, people who are helping other people, very unique people.I don\'t like to use the word "expert", because too many times this word is associated with people who get just some kind of certification from an institution. We\'ve just too many of them, who need to prove in the field that they\'re good, not because they got some certification from somewhere, or because their father was doing something great and now they\'re just taking over. Robert has gone out not for those typical experts, but for people who I think really have really garnished on the field something special.Do you agree with this view Robert, or you think it is too radical?Robert Anthony: No, I agree entirely. Most of the people come from school of hard knocks not before they got their qualifications. They were people that had been out there and done all the things that they are talking about and then they went and got their qualifications. So, what we found was that in people\'s lives we had some of the best people around to offer the advice not only because they\'ve done it, but because then they went and got their qualifications.Now they can talk from authority. and that\'s what we found. The best part of it doing, was that they just loved it passionately deep, and they want to help people. So Robin, yeah you\'re right, they were from all walks of life and they just... I can \'t explain it, because it was just so exciting.

How It All StartedRobin Good: So, more digestible for everyone who\'s watching: Robert, do you want to share how did this thing start up? How did it come to you to do a movie, and why did you want to do it on this very topic of improving one\'s own life?Robert Anthony: It started off really because of what I was noticing in my work as a management consultant, how people had low self-esteem and they just didn\'t appreciate themselves.I started looking into things and I came across an ancient philosophy called the wheel of life, and when we started looking into the wheel of life, we found that it was a tool that had been left around for nearly 3.000 years and we just didn\'t use it properly anymore.What I started to look for was a way to get the message out to people, that they can actually use it, and by using it they can get their lives back into balance.We didn\'t want it to be something really fancy that people paid a lot of money for. We want to make this available to the world, so we looked for the simplest way to get it out and it turned out to be a DVD. Then we didn\'t want to charge a really lot of money for it like some other DVDs that have come out recently, and I leave their name out, but they leave the people without the tools to improve their lives. We believe that this vehicle gives everybody the exact tools to do it. That\'s a simple daily exercise that they can do, and there\'s more of the journey to come for those who want to get more involved. But just by looking at this one simple tool, people can make a radical difference to their lives as they find it today.

How Long Did It Take to Get the Movie OutRobin Good: Good. Tell me now: how much time did it take for you and the people who\'ve helped you to make this project become a reality? Right now people can come to your site and... you want to remember us the URL? Is wheeloflife.tv correct?Robert Anthony: That\'s right, yes.
Robin Good: And to get this "Wheel of Life" out there, on the site, and ready for purchase on DVD, how much time did you have to spend from the time you got your first inspiration?Robert Anthony: It took me about eight years in total, and then once we started making it, we had to bury a few of the original takes and productions because it just wasn\'t right, and it took another year to get it right. Because it\'s so important that we reach out to people in the right way. We didn\'t want people believing that they had to have a mindset. What we found in all the researches we did for this was that everybody knows, as one of the gentleman on this says: "you put somebody in front of a hamburger with french fries and you put a chicken salad beside them, people know what the better thing is to eat". Because the cravings and other things that happen in their lives, oftentimes we pick the bad things to wait. What "The Wheel of Life" is about was telling people that inside you know what to do, but you don\'t always have a friend there to help you. So, we brought this out to be their friend, to help them along, give them something to go back to, so they can get the inspiration, so that they felt better about themselves when they achieved a target, a milestone. To let people know that you\'re not alone when you make resolutions and you fall over, that we all make new year\'s resolutions, and how many of us keep them? So, what is it, a bad about our behavior and about our support system that we need to actually make these things into a reality, and that\'s what we set out to do, was to show people that they can actually do something if they really want to do, and that we believed in them.To answer to your question, eight years. And then very hard twelve months.

How the Resources Were Brought TogetherRobin Good: Good, and how many people did you have to get involved, and where did you find these people to produce a movie, since you weren\'t a movie producer or director before. How did you get the whole resources together, where did you find them?Robert Anthony: It began in Melbourne, Australia, when we first started looking at how... the original idea was to go into corporations and tell corporations that they\'re undervaluing their main essence, that was the start. We had about five experts that came along that were mostly trainers and neuro-linguistic programmers, a couple of psychologists.And then when we realized that this thing was a lot bigger, I hate to use the terminology, but the universe provided them, and we had people who came from all over Australia, we had people from Singapore, London, America, New Zealand, and what we found was that they\'re all experts who were interested in being there for other people, and helping them with their life processes.Don Tolman for instance, he\'s an American nutritionist, and it took me 14 months to track him down, and it was just the perseverance too. So, it was a combination of perseverance and the universe providing.

How the Movie Was FinancedRobin Good: That\'s a great story, and that tells a lot of people how much really you have to insist on something even tough things are not going the right way. Robert has been there, if we heard correctly, eight years at this project. He has produced a first release, he didn\'t like it, he didn\'t think it was good, and went on, shot again, re-edited and maybe even a third time, but he didn\'t give up on really what he wanted to achieve. That\'s what I think is also so great about this story, not just what\'s inside the DVD, which I think it can be very valuable to many people, but especially the story behind it, which is always what I\'m looking for.My next question Robert is: people would ask immediately how much money did you spend on this, and did you get venture capital to do it? How was your approach to finance such a long and complex project?Robert Anthony: We used all of our family savings. In total, its cost is nearly a million dollars. Probably by the time we\'ll finish up when we add up my time, it\'s something like a bit two and half million dollars. But in the end it was just the passion to get the project out there. Venture capital thought it was crazy. I had one gentleman that told me I was trying to climb a mountain higher than Everest, and then I gave him the story of a gentleman that climbed it from New Zealand and he didn\'t have any legs, so Everest cannot be that tall, can it?Look, I think we created the barriers that stop us from doing things, and in the end we were so determined to get this out and I had the support of my wife and my family. We were so determined to get it out that nothing would stop us, and then we found that people were at the same lines that came along and landed us their savings. It\'s been a very family-orientated project, and this cost a lot of time, a lot of money, but I think it\'s going to be very worthwhile. I believe that the world is going to get the benefit from it. I believe that people of the world will realize that they\'re better within themselves, once they start to see how simple it is to change the process and the way they feel about themselves, and the way they talk about themselves.

How to Measure "The Wheel of Life" Real WorthRobin Good: One critical question would then be: how are you going to measure, and given six months or a year from now, what criteria are you going to use to say: "this was a successful project and I\'m very proud and happy of it"?Robert Anthony: I suppose if we\'re able to brief on the money that it\'s been lent to us to get this out there. Also... I get a little bit embarrassed about it because we do want to do a lot of philanthropic work. We see that there is a lot to be gained out of this, that there\'s a lot of work that can be done to help people who want to live differently. We want to set up some nutrition\'s kitchens, we want to set up some environmental courses, we have made contact with some indigenous groups. In six months\' time Robin I would like to see it be the number one DVD in the world. I would like then to move on to the other projects we have planned like we\'ve got a similar series planned to go into schools for children, because we see the need there... just the way children perceive and talk about themselves, we don\'t like the fact that they do it in a way that they put themselves down. That little voice in the back of their head that we all have, that automatically says: "I\'m not good enough". We want to teach people how to make that voice say "I\'m good enough, and I\'m better".And if we can do that with children, imagine how powerful it can be. We can get rid of all the, maybe not get rid of, we can readjust the amount of hatred that goes on in the world, like we are going to look at the Middle East and all the sad things that go on there. And it\'s adults teaching children how to hate.If we can do something about that, at a very early age, the word will be a better place for them. And then the dreams and the aspirations that we have with this project, that the DVD is the first part of a bigger, bigger thing, and that as the best the DVD sells, then we can get involved in all of these other things and we can use the profit of the DVD to push things forward.If you do manage to watch the DVD, the other thing you\'ll notice is that on the DVD we have some indigenous ladies. The reason that we got them there is because we deliberately sought them out. Because the fact that they understand the lands that they inhabit, whereas I think that too many Europeans have forgotten their ties to the land, and we\'re trying to rekindle some of that spirit, too. So it\'s a number of aspects rolled into one. And really is there for humanity, it\'s not there for anyone person. I think the power of the Internet is people search for yourself are showing us there is no barriers anymore, we\'re all one and it\'s about time we realized that. It is that what the DVD is endeavoring to do.
Robin Good: Thank you Robert, that\'s fantastic, and this was my brief introduction to the work of Robert Anthony, who\'s the producer and director of a very unique movie called "The Wheel of Life", you can find out more by going to wheeloflife.tv right now on the Web, and Robert will be very happy to get your feedback, comments, suggestions on anything.As myself, we\'re all trying to make the place where we live a better one for everyone.Thank you Robert for sharing your time today, and look forward to see you reach that... I don\'t know how many million sales you said, but the most DVD sold on the Internet.I gave you my strategy yesterday, and I will add it up actually to this interview, so that you\'ll see what you want to do with it, but best of life to you and congratulations for putting together such a great project.Robert Anthony: Beautiful Robin, you stay in touch, because I\'m going to stay in touch with you!You have a lovely day! Ciao!Robin Good: You too, ciao!

How To Market A Film DVD Online - Free Or Paid Release?Duration: 7\' 20\'\'
Full English Text Transcription
"The Wheel of Life"Robin Good: Here I am, this is Robin Good. I just finished talking to Robert Anthony, the producer-director of "The Wheel of Life". You can check it out at wheeloflife.tv.This is an independent movie, not the typical Hollywood-circuit type of thing, and it is a commercial thing because presently you have to pay to get that DVD shipped to your door. But it is a special movie because it talks about self-help improvement reaching your human potential, putting in balance the different parts of your life.It\'s not the typical movie plot. Here there are special people sharing their experience, unique people who have invested their lives in trying to improve it and understand what it is that we need to do properly for things to go right.Basically the idea of "The Wheel of Life" is that there are different components in life that you need to equally serve, attend to, take care of, water like they were living plants. All these aspects, need to be in proper balance and if you just feed some of them and not the others, things are never going to go fully right.

A Winning Marketing Strategy: Word of MouthNow, I wanted to spend an extra minute to share with you what I think is the winning marketing strategy for somebody who is in Robert Anthony\'s position.He says he has spent, or he and his partners have invested, more than a million dollars to pull this project together over the course of many years. And he said he may spend even more to get it where he wants it to be.My key suggestion is: here you have an opportunity to really leverage the power of the Internet. Which is to let WOM, word of mouth, work for you and do all of the marketing work that would cost tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars if somebody wanted to do things like traditionally are done for movies, or commercial productions of this kind.

Give For Free Instead of Charging MoneyI think that the winning strategy for such a movie is the one of not holding anything, but really giving out fully this movie as a present.If it\'s true that this wasn\'t born as an idea to make more money, and if it is true that this were really things that you wanted share with as many people as possible in the world, independently of the fact that they had, whatever amount of dollars to pay for a DVD, or had a machine to play the DVD on, you just wanted this information to get out to as many people as possible.My advice is: let that information go, make it fully available, put that two hours on YouTube, on whichever platform is needed. It doesn\'t matter what\'s the name, but put it out there in as many places as possible, in full. It may not be the greatest quality, it may not look as good as in the DVD, but that\'s all perfectly fine, because you want your message to go out there.And you know what? The beautiful thing that will happen if you do this, is that people will buy your DVD in numbers that are orders of magnitude greater than if you just sold it and promote it with a few clips here and there, a few nice trailers. People are going to pick up just the trailers and go away with a little insight you share inside the trailers. They\'re not going to check the DVD because to see the DVD they have to do some effort, they have to pay some money, they have to send you the money, you have to send the DVD and all this. And very very few people will do it. Possibly the people who already know about your work, or are very specifically interested about it for some other reason. But if you really want to get the highest number of sales out there, you have to listen to what Paulo Coehlo and other big book best-sellers, writers out there, are saying. Which is: it doesn\'t matter how many free copies are circling out there, or better yet, it actually matters, how many free, pirated copies are out there, because the more there are out there, the more people will buy your original version.It just happens that if there\'s the free version, I go look at it, and then I say: "Oh, did you see this movie? Let me send you the link, I would like you to check it out!", and I send it to my best friends and some of them will send it to their best friends.

Sharing May Be The Marketing of the FutureWhen you like something, you want to reciprocate, you want to give it out as a present to other people, you want to own it in some way so that you feel even more gratified, you want to see it in high quality and invite friends to watch it on the big screen in your living room. All of this will happen if people can appreciate the beauty that is in the movie. But if you create a beautiful movie, a beautiful something, and you just give little bits of it, and say: "Well, if you want it all, buy it". I don\'t think is going to work. Unless you\'ve given out already a lot before and people know exactly the type of value you\'re going to give out in there, or, I don\'t know, unless you let them see what\'s out there.I think that there are enough proofs out there that this can be a winning strategy. I know it\'s very hard to swallow, I know that many partners are not going to be liking this idea at all, but I needed, as I\'m an explorer of how to use new media solutions, with all the limitations and mistakes that I make, I do like to state my own vision on this.I think the vision for the future, for whoever is in your same position, is to let this thing go out for free, as much as possible, maybe in lower quality than normally would be, and that will do your marketing.I don\'t know if you\'ll do it, but my compliments for you for having created it, and the fact that you\'re already stopping and listening to this, it\'s a great reward for me.All the best for you Robert, and ciao to everyone!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 23, 2009 as "How To Market A Film DVD Online: Free Or Paid Release?". ...

Location-aware devices, the importance of good visuals, generational distinctions, and open educational resources are just some of the fascinating topics included in this week issue of this Media Literacy digest.Photo credit: Mr_SteinHow can you define and group completely different individuals together? Just because they\'re all the same age, or they praise the same God it doesn\'t mean they all belong to the same category.How do you track the shifting mindset of an entire society? Could you clearly point out a single characteristic that marks our society in a way or another? Would you say we are in the process of a becoming more generous?To answer some of these open questions and to understand better these times of deep transformation, George Siemens brings you once again unique pointers, rare places, and quality resources to help you make greater sense of what is truly happening all around you.

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Informal Learning Becomes FormalJosh BersindeclaresInformal learning becomes formal: "I am now 100% convinced that "informal learning" has become "formal." That is, if you want to build a high-impact, cost-effective, modern training organization you must "formally adopt" informal learning."Jay Cross has been advocating for informal learning longer than most… his blog and book are great starting points. Paying attention to existing networks of information exchange and socialization (outside of formal training and classrooms) has the opportunity to yield valuable returns to organizations.

Britannica and WikipediaBritannicahas announced the rather inevitableinclusion of reader suggestions under the banner of "more participation, collaboration from experts and readers". Disruptions and innovations either carve out an entirely new field, or they are co-opted by existing fields - consider the blogs that are now common on almost every newspaper website or the ireporter feature at CNN. I applaud Britannica's decision to encourage more participation from readers. I'm not convinced it will be successful, however. A wikipedia edit has the gratification of immediacy. From the description of Britannica's initiative, a period of time is required before edits are incorporated. That might not be a huge issue for people who are passionate about the topic.But, participation is only part of the appeal of Wikipedia. Access is the biggest element. A Google search for "quick and dirty" information is the biggest value I find with Wikipedia. I signed up - and paid - for a Britannica subscription last year. The interface was awkward, the search feature didn't provide results as useful as Google's, and the need to sign in was a pain. If Britannica wishes to succeed with this initiative, it has to not only solve the participation problem, but also the Google problem of quick search and ease of access to Wikipedia.

PLEs and NRCCongratulations toStephen DownesandNRC! In yesterday's OLDaily, Stephen mentions approval for what looks like a large project on personal learning environments (PLEs). I couldn't find a detailed description of the project, but from the hiring requirements (five positions) and length (three years), it's reasonable to assume significant financial resources have been allocated. I'm familiar with smaller research projects around PLEs and the odd journal issue devoted to exploring the concept. The project Stephen is managing - due to size and length - is a milestone. The informal theorizing of educational technologists requires a research base if PLEs are to move outside of our small network. I hope that NRC will be transparent in this project. A good opportunity exists to form a distributed research network, in addition to the core team, to brainstorm, reflect, evaluate, discuss, etc.

Location, LocationLocation-aware devices hold promise for learning (simple things like walking past an old building and being able to see - on your phone - images of the building as it was being constructed, notable events, a history of ownership, even real estate listings for similar buildings). Location awareness comes with a privacy issues. Most of us have been gently lulled into a complacent demeanor on privacy issues - we need one of those "big incidents" to focus our awareness on what we are revealing in our blogging, networking and tweeting.How big are GPS and location-awareness technologies going to be? A few thoughts:

• Location-based dating
• Inside the GPS Revolution: 10 Applications That Make the Most of Location: "Inside the GPS revolution it's more than maps and driving directions: location-aware phones and apps now deliver the hidden information that lets users make connections and interact with the world in ways they never imagined. The future is here and it's in your pocket."
• I am here: "The location-aware future - good, bad, and sleazy - is here. Thanks to the iPhone 3G and, to a lesser extent, Google's Android phone, millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are but also plugs into the Internet to share that info, merge it with online databases, and find out what - and who - is in the immediate vicinity… Simply put, location changes everything. This one input - our coordinates - has the potential to change all the outputs."

On Being Rather Pathetic With VisualsI have been blessed with an astonishing inability to draw or create visuals. Periodically, I will use Gliffy or Fireworks and create a graphic. The resulting image will reveal the severity of my condition. In spite of this, I am committed to improving my use of visuals in expressing ideas. I turned, of course, to Twitter to see what gems of visual thinking I could glean from the network. Here are a few of the resources others provided:

• Thinking Visually
• Periodic table of visualization methods
• Chart of visualization options
• Exploratree
• WikiViz tools

Generation GGenerational distinctions are usually flawed. It's comical to take an entire group and define them by select attributes. To some degree, an era can be defined by a vague feel / spirit (the 1960's, 70's, 80's still conjure strong images of music, culture, and spirit… but even then, that spirit varies from country to country. I suspect Cindi Lauper wasn't huge in Afghanistan). Where generational distinctions are largely futile, trying to define the changing mindset of an entire society is even more challenging. Yet, even with that broad dismissal of generational /trend stereotyping, I found this article on Generation G interesting (language warning in the opening images). Periods of enormous upheaval and change can bring out the best or the worst in humanity. I would like to believe, as this article unscientifically asserts, that the developing mindset of our era is a shift toward "generosity".

Open Educational ResourcesScott Leslie is hosting a three-week SCoPE discussion on open educational resources. No charge to participate.Scott's discussion will go much deeper than the short presentation I delivered last week on open educational resources: recording and slides.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on January 23rd 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:Informal Learning Becomes Formal - podiusBritannica and Wikipedia - epiacLocation, Location - Irina TischenkoOn Being Rather Pathetic With Visuals - graphicphoGeneration G - Yuri ArcursOpen Educational Resources - Jiri Kabele ...

Do you want to understand the metrics, mechanics, and levers of engagement required for effective viral customer acquisition? Photo credit: arrowManyviral marketing approaches have been used over the years, but while they were able to capture large numbers of users, they proved ineffective because they failed to engage customers for the long-term. In this article Eric Ries shares his strategic vision on how to engage customers for the long-term. While a viral marketing strategy may initially be a good approach to reach your audience, there\'s much more you can do to keep the interest of your customers alive. And that\'s where "viral loops" come into place.Viral marketing loops allow you to acquire new customers in such an unobtrusive way it doesn\'t even looks like marketing or advertising at all. But what is exactly a "loop"? How do you keep a high level of interest on a product and suggest other people to do the same?Find out now:Intro by Robin Good

Engagement loops: beyond viralby Eric Ries
Viral LoopsThere\'s a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. Today, I was comparing notes with Ed Baker (one of the gurus of viral growth). We were trying to broaden the conversation beyond just viral customer acquisition. Many viral products have flamed out over the years, able to capture large numbers of users, but proving transient in their value because they failed to engage customers for the long-term. Our goal is to understand

• the metrics,
• mechanics,
• and levers of engagement.

Levers of EngagementLet\'s start with the levers of engagement. What can you do to your product and marketing message to increase engagement?
Synthetic NotificationsThe most blunt instrument is to simply reach out and contact your customers on a regular basis. This is such an obvious tactic that a surprising number of companies overlook it. For example, IMVU runs frequent promotional campaigns that offer discounts, special events, and other goodies to its customers. From a strictly "promotional marketing" point of view, they probably run those campaigns more than is optimal (there\'s always fatigue that diminishes the ROI on promotions the more you use them). But there is a secondary benefit from these activities: to remind customers that IMVU exists, and encourage them to come back to the site. The true ROI of a synthetic notification has to balance ROI, customer fatigue, and the engagement effects of the campaign itself.When you live with your own product every day, it\'s easy to lose sight of just how busy your customers are, and just how many things they are juggling in their own lives. A lot of engagement problems are caused by the customer completely forgetting about the provider of the service. Direct notifications can help ameliorate that problem.

Organic NotificationsFacebook, LinkedIn, and other successful social networks have elevated this technique to a high art. They do everything in their power to encourage customers to take actions that have a side-effect of causing other customers to re-engage. For example, from an engagement standpoint, it\'s a pretty good thing to automatically notify a person\'s friends whenever they upload pictures. But it\'s exponentially more engaging to have each person tag their friends in each picture, because the notification is so much more interesting: "you\'ve been tagged in a photo, click to find out which one!" Similarly, the mechanics of sending users notifications when new friends of theirs join the site is a great organic re-engagement tactic. From the point of view of the existing customer, it goes beyond reminding them that the site exists; it also provides social validation of their choice to become a member in the first place.As with synthetic notifications, organic notifications are subject to fatigue, if they are not used judiciously. On Facebook, "poking" seems to have fairly high fatigue, whereas "photos" has low (close to zero?) fatigue. Ed adds this account: "When I first joined Facebook, I used to poke my friends and get poked back for the first few weeks, but now I rarely, if ever, poke people. Photos, on the other hand, is probably the primary reason I go to Facebook every day. Because they are constantly new and changing, I doubt I will ever get tired of looking at my friends photos, and I will probably always get especially excited to see a new photo that I have been tagged in."

PositioningThe ultimate form of engagement is when the company doesn\'t have to do anything explicit to make it happen. For example, World of Warcraft never needs to send you an email reminding you to log in. And they don\'t need to prompt you to tell your guild-mates about the new epic loot you just won. The underlying dynamics of the product, your guild, and the fun you anticipate takes care of those impulses. This is true, to a greater or lesser extent, for every product. After you\'ve acquired a customer, why would they bother to come back to your service? What do they get out of it? What is going on in their head when that happens?I wrote about this challenge for iPhone developers, in an essay on retention competition: the battle over what icon the user will click when they go to the home screen. At that point, there\'s no opportunity for marketing or sales; the battle is already won or lost in the person\'s mind. It\'s analogous to walking down the aisle in a supermarket. Just because you\'re already a Tide customer, doesn\'t necessarily mean you\'ll always buy Tide again. However, if you\'ve come to believe that Tide is simply the only detergent in the world that can solve your cleaning problems, you\'re pretty unlikely to even notice the other competitors sitting on the shelf. Great iPhone apps work the same way.Marketing has a discipline about how to create those effects in the minds of customers; it\'s called positioning. The best introduction to the topic is Positioning (I highly recommend it, it\'s a very entertaining classic). But you don\'t have to be a marketing expert to use this tactic; you just need to think clearly about the key use cases for your product. Who is using it? What were they doing right before? And what causes them to choose one product over another? For example, a common use case for teenagers is: "I just got home from school, I\'m bored, and I want to kill some time." If your product and its messaging is all about passing time while having fun, you might be able to get to the point where that is an automatic association, and they stop seriously considering other alternatives. That\'s exactly what the world\'s best video games do.

Seeing the Engagement LoopWe\'re just starting to weave these techniques into a broad-based theory of engagement, that would complement the work that has been done to date on viral marketing and viral loops. Notice that all of these techniques are attempting to affect one of a handful of specific behaviors that have to happen for a product to have high engagement. Do these sound at all familiar?

1. A customer decides to return to your product, as a result of either natural interest, or a notification (organic or synthetic).
2. They decide to take some action, perhaps influenced by the way in which they came back.
3. This action may have side effects, such as sending out notifications or changing content on a website.
4. These side effects affect other customers, and some side effects are more effective than others
5. Some of those affected customers decide to return to your product...

This is essentially a version of the viral loop. Let\'s look at a specific example, and start to think through what the metrics might look like if we attempted to measure it:

1. Customer gets a synthetic message saying: "upload some photos!" Some percentage of customers click through.
2. Some percentage of those actually upload.
3. Those customers get prompted to tag their friends in their photos. Some percentage of them do (A), and these result in a certain number of emails sent (B).
4. Each friend that\'s tagged gets an email that lets them know they\'ve been tagged. Some percentage of them click through. (C)
5. Of those, some percentage are themselves convinced to upload and photos. (D)

Calculating the "Engagement Ratio"If we combine the quantities A-D using the same kinds of formulas we use for viral loop optimization, and the result is greater than one, we should see ever-increasing engagement notifications being sent. This will lead to some reactivation of dormant customers as well as some fatigue, as existing customers get many notification. Our theory is that the key to long-term retention is creating an engagement loop where the reactivation rate exceeds the rate of fatigue. This will yield a true "engagement ratio" that is akin to the viral ratio.This makes intuitive sense, since the key to minimizing fatigue is to keep things new, exciting, and relevant. For example, user-generated content that includes of friends, especially if it includes you ("Joe tagged you in a photo. Click here to find out which one!") is usually going to be newer, more exciting, and more relevant than synthetic notifications ("Did you know you can know upload multiple photos at a time with our new photo uploader?"), or even than more generic organic notifications ("You\'ve been poked by Joe."). High "engagement growth" with low fatigue is how you get the stickiness of a product to near 100%. You can try to churn out, but your friends keep pulling you back in. That\'s an engagement loop at work.

Seeing the WholeEngagement loops are a powerful concept all by themselves, and they can help you to make improvements to your product or service in order to optimize the drivers of growth for your business. But I think the value in this framework is that it can help make overall business decisions that require thinking about the whole rather than just one of the parts.For example, let\'s say you have a viral ratio of 1.4. Your site is growing like wildfire, but your engagement isn\'t too good. You decide to do some research into why customers don\'t stay involved. When asked to describe your product, customers say something like "Product X is a place to connect with my friends online." Turns out, when optimizing your viral loop, this was the winning overall marketing message. It\'s stamped on your emails, landing pages, UI elements - everywhere. Removing a single instance of that message would make your viral ratio go down, and you know that for a fact, because you\'ve split-tested every single possible variation.As you talk to customers, you notice the following dilemma. Customers have a lot of options of places to connect with their friends online. And, compared to market leaders like Facebook and Myspace, you discover that your product isn\'t really that much better. Consequently, you are losing the positioning battle for your customers when they get home from school and ask themselves, "how can I connect with my friends right now?" Worse, your product isn\'t really about connecting with friends; that\'s just the messaging that worked best for the viral loop, where customers aren\'t that familiar your product anyway.To win the positioning battle, you could try and make your product better than the competition, or find a different positioning that allows you to be the best at something else. Let\'s assume for the sake of argument that your competitors offerings are "good enough" and that you cant\' figure out how to beat them at their own game. So you decide to try to reposition around a different value proposition, one that more closely matches what your product is best at. You could try and drive home that positioning with an expensive PR campaign, superbowl ads, and whatnot. But you don\'t have to - you have a perfectly good viral loop that is slowly but surely exposing the entire world to your positioning messages.Here\'s what this long example is all about. When you go to change your messaging, imagine that your viral ration drops from 1.4 to 1.2. Disaster, right? Not necessarily. Since your viral ratio is still above one, it\'s still getting your message out, albeit a little slower. But if your new positioning message improves your engagement loop by more than the cost to your viral loop, you have a net win on your hands. Without measuring your engagement loop, can your business actually make tradeoff decisions like this one?

Connecting Engagement and Viral LoopsThe two loops are intimately connected, in a figure-eight pattern. Customers exit the viral loop and become part of the engagement loop. As your engagement improves, it becomes easier and easier to get customers to reenter the viral loop process and bring even more friends in. And as in all dynamic systems, there\'s no way to optimize a sub-part without sub-optimizing the whole. If you\'re focused on viral loops without measuring the effect of your changes on other parts of your business (of which engagement is just one), you\'re at risk of missing the truly big opportunities.

Originally written by Eric Ries for Lessons Learned and first published on December 16, 2008 as "Engagement loops: beyond viral".

About the authorEric Ries serves as a venture advisor for Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and is the author of the blog Lessons Learned. He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting.

Photo credits:Viral Loops - Sergey LavrentevLevers of Engagement - Leah-Anne ThompsonSynthetic Notifications - Elnur AmikishiyevOrganic Notifications - DellynePositioning - Andres RodriguezSeeing the Engagement Loop - photo25thCalculating the "Engagement Ratio" - Junaid KhalidSeeing the Whole - Marc DietrichConnecting Engagement and Viral Loops - Stephen Coburn ...

How did I start with my professional web publishing career? What was I doing before? How did I get to name myself Robin Good from Sharewood? What do I see in the future of those wanting to find a way to leverage the Internet to do and live off what they are really passionate about?If you want to find out a bit more about my story as an online independent publisher, how I started and how converted my total resistance to advertising into a win-win partnership, my unrehearsed performance / presentation at the 6th Girls Geek Dinner in Athens, Greece, this past weekend, is definitely a good opportunity to know a bit more about how it all came to be. Here\'s the entire video (29 mins) with a full English text transcription:

The Story Of Robin GoodDuration: 29\'
Full English Text Transcription
IntroI\'m going to tell you a little bit about my story, how I became the first Italian probably and one among the first Europeans that has been able to live completely off the Web.That is: my dream was to stop to have some customers, some clients, some people to consult to, because one way or another, I always ended not liking the situation.Either because they had you work too much and they paid you too little, or because they have you work too little and they pay you a lot but they never pay you, or because you have to go to the lawyer to get your money, or the bank doesn\'t get you that check for two-three-four-five-six months. This is life I think not just in Italy, although we have our peculiarities about business, but I think is a matter of everywhere you live.Business is business, and there\'s always smart people trying to get the greater part of your business, and somebody taking advantage of you, and so I\'m a very raw, sincere, direct type of person, and I didn\'t like this thing, because the wheel kept going. You have to find a consulting job, and then when it\'s over, assuming you\'ve liked it and you\'ve made some money, you got to find another one, and another one, and another one. For all of your life. And then you have to pay the rent, the leasing of your car, whatever else. This to me is not life.Life for me is the ability to do what I like to do. All of the time, as much as I can.

My Past Work As Communication Consultant...What I was doing before was to be a communication consultant. I worked for international organizations like those that help Third Word countries, war situations, and they bring rice, they bring money, they bring volunteers help. Humanitarian type of organizations. And in Rome, Italy, where I was born, there are a lot of these organizations. It\'s like Geneva, it\'s like Washington. There\'s a concentration of them there.So, since I knew very well English, I decided way before that the Internet came about and the idea of working for niches, to specialize myself for an English-speaking market. I was in Rome, I didn\'t want to have any competition, what could I do? I said: "I know English well, who can I talk to into business?" The embassies and these international organizations came to mind. I started to work with them, and I said: "What a great idea to work for organizations that are helping the world become a better world. Isn\'t that nice? I\'m not just doing an advertising for a big company to promote their products, which I don\'t care anything about maybe, but I\'m helping, in my head, the poor guys out here and there across the world live or get out of the trouble." That\'s what I thought. And I spent quite some years, ten or fifteen years working for those organizations.What i did for them was help them put together the communication products. Manuals, books, brochures, which are usually in five languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French and Spanish. Or do CD-ROMs first, and then the Internet came about. It\'s been a very fantastic university for me because in that environment, no matter how much money I made, I was able to work with lots of different things, lots of challenges, lots of new things.

...and CoachThe other thing I did for them was to immediately give back to them what I was learning through that job. That is: if they give me a project to do something, I would discover some tools, some methodologies to do this, and so I\'d offer this same organizations that I would do some training for them. "I\'m doing this project for you, and this other one. You liked them very much, why don\'t I come and train your people, so next time you don\'t call me, you can do this by yourself?."I did ten years of training. I would have classes about eight, ten, twelve people, and would do training on all the topics that dealt with communication and technology. So, you start with PowerPoint. Everybody\'s using PowerPoint. I hate it personally, but most people use it, so you got to know not only to click and what to do, but also how to communicate a little more effectively with the tools, how to do web publishing, how to do information design, that is how to use text and graphs in a way that this is more effective than the work we can get out of PowerPoint, or Excel, or Graph. These are the things I did for them.Then, all of a sudden, I said: "But this world here is not very different from business world." Even here, the big boss maybe was coming from Africa, but it was a big boss inside the organization, would say: "Make this thing inside here just a little green, I don\'t like it blue, or this thing put it a little like that."They were spending tens of thousands of dollars and then they were changing the color because the boss liked it more. That really gave some bad feelings inside my blood. I said: "This is not the type of organizations that I thought. These are not really always helping the people, maybe there is some other way that I can get some satisfaction from what I\'m doing."

The Turning PointBecause, do you know what my problem was? Not the money, not the work, because it was always different, but the personal satisfaction. They can pay you all kinds of amounts of money, but if you\'re not able to do what you can do best, and see the people use it, or appreciate it, I feel like shit. I don\'t know about you, but that\'s what I feel.What I did, since I felt very depressed by the fact that I had all this work, they paid me well, but I didn\'t like it, I said: "Let me do something that I really like." And so, it was about 1998, I said: "I have all these names of these people that have come to my courses. Why don\'t I tell to these people, when they come to the course, and they give me the feedback, let me put an extra box that says: "Do you want to receive some information from me? I\'ve got a newsletter, and I\'m going to send them something." " And all the people in the courses said: "Yes, I want to have some information from you, I liked your course, give me more".And so I started a newsletter. What did I write in the newsletter? Everything I learned in my work. What tools I used, what approach I took, what was a better methodology to do this or that, and so the newsletter gave me immediately the satisfaction that I wanted, because people started to build up in number. 20, 30, 100, 500, 1000, 5000. "Wow! - I said - 5000 people reading my stuff!", and I wasn\'t even using a web site. I did have a web site, but it was... nothing. It was a brochure, like everybody when you start a website, you kind of do these dead thing: "I am this company, I do this and that", but is nothing like we see today where there are conversations going on many things.I said: "Maybe the brochure on the site is not very up-to-date, maybe I should change that". S,o I started publishing the stuff of the newsletter on the web site. That\'s kind of the opposite that the people do today, but that\'s how I started. I took the newsletter stuff and put it on the site, every week and I got this newsletter bigger and bigger, and bigger. 30, 40, 50 pages. I couldn\'t print it and read it back home myself. It was so much writing. I said: "This is amazing. I\'m happy I\'m doing all this, but there must be something beyond." I didn\'t know where this was going t go.

AdSense and The Final DecisionOne day two friends of mine, Antonella and Massimo, came to me and said: "Robin (actually the said "Giggi", because I wasn\'t Robin at the time), why don\'t you put some advertising on side of your site? Are you stupid, what are you doing? You got all these readers and you don\'t make any money out of this." I hate advertising, I really cannot stand it. It really bugs me every time I read something. I don\'t want that stuff. It\'s distracting, it\'s not what I want.I want to help people, I want to share what I know, I want to give to others things that they like. "Oh you\'re just stupid, you don\'t understand. Look there\'s a new advertising program from Google that\'s called AdSense. You should look into that." "Google? AdSense? Let\'s go see". Some of you\'ve already seen this, but some of you have not.This advertising program is based on something completely different from traditional advertising, because,

1. first of all, the ads are generally just text. A small text information with a link.
2. And secondly, what was really revolutionary at the time (and we\'re talking about 2001-2002) is that these ads come up intelligently.

If you write an article about loaf, or cooking, the ads that will come up are about eating spaghetti and getting a great pizza, and what is the restaurant to go have a dinner tonight. I said: "That\'s not distracting, that\'s complementary information. If I write about Bruce Lee killing somebody, then there\'s Judo shoes, or punching gloves. That\'s cool. Let me try this, let me put those ads on the page."And a miracle happened. Because, again, I never started with the idea of becoming a web publisher, of making money online, or even living off of it. But once I put these ads on the pages, the money started to come. And I was in trouble, right away, immediately, because AdSense was not available in Italy. So, I said: "How am I going to get paid? I\'m making money, but I can\'t take it!" So, I called my friend Kelsey in California, and I said: "Kelsey, you got a bank account? I need a favor. I got this AdSense money that is coming in and I don\'t know where to put it. Can you take them from me, and then you once in a while send me some?" "Sure Giggi, no problem, I can do that." "Ok, fantastic!"And so the money started to come up. 1000, 2000, 3000 dollars per month. "Whoa! - I said - they were going! I can do whatever I want, I can go to the tropical island and keep writing, and the money keeps coming! Is it possible?" And I realized it was seriously possible when Kelsey called me back: "Giggi, my wife is asking me where is all this money going? Whose these money? She\'s telling me where I\'m sending all these money. I cannot do this anymore. It\'s too much money every month. You got to open your own account."And happily Google decided, it was about 2003-2004, that Italy was ok and that we could have our own accounts and receive the money, and so I was even happier. But that wasn\'t the end of the story, because we were talking... what? 4000, 5000 dollars every month, and that was pretty much what I was making as a consultant.I had one foot inside the international organization, and one foot inside my publishing stuff and Google AdSense. I said: "As soon as I make 4000 or 5000 dollars these feet are gonna be both there." And in fact they moved automatically, I didn\'t have to do any command. I just found myself here. The international organizations gave some bids, I said: "I cost 2.000.000 (dollars)" and so they said: "Forget it"." I just made myself loose out all the competition, so that I didn\'t have any regret or say: "I should be doing this or that. That was my old business, is secure, oh, but stay here." I wanted to stay in the risky business, because it gave me so much more satisfaction and energy that nothing beat that.

How I Became a Google Premium PartnerWhat happened next, was really the most amazing thing. That is: Google itself came to me and said: "You\'re doing such a great job, we want you to be our premium partner". Whoa, I had read this word before, "premium partner". I said: "What did I do wrong? I read to be a premium partner you got to have 10.000.000 visitors. I don\'t have 10.000.000 visitors! Maybe there\'s a mistake..." So, I wrote them back and said: "I\'m very happy, what can I do for you? How can you help me being a premium partner?" And they said: "You got to do nothing, we\'re going to just help you make more money." "You are going to help me make more money? How?" "We\'re gonna give you just a few tools, and we\'re gonna dedicate an account manager in Dublin, Ireland, for you. You can call her anytime you want. Plus we\'re going to give you some secret stuff that you can put inside your pages that are going to make your ads even better." "Whoa - I said - I\'m not going to say no. Give me everything you\'ve got."And they really gave me lots of valuable tools to make my job better. And so, jumping about four years ahead, here I am.

My Business and My PartnersI have now about 600.000 unique visitors from around the world who come every month. I publish my site in English, and I write in English, but I\'ve also been able to build some partnership with some very nice people. I have anedition in Italian, a Latino edition for Spain and Latin America, and a Portuguese edition for Brazil and Portugal.I had also got that Russian edition, but I\'ve lost my editor, so it\'s sitting there sleeping. I haven\'t got a Greek edition, because I haven\'t got to know anyone of you yet, but I\'m definitely looking all the time for more partners and more languages. Because the partnership that I\'ve made up is very simple.When I find somebody who\'s very reliable and trusted, and who\'s passionate about the stuff that I write - and I write about how to use these communication media to communicate more effectively, and if you want to become self-sustainable - if they\'re passionate about this, I tell them: "Look, you just translate what I write in your languages - I have policies, I can use some training - and the we split 50 / 50 all of the advertising money that your edition creates". If the Latino edition makes 5000 dollars in a month, 2500 are yours, 25000 are mine.And this has worked really well, because some of these people are not writers, but they\'re passionate about what I write and what I research, and so for them is double good. They learn something, while they translate and they write it, they make good money, and they get a lot of visibility as well.That\'s the story, the business story. There\'s a lot more data and you are going to ask me some of this.

Why Robin Good?The second question people generally ask me before I give them the microphone is: "Why did you choose to call yourself Robin Good?" Robin Good! Robin Hood is my uncle. He lived in... did you know where Robin Hood comes from?Sherwood. S-H-E-R-WOOD. The wood of Sher. I\'m Robin Hood nephew, and I come from a nearby village that\'s called Sharewood. But is spelled S-H-A-R-E, the forest where you share stuff. "Robin Good from Sharewood, you\'re really out of your mind Robin, how did you get all these stuff in your head?"You have to know that each one of us has a little Google engine inside his / her head. Most people don\'t know, they think that they have bad memory, because they don\'t know how to use their internal Google.One day I said: "I want to use my internal Google, and I want to find out how can I make myself some kind of a brand, something that people are going to remember. One because the name is easy, and secondly because my name is going to tell them something." Because my name, beside "Giggi", is really a lot difficult, kind of aristocratic name that nobody can say correctly, when I travel to other countries, they all reverse it all around. It\'s really displeasing. By the way, it\'s Luigi Canali De Rossi. So I get to be, Mr. Du Rossi, Mr. Luigi, Canali Di Rossi. They never get it right!I said to my internal Google: "Listen, Google, I have to find a name that I can use over and over that it\'s easy to pronounce wherever I go and that is going to represent me. That when I say it, I feel I\'m that one. It didn\'t choose my mother or my father, it\'s my choice."Do you know how this Google works? You know when you say: "Shit, I don\'t remember that stuff, I have it here... it\'s not coming to me..." When you say "shit", you\'re telling Google: "Don\'t search for it. Forget it, I don\'t know it", so he just doesn\'t find it.Pay attention to this. Some of the time you say: "Oh, it\'s just there, hold it, it\'s going to come then you\'re going to say something else, and bang! It comes!" Because you said to the internal Google it\'s coming, so he\'s working there! he listens to your commands. "So, Google, I know you can work with my commands. I know it\'s going to take you some time, just go and do your job." And so he went and did his job, he completely forgot about it. Three months went by.Then one day, I was there on my motorbike, doing my own thing, looking at the red light... bang! "Robin Good from Sharewood." It just came, all done, in the package ready to use. How can you say no to such a great name? It represented me fully!I\'m the person who likes to share with a lot of people, that is what gives me satisfaction. I didn\'t get into the web publishing business to make money, but because I enjoyed the sharing with other people. And Robin Good.. that\'s fantastic, he\'s the guy who\'s stealing from the big guys and giving to the poor, so "What\'s the correspondence in my world - I said - Maybe who do I still from? Microsoft?" At the time I would give to Google, but now... you don\'t know anymore who to steal from... but the idea is to get these fantastic ideas that are all over the place, and give them out to people, because to be successful online doesn\'t really take a lot of money, and a lot of investment, but a lot of good thinking and asking lots of questions, and looking around, and talking to people. That\'s what it takes.

Be a Guide For Other PeopleThese are the typical two things that people ask me, when they invite me: "What\'s your story, and how do you make all this money, and how you got to name yourself Robin Good". The rest maybe you want to venture asking me something else, because I\'ve plenty of things that I could tell you about newsmastering, or which type of content can make more money, but I would really like to serve you not to be here, to celebrate myself.I\'m here to have fun. So you\'re very welcome if you\'re a small entrepreneur, a video producer, or somebody who\'s venturing out on the Internet and want to get a different point of view, not the Bible. I\'m not that. Let\'s talk a little bit.Is anyone out there trying to make some money on the Internet? Raise your hand. 1-2-3-4-5. Anyone of you have some immediate questions or do you want me to provoke you? Maybe... some people ask me often: "Is that Google AdSense really the panacea, the perfect recipe for being successful?" And that is only one way.Today there are many different ways, and think the little pearl, of value that I want to give you out today, is the fact that what is going to work extremely well and some of you today, the presentation, I could not understand the words, so I didn\'t know the names, but this beautiful girl who\'s in front of me me introduced a thread that is going to be a winning one. Maybe the way she\'s interpreting it\'s the wrong way, but the idea is this:In the near future, because of the economic crisis, because of the way schools are, because of the need to learn continuously new stuff, because no matter what job you do, doctor or traffic cop, you got to learn new stuff, new rules. Things change continuously and they do change faster and faster.It doesn\'t take to be Leonardo da Vinci to understand that the business of the future is helping others get where they want to get. There are a number of people that want to get somewhere, there must be some other people who help them get there. they cannot go there by themselves.It doesn\'t matter if you\'re an expert about cultivating tropical flowers, or if you\'re an expert about healing rats that fill your house. It doesn\'t really matter. What matters is dealing today with the most valuable thing, after knowing English and the computer, is being able to communicate effectively to others. Because if you can communicate effectively to others, you have a huge business ahead of you that is not going to end.We\'re entering an era in which each one of us that wants to, is going to become an independent teacher, a guide, a mentor for others. This is what is meant to be.

The Value of True EducationYou don\'t hear this story very much around, because schools and universities have the monopoly on education. But on a fake education. Especially the schools, because what you get out of schools is just learning how to pass an exam. What is the most intelligent question a student today can have? "What\'s going to be in the exam?" That\'s all they want to know, they don\'t care about the Sumerians or why they did certain things ore others, or the Egyptians, or the formulas, because the teachers expect them to memorize stuff and repeat it at the time of exam.There is very little understanding or knowledge. There\'s very little communication and discovery going on, but there are plenty of possibilities to change this if we don\'t leave it to the schools only. We can\'t destroy the schools, we don\'t want to have a revolution, we don\'t want to shoot the teachers. We want to have a quite, peaceful upheaval, change, revolutionary approach to education. And each one of us can start. Because when you\'re having dinner with your kids, with your daughters, and with your family, that\'s the time where instead of just talking about what the weather is, you can inject some of the true knowledge, you\'re discovering every day.You just forget that the true learning that takes place everyday, takes place when you\'re just not thinking about it. When you\'re talking at the water cooler with somebody and he says: "I\'ve discovered this hat and this is fantastic stuff, because it\'s not just like Velcro, this one when you open it creates energy and then there\'s a light that lits up here, and so when you\'re going..."You discover stuff by talking to people, by searching on Google, by asking others, by going to places where there are all the people there and you hear the stories. But this is not what we do in school. Absolutely not. Nor we learn anything about "how to do this".To end my story: future, successful revenue business models for Internet, a great deal of them, are going to be based on your ability to share your knowledge. And you don\'t have to talk about astrophysics. You can talk about anything you want, because there are people interested in about mostly anything, and when they find somebody who they can see is sincere, is generous, is going to listen to them, they are going to say: "Hey, you got to tell me how much money you want. I want some stuff from you. Man, woman, give me something."That\'s what happens when you like somebody. It\'s natural. If she sits with me and she tells me for an hour ten secrets of video publishing that I\'ve never heard before, I say: "How can I take you to dinner, where can take you tomorrow?" And so, when you\'re doing business, that translates into: "Can I buy your DVD, can I come to a workshop where you tell me this? Can I come to a teleseminar and ask you questions?"Whatever you give them, they\'re going to want it if you\'re good, passionate, serious, and sharing

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 27, 2009 as "The Story Of Robin Good At The Girls Geek Dinner 6 In Athens Greece". ...

Do you buy into everything you read, or do you analyze, research, and question what you learn? Are you willing to start reconsidering the way you read and select your trusted news sources? Is a new media literacy really needed?Photo credit: Yurok AleksandrovichYou live in the era ofinformation overload. Technology is becoming increasingly cheaper, and it\'s not in the hands of an oligarchy anymore. But if anybody can create, publish and distribute media, how can you find the info that really matters in this jungle of data? What\'s the best way to separate "the news from the noise"?New media journalism researcher and online publisher, Dan Gillmor, looks in Part 1 of this article, at what should be the guiding ethics of this emerging media literacy, such as credibility issues in new media, the problems of privacy, and those key journalistic values that the Internet revolution and those riding it may have lost track of in their rush to create commercial value.Here all the details:Intro by Robin Good

Principles of a New Media Literacy
IntroMedia are becoming democratized. Digital media tools, increasingly cheap and ubiquitous, have spawned a massive amount of creation at all levels, most notably from the ranks of the grassroots in contrast to traditional, one-to-many publications and broadcasts. The networks that made this possible have provided vast access to what people have created–potentially a global audience for anyone's creation.But the expanding and diversifying media ecosystem poses some difficult challenges alongside the unquestioned benefits. A key question: In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?How we live, work, and govern ourselves in a digital age depends in significant ways on the answers. To get this right, we'll have to re-think, or at least re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.These norms are principles as much as practices, and they are now essential for consumers and creators alike. They add up to a twenty-first-century notion of what we once called "media literacy," which has traditionally all but missed the emerging methods of participation that are becoming such a key element of digital media. (This is only one reason that we should seek a replacement for the expression "media literacy" - because it connotes something that has become quaint to the point of near-irrelevance.)

Issues of CredibilityTrust and credibility are not new to the Digital Age. Journalists of the past have faced these questions again and again, and the Industrial Age rise of what people called "objective journalism" - allegedly unbiased reporting - clearly did not solve the problem.We don't have to look very far, or very far back in history, to note some egregious cases. The New York Times' Jayson Blair saga, in which a young reporter spun interviews and other details from whole cloth, showed that even the best news organizations are vulnerable. Fox News still maintains a slogan of "fair and balanced" - two falsehoods in three words. The Washington press corps, with dismayingly few exceptions, served as a stenographic lapdog for the government in the run-up to the Iraq War. And so on.But the credibility problem of traditional media goes much deeper. Almost everyone who has ever been the subject of a news story can point to small and sometimes large errors of fact or nuance, or to quotes that, while accurately written down, are presented out of their original context in ways that change their intended meaning. Shallowness is a more common media failing than malice.Traditional media boast processes, however, aimed both at preventing mistakes and - when they inevitably occur - setting the record straight.The new media environment is rich with potential for excellence. But it is equally open to error, honest or otherwise, and persuasion morphs into manipulation more readily than ever.Consider just five examples, two from the political world:

1. The 2004 U.S. congressional elections were notable in many ways, not least the widespread adoption of blogging and other conversational tools by candidates, staffs, and supporters. But in South Dakota's U.S. Senate race, the campaign of Republican challenger John Thune paid two local political bloggers whose work influenced the state's major newspaper; not until after the election, which Thune won, was their paid role widely known.
2. Venture capitalists have poured considerable funds into a startup called PayPerPost, a company that serves as a go-between for companies wishing to get bloggers to write about products and services. Although PayPerPost encourages bloggers to disclose this arrangement, the disclosure can be easily hidden or omitted entirely at the blogger's choice. This practice has drawn well-deserved contempt from those who favor transparency in media, and equally derisive rejoinders from paid bloggers who don't care what people think of what they do.
3. Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart, among other major companies, have been caught paying bloggers directly or indirectly to promote the firms or their products - but without disclosing their corporate ties. The stealth marketing, also called "buzz marketing," caused mini-uproars in the blogging community, but a frequently asked question was whether these campaigns were, as most believe, just the tip of an influence iceberg.
4. President-Elect Barack Obama has been the target of mostly shadowy, though sometime overt, rumors. They range from the laughable to the truly slimy. What they have in common is a single factor: They were plainly designed to poison voters in swing states. They were equally plainly having an impact; a nontrivial percentage of Americans is not sure whether he is a Muslim. (Obama's staff created a special section on the campaign website aimed at countering the rumors.)
5. On blogs and many other sites where conversation among the audience is part of the mix, we often encounter so-called sock puppets - people posting under pseudonyms instead of their real names, and either promoting their own work or denigrating their opponents, sometimes in the crudest ways. As with the buzz marketing, it's widely believed that the ones getting caught are a small percentage of the ones misusing these online forums.

Craig Newmark, founder of the craigslist online advertising and community site, famously says that most people online are good and that a tiny percentage does the vast majority of the harm. He is undoubtedly correct.In the traditional news world, even though we understood the prevalence of minor errors in stories, even by reputable journalists, we also understood that, by and large, the better media organizations get things pretty much right. The small mistakes undermine any notion of absolute trust, but we accept the overall value of the work.In a world with seemingly infinite sources of information, this equation is harder to solve. But we can make a start by being better informed about what we read, hear and watch.

Supply Side: Watching the WatchersOne of most serious failings of traditional journalism has been its reluctance to focus critical attention on a powerful player in our society: journalism itself. The Fourth Estate rarely gives itself the same scrutiny it sometimes applies to the other major institutions. (I say "sometimes" because, as we've seen in recent years, journalists' most ardent scrutiny has been aimed at celebrities, not the governments, businesses, and other entities that have the most influence, often malignant, on our lives.)A few small publications, notably the Columbia Journalism Review, have provided valuable coverage of the news business over the years. But these publications circulate mostly within the field, and can only look at a sliver of the pie.To be fair, the news media do cover each other to some degree. But most of that coverage focuses on reporting related to corporate maneuvering and profiles of stars - not bad to do but not sufficient to what the public needs. Only very occasionally do journalists for major media organizations drill in on each others' successes and failures as journalists. When they do it, they tend to do it well; it is unfortunate that they don't try more often.The Internet has been a boon to media criticism in several key respects. First, bloggers and Web-only publications are providing some of the toughest and best work of this kind.

• Salon's Glenn Greenwald tends toward overwrought descriptive language, but he reports with enormous depth and is singularly persuasive in showing how American journalists have continually botched even basic duties when it comes, for example, to covering the debate over government electronic surveillance.
• In Los Angeles, blogger Patrick Frey ("Patterico"), a lawyer, relentlessly watches and critiques - also sometimes with over-the-top language - the Los Angeles Times' coverage, particularly political stories.

Both of these writers make clear their political leanings, left for Greenwald and right for Frey; readers refract that information through their own lenses to make their own decisions.These two writers are among legions of people who have taken up media criticism, not as their primary occupation but as a part of what they do in their daily lives. When they care about something, they care about the journalism covering that topic - and now they have a way to discuss what they've seen. Their work, however, is diffuse. The diffusion is a natural aspect of the Web's distributed nature.Several sites, including one I'm co-founding seek to generate and collect some of the criticism. There are two of note.

1. The admirable NewsTrust project (I am an advisor) asks people to rate articles from major media organizations and blogs across a variety of criteria that, we hope, adds up to quality.
2. In the United Kingdom, the Media Standards Trust is doing brilliant work to promote better journalism, and its Journalisted project aims to create a database of journalists to encourage transparency and accountability.

The word "accountability" resonates. Apart from raw market mechanisms and the legal system's bludgeon of libel lawsuits - both, sadly, are flawed as countermeasures to poor journalism - we have had a largely unaccountable press.New media tools are pulling down some walls and helping to create the possibility of deeper nonlegal accountability. More thorough and robust media criticism, and a conversation around it, will serve us all better.

Demand Side: Democratization Means ParticipationAs noted previously, the democratization of media is well under way. This takes two major forms.

1. First, the tools of creation are increasingly in everyone's hands. The personal computer that I'm using to write this essay comes equipped with media creation and editing tools of such depth that I can't begin to learn all their capabilities. My phone boasts video recording and playback, still-camera mode, audio recording, text messaging, and GPS location, among other tools that make it a powerful media creation device.
2. Second, we can make what we create widely accessible. With traditional media, we produced something, usually manufactured, and then distributed it - put it in trucks or broadcast it to receivers in a one-to-many mode. Today, we create media and make it accessible: People come and get it. This distinction is absolute crucial, because although there is plainly an element of distribution here, even in the traditional sense, the essential fact in a one-to-one or many-to-many world is availability.

This democratization gives people who have been mere consumers the ability to be creators. With few exceptions, we are all becoming the latter as well as the former, though to varying degrees.Even more exciting, media democratization also turns creators into collaborators. We have only begun to explore the meaning, much less the potential, of this reality.Media saturation requires us to become more active as consumers, in part to manage the flood of data pouring over us each day but also to make informed judgments about the significance of what we do see. When we create media that serves a public interest or journalistic role, we need to understand what it means to be journalistic, as well as how we can help make it better and more useful.This adds up to a new kind of media literacy, based on key principles for both consumers and creators. They overlap to some degree, and they require an active, not passive, approach to media.

Why This MattersWe are doing a poor job of ensuring that consumers and producers of media in a digital age are equipped for these tasks. This is a job for parents and schools. (Of course, a teacher who teaches critical thinking in much of the United States risks being attacked as a dangerous radical.) Do they have the resources - including time - that they need?But this much is clear: If we really believe that democracy requires an educated populace, we're starting from a deficit. Are we ready to take the risk of being activist media users, for the right reasons? A lot rides on the answer.End of Part 1

Originally written by Dan Gillmor for Dan Gillmor: Blog and first published on December 26, 2008 as "Principles of a New Media Literacy".

About the authorDan Gillmor\'s principal gig these days is the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project with Harvard University\'s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Dan Gillmor also writes articles and has published a book called We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People (2004; O\'Reilly Media), and is working on a new book about media in the digital age. From 1994-2005 Dan was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press.

Photo credits:Issues of Credibility - Josef MuellekSupply Side: Watching the Watchers - vacuum3dDemand Side: Democratization Means Participation - Andres RodriguezWhy This Matters - Marc Dietrich ...

Media literacy encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see, and read, as to provide you with the tools to evaluate, analyze, consume and create credible, trusted, verifiable information. Photo credit: Yurok AleksandrovichIn Part 2 (Part 1) of this in-depth guide, new media journalism researcher and online publisher Dan Gillmor outlines the core principles and ethical guidelines for what should be called a new media literacy.Don\'t take anything for granted. Don\'t be afraid to ask more questions. Research, explore, and be eternally curious. Adopt a critical stance but be equally open to try and explore all available roads.Questions your sources, verify their claims."Media literacy aims to enable people to be skillful creators and producers of media messages, both to facilitate an understanding as to the strengths and limitations of each medium, as well as to create independent media. Media literacy is an expanded conceptualization of literacy.By transforming the process of media consumption into an active and critical process, people gain greater awareness of the potential for misrepresentation and manipulation, and understand the role of mass media and participatory media in constructing views of reality."(Source: Wikipedia)Therefore, if you\'re into creating knowledge, rather than just becoming smarter at filtering the news you get, your approach will have to be humble, open-minded and transparent just as much you would expect your credible media sources to be. Model what you are after and others will follow.Here all the details:Intro by Robin Good

Principles of a New Media Literacy
Principles of Media ConsumptionEven those of us who are creating a variety of media are still - and always will be - more consumers than creators. For all of us in this category, the principles come mostly from common sense. Call them skepticism, judgment, understanding, and reporting. More specifically:
1. Be Skeptical of Absolutely EverythingWe can never take entirely for granted the absolute trustworthiness of what we read, see or hear from media of any kind. This is the case for information from traditional news organizations, blogs, online videos and every other form.As noted previously, even the best journalists make factual mistakes, sometimes serious ones, and we don't always see the corrections. When small errors are endemic, rational people learn to have a small element of doubt about every assertion not backed up by unassailable evidence.More worrisome in some ways are errors of omission, where journalists fail to ask the hard but necessary questions of people in power. Stenography for the powers-that-be, and the unfortunate tendency of assigning apparently equal weight to opposing viewpoints when one is right and the other is wrong, are not adequate substitutes for actual journalism; you don't need a quote from Hitler when you're doing a story about the Holocaust. The reader / listener / viewer needs to keep an eye out for such behavior.

2. Don't Be Equally Skeptical of EverythingWe all have an internal "trust meter" of sorts, largely based on education and experience. We need to bring to digital media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information.We know, for example, that the tabloid newspaper next to the checkout stand at the supermarket is suspect. We have come to learn that the tabloid's front-page headline about Barack Obama's alien love child via a Martian mate is almost certainly false, despite the fact that the publication sells millions of copies each week. We know that popularity in the traditional media world is not a proxy for quality.When we venture outside the market and pump some quarters into the vending machine that holds today's New York Times, we have a different expectation. Although we know that not everything in the Times is true, we have good reason to trust it more often than not–considerably more.Online, any website can look as professional as any other (another obviously flawed metric for quality). And any person in a conversation can sound as authentic or authoritative as any other. This creates obvious problems in the trust arena if people are too credulous.Part of our development as human beings is the creation of what we might call an internal "BS meter" - a sense of understanding when we're seeing or hearing nonsense and when we're hearing the truth, or something that we have reason to trust. Let's call it, then, a "trust meter" instead of a BS meter. Either way, I imagine it ranging, say, from +30 to –30. Using that scale, a news article in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal might start out in strongly positive territory, perhaps at +26 or +27 on the trust meter. (I can think of very few journalists who start at +30 on any topic.)An anonymous comment on a random blog, by contrast, starts with negative credibility, say –26 or –27. Why on earth should we believe anything said by someone who's unwilling to stand behind his or her own words? In most cases, the answer is that we should not. The random, anonymous commenter on a random blog should have to work hard just to achieve zero credibility, much less move into positive territory.Conversely, someone who uses his or her real name, and is verifiably that person, earns positive credibility from the start, though not as much as someone who's known to be an expert in a particular domain. A singular innovation at Amazon.com is the "Real Name" designation on reviews or books and other products; Amazon can verify because it has the user's credit card information, a major advantage for that company (disclosure: I own some Amazon stock). Almost invariably, people who use their real names in these reviews are more credible than those who use pseudonyms.Pseudonyms are becoming an online staple, and they can have great value. But they need to have several characteristics, all pointing toward greater accountability. Content management systems have mechanisms designed to

• (a) require some light-touch registration, even if it's merely having a working email address;
• and (b) prevent more than one person from using the same pseudonym on a given site.

This isn't as useful as a real name, but it does encourage somewhat better behavior, in part because it's easier to police.Ultimately, conveners of online conversations need to provide better tools for the people having the conversations. These would include moderation systems that help bring the best commentary to the surface, ways for readers to avoid the postings of people they found offensive, and community-driven methods of identifying and banning abusers.For all this, anonymity is essential to preserve. It protects whistleblowers and others for whom speech can be unfairly dangerous. But when people don't stand behind their words, a reader should always wonder why and make appropriate adjustments.

3. Go Outside Your Personal Comfort ZoneThe "echo chamber" effect - our tendency as human beings to seek information that we're likely to agree with - is well known. To be well informed, we need to seek out and pay attention to sources of information that will offer new perspectives and challenge our own assumptions. This is easier than ever before, due to the enormous amount of news and analysis available on the Internet.The easiest way to move outside your comfort zone is simply to range widely.

• If you're an American, read Global Voices Online (I am an advisor), a project that aggregates blogging and other material from outside the North America.
• If you are a white American, stop by Black Planet and other sites offering news and community resources for and by African Americans.
• Follow links in blogs you normally read, especially when they take you to sources that disagree with the author.

Whatever your worldview, you can find educated, articulate people who see things differently based on the same general facts. Sometimes they'll have new facts that will persuade you that they were right; more often, no doubt, you'll hold to the view you started with–but you may have more nuance on the matter.I engage in a semi-annual exercise that started more than a decade ago, when I was writing for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. I kept a list in the back of a desk drawer, entitled, "Things I Believe" - a 10-point list of topics about which I'd come to previous conclusions. They weren't moral or ethical in nature. Rather, they were issue-oriented, and about my job as a business and technology columnist.Every six months or so, I'd go down the list and systematically attack every proposition, looking for flaws in what I'd previously taken for granted.For example, one longstanding item on my list was this: "Microsoft is an abusive monopoly that threatens innovation, and government antitrust scrutiny is essential." From 1994 until I left the San Jose Mercury News in 2005, I continued to believe this was true, though a shade less so by the end of that period than at the beginning and during the software company's most brutal, predatory era. Conditions have changed. Given the rise of Google and other Web-based enterprises, I'm not as sure as I used to be.Consider creating just such a list of "givens" that you will challenge on a regular basis. This is especially vital when it comes to political beliefs. My basic political grounding combines elements of liberal, conservative, and libertarian doctrine, and I vote according to a collection of issues, not by party. But I'm constantly reassessing.Rush Limbaugh and other "conservatives" who believe in dictatorial government when it comes to security and personal liberty but have no patience for equal opportunities in life infuriate me. Yet I regularly read and listen to their arguments, and occasionally learn something useful.Going outside your comfort zone has many benefits. One of the best is knowing that you can hold your own in a conversation with people who disagree with you. But the real value is being intellectually honest with yourself, through relentless curiosity and self-challenge. That's what learning is all about. You can't understand the world, or even a small part of it, if you don't stretch your mind.

4. Ask More QuestionsThis principle goes by many names: research, reporting, homework, and many others. The more personal or important you consider the topic at hand, the more essential it becomes to follow up on the media that cover the topic.The Web has already sparked a revolution in commerce, as potential buyers of products and services discover relatively easy ways to learn more before the sale. No one with common sense buys a car today based solely on an advertisement. We research on the Web and in other media, and arm ourselves for the confrontation with the dealer.This extends widely. We generally recognize the folly of making any major decision about our lives based on something we read, hear, or see. But do we also recognize why we need to be more active in digging deeply ourselves to get the right answers? We need to keep reporting - sometimes in major ways, but more often in small ones–to ensure that we make good choices.Near the end of the Cold War, President Reagan frequently used an expression, "trust but verify," in his dealings with the Soviet Union. He didn't invent the saying, but it was appropriate for the times. It's just as rational an approach when evaluating the media we use today.

5. Understand and Learn Media TechniquesIn a media-saturated society, we need to know how digital media work. For one thing, we are all becoming media creators to some degree. Moreover, solid communications techniques are going to be critically important skills for social and economic participation - and this is no longer solely the reading and writing of the past.Every journalism student I've taught has been required to create and operate a blog, not because blogging is the summit of media creation but because it is an ideal entry point into media creation. It can combine text, images, video, and other formats, using a variety of "plug-in" tools, and it is by nature conversational. And it is a Web-native form, natively digital media that adapts over time. This is a start, but only a start. Over a lifetime, people will pick up many kinds of newer media forms, or adapt older ones.Media-creation skills are becoming part of the development process for many children in the developed world, less so for children in the developing world. In America and other economically advanced nations, teenagers and even younger children are digital natives.Younger and older audiences may be less familiar with other kinds of media techniques. Learning how to snap a photo with a mobile phone is useful. But it's just as important to know what one might do with that picture, even more so to understand how that picture fits into a larger media ecosystem.And it's absolutely essential to understand the ways people use media to persuade - and manipulate - how media creators push our logical and emotional buttons. Children and adults need to know marketers' persuasion and manipulation techniques, in part to avoid undue influence, whether the marketers are selling products, opinions, or political candidates.In the process we all need to have a clear understanding of how journalism works. The craft and business are evolving, but they exert enormous influence over the way people live. In one sense, journalists are an example of a second-order effect of the marketers' trade, because sellers and persuaders use journalists to amplify messages. But journalists deserve (and themselves should wish for) greater scrutiny for its own sake - to improve journalism and public understanding. Hence my earlier push for more and better media criticism.

Principles of Media CreationAll of the principles for consumers are part of the toolkit of every responsible journalist or information provider. So are the following. The first four are standard for journalists of all kinds, and are widely accepted inside of traditional news organizations. The fifth is somewhat new and considerably more controversial, and even more critical in a distributed media age.
1. Do Your Homework, and Then Do Some MoreYou can't know everything, but good reporters try to learn as much as they can about a topic. It's better to know much more than you publish than to leave big holes in your story. The best reporters always want to make one more call, check with one more source.I had a rule of thumb as a reporter. I tried to tell roughly 10 percent of what I knew in any story. That is, I was so overloaded with facts and information that I had to be extremely selective, not to hide things but to illuminate what really mattered.Although the digital world gives us more reporting tools, none of them replace old-fashioned methods such as making phone calls, digging through paper records, and, of course, in-person interviews. Shoddy research, moreover, can happen online and offline. What matters is to keep reporting until you get the information that is critical, not just what is on the surface.Publication in the online sphere is only the first step. Then you discover what I learned as a journalist covering technology in Silicon Valley: Your readers collectively know vastly more than you do. Learn from them, and revise your work accordingly.

2. Get It Right, Every TimeFactual errors, especially ones that are easily avoidable, do more to undermine trust than almost any other failing.Accuracy is the starting point for all solid journalism. Get your facts right, then check them again. Know where to look to verify claims or to separate fact from fiction. And never, ever, spell someone's name wrong.In my first daily-newspaper job I spelled the name of a company wrong through an entire article, and didn't discover this until after publication. I abjectly apologized to the owner of the company, who took it with amazingly good humor, but the shame I felt was a longstanding lesson.Smart journalists know there are no stupid questions. Sometimes there are lazy questions - asking someone for information that you could have easily looked up. But if you don't understand something, you have no excuse for not asking for an explanation.When I wrote about technology, I frequently called sources back after interviews to read them a sentence or paragraph of what I planned to write, so they could tell me whether I'd explained their technical work in plain English. Usually I had it right, but sometimes a source would correct me or offer a nuance. This made the journalism better, and made my sources trust me more.

3. Be Fair to EveryoneWhether you are trying to explain something from a neutral point of view or arguing from a specific side, fairness counts. You can't be perfectly fair, and people will see what you've said from their own perspectives, but making the effort is more than worth the difficulty.

1. First of all, it's the honorable approach. You want to people to deal with you in a fair way, especially when someone is criticizing what you've said or done. Do the same for them.
2. Second, it pays back in audience trust. The people who read or hear your work will feel cheated if you slant the facts or present opposing opinions disingenuously. Your reporting will be suspect once they realize–and they eventually will–what you've done.

How to be fair? Beyond the Golden Rule notion of treating people as you'd want to be treated, you can ensure that you offer a place for people to reply to what you (and your commenters) have posted. You can insist on civility in your own work, and in the comment postings; my rule for hosting community is that we will be civil with each other even if we disagree on the issues. Use the Web, especially the elemental unit called the hyperlink. Point to a variety of material other than your own, to support what you've said and to offer varying perspectives.Most of all, fairness requires that you've heard what people are saying. Journalism is evolving from a lecture to a conversation, and the first rule of good conversation is to listen.

4. Think Independently, Especially of Your Own BiasesBeing independent can mean many things, but independence of thought may be most important. Creators of media, not just consumers, need to venture beyond their personal comfort zones.Professional journalists claim independence. They are typically forbidden to have direct or indirect financial conflicts of interest. But conflicts of interest are not always so easy to define. Many prominent Washington journalists, for example, are so blatantly beholden to their sources, and to access to those sources, that they are not independent in any real way, and their journalism reflects it.Independent thinking has many facets. Listening, of course, is the best way to start. But you can and should relentlessly question your own conclusions based on that listening. It's not enough to incorporate the views of opponents into what you write; if what they tell you is persuasive you have to consider shifting your conclusion, too.

5. Practice and Demand TransparencyThis is essential not just forcitizen journalists and other new-media creators but also for those in traditional media. The kind and extent of transparency may differ. For example, bloggers should reveal biases. Meanwhile, Big Media employees may have pledged individually not to have conflicts of interest, but that doesn't mean they work without bias. They should help their audiences understand what they do, and why.Transparency in the traditional ranks has scarcely existed for most of the past century. There may be more opaque industries, but it is ludicrous for a craft that seeks openness in others to be so opaque itself. When we demand answers from others, we should look in the mirror and ask some of the same questions.Scandal, for the most part, has forced open the doors to a degree. The Jayson Blair debacle at the New York Times led the newspaper to describe in lurid detail what had happened. It also led to the creation of a "public editor" post –analogous to the position of "ombudsman."Bloggers, through their own relentless critiques, have made traditional-media transparency more common as well. However unfair bloggers' criticism may often be, it has also been a valuable addition to the media-criticism sphere.Bloggers, too, need to adopt more transparency. Some, to be sure, reveal their biases. That gives readers a way to consider the writers' world views against the postings, and then make decisions about credibility. But a distinctly disturbing trend in some blog circles is the undisclosed or poorly disclosed conflict of interest. Pay-per-post schemes are high on the list of activities that deserve readers' condemnation; they also deserve a smaller audience.

Originally written by Dan Gillmor for Dan Gillmor: Blog and first published on December 26, 2008 as "Principles of a New Media Literacy".

About the author:Dan Gillmor\'s principal gig these days is the Center for Citizen Media, a joint project with Harvard University\'s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and the University of California-Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Dan Gillmor also writes articles and has published a book called We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People

Photo credits:Principles of Media Consumption - Ron SumnersBe Skeptical of Absolutely Everything - O76Don\'t Be Equally Skeptical of Everything - John KounadeasGo Outside Your Personal Comfort Zone - LetSkyDiveAsk More Questions - Antonio NunesUnderstand and Learn Media Techniques - SlonovPrinciples of Media Creation - Alexandre DvihallyDo Your Homework, and Then Do Some More - ridoGet It Right, Every Time - ridoBe Fair to Everyone - alxmThink Independently, Especially of Your Own Biases - Gunnar PippelPractice and Demand Transparency - Lisa F. Young ...

Which camcorder is best when it comes to making videos for the web? What can you expect from the latest generation of digital camcorders that record on microscopic hard disks or on high-capacity SD memory cards? How good is the quality after you upload their videos to the Web? While atLeWeb08, this past December, I run into two passionate video bloggers: Nicholas Charbonnier and Teemu Arina. Nicholas has actually a blog fully dedicated to video technologies at TechVideoBlog.com, while Teemu is a new media explorer who likes to explore and test out new ways for communicating and sharing valuable know-how. I then suggested to them to try out a "collaborative" video interview, in which we would have shot each other simultaneously while sharing in turn some good tips and suggestions about video blogging. They did not need to be convinced and in a matter of seconds we were all ready to shoot while capturing each other answers from different angles.As I reviewed later on this material, I realized that what our readers may have liked to know more about would have been actually the equipment that each one of us was using during the interview, as to get a little perspective on popular options among video bloggers while being able to also see the results that they produced. And so, I got back to Teemu and Nicholas and asked them to share with me a bit more of their video shooting setup and the specifics of their video reporter toolkit. In this video information report you can find both some useful tips for your video production as well as specifics about the camcorder models and brands and other accessories that the three of us typically use when shooting video for the web.Here all the details:

Video Production Tips and ToolsDuration: 6\'
Full English Text Transcription
IntroAllright, we\'re at LeWeb08 here in Paris. I\'m speaking in my microphone, and you have the microphone inside the camera, and we\'re doing a collaborative project, the first time in the world: we\'re going to speak with three cameras at the same time, and it\'s going to be totally crazy.Here I\'m interviewing Robin Good.First time I saw you was in a live video on Mogulus. You were sitting and you were talking during the iPhone launch, I suppose. It was really good, really funny, and there was this crazy guy from Mogulus, in New York and he was doing live broadcasting and commenting.What do you think about LeWeb?You had this... presentation? A really cool presentation...I\'m making a video and putting it on techvideoblog.com, like TechCrunch, but with "videoblog" instead.

Robin Good: Be InvisibleCan I ask you Robin Good, what do you think about video and Internet please? What is your your best secret? What do you suggest people should do with video and Internet?
The thing that I suggest is to make yourself invisible. I think that is one of the best suggestions I\'ve learned by doing video.

1. Use your camera always in a modality where people are not going to notice that you\'re shooting them.Do not hold it at high level, like you guys are doing right now, but hold it more down when pointing up to people.
2. Second thing: Close the f**, hem... close the nice lid where you have the video so the people don\'t think you\'re shooting because you\'re not looking inside.
3. Third and last one. Take some black tape and put it on the red light that you may have on your camera. If you don\'t have it you\'re a lucky guy, and if you do have it, just put some black tape on it, so they never can tell whether you\'re shooting or just trying out something.

Teemu Arina: Always ShareLet me ask myself now to Teemu Arina, what is his tip about video production that he wants to share with people that normally doesn\'t tell anyone?
I got interested in video production because of you. I was interested in this stuff and I\'m giving presentations all the time. Over a hundred presentations last year and still giving them.I like to share my presentations. My recommendation for everyone who\'s speaking at any venue (if it\'s five people, 50 people, 500 people, 5000 people, it doesn\'t matter), is to put your stuff out there. Record it, and just go on with it.When you put it on the Internet people will find it. Some of my slide presentations for example, have been featured on SlideShare. They have been seen 25.000 times, and that\'s incredible compared to the audience who I gave those things in the first place.Regarding the equipment, to make it more enjoyable for your friends, refer to MasterNewMedia.org, that\'s the best source for information. That was for me. Especially the tip on external microphone input. Thank you Robin.

Nicholas Charbonnier: Go HDBut I have here Nicholas Charbonnier.Here you\'re displaying some nice equipment as well, so how did you get into the video camera stuff, shooting podcast in the first place. What have you learned?
First, I think that we need to change the media. It\'s getting boring.., the CNN, you watch one-minute CNN and then it\'s three-minute advertising. Come on!I think people should film more videos in HD and put on YouTube. And I think YouTube should do a lot better work in doing voice recognition and putting subtitles automatically, and now the HD, that\'s really... whoa, it\'s cool!I\'ve been putting my videos in HD on Internet since 2005 on techvideoblog.com, but most people watch still YouTube because Google is...
...it\'s the preference
...yeah. I also put my videos on the other sites. I use Hey!Watch.com (in reality he meant to say Hey!Spread), and it just clones the video and it sends it to 50 different sites at the same time.I\'m just spamming the whole Internet with my videos, so when you search for a guy and I made the video, I\'m first search result in the first page. It\'s YouTube and all the place. I don\'t get any money, but that\'s great. That\'s the problem: they should really monetize. We are waiting for the monetization, we have cameras and where\'s the money?
Yes, and since this conference it\'s all about love, let\'s have our cameras make love to each other!Bye-bye guys!

Video Toolkit Setup
Robin GoodClick on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews

• Camcorder: Canon FS-100
• Lens: Canon
• Additional lens adapter: None
• Recording format: .MOD (= MPEG-2)
• Recording data rate: 9Mbps
• Microphone: External wireless Audio Technica ATR-288W
• Memory: Memory Card Transcend 8GB SDHC
• Additional Comments:The recording format of the Canon FS series is a little bit of a problem if you do not have any technical video expertise. The Canon FS series records in a strange file format with the extension .MOD. In reality this is just a MPEG-2 file. To make these video files work you simply need to rename them from .MOD to .MPG on a PC, or if you are on a new Mac iMovie 08 will just read them straight as they are with no problem. Battery time is excellent on the Canon and recharging it is also pretty fast.

Teemu ArinaClick on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews

• Camcorder: Canon Vixia HG-21
• Lens: Canon
• Additional lens adapter: 0.5x wide angle lens (Japanese generic brand) + UV-filter
• Recording format: MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
• Recording data rate: 24Mbps
• Microphone: Directional Stereo Microphone Canon DM-100
• Memory: 120GB Internal HD
• Additional Comments:I also have two wireless microphones (AudioTechnica ATR288W) for interviews and I use a mini passive 2-channel mixer to record both in stereo, another speaker in left channel and another in right channel, helps a bit in the editing phase.If I have a fixed set, I will run the audio through a DBX 1066 Compressor and a mixer before entering my camera to make sure that levels are what they are supposed to be, in order to save time in editing (Levelator and what not).

CharbaxClick on the camcorder to go to the technical specifications page on CNET Reviews

• Camcorder: Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1000
• Lens: Sanyo
• Additional lens adapter: Wide-angle Sanyo VPC-L07W
• Recording format: .MP4
• Recording data rate: 9Mbps MPEG-4 AVC/H.264
• Microphone: External wireless Azden WM-Pro
• Memory: Memory Card 16GB A-Data SDHC
• Additional Comments:There is a new better model of camcorder out that does 1080p instead of 1080i - the Sanyo HD1010.I do not recommend the Azden VW-Pro external wireless microphone, somehow I am getting a lot of interference on it, and I am currently looking for a better quality microphone system, or perhaps I just need to use another input volume setting or something to remove that interference.The memory card from A-data has SDHC compatibility issues with other of my devices, because it was too cheap when I bought it. But it works fine with the Sanyo HD1000. Though now you can get better Kingston, Transcend, and other brands of 16GB cards.

Compare Video QualityRobin Good - Canon FS-100
Teemu Arina - Canon Vixia HG-21
Charbax - Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1000

Additional ResourcesThe Ideal Camcorder For Small Independent Video-Makers: The Canon FS and HF Series - Wow!

How To Convert .MOD Video Files To MPEG-2 On Mac And PCs

Best Portable Wireless Microphone Kit For Your Video Production Needs: Robin Recommends

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on February 2, 2009 as "Video Production Tips And Tools For Professional Video Bloggers". ...

"In the future students will not be constrained by the limits of the classroom model. They will set their own curriculum and proceed at their own pace. Learning can thus be based on a student's individual needs, rather than as predefined in a formal class, and based on a student's schedule, rather than that set by the institution."Photo credit: alastorIn the future you will see that the choice of learning opportunities will be embedded in other activities just like players learn in the course of a game, for example. "They do not first learn how to play the game, and then play it. Rather, they begin playing the game, and as they attempt to achieve goals or perform tasks, the learning they need is provided in that context." Personal Learning Environments will become more popular giving gradual way to an educational curriculum based on one's personal, context-based, learning needs. What will happen in the future is that learners will be offered learning resources according to their specific and personal interests, aptitudes, skills and already attained educational levels, while in the course of attending their job, playing a game or exploring a new kind of activity.Stephen Downes takes you to uncover many of the new trends, innovations and dynamics that will likely shape the way you and I will learn and educate ourselves in the near future.Here is Part 1:

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years Onby Stephen Downes
Personalized LearningWe now have powerful and inexpensive computers we can sling over our shoulder or carry in our shirt pocket. (Yamamoto, 2006) These computers are connected wirelessly to the internet at bandwidths sufficient to allow instant multimedia communication anywhere on the planet. These computers will only improve in the years ahead, becoming faster, slimmer, and more affordable. And we are not at the point where we are seeing the possibility that education may be deeply personalized.To date, much of our attention, even in the field of online learning, has been focused on a system of learning centered on the class or cohort: groups of students studying the same curriculum pace through the same set of learning activities. (Fenning, 2004) We continue to organize classes in grades, sorted, especially in the earlier years, by age. Time continues to be the dominant metaphor for units of learning, and learning continues to be constrained by time. As it was ten years ago, the model is that of a group of people starting at the same time, studying the same materials at the same pace, and ending at the same time. And as I noted ten years ago, this model of education was adopted because it was the most efficient. (Hejmadi, 2006) While we want to provide personalized attention, especially to submitted work, testing and grading, learning is still heavily dependent on the teacher. But because the teacher in turn is responsible for assembling, and often presenting, the materials to be learned, customization and personalization have not been practical. So we have adopted a model where small groups of people form a cohort, thus allowing the teacher to present the same material to more than one person at a time, while offering individualized interaction and assessment.What we have begun to notice with online learning, however, is a decreasing emphasis on this formal style of learning, and an increasing emphasis on what has come to be called informal learning. (Chivers, 2006) In the case of informal learning, students are not constrained by the limits of the classroom model. They can set their own curriculum and proceed at their own pace. (Moore, 1986) Learning can thus be based on a student's individual needs, rather than as predefined in a formal class, and based on a student's schedule, rather than that set by the institution.

Groups Versus NetworksThe continuing trend in formal learning to structure learning opportunities as classes and cohorts requires explanation. Underlying the transition from formal, structured learning to more informal and more unstructured learning is not simply a technological change but also a social change. It is this change I have attempted in recent years to capture under the heading of ‘groups versus networks'. (Downes, Groups Vs Networks: The Class Struggle Continues, 2006)Traditionally, people have been seen to learn either as individuals or in groups. This characterization of organization is not unique to education; it is very common to talk of (say) the needs of the individual versus the needs of the state. This characterization, however, glosses over the possibility that there may be more or less cohesive ways of organizing people, thus allowing for a middle point between the individual and the group: the network.Though networks have always existed, modern communications technologies highlight their existence and given them a new robustness. Networks are distinct from groups in that they preserve individual autonomy and promote diversity of belief, purpose and methodology. In a network, however, people do not act as disassociated individuals, but rather, cooperate in a series of exchanges that can produce, not merely individual goods, but also social goods. Traditional learning composed of classes and cohorts operates more as a group than as a network. (Davis, 1993)

• Students pursue the same objectives employing the same methodologies. This is especially evident in corporate learning, where they are expected to share the same vision and to be pursuing the same outcomes.
• Learning in such classes is frequently collaborative, as students work in small groups to produce a common project or outcome. (Mohn & Nault, 2004).
• Interaction is structured and led by an instructor.
• Classes are closed; there is a clear barrier between members and non-members.

In the case of informal learning, however, the structure is much looser.

• People pursue their own objectives in their own way, while at the same time initiating and sustaining an ongoing dialogue with others pursuing similar objectives.
• Learning and discussion is not structured, but rather, is determined by the needs and interests of the participants.
• There is no leader; each person participates as they deem appropriate.
• There are no boundaries; people drift into and out of the conversation as their knowledge and interests change.

Learning Management and CompetencesThe ‘educational delivery' (ED) system I postulated in 1998 became what we now know as the learning management system (LMS). However, unlike what was projected then, the LMS was not based on personalized learning, but rather, preserved the course management structure that prevailed in schools and universities. (Jarche, 2006) Indeed, early incarnations of the LMS were seen as extensions to the classroom, as evidenced by the name ‘web course tools' (Web CT). That said, even in traditional educational institutions, the trend is shifting away from courses and toward topics. This is seen in the development of competence-based learning designs, such as in the TenCompetence project. (Kraan, 2006)The idea of competences is that they are based on identifiable skills or capacities, and hence are not rooted in a body of content but rather in a student's personal growth. (Karampiperis, Demetrios, & Demetrios, 2006) As such, students are able to select their own track or achievement path through a competence domain, as informed by their own interests, employer needs, or in the case of younger students, parental guidance. Each competence, meanwhile, corresponds to a selection of learning resources (and specifically, learning objects). (de-Marcos, Pages, Martinez, & Gutierrez, 2007*)It is not clear that such a system will meet the needs of learners. Insofar as this is a form of autonomous learning, it is not clear that it supports collaboration or cooperation. Moreover, it is not clear that an outcomes driven system is what students require; many valuable skills and aptitudes - art appreciation, for example - are not identifiable as an outcome. This becomes evident when we consider how learning is to be measured. In traditional learning, success is achieved not merely by passing the test but in some way being recognized as having achieved expertise. A test-only system is a coarse system of measurement for a complex achievement.

Personal Learning EnvironmentsIn the future, competences will be just one way (and an unusually employer-centered way) to select learning opportunities. What we will see, rather, is that the selection of learning opportunities will not be a stand-alone activity, but instead will be embedded in other activities. (e-Lead, 2008) One can imagine how players learn in the course of a game, for example. They do not first learn how to play the game, and then play it. Rather, they begin playing the game, and as they attempt to achieve goals or perform tasks, the learning they need is provided in that context. (Wagner, 2008)The ‘personal learning environment' (PLE) is a collection of concepts intended to express this idea. (Liber, 2006) The PLE is not an application, but rather, a description of the process of learning in situ from a variety of courses and according to one's personal, context-situated, needs. The process, simply, is that learners will be presented with learning resources according to their interests, aptitudes, educational levels, and other factors (including employer factor and social factors) while they are in the process of working at their job, engaging in a hobby, or playing a game. The environment that they happen to be in, whether it be a productivity tool, hobbyist web page, or online game, constitutes (at that time) the personal learning environment. Resources from across the internet are accessed from that environment: resources that conform to the student's needs and interests, that have been in some way pre-selected or favorably filtered, and that may have been created by production studios, teachers, other students, or the student him or herself. Content - interaction, media, data - flows back and forth between the learning environment and the external resources, held together by the single identity being employed by the learner in this context.In time, the learning management systems deployed by educational institutions will evolve into educational delivery systems usable by personal learning environments. They will, in essence, be the ‘remote resource' accessed from a given context. Educational delivery systems will recognize the identity of the student making the request and will coordinate with other online applications (which may include commercial brokers, open resource repositories, or additional student records) to facilitate the student's learning activity.We might think that these educational delivery systems will be delivering learning objects. This is not entirely incorrect, although a learning object today has come to be seen as more like a unit of text in a textbook or a lesson in a programmed learning workbook. It will be more accurate in the future to say ‘learning resource', since many such resources will be available that do not conform to the traditional picture of a learning object - and may be as simply as a single image, or as complex as a simulation or training module.*(de-Marcos, L., Pages, C., Martinez, J., & Gutierrez, J. (2007). Competency-based Learning Object Sequencing using Particle Swarms. Retrieved September 03, 2008, from 19th IEEE International Conference on Tools with Artificial Intelligence).
End of Part 1

Originally written by Stephen Downes for OLDaily and first published on November 16th, 2008 as "The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On".

About the authorBorn in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), Stephen Downes is based in Moncton, New Brunswick. At the Institute for Information Technology\'s e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. Downes is widely accepted as the central authority for online education in the edublogging community. He is also widely accepted as the originator of ELearning 2.0. Downes. Downes is also the Editor at Large of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. For more information about his career and to access his multiple web sites please see this About Stephen Downes web page. ...

How are you going to certify your knowledge in the near future? While it is unlikely that general educational degrees will maintain their value and business currency, it is increasingly probable that your "value" will be in good part vouched for by the "portfolio" of your online experiences, social reputation and past Internet learning-related activities.Photo credit: alastorIn the future, what you will learn outside of school, through your other experiences, the connection with your peers, the projects you participate in will be fully acknowledged, recorded and even credited. Your key life experiences will be recognized as being one of the key components of what will be seen as a lifelong personal learning path. Your Flickr photo-stream, your blog writings, your videos on YouTube, and like these many other significant activities you will take online, are going to determine your public learning persona and educational profile.In Part 2 (Part 1) of this exploratory voyage in the future of learning, Stephen Downes shares an accurate analysis of the trends and dynamics driving our relationship with institutional and informal learning, and allows you to assess and anticipate how education and our perception of it is going to be deeply transformed in the coming years.

The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years Onby Stephen Downes
Content Versus ConversationOur picture of learning technology today – whether it be an LMS like Blackboard or Desire2Learn, an authoring system such as Connexions, or a resource such as OpenCourseWare - is that learning systems are essentially content delivery systems. Hence, they are typically based on a publication model of storage and distribution, are institutionally based, and tend to focus on mass deliveries of common materials to classes or cohorts. We see this in the design of the system, the technical specifications (such as ‘content packaging') and in their deployment.The personal learning environment, however, is not based on the principle of access to resources. It should more accurately be viewed as a mechanism to interact with multiple services. (Milligan, 2006) The personal learning environment is more of a conferencing tool than it is a content tool. The focus of a personal learning environment is more on creation and communication than it is consumption and completion. It is best to think of the interfaces facilitated by a personal learning environment as ways to create and manipulate content, as applications rather than resources. In particular, that the various channels created by the PLE enable is for a student to form a set of connections with a collection of individuals at any given point. In 1998, I referred to this as the Quest Model, based on the idea of ad hoc collections of people grouping together to solve puzzles in online multi-user environments such as Multi User Dungeons (MUDs). This model has become much more widespread, but no less ad hoc, as people today connect with each other to have distributed conversations, to create wiki entries, to collect resources in discussion threads, and like activities.In the Quest Model, each achievement would become a part of a personal profile, a part of a learning record that would in turn inform future challenges. This idea is reflected today in the concept of the e-portfolio, where the products created through the process of engagement and interaction are stored and (digitally) mounted for display. We see today the idea of an e-portfolio taking hold outside traditional learning - people have their own blogs, their own Flickr photo portfolios, art projects on Deviant Art, game modifications, fan fiction, open source software, and much more. The products of our conversations are as concrete as test scores and grades. (Ryan, 2007) But, as the result of a complex and interactive process, they are much more complex, allowing not only for the measurement of learning, but also for the recognition of learning. As it becomes easier to simply see what a student can accomplish, the idea of a coarse-grained proxy, such as grades, will fade to the background.

ConnectivismThe educational institution is unlikely to disappear, but it is unlikely also to remain the sole locus of student learning. Educational institutions will need more and more to think of themselves as part of a larger system, and as their offerings as entities that will become a part of, and interact with, the larger environment. Consider, for example, the photo editor that connects to Flickr, described above. Now imagine what an art appreciation resource would look like, how it would interact with Flickr photos. (Unattributed, 2006)Educational technologists should additionally not only think of themselves as building systems that contribute to the network of resources, but also of systems that draw from that network to create value-added resources. For example, a recent TED demonstration saw an application that created a three-dimensional composite image of Notre Dame Cathedral composed from thousands of Flickr photos. (Arcas, 2007) Educational institutions can in the same way create pictures of our understanding of other - less concrete - concepts that can be found in the thousands and millions of bits of content created by people around the world.This is the fundamental understanding behind a learning theory developed to describe learning in networks, connectivism. (Siemens, 2004) The theory proposes that knowledge is contained, not merely in the bits of information transmitted to and fro as content and creations, but in the way these contents, and the people that create them, link together. Just as the activation of the pixels on a television screen form an image of a person, so also the bits of information we create and we consume form patterns constituting the basis of our knowledge, and learning is consequently the training our own individualized neural networks - our brains - to recognize these patterns. The purpose of educational institutions, therefore, is not merely to create and distribute learning opportunities and resources, but also to facilitate a student's participation in a learning environment - a game, a community, a profession - through the provision of the materials that will assist him or her to, in a sense, see the world in the same way as an accomplished expert; and this is accomplished not merely by presenting learning materials to the learner, but by facilitating the engagement of the learner in conversations with members of that community of experts.

Learning ResourcesAs discussed above, educational institutions will need to see themselves as providers of learning resources (and not merely learning objects). These resources will be online services that connect students with:

• learning content;
  • games,
  • simulations, and
  • other activities;
• ad hoc communities of learners;
• and experts and
• other practitioners.

They will be specialized multimedia content consumption, editing and authoring systems designed to facilitate a student's ability to perceive and perform as modeled by experts in a community of practice.These resources will not be inert content objects, but rather, will need to be able to learn about the environment they are being offered in, be able to learn about the student, and to get this information not just locally but from wherever it may be on the internet. Thus, such resources must be able to communicate state and other information to and from other (authorized) systems and services. They may, therefore, be fully-fledged web services, but they are just as likely to be lightweight applications depending on other simple services to do much of this work for them.Today, institutions do not yet know how to deliver information to other systems. Beyond interlibrary loans, we have (at best) identity federation systems such as Shibboleth. Learning resource sharing networks, such as Globe, are small, ineffective, and exclusive. However, institutions are beginning to learn to prepare content for distribution through remote systems, such as the provision of lectures for delivery through iTunes University. Such systems will evolve over time into a mature system of open content distribution, facilitated through open access mandates, repository and other server software, and content and interaction standards.

Flow and SyndicationUnderstanding learning as ‘conversation' (Sharples, 2005) also allows us to look at the management and distribution of learning resources a bit differently.Today, as noted above, we tend to think of such resources as static and bibliographical, like books in a library, where contents are ‘published' and then ‘stored'. This view is evident in much of the discussion that surrounds learning technology today. We think of work as being stored in a research repository, indexed and archived, in such a way that we can search for them, typically through a catalogue (or metadata) system, and retrieve them. (Barker, 2007) The major concerns of educators in this environment are things like persistence and provenance, copyright and reproduction. (Jantz & Giarlo, 2005)In the networked learning environment, however, learning resources are best thought of not as content objects about a discipline that are retrieved and studied, but rather as words in a multimedia vocabulary that is used by students and teachers in an ongoing conversation within a discipline to engage in projects and activities. (Downes, The New Literacy, 2002) Content and learning resources, rather than being thought of as static objects, ought to be thought of as a dynamic flow. They are more like water or electricity and they are like books and artifacts.The technology of learning - and of the web generally - is evolving to accommodate flow. (Jarche, Learning is Conversation, 2005) Probably the most significant development in the last ten years has been the deployment of the Rich Site Summary standard - RSS - that allowed content creators to syndicate their writings and other creations. Using RSS feed readers, web users do not go to web pages or search for content, but rather, subscribe to RSS feeds and let the content come to them. (Downes, An Introduction to RSS for Educational Designers, 2003)Most educators, and most educational institutions, have not yet embraced the idea of flow and syndication in learning. They will - reluctantly - because it provides the learner with the means to manage and control his or her learning. They can keep unwanted content to a minimum (and this includes unwanted content from an institution). And they can manage many more sources - or content streams - using feed reader technology.RSSand related specifications will be one of the primary ways Personal Learning Environments connect with remote systems. To use a PLE will be essentially to immerse oneself in the flow of communications that constitutes a community of practice in some discipline or domain on the internet.

What It Isn'tWhen people think of personalized online learning, they frequently think of adaptive systems, learning programs powered by artificial intelligences that test a student's competence, formulate customized lesson plans based on those pre-tests, and then measure a student's performance though a series of online activities. (Boticario & Santos, 2007)While people will no doubt pursue solo learning activities (just as they, by themselves, read books today) this will not constitute the core of the learning experience in the future (just as reading books does not constitute the core of learning today). Even though learning systems will be able to auto-grade tests, will be able to track progress through a set of learning activities, and will be able to facilitate a wide variety of measures, these results will not constitute, by themselves, ‘evidence' of learning. Students will demand that there be a human element to evaluation, as they realize that their own performance is varied and complex, and may not be measured accurately by a machine, and employers and others will require a human element, because they will understand that humans devise endless schemes to ‘game' or otherwise trick automated systems.In the end, what will be evaluated is a complex portfolio of a student's online activities. (Syverson & Slatin, 2006) These will include not only the results from games and other competitions with other people and with simulators, but also their creative work, their multimedia projects, their interactions with other people in ongoing or ad hoc projects, and the myriad details we consider when we consider whether or not a person is well educated.Though there will continue to be ‘degrees', these will be based on a mechanism of evaluation and recognition, rather than a lockstep marching through a prepared curriculum. And educational institutions will not have a monopoly on such evaluations (though the more prestigious ones will recognize the value of aggregating and assessing evaluations from other sources).Earning a degree will, in such a world, resemble less a series of tests and hurdles, and will come to resemble more a process of making a name for oneself in a community. The recommendation of one person by another as a peer will, in the end, become the standard of educational value, not the grade or degree.
Part 1: Online Learning: Trends, Models And Dynamics In Our Education Future - Part 1

Originally written by Stephen Downes for OLDaily and first published on November 16th, 2008 as "The Future of Online Learning: Ten Years On".

About the authorBorn in Montreal (Quebec, Canada), Stephen Downes is based in Moncton, New Brunswick. At the Institute for Information Technology\'s e-Learning Research Group, Stephen has become a leading voice in the areas of learning objects and metadata as well as the emerging fields of weblogs in education and content syndication. Downes is widely accepted as the central authority for online education in the edublogging community. He is also widely accepted as the originator of ELearning 2.0. Downes. Downes is also the Editor at Large of the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning. For more information about his career and to access his multiple web sites please see this About Stephen Downes web page. ...

Geo-brodcasting, university leadership, and the shift from routine-oriented to more creative jobs are just some of the fascinating topics covered by George Siemens in this weekly issue of Media Literacy Digest.Photo credit: D\'Arcy NormanIn this issue:

• George Siemens deals with a brand new feature of Google Maps, Latitude, which allows you to know where your friends are at a specific moment. Using the GPS signal of your mobile phone you can pinpoint their location (or share yours), and let selected people find you for a good chat or grab a cup of coffee.
• What is really interesting of geo-broadcasting features like Latitude tough, is that you have yet another way to share your interests with people that "can be a basis for effective and contextual information provision."

If you want to make greater sense of where education and technology are heading in the near future, this digest brings you to places, facts and resources to have a better understanding of the disruptive changes that our society is facing.Here all the details:Intro by Daniele Bazzano

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

On the Value of Assessment…Marks are really rather arbitrary. I have this fear, when marking, that I'll double mark a paper / project submitted by a student (i.e. I'll mark it once with comments and a grade… and then, because I forgot I had already marked it, do the same again)… and provide completely different comments or even a different grade. A prof at U of Ottawa decided to take a different approach: Give every student an A+ at the start of the course. In his words:It was not his job, as he explained later, to rank their skills for future employers, or train them to be "information transfer machines," regurgitating facts on demand. Released from the pressure to ace the test, they would become "scientists, not automatons," he reasoned.Of course, the tenured prof was fired.The use of grading for evaluating students is recent, all owed to William Farish.UPDATE: Just noticed D'Arcy Norman had already posted on this: "As we continue moving toward a more individual and portfolio-driven assessment of a person's abilities, philosophies, and educational contexts, grades become less meaningful anyway."

Ontario in The Creative AgeOntario in the creative age (.pdf) makes the somewhat obvious argument that Ontario (and many parts of the developed world) are experiencing a "shift from more routine-oriented to creativity-oriented jobs that place a premium on analytical and social intelligence skills". The authors then suggest that no region / country has yet made the transition to an economy based on creativity and intelligence… and that current global situations may serve to accelerate the need for this to happen.In Canada, almost 80% of jobs are services-based, showing a steady decline of goods-producing jobs since 1946 (p. 9). What is required, according to the report, is greater emphasis on analytic and social intelligence skills (though they fail to detail how they assigned percentile groups of each domain). It's worth reading, but does slip into "let's write buzzword statements so we'll be quoted in newspapers" (such as "Economic development is driven by 3Ts - tolerance, talent, and technology") occasionally.

Geo-BroadcastingThe history of humanity reveals information as something we have had to pursue. Through philosophy, research, libraries, and universities, information had to be intentionally sought to be known (by the individual). It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we are today moving toward a system where information knows us. Well, maybe "know" is over-stating it. But many of my information interactions are not ones that I have to initiate. Simple services like Google Alerts, personal bots (more popular a few years ago) and more complex social network tools (like Diigo) provide a steady stream of information.The patterns that we exhibit in our interactions with information and with others (i.e. facebook), when known by certain software / services, can be a basis for effective and contextual information provision. GPSwill likely continue to improve information quality. Why shouldn't my history of search be combined with my interactions on facebook and used as a basis to provide me with important information (i.e. my iphone says: "George, three months ago you searched for history of human rights, then you joined a similar group on facebook… just around the corner is a museum dedicated to the cause… and, for that matter, so are Joe and Jane that you've emailed several times over the last year, but have never met").Ok, perhaps that would be unnerving. But, still, geo-broadcasting combined with the information trails we leave online could serve as valuable source of relevant information.

University LeadershipBlindingly obvious statement: how we access information and interact with each other has (disruptive) implications for educational institutions as well as leadership models. Openness and transparency, as guiding principles for organizational design, are now readily acknowledged by business leaders and educators. The recent American election and current spirit of the new administration reflected these ideals. What is to come of university leadership in this climate? Thewiki-way and university leadership states: "At the heart of new university leadership is the reframing of the leader (professor, department chair, dean, vice president, president) as less than perfect, without perfect knowledge, and in pursuit of persistent improvement." As goes information so goes society's organizations (business, universities, schools, politics). How soon can we expect to see fundamental change? I'm pessimistic on change cycles. It seems, as General Motors attests, that we can recognize the need for change for decades before we respond. And then change is considered only when survival is at stake.

Online Conference on Improving Traditional ConferencesJust a quick reminder - AACE is hosting an online conference on improving face-to-face conferences: Partial speaker list… main conference site and sign up for mailing list… and ning site. The conference is free and online. Feb 18-20.

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on February 7th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:William Farish - On the Value of Assessment... - Graça VictoriaOntario in the Creative Age - Aleksan GhojoyanUniversity Leadership - Volodymyr KyrylyukOnline Conference on Improving Traditional Conferences - Kari Høglund ...

Are you tired of giving away your personal e-mail address to those sites you know you\'ll visit only once? In this mini-guide you can find a way to create anonymous, temporary e-mail inboxes that expire right after you used them, helping you avoid letting your private personal email out for spam bots to harvest.Photo credit: Mike FlippoE-mails are the currency of the Web. Each time you register for a service, join a forum, or browse sites which are not secure, you expose your personal e-mail address to be caught in the net of spammers.What you can do to drastically reduce the quantity of junk messages you receive is to set up an anonymous, temporary e-mail inbox to use anytime you don\'t want to give away your private address.Most of the sites which allow you to create a trash-away mailbox are free and do not require registration. You simply go there, create your anonymous, temporary email address in a few clicks and select an expiry date establishing when the disposable email service will delete all the messages you received.Obviously if you plan to join a site that sends information which may possibly come in handy in the future, do not use an anonymous temporary mailbox, but rather stick to your personal address. Curious? Do you want to know more about anonymous temporary e-mail services?In this mini-guide I have collected the best services out there to create an anonymous and temporary, disposable e-mail address.Here below the set of key basic characteristics that I have utilized to compare the tools I hand-picked and reviewed, so that you can easily find the best disposable email service to fit for your needs:

1. Price: Find whether the service you need is free or not.
2. Registration: Indicates if you need to register to use the service.
3. Duration: Specifies whether the service allows you to choose when your temporary address will expire.
4. Check ways: Some service offer different ways to check your inbox: RSS, web widgets, Firefox extensions, and more.

Here all the details:

Top Disposable E-Mail Services And Tools Comparison Table

Top Disposable E-Mail Services And Tools

• Melt Mail
  
  Melt Mail is a service that allows you to create a temporary e-mail address that can be used for one-time registrations, or to avoid giving away your personal address. You can even specify how long your temporary inbox will last. Free to use and with no registration needed, Melt Mail allows you to check the expiration of your mailbox in a handy auto-updating pop-up window.

  http://www.meltmail.com/

• MailExpire
  
  MailExpire is a service to create disposable inboxes that you can use to filter the spam at your personal inbox. You can use it to register to those sites you plan to visit just once in your lifetime. Your temporary inbox can last from 12 hours to three months. Mailinator is free and no registration is required to use the service.

  http://www.mailexpire.com/

• Incognito Mail
  
  Incognito mail is a clean, simple service to create a disposable e-mail address that you can use for one-shot registration purposes and avoid spam to reach your personal e-mail address. Completely free and without registration. You can check your 1-hour temporary inbox via RSS feed or iGoogle gadget.

  http://www.incognitomail.com/

• Mailinator
  
  Mailinator is a service that lets you avoid spam messages the easy way creating a temporary e-mail inbox to receive all the unwanted messages you get. Free to use, no setup nor registration required, and you can check your disposable inbox via web, RSS, or the Mailinator widget.

  http://www.mailinator.com/

• Jetable
  
  Jator is a free online service that lets you create a temporary e-mail inbox to receive the messages you don\'t want to be delivered to your personal address. Your inbox can last from one hour to one month. The web interface is available in different languages. No registration required, and you can check your trash-away inbox via web or the Jetable Firefox extension.

  http://www.jetable.org/

• spambox.us
  
  spambox.us is a service that allows you to create a temporary e-mail inbox for all your unwanted messages. You can choose an expiry date up to one year. spambox.us is completely free to use and no registration is needed. The web interface is available in different languages.

  http://www.spambox.us/

• Yopmail
  
  Yopmail is a free service that lets you create a disposable, anonymous e-mail address. Messages on your temporary Yopmail inbox are stored for 5 days and you can check them via a dedicated Firefox extension or widget. No registration process is needed.

  http://www.yopmail.com/en/

• temporaryinbox
  
  temporaryinbox allows the creation of a free anonymous, temporary e-mail address that you can use to receive spam messages. Your disposable address will expire automatically after six hours. The site is available in different languages. Checking your mailbox is possible via web, Firefox extension or Opera dedicated widget. No registration required.

  http://www.temporaryinbox.com/

• GuerrillaMail
  
  GuerrillaMail allows you to create a free disposable e-mail address that helps you to filter spam messages. You can check your GuerrillaMail temporary inbox via web or customed iGoogle gadget. No registration required. The web interface is available in different languages.

  http://www.guerrillamail.com/

• KasMail
  
  After registering for an account on KasMail, you\'ll get a temporary inbox to receive and store all those messages that you prefer to keep separate from your private e-mail account. You can decide when the disposable mailbox will expire, or even choose to keep it forever. Free to use.

  http://www.kasmail.com/

• spamfree24
  
  spamfree24 is a free service that lets you check a temporary inbox where you can receive all junk mail. You cannot indicate an expiry date for your trash-away inbox, but on the sites it says that messages to your disposable inbox will be deleted "after a few hours". No registration is needed.

  http://spamfree24.org/

• Mailboxable
  
  Mailboxable is a free service that lets you generate a disposable e-mail inbox for one-shot registration purposes or any other situation where you don\'t want to give away your personal address. Completely free, you don\'t need any registration process to use the service. Messages in your disposable inbox are stored by Mailboxable for 7 days.

  http://mailboxable.net/

• LiteDrop
  
  LiteDrop provides you with a free disposable e-mail address which expires in 1 hour, although you can get another free hour just by clicking a button. You can use it to receive all those e-mail messages that you don\'t want to be delivered to your personal address. LiteDrop is a registration-free service and you can check your anonymous inbox via web or RSS feed.

  http://www.litedrop.com/

• myTrashMail
  
  myTrashMail is a free service that allows you to create a temporary e-mail inbox to filter spam and any unwanted messages you receive. RSS checking of your inbox is activated by default. Upgrading to the PRO version you can extend the expiry date of individual e-mails up to 30 days and get extra features like secure temporary email or automatic forwarding to your trash-away inbox.

  http://www.mytrashmail.com/

• MailCatch
  
  MailCatch is a free service to create an anonymous, disposable e-mail inbox to filter spam messages. Easy accessible via web or RSS feed, MailCatch inboxes last "from a few hours to a few days depending on the traffic". No registration is necessary.

  http://mailcatch.com/

• MailEater
  
  MailEater helps you fight spam creating a disposable e-mail address that will automatically expire after 4 hours you create it. Free to use, no registration nor setup is required to use MailEater.

  http://www.maileater.com/

• 10 Minute Mail
  
  10 Minute Mail creates for you a random temporary e-mail address that you can use to receive junk messages instead of using your private address. The inbox auto-expires in 10 minutes. Free to use, no registration needed.

  http://10minutemail.com/

• TempEMail
  
  TempEMail is a free online service that lets you create a temporary, anonymous e-mail inbox that will last for 14 days. You can use it to receive one-time messages from sites that you won\'t visit again in the future. No registration nor setup is required to use TempEMail.

  http://www.tempemail.net/

• Tempinbox
  
  tempinbox allows you to create a random receive-only, temporary e-mail inbox. Unlike other similar services, tempinbox does not allow you to choose an expiry period. Completely free to use and without registration. You can access your inbox even via RSS or Atom feed.

  http://www.tempinbox.com/

• SpamMotel
  
  SpamMotel is a free, simple disposable email address service. After registering for the service, SpamMotel allows you to create a temporary anonymous email address to help you filter the quantity of spam you get. Although the service is fully accessible via Web, it can be used via a small Windows application as well.

  http://www.spammotel.com/

Originally prepared by Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 9th 2009 as "Best Anonymous Temporary Email: The Top Disposable E-Mail Services And Tools - Mini-Guide". ...

Making sense of complex products, services, and ideas by using visuals and easy to understand story-lines is going to be a blooming business for many years to come. Photo credit: tombakyExplaining difficult ideas, or complex new technologies to non-technical people is going to be a professional activity by an increasing and unstoppable popular demand. As technology keeps changing faster and faster and as the number of tech-based solutions that can have positive impacts on one\'s own daily life steadily increase, the need to understand and make sense of these technologies and their use keeps growing. How many times did you try to explain some new cool web service or technology to a friend, only to discover it was harder than you thought? Not everyone is a geek, and, when it comes to technology, if you want people to understand what you say, you have to explain things (especially tech stuff) in a language that they can understand.Nutintuit is a small company that specializes in creating animated video tutorials which are short, simple, and easy to understand and which help companies promote and explain new technologies to their potential customers via fun and enjoyable cartoons.This is why I have decided to reach out and ask for a video interview with Joshua Gunn, one of the two guys behind Nutintuit, a small company devoted just to make explanatory videos for companies wanting to explain how their technology works.How did Nutintuit get started? What made them realize this was a hot market to enter? What makes the ability to explain things effectively so much appealing for online marketers?Here is my video interview with Joshua alongside a full text transcription:

Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New BusinessDuration: 9\'
Full English Text Transcription
IntroRobin Good: Hi everyone, here is Robin Good, live from Rome, Italy, and I\'m together today with Joshua Gunn.Hello Joshua, where are you connecting from?Joshua Gunn: Hey Robin, I\'m in Boston, Massachusetts. Fine to see you.
Robin Good: Fantastic, fine for me to see you, because what you and your great partner, Xavier Viñas, have started doing is something that strikes the same chords that here on MasterNewMedia we try to play everyday, that is: trying to make it easy for people who are not geeks to better understand technology.But let me hear from your own words: What are you up to these days with your project, and what is it called?Joshua Gunn: We started a studio called Nutintuit Studio. We make short, animated videos called "nutshells", and we\'re in the business of explaining things. It\'s really as simple as that.We just want to make things easier for people to understand, and... that\'s our project!
Robin Good: Good. Repeat please the name slowly, and tell us where is the URL where we can see some of your stuff first.Joshua Gunn: It\'s Nutintuit Studio, the web address is www.nutintuit.com

Explaining Things as a Business: Nutintuit Robin Good: Good, and how did you get this idea of going this specific direction?Joshua Gunn: I became friend with the Common Craft folks out in Seattle. I used to live in Seattle about a year ago. We met, I was inspired by what they were doing, and I realized there was a lot of space for this work to be done.Common Craft is a great idea. I love their work, and I thought I could use something a little bit different, but in the same spirit. That\'s how I got started.
Robin Good: The natural question for somebody wanting to emulate what Common Craft and you have done... would be to be hesitant, because there is already someone there doing that thing very well.What I want to know from you is: What did you and Xavier thought more specifically that gave you the enthusiasm and motivation to go in a road where there was already somebody clearly successful at it?Joshua Gunn: That\'s a great question. I think the answer is that there\'s so much need for quality explanation. There\'s so much confusion out there, and there are so many companies that are interested in educating their customers and really appealing to them on a more authentic level.I think there\'s plenty of room in this space for more than just CommonCraft, and more than just Nutintuit.I think the question is: How are you going to execute it? And... are you good at what you do? We\'ve done a lot of work and we\'ve answered that question for ourselves, then we\'re moving forward. We\'re really happy with what Common Craft does and we\'re really happy with what we do, and we support each other. It\'s a community of people who are making explanatory videos. No one is an island in this small industry.

How Nutintuit Was BornRobin Good: Let me ask you then: How did you start doing this? You started, I imagine, with a few tutorials, but how did you make this become something you could think of living on? How did you spread the word and converted it into something that brought in money?Joshua Gunn: That\'s a great question, too. For many years I was a product writer at Amazon.com. I wrote about products, explained them to customers. Thousands of products. To own the company was some partners that provided content at Amazon and all we did was write about the Amazon products and review them.I had a lot of experience as a product writer. I knew how to write well about products and ideas, but I didn\'t know anything about motion graphics, so I left my former company, it took about three months to teach myself how to do motion graphics.Then I realized I could really use some help with the artwork and some of the visual design, and visual ideas, and that\'s where Xavier came in. He\'s really brought a lot to Nutintuit in terms of illustration and the visual concept of the videos we do.The first video we did, I did, was on what is a smartphone. It was just a spec project, I wanted to see if I could do it, and things grew after that. I attracted clients thanks to some other spec videos that I did for Amazon, and things just grew from there.I really think you can make it if you really focus on what you\'re good at, and get help in the areas where you need help. That\'s where Xavier came in.

Key Marketing Advice in Explanatory VideosRobin Good: If you were to advise somebody else trying to follow your tracks, what would be the two or three key marketing steps you would advise somebody wanting to do video explanatory work to do to get their work out, and to start getting somebody pay for it?Joshua Gunn: I think there are a number of things:

1. I think, obviously, the way the work is marketed now is drastically different than the way it was just a few years ago.I found other people who were doing what I was doing and got them interested in my work, and they liked my work, and they referred me to the clients. That was a key way that I got started.
2. I went to old context that I had from other work experiences, and I said: "Hey, look, this is what I\'m doing now! What do you think? I think this applications for you guys, let\'s talk about it!"

That\'s how I got some work with Brooks running shoes, and working on a series for videos of them, as well.

Which Business Model for the Future?Robin Good: My last question would be about the future: How are you going to scale and what kind of business model you have in mind? Are you going to hope that you just get more and more request, and you do more custom videos for different clients, and each one of them pays for them, or are you thinking in some way to scale this up as the Internet would suggest to do so that you produce x, but you sell 10x.Joshua Gunn: Right now we\'re in a phase where we\'re trying to perfect what we do and to show a wider audience that we do great work. We really are in a building phase with clients right now, but I agree with you. I think the future is in scaling videos so that.... a guy who\'s going to a conference, for instance, and he wants to teach people about what is a blog, or what is the best way to collaborate with people online using free tools... the guy who\'s going to a conference wants to teach people about that, maybe he might want to buy a video from us and take that to the conference with him.That\'s a model that we believe in. Obviously it\'s a path that we\'re probably going to go down soon, but we\'re not quite there yet.
Robin Good: Fantastic. Thank you for sharing all of these insider information and insight from your experience.Bring my very best from the passionate readers of MasterNewMedia to Xavier as well, and thank you Josh for spending the time with us. All the best to your new company!Guys please go check out their work, and how they\'re communicating and explaining in simple words how complex technological things are, and how they function.Please, I leave you with the opportunity to repeat one more time your URL and web site for everyone else, and ciao from Robin Good in Roma and thank you for your great work!Joshua Gunn: Thank you so much Robin, it\'s been a pleasure. It\'s www.nutintuit.com.
Robin Good: Ciao!Joshua Gunn: Thanks Robin, bye-bye!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 11, 2009 as "Explaining Things To Non-Technical Users Is A New Business - Video Interview With Joshua Gunn".

Photo credits:How Nutintuit Was Born - AlexStarKey Marketing Advice in Explanatory Videos - adempercemWhich Business Model for the Future? - John Kounadeas ...

Location-based learning, flexibility in education, and changing paradigms in society are just some of the pointers which George Siemens explores in this weekly issue of Media Literacy Digest.Photo credit: D\'Arcy NormanAmong the hot topics and issues covered in this week digest, the relationship between geographic location and success. Does it really matter to live and work in the place where you want to achieve your goals?On one hand, if you do want "to succeed in your career, it\'s a good idea to be in areas that are hotspots for your field." Sure, no doubt about that. But even if you can\'t (or don\'t want to) move from your place, there are plenty of online resources that might help you to do so. You can skype your peers and colleagues, share your screen with them, or use a wiki to work on collaborative projects straight from your own living room.What\'s then the best way to go?Dr. Siemens seems to suggest that the best approach is to balance the two things. If you can, do not hesitate to go out and about to reach valuable people that may serve well to your purpose, but consider as well that packing your bags is not strictly necessary. New technologies can be very helpful to contact and tie relationships with people you can\'t easily reach on your own.Moreover, if for example you want to build a startup and move to Silicon Valley, why the hell should you avoid getting in touch with a friend in Prague just because she will never ring at your doorbell? The best advice here is: flexibility is the key.If you want to make greater sense of the disruptive changes that our society is undergoing, as every week here on MasterNewMedia, this digest brings you to pointers, places, and resources that might help you in your exploration journey.Here all the details:

eLearning Resources and Newslearning, networks, knowledge, technology, trendsby George Siemens

Learning and Technology: Success and Strategy in a Digital WorldClick above to enlarge the imageIn late January, I presented atLearning Technologies 2009 in London. Had a great time (including spending time with Jay Cross getting depressed in the Imperial War Museum). I've posted a paper that I used as the basis for my talk: Learning and Technology: Success and strategy in a digital world. The paper focuses on the need for organizations - corporations, universities, NGOs - to conceive a more compelling vision for learning and development than currently exists.

Facebook on TopFacebookis creeping into all aspects of information exchange. Celebrities use it to share information with fans, businesses use it as a marketing tool, activists use it to generate support for causes, family members use it… well, you get the idea. For many, it has become the primary information and interaction tool. I haven't read stats on how Facebook use influences traditional media access, email use, or other social media. But more activity seems to be shifting to the platform in relation to other sites. Techcrunchreports thatFB has now take top spot among social media sites (for unique visitors). Facebook is doing what Microsoft did in the 1980's: pulling together a suite of tools into one fairly easy to use interface. It doesn't have to be better than its competitors. It just has to be more prominent. People who have invested time forming social and work networks in the platform will find it increasingly difficult to leave.

Video Games Are Good For You!This is the kind of report parents dream of - Video games are good for children: "video games can stimulate learning of facts and skills such as strategic thinking, creativity, cooperation and innovative thinking, which are important skills in the information society".It reminds me of Steinkuehler & Duncan's Scientific Habits of Minds in Virtual Worlds (.pdf) where they address "the potential of games for fostering scientific habits of mind".People learn constantly - through games, strolling through a meadow, or sitting and thinking. It's how we're wired. The question for me is not whether we can learn through video games (we obviously can), but whether games are a more effective way of learning than other approaches.

Periods of Being Randomly BoredIn odd moments of silence, thoughts have a way of creeping in that appear foolish, but on additional reflection reveal something of value. The obvious solution to these random thoughts is to pursue hyper-distractedness. I don't always succeed on that front.Lately, I've been thinking about how change happens. The US election was all about change. Why? Did Obama drive it? Or what about Apple's success with the iPhone / iPod / iMac? Did Apple create a market that didn't exist? That's the obvious view. We like to hail heroes and visionary leaders. What if that's the wrong view? What if the real change is not driven by an organization or a person? What if resonance is the real factor?It's entirely possible to say that Obama's success was not in what he created in terms of momentum, but that he was in synch with the minds of the populace. He didn't create change so much as resonate with the change occurring in society. Would any leader do? Or, getting back to Apple - if Apple didn't exist, wouldn't someone else have acquired the hip / cool product reputation? Maybe it's not at all about single individuals and organizations. Maybe change is more concerned with the rhythms of a society or generation. Whoever is best resonates the change is declared the leader, when in actuality, they are only a mirror. I'll stop there before I get into determinism.

How the Crash Will Reshape AmericaAdhering to the motto "a provocative title will surely increase readership", Atlantic has an interesting article on How the Crash Will Reshape America:Economic crises tend to reinforce and accelerate the underlying, long-term trends within an economy. Our economy is in the midst of a fundamental long-term transformation - similar to that of the late 19th century, when people streamed off farms and into new and rising industrial cities. In this case, the economy is shifting away from manufacturing and toward idea-driven creative industries - and that, too, favors America's talent-rich, fast-metabolizing places.I find Richard Florida's "world is spiky" view to be more accurate than Thomas Friedman's "world is flat". But, in this article a tension that I've felt with Florida's work is more clearly revealed than previously. Florida has argued - generally quite effectively - that location matters. Cities and regions of creativity and innovation spur growth. To succeed in your career, it's a good idea to be in areas that are hotspots for your field. But… I am not sure how to reconcile this view with the growth of technology. Now, more than ever, technology has reduced the challenges of distance. Online education and distributed teams reflect this. Video conferencing and online conferences reduce the need for travel. Is location less, not more, important than in the past?

Uneven ImpactCreative Classanalyzes the sectors hardest hit by job losses. Traditional manufacturing fields are most impacted. Office, sales, computer, art, and architecture / engineering show large losses as well. Service sector jobs - health, education, legal - are fairing better than most. Many of those most impacted will soon be returning to colleges and universities to engage in new careers.One of the things that has always irritated me about education is how the model is one that learners must adjust to… rather than systemic flexibility to meet diverse needs of learners. Online learning has opened some opportunities for flexible learning. Largely, however, those returning to colleges will find the experience much as they did several decades ago. With a few extra LCD projectors and computer thrown in. Am I being too negative?

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on February 13th 2009 in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News.

About the authorTo learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge".

Photo credits:Video Games Are Good For You! - Niki CrucilloPeriods of Being Randomly Bored - Johnny LyeHow the Crash Will Reshape America - David DavisUneven Impact - Luis Francisco Cordero ...