Robin Good

Here my new media predictions for 2009: what to expect when it comes to new media, professional web publishing and learning, collaboration and social media? Find out everything I see coming across these key areas in this two-part report opening today.Photo credit: Giancarlo Mazzaro - 7th FloorI have prepared this report, which gets published every year end (here my 2008 new media predictions Part1 and Part 2), by focusing on what I think you, my reader, are most interested in knowing: what a professional new media publisher needs to know. The contents and topic areas I have decided to include are particularly interesting to those who are involved in media, communication, marketing or education and it is directed primarily at non-technical individuals who are passionate about communicating effectively with new media and who want to know ahead of time what awaits them next. My look at future trends on these fronts is a personal one. I don\'t claim to be an expert in these fields, but I spend loads of time experimenting and working in them, and therefore I develop my own opinions about what is going to be happening next. These below are the new media areas I will analyze for my 2009 predictions which I have divided into two parts. Part 1, the one you are reading now, which is devoted to online publishing, marketing and advertising, video and net television, digital imaging, visual communication and site design, and Part 2, tomorrow, dedicated instead to social networks and social media, identity, future events strategy, learning, education, online collaboration.:Here all the details... and have a great 2009!

2009 Media Predictions - Part 1If you are an online web publisher, a pro, or a would-be one, what I am covering here below are the areas that I believe you should pay most attention to in the upcoming 12 months. I expect again all of these areas to show lots of activity, announcements and the release of new tools. Since there are over twenty web publishing publishing-related areas I personally follow, I am structuring these 2009 trends and predictions reports in two parts. The first part today covers essentially web and video publishing, visual communication and site design, marketing and advertising trends, while Part 2, to be published tomorrow, January 1st, will cover social networks and social media, the future of events, learning, education, online collaboration.As in most of the areas I analyze here, while I am not an insider in any, my position of online publisher and external observer allows me at times to notice things that may not be so obvious and evident to those working in my same direction. These are the ones that I feel are going to be most interesting for online web publishers in 2009:

Online Advertising
1) Average online ad prices will be falling. Here\'s why: "The Internet advertising market, like all markets, responds to changes in supply and demand. In the current recession, demand for advertising is likely to decrease. At the same time, supply of online inventory, page views, is continuing to increase. Social networks and other social media sites in particular are creating masses of new inventory. As a result, the price of online advertising will continue to fall in 2009."
2) Advertising markets are expanding"The US market represents about half of all online advertising, which is partly what makes monetizing international traffic so difficult. Building up direct ad sales teams (and networks) internationally will partially help to bridge the gap, but this will not be enough. ....in Asia direct monetization models (i.e. selling things directly to users) have proven to be a better business model than advertising. U.S. companies will need to understand and embrace the direct monetization models that have worked well overseas, principally mobile monetization, premium subscriptions models and digital goods models based on selling greater functionality, scarcity or status."(Source: Consumer Internet Predictions 2009 - by Lightspeed Venture Partners)
Check out also this recent video in which Google\'s Vint Cerf explains how informational advertising meets the social network in 2009: When writing about online advertising future it is a little harder for me to separate what I would want to see from what it\'s going to take place. As many others, I personally feel that traditional advertising is losing more and more ground in terms of effectiveness and that the winning new front is the one of highly targeted, contextual advertising both via established media venues, but more and more via smaller and highly targeted content outlets (blogs) and via communities, forums and social media venues.If online advertising prices keep going down like they have in the last few months, a few good things are likely going to happen: 1) Those that will keep spending will try to target their marketing messages in the most effective way possible. 2) Banner-like CPM advertising will be increasingly ineffective and albeit inexpensive it will not provide tangible benefits to neither advertisers nor publishers.
Monetization via Google AdSenseI know you will think I am crazy, but I really think that in 2009, AdSense will become a superperforming money making machine for a good number of online web publishers. Thanks to the long-awaited marriage between AdSense and Analytics now web publishers can dip into the hard data they were looking for to understand what their readers click that makes them money. This is pretty revolutionary from my personal viewpoint and I would expect that for those who have enough skill or resources to study and analyze in depth the wealth of this data there will be an ocean of opportunities to improve their AdSense-based revenue stream.Under these circumstances, the use of heavy A/B testing to find best placement and ad style as well as the optimization of targeted ad placement opportunities for advertisers interested in specific pages or sections of your site are likely the two most valuable strategic actions you can plan on taking during the coming year.

Search-SEOWhat to expect?The world of search is under heavy transformation and 2009 will positively be bringing new surprises, features and new search tools. What appears as irreversible is the fact that search engines, Google first, are going to increasingly value your choices and clicks as a reference value to serve relevant results for your queries. After links and PageRank, your actual attention and behaviour patterns are going to increasingly influence the results that Google and others are going to serve you. This is especially true for Google, who, by monitoring via Analytics, Adsense and AdWords can now see your site behaviour from all of the most critical viewpoints, and is therefore in the ideal position to decide whether and when your content is relevant as a reading and / or advertising destination.What SEO strategies to put in place for 2009?Video and conversational media marketing, via forums and social communities will be among the most effective ways to keep your content visible inside major search engine result pages. That is: if you want to populate search results for your specific niche your presence must be solid and well spread across diverse media outlets. Adding therefore the likes of Twitter, Friendfeed or of a dedicated Facebook group or Knol page are going to be fundamental requirements for all professional web publishers.The rest, what you should know already quite well, remains all valid and useful: titling, linking, quality content, avoiding bad practices and so on.The new interesting thing about link juice and PageRank, is that now you can be a lot more efficient about where and how you hand out PageRank to others even if, like me, you like to heavily promote other sites and news and offer plenty of reference links inside your articles. By utilizing tools like Apture, you can now provide valuable links and multimedia references, that keep your reader on your site and do not dilute your link juice across too many different sites. This by itself, especially if the Apture model catches on and other competitors move into this area, is a major shift for SEO and for delivery additional value while improving SEO benefits to any site.
Ad Management and OptimizationAd optimization and ad management platforms will increase in number and featrures offered. This is a fast growing area for online independent publishers and the need to manage and coordinate in an easy and efficient way all of your advertising inventory, from AdSense to your personal direct advertisers is increasingly felt.2009 may actually see the crowning of OpenX as one of the best solutions in this area for independent web publishers, with many other contenders, including YieldBuild, Pubmatic, Rubicon Project as well as Google own not so easy to use powerful Ad Manager fighting for a piece of this pie.

Internet MarketingInternet marketing tactics get wide adoption.2009, at least in my eyes, may be the year in which businesses of all kinds, not just how-to-make-money-on-the-internet guys, will start leveraging many online marketing tactics and strategies while extracting the best parts of these and making them less extreme and artificially hyped. As a matter of fact, sales letters, squeeze pages, scarcity triggers, identification and social proof are all great marketing components that deserve to be popularized and put to use by a much larger number of online businesses. The key difference we will see is how effective these marketing techniques can be even when used in a more sober, credible and professional looking fashion, and how much more they can outperform their traditional counterparts when mixed in with the right doses of common sense web 2.0 and social media marketing savvy.
New Advertising Agencies?I don\'t know whether 2009 will be the year that this happens, but I know it is about time that it does. Independent web publishers need a new kind of small advertising agency that leverages groups of high quality, tight focus, strong community building blogs to sell highly targeted advertising opportunities to small and medium sized advertisers that match their ideal audiences.Outside of a very few and rare exceptions I am increasingly amazed at the size of the untapped market for direct advertisers that high quality small sites and independent blogs are leaving on the table for lack of resources and time. We have web-based self-service advertising outlets, we have auction-style ad clearinghouses, we have AdSense-AdWords and its many counterparts, but we do not have a group of small advertising agencies willing to sell marketing, branding and sponsorhsip to specific sectors. The Google competition is too strong and it is very hard to go and convince traditional advertisers of the benefits of new media marketing. Then it may very well be that this is the wrong way to look at things and that the future is all about small publishers rolling up their sleeves and setting up their own personal ad management system and small direct marketing team. Given the economic times, this may the very best way to go for independent publishers in the next 12 months, next to their already established revenue channels.

Professional Web Publishing2009 will see the establishment ofautomatic web site builders that go, in terms of usability, features and cost of maintenance well beyond blogs and personal publishing tools we have seen so far. There have been a number that have already surfaced in 2008 but given the premises I think we are going to see a lot more interesting ones coming out this year.Most of the existing solutions are fully hosted services and based on the past approach to publishing, this would normally appear as something reserved only for the novice and beginners. But as we move more and more to a cloud-based access to all of our services and data it makes sense that we may be looking at a lot more hosted professional solutions, than do away with the classical equation, professional site requires dedicated server and publishing software running on it. 2009 may likely bring the confirmation signs that this is indeed the road we are headed to.AtLeWeb08 I was truly impressed with the work of Czech automatic site builder webnode.com, one of the winners of the startup competition, and I can\'t wait to experiment using it as an affiliate partner in 2009 to give voice and a publishing platform to those people in my community network who are not geeks.

Content CreationContent creation and syndication tools will keep increasing in variety and use and adding content of whatever kind to your blog page will become as easy as clicking and dragging stuff over your desired page destination.Automatic website builders will give a hard time to WordPress and other traditional blog publishing platforms.A serious quality service that will provide automatic WordPress site installation and customization will become available. This is the single most frequent request that would be pro web publishers have. Who can install and customize me my WordPress site.New tools that will pull in different types of content from multiple sources, allowing you to create related stuff boxes or complementary info sections, will become more sophisticated and will allow even small individual bloggers to add lots of quality content to their articles.External content gets to be visited in place. That\'s right, differently than what it used to be until now, you are not going to be sending as much people around the web by providing great links to content destinations not on your own pages, as new technologies provide increasingly the ability for that external content and resources to be displayed right within your content pages via pop-up windows and other effective on-the-page visual solutions.(for some great examples please see MasterNewMedia review of Apture)They key point to pay attention to on this front, is that the new content creation, aggregation and referencing tools that will have the most appeal will be the ones which will allow for the editor to play a strategic role in selecting, sorting, and cleverly juxtaposing and grouping content units contextually and according to the editorial focus of their site.Therefore I am calling 2009 the year that will see the birth of content creation and publishing tools that will be at the intersection of where Apture, Splashcast, Iterasi and Mixwit/Muxtape are and have been.It is not just the ability to aggregate, find and republish that interests online media publishers but specifically the ability to add editorial value to existing content out there, by acting as curators, compilation masters, news djs or content mash-uppers, something that has been too often dismissed in the past as having no value.The opposite is becoming true. To create extreme value you need not create new content. Greatest value sits in having the ability to find great, unknown, disconnected, content pearls and to bring together in editorially effective ways.Beyond the sheer quantity of content published, differences between popular independent sites and traditional media web outlets will sharply decrease, with each side increasingly borrowing ideas and solutions from the other part.As a matter of fact I dare to say that some of the most successful blogs and independent sites will be those that will most effectively mix-in big online media solutions into their approach, while traditional media web sites who will integrate typical blog and social media solutions may also see a greater appreciation by those already fluent in the digital universe.

News Aggregation and NewsmasteringI was extremely happy to attend the Gillmor Gang session at LeWeb08, as it was rich of insightful exchanges. Among these, Gabe Rivera, the wizard of Oz behind technology news aggregator Techmeme, stated something I have been vouching for much before Techmeme even existed: newsmastering, that is the work of aggregating and republishing selected news according to a specific theme / focus or topic must be the fruit of human editor. Yes, you can definitely take advantage of automated news aggregation and filtering technologies but the last vote on which stories should go up on your newsradar should be reserved only to the newsmaster. Yes, crowdsourcing and bottom up network votes and suggestion can further help uncover gems, but to me, nothing beats the result one skilled one human editor can produce, when not delegating to algorithms or followers their ability to choose what is really worth looking at.Here is Gabe Rivera from LeWeb08 stating exactly this when asked if the perfect algorithm for a news aggregation service could ever be found.
NewsMastering: Gabe Rivera On Why A Human Editor Is Better from RobinGood on Vimeo.Morale of the story: the art of newsmastering has yet to catch on with greater strength and 2009 will keep seeing growth of evangelism, tools and adoption of this content filtering and republication approach. By all means this will become integral part of news making for both mainstream media and small independent publishers everywhere.Extend now the same concept to any other digital media format beyond news: video, social bookmarking, clippings, audio, presentations, social conversations and so on. The more content gets to be produced in any of these formats the larger the need for someone to search, aggregate and select the most relevant items. Obviously this can be done in an infinite number of ways depending on what is the community focus you are doing this for and the editorial style you want to maintain.The role of the DD digital distiller, or CC content curator is a natural conseuqence of the above, and while these terms may not be the best ones to capture the idea they are for me now the simplest way to describe this new emergent media producer role.There have been a few services bringing forward this idea (Splashcast.net and Magnify.net for video, Mixwit / Muxtape - now dead - for music) but they have either not yet provided users with the right tools and approach or have been crunched by legal pressures from traditional media who are yet coming to grasps with such unstoppable free flow of content. Without a shadow of doubt these early services show tremendous potential both in creating strong spontaneous communities of passionate fans as well as in generating loads of truly valuable content. This is why content licensing schemes limiting such approaches should rapidly fall and let more innovative monetization opportunities to fluorish "around" the content and not by selling it directly.

• WordPressFor everyone else with some geekiness inside her DNA, WordPress remains the reference platform especially for those who want to start their own blogs while feeling free to experiment and change with literally thousands of different design templates (themes) and plugins available. WordPress, which is an open-source product, has also on its side a powerful distributed community of fans and supporters who openly share great little tools and contribute to improve and refine the existing infrastructure. What may fall into place for the multitude of those who would want to use WordPress but are too busy or too little tech savvy to spend time installing and configuring, is the launch of a few services / tools that will provide seamless WordPress installation on your server, either by doing manually for you, or by offering pre-configured and easily upgradeable solutions. I, for one, would have a ton of customers to refer to it.
• Live BloggingLive Blogging will increasingly be a growing trend of independent news publishing and 2009 will see further synergies between real-time reporting tools, such as real-time blogging, chat-IRC-IM, live mobile video streaming, multi-cam reporting, audio streaming, twittering and other social media. Providing a dashboard of such tools to leverage the potential reporting fire-power of a small team of distributed reporters at an event is the next frontier to be challenged by players in this field.

Web Video - Online Video PublishingMore web publishers will start using video in 2009.Driving forces behind this are going to lower prices for high-quality camcorders which have become very simple to operate and much better video sharing services accomodating all kinds of original video formats, resolutions and even HD video at no cost to the video publisher.At the end of the equation, there is more video content available on the Internet and therefore a greater need for effective video search engines as well as sites or blogs that make sense of all of these content by letting the most interesting content emerge through various means and approaches. Expect 2009 to see the announcement of new services and tools dedicated to video search as well as to aggregating, filtering and assembling topic and theme-specific video playlists.In 2009 you will also see the first group of automatic video to text transcription services and tools. This is a very hot area because as soon as there is some reliable solution to automatically transcribe audio inside video clips into text format, a universe of new content becomes accessible to everyone via traditional search engines. So, video to text transcription and innovative video search engines go hand in hand.Other video publishing features that will need to move to mainstream status in 2009 are:

• deep linking as well as
• captioning / annotating,
• direct linking from any video frame to any specific URL and
• personalized - user controlled ad overlay space
• hot video spots (a visual indicator of the hot / most viewed points in the video) which will have all to become part of the basic video publishing feature set for any video sharing site.

Strong competition from early adopters and power users will drive adoption by more mainstream publishers and bloggers as well.On the live video streaming front Ustream and Mogulus will consolidate their leading position and may be likely acquisition targets by anyone of the large players being among the most popular and feature-rich video streaming services available.Kyte, Qik, Stickam, Flyxwagon and many of the more recent entries in the mobile live video streaming arena, like Finnish startup Floobs which I recenty discovered at LeWeb08, will see several new entries with some quite innovative features. Multicam / multi-view reporting of events will take off in 2009.Conversational social video platforms like Seesmic have a more uncertain future due to their tendency of trying be too many things to too many different audiences. Seesmic as a video commenting and Twitter-like conversational platform is not bad at all, and as I have suggested to Loic in the past, having the opportunity to de-centralize its deployment, by having the opportunity to create Seesmic-enabled communities (what I called MySeesmic) would be great motivators for wider adoption. I see such tools having a much easier business life if they were targeted to specific uses and markets rather than as a final destinations a-la Facebook, Myspace or Twitter are. 2009 will likely tell, before it is over, whether I am right or wrong on this one.In 2009 we\'ll also witness a growing number of video sharing and publishing services going the Pro route. That is: either you have a professional, commercial use for publishing your videos, and therefore appreciate having specific advanced features like video analytics and ad management, or you can go to any of the free and open video sharing sites.Brightcove has been among the first to make a distinct move in this direction, but I think you will see more soon.YouTube itself may actually be the one that will surprise everyone by releasing a number of truly powerful tools to empower new and more effective ways to create highly distributable video playlists on specific topics and themes.

• HD VideoHD video is the new wave to ride.If you are already into video publishing online this is definitely the year to step into HD. The new high definition format is increasingly supported by major video sharing sites and the prices for a decent HD camcorder have dropped down to $150 or less.2009 will see all video sharing sites embracing the new standard with the best ones integrating encoding and distribution of your video at the most appropriate bitrate for each viewer.
• Video DistributionVideo, like any other content, wants to be as findable as possible. Until now there have been a handful of web services and software tools that have taken your video to as many video sharing sites as you desired. End result your video is duplicated across 10 or 20 video sharing sites and supposedly this gives you some extra exposure and visibility. In reality what you want to achieve to get greater findability via the search engines is diversification of keywords by which your title and key meta-data are found. By having multiple video destinations you are in the ideal position to diversify your title, description and tags multiple times to serve different but complementary target audiences. In 2009 you should see video distribution services like Tubemogul and Heyspread add these new features alongside lots of new and highly detailed metrics.
• Internet TVMore and more traditional television channels will be broadcasting also to the web. The sooner they will do so, the better. P2P distribution offers extreme cost advantages to any media publisher interested in international distribution (read live sports) and the ability to gain orders of magnitude of more data about who is watching what and where. Isn\'t that what advertisers and sponsors are looking for?In 2009 you should not expect any major moves by traditional media channels on this front as it will take them longer to resolve the licensing issues involved in distributing content across such new unexplored channels. In the meanwhile a small army of minuscule companies and small borderline publishers are generating millions of extended video views daily via the use of mostly unathourized P2P television sharing platforms.As a matter of fact I would expect some harsher rules and restrictions to be implemented against users in 2009 when it comes to P2P TV in some Western countries. Asian companies manufacturing such tools and users in those regions will likely increase their mastery of the technology and business opportunities and will likely be among the emerging new players in this sector in a year or more.One thing stands clear in my mind: whichever mainstream TV channels will embrace soonest open P2P distribution will have tremendous audience and business oppurtunities advantages relative to their over-the-air- and cable-only counterparts.
• Video Related ServicesIn 2009 a tremendous market opportunity will present itself to those able to organize and deliver good quality video stock footage for the typical web video publisher. There is a total scarcity of this kind of resources and the few out there charge outrageous prices for 5 to 10 seconds video clips.Also in the realm of visual effects for creating video titles and other opening sequences are in very high demand with very little available on the market. It will not take but a few months before you should see some really interesting services pop-up on this front.
• Video Shooting EquipmentWhen it comes to video hardware for online video publishing work, my basic advice remains the same: go for good brands that provide you with recording on solid state memory cards (hard disk is second choice), a microphone input jack and a wide lens adapter. These are the three things that can make a huge difference in the quality of your video.Camcorders with such characteristics are available from several brands and start from prices as low as $150 (Kodak Z6). My favorite ones remain the Canon models of the series FS and HF (Vixia) which start at around $350. If you buy a camcorder in 2009 make sure it is an HD (high definition) model.

MobileIn 2009 it will be a must for any serious web publisher to have a mobile version of their site. While there are already a number of services providing free mobilization of your site, they mostly rely on creating a portable device compatible version of your RSS feed while integrating some kind of advertising into it. Since I hate being bombarded by ads when looking at my mobile phone I am not yet sold on any of these early solutions, but I am pretty sure that in 2009 I will find a new service, maybe from Google or maybe from my blog publishing platform provider, that will allow me to easily publish a mobile phone optimized version of my site contents automatically.

Web Site Design TrendsWeb site design will keep evolving in 2009 as well. My personal preferences in the coming year are for:

• three or four column designs that has a fixed body width,
• footer area to provide additional information and resources,
• clear separation of traditional display advertising from content, as well as
• greater integration of highly contextual and relevant ads (a-la AdSense) with the content,
• mean and lean mastheads saving lots of vertical space for above the fold content and premium ad spaces,
• larger-sized font size inside body text to provide less coolness factor and more legibility
• use of tabbed interfaces for main navigation as well as for information boxes
• better integration of video and other multimedia links inside text content

In January 2009 MasterNewMedia will launch a new design characterized by all of these traits. Stay tuned.

Visual Communication and Presentation ToolsThis is a time of profound progress in the area of visual communication. In no more than two or three years we will look back at PowerPoint presentations with the contempt we reserve today for those old, static, institutional web sites.The tools that will make this possible are all to be invented and the innovative web presentation tools we have seen emerge in these last two years are good indication that 2009 will bring more of these tools and with greater innovative metaphors for their use.If you take as an example the area of live annotation and whiteboarding, most of tools available out there still reflect the original paradigm developed by Microsoft Netmeeting and its original basic toolset. End result is that when we attend live web seminars, the artwork created with the existing whiteboarding tools looks always something like a first grader first attempts at drawing. Instead of making us look more professional these annotation tools make us look more amateurish than we really are. Very few companies so far have ventured in studying and analyzing which would be the tools and features users really need when it comes to communicate clearly and in a visual way a specific idea, and given the fast increasing need for tools that help us communicate more clearly our ideas, I really see plenty of opportunities in this area.

Online Digital Image EditingThe coming change here is: Your complete digital imaging workflow will soon be all online. Capturing offline, editing, uploading, redownloading, editing, re-uploading is time consuming and inefficient from many standpoints. If our digital cameras started to capture directly in the cloud, and if stock and image sharing libraries started to integrate more image editing tools in their basic feture-set we would be moving in the right direction. In 2009 you will see exactly some of these innovations and improvements materialize, while making the use of Photoshop and other complex and sophisticated image editing tools obsolete for most web publishers.

Legal issues - bureaucracy -censorship 2009 will likely bring new rules and restrictions independent publishers will have to comply with. This will vary from country to country but it is apparent that the trend is clearly headed in this direction. As I see it, such issues may actually be a great medicine for independent publishers as it will require for all of them to get more involved in lobbying for their rights and to start getting involved in the debating of new legislation that will impact the publishing universe they operate in.Those proposing and introducing conservative, restrictive legislation seem more concerned with extending the commercial lifetime of existing media rather than providing the fertile grounds in which new media can truly flourish. Providing research, examples and data that proves how suicidal this can be is really a responsibility for all web publishers to take on.
End of Part 1 - Part 2 tomorrow
Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on December 31, 2008 as "New Media Trends And Predictions 2009: What Independent Web Publishers Should Expect - Part 1". ...

Here is Part 2 of my New Media Trends and Predictions for 2009. In this report I look at major trends while I try to anticipate key changes and the type of innovation taking place around the world of new media communication and professional web publishing.While yesterday I have covered web and video publishing, content creation, newsmastering, online advertising, internet marketing, in Part 2 my focus is on social media tools, technologies and trends, X-events, online collaboration, P2P and Open Source, learning and education.I have also reserved a little section to share some of my personal and editorial plans for 2009 as some of you have been asking me about them.I hope you will enjoy what I am seeing.Here all the details:

2009 Media Predictions - Part 2(Part 1)by Robin Good
Social Media and Social Media MarketingIn 2009 social media will keep thriving. Innovation will come in the form of further opening up of the existing major social destinations to gather and aggregate any and every aspect of your digital presence.The Open Stack, OpenSocial, OpenID, and a few other tech acronyms characterize within social media a strong trend toward adopting and using open standards. For example, OpenID is a profile identifying web address that can be used to login to any site that supports it. OpenSocial instead solves the need to utilize any application on any site on the Web, while keeping the same people relationships and profile data you already own elsewhere.For some indication of where this is heading you may want to look into the Open Social session moderated that Marc Canter that took place at the recent LeWeb08 in Paris.My take on this front is that what you will see happening is the de-centralization of most social destinations. The new open social applications and features you will see in 2009 will allow you to make them local to your own site and community, while remaining internetworked with all social profiles on the many social networks out there."Even if Facebook is currently the shiny place, if developers can write and application once and put it loads of places, Facebook will be marginalised."(Source: LeWeb08 The Social Stack - Computer Weekly)Instead of having to go to Facebook or Linkedin to talk to your network of contacts and communities of interest, you will be able to bring all of this on your own site and blog.
NingTo those pointing to Ning as the already existing example of such an approach, I reply that while certainly a useful community building tool, Ning still lacks the features and traits that would make my ideal community platform. Despite all of the reasonable excitement around it for being the first distributed community building platform, I find its content organization, navigation and content accessibility very poor, as much as its search function, discussion capabilities and blog functionality. Ning insists on being a hosted solution and unlike WordPress, it doesn\'t get the support of a large community of developers in getting new features and extensions to its users. I need something much better than that. And in 2009 you will see exactly this.Google itself, with the recent launch of its FriendConnect social application may be the one introducing some very innovative services and features in the next few months. The MyBlogLog-like interface you can already activate on your site, may likely be the gateway to a new way to participate and join in with people of your similar interests through grassroots, web site-bound but also highly portable, distributed and de-centralized communities.
TwitterTwitter is one of the powerhouses of such profound new changes in the way we will use social media, and if you are serious about leveraging the opportunities that the social network can open up for you, if you haven\'t yet, you will need to start using it and discover its huge potential.Make no mistake though, like many have done. Social media does NOT mean that all conversations now need to be in the open and that you need to tell everyone what you are up to drink at your next stop in your nightly wonderings. That is one way to use it, but not the only one. Twitter and other similar emerging social communication and conversational tools provide the opportunity to create trusted networks that can enable the fastest and most effective way to share interesting news and stories, light years ahead of any other traditional news service.I myself have a problem with the shallow conversations. I steer away from them as much in real life as in the virtual one. They consume me lots of time and often I find them inconsequential, preposterous and characteristic of the lazy man\'s approach to getting noticed in public. On the other hand I am thankful to these tools when they help me be in touch and virtually side-by-side with my real friends and contacts, the ones I really care about. I like to know what some of them are up to, I enjoy reading a bit of their private life and I run to check the references and article suggestions they put out. I am not there for the conversation per se or for having a conversation with anyone who jumps at me with a questions. I am there mostly to learn and pick up rare gems, tech gossip, insider buzz and tips from all of my networks. I am there to help out those asking questions I am passionate about and to reach out for ideas and suggestions from people who think differently than I do.Problem is people have taken this social media game as a competition for who has the most followers and in the rush many have not really made sense of what they are using this tool for. My take is that, depending on who you follow, going to 200-300 people you follow is the present limit, especially if you want to be able to really follow what these individuals have to say.If you look at my Twitter channel you will see that I have about ten times more people than follow me than the people I have chosen to follow. This is only because, differently than what I do on Facebook for example, where I like to be open and friendly with anyone who wants to do so, I select very carefully who I chose to follow. I frankly don\'t buy into this idea that if you follow me I have to follow you back, and therefore I make no difference whether you have got 6500 followers or 24. What I look at is what kind of things and information you are sharing with me and how valuable for me these are. The more useful and interesting stuff you have to share the more likely it is that I will follow you. And, given the above, if you are small and unknown with very few followers, it is even more likely that I will follow you as I don\'t like to get tips and breaking news from the same circle of insiders, who just pass around the same stories over and over again.So 2009 will be definitely be a year of maturation for both Twitter as a service as well as for its users who will grow a lot in understanding its best uses and applications. In this direction, in 2009 you will see some truly amazing services built on top of Twitter which will help you manage more effectively the stream of twits coming from your different networks and relationships.

Social Media MarketingThe big discovery in 2009 for many companies will be that you cannot really engineer social media use inside an organization. You can facilitate it, support it, make it emerge, but you fundamentally need to let your own most passionate people find their own best ways to make use of this new conversational tools.Private social networks, vertical communities, decentralized and portal social media solutions are the keywords for 2009. You will see a lot of new names in this space.Better metrics. Everyone is talking about them, and there is indeed a wealth of valuable information to extract from the metadata available around your social activity. It is not so much how many followers, friends or contacts you have, but what these people do with the news and stories you share with them. Do they follow your tips and click on them? Do they pass those items on to their trusted friends? or... what kind of people are those following your friends? Who do they influence? What types of information topics characterizes your listeners? And your sources? How good are you at breaking news early for your network of followers?Finding the best questions and creating tools that enable you to see the big picture under this social media universe could prove extremely valuable in understanding influencers and opinion leaders beyond mere popularity numbers.

Social Shopping2009 marks the first large scale entry of the social shopping metaphor into the mainstream online eCommerce. Beyond what Amazon and eBay have long shown to be the value of recommendations and customer feedback, we are now moving into a year in which you will start benefiting more directly from the advice and recommendations of your own very network.If until today you have relied on the opinions of some unknown guy posting in a forum or commenting under a blog post, in 2009, you will start to see that your own network of contacts can actually help you find a trusted solution to your plumbing needs as well as recommending you the next camcorder you may want to buy, with much greater effectiveness and reliability than any other traditional approach.Two are the key things happening here:

1. New services and eCommerce features will further facilitate your ability to rate, provide feedback, review and recommend any product or service you purchase online.
2. The integration of your social network and presence with many of the online eCommerce destinations will allow you to get advice and recommendations from the people you know and trust rather than from just another user.

"Although customer reviews are nothing new on popular eCommerce sites like eBay and Amazon, in most cases, consumers use the critiques from people they don\'t know. Now with connective technologies like Facebook Connect, Google FriendConnect, and OpenID, consumers will now be able to see reviews, experiences, and critiques from people they actually know and trust. As a result, expect to see eCommerce widgets and applications appear in popular social networks, as well as when visiting existing eCommerce sites the ability to login with your Facebook or Google identity. As an example, next time I\'m shopping for a laptop, not only will I see reviews from editors and consumers, I will now know which one of my friends uses an Apple computer, and what they think of it."(Source: Jeremyah Oywang)

Social ReputationOf all things social, social reputation is going to be the one having the most impact on your personal life and on your opportunities to access new project and work offers. In very simple words, what it is going to happen, is a strong shift from personal credentials based on certifications and tests to the emergence of personal reputation profiles built around the spontaneous comments, evaluations and reference comments of your previous team-mates, co-workers, customers and employers.I see individual persons going around unchecked and deeply lying about their experiences, references and career, to get where they would like to be. How can you still trust a CV or resume and not find out directly by those who met and worked with that person who that person really is. How can you trust that someone mischivious, lazy or outright dishonest will list such personal traits in his CV presentation and why would you trust unchecked credentials when you have the opportunity to spend a little time to find out the truth? Habit... and misunderstanding that the world is rapidly becoming a different place when it comes to evaluating people. Just like for technology products and services, you don\'t go to check the official marketing leaflet of a new camcorder to find out whether it is the one you are looking for. You research, compare models and you ask lots of questions to your friends and competent contacts. You search on Google for your camcorder model and see what others have been saying about it. You go to your friend at the corner electronics store and you ask him what his experience and advice is based on his customers feedback and store sales. That\'s how you chose and select people.Why shouldn\'t it be the same for such critical choices as selecting your partner or new executive marketing manager?This is why getting your hands dirty now with social media, living the idiosyncracies of this new universe, and exposing yourself to the many conversations that the Web provides is a good path to prepare yourself for the future.As your certificates and diplomas will lose more and more of their value what will count most is what people out there think of you and what they are willing to say about you when asked to. This is why is increasingly less important to have a degree or master in a discipline, and it is much more important WHO you have been working, interacting and exposing yourself to and WHAT kinds of things you have produced that others can see.If you say you have been here and there, have done this and that, but then the digital tracks say something different, you suddenly become a self-referential puppet that can survive and get work only within protected circles of friends and allies.Until today, if you lied, misrepresented or concealed something about your past experiences and credentials, it would be only you and someone else to be sharing that information. Now if you do this in public, by replying to public questions in videos and interviews by hiding or misrepresenting facts to your advantage, not only you run a much bigger risk of losing your credibility but this possible discovery, will not remain a private matter that you can easily forget about.To gain solid social reputation you need to transparent and accessible. The more you hide or cover up who you really are, to defend or protect your ideal projected persona (who you think you would like to be) the more this will show true, and while your friends and close mates may keep smiling at you, the opportunities to become a respected reference and a trusted source to those beyond it will likely dwindle.For companies, 2009 will mean the year in which they can start to have a meaningful social media presence. For the most part, companies who have embraced social media so far have done so in a very conservative and somewhat incorrect way. They have landed into social media land bringing in their traditional approaches and behaviours to communications, PR and marketing, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do to be effective inside social media.The wrong strategy approach to use in such situations is the one of placing your best PR and marketing people on these tasks, while who should really ride this opportunity are your best and most passionate workers in the operating lines. These are the people that your customers and suppliers want to see and become friends to.

Online Identity and Your Distributed Social ProfileThe emergence of a centralized Personal Social Identity Profile.2009 should also rescue us from the bad situation we have fallen in when it comes to our profiles on social networks and the need to maintain and create separate ones for each new place you sign-up to, with the same frustrating issue affecting also our network of contacts which we have to slowly rebuild across each and every new social community we enter.What you are likely going to see happen this year is the advent of a new tools and features which will allow you to create a centralized and very comprehensive social profile of yourself and of your network contacts and which will then allow you to share and submit selected parts of it to each of the new web communities and social services you will later join.This will save you a ton of time and frustration, while reducing friction in adopting or testing out new services and tools.

X-EventsIn 2009 you will see some of my original ideas BOUTX-Events become reality. In 2008 already a handful of companies has started to challenge the X-event puzzle by developing tools and projects around the fundamental idea of creating resources to facilitate the creation and realization of events that went beyond their physical occurrence.X-eventsare strongly tied to social media development and the ability of individuals to meet and exchange openly across multiple and diverse communities and social networks. X-events (extended events) can provide an ideal platform to extend the relationship building process that live events are built for as well as to fuel a much larger and lasting conversations.Bantora, is one such company, which working and extending the original X-events paradigm is trying to build the first true X-Event platform.The trend toward extended type of events will give way also to a new approach to virtual conferences: the distributed event. Who said that to have a powerful and memorable event we all need to go to one site or location and do everything there? Can\'t it be that the event organizers launch a theme, or a set of topics, and then aggregate and list distributed events taking place at this or that site or blog as components of the actual event?Say for example that an organization has organized an event that you are very interested in, but it is on the other side of the world and you have not been invited to speak. Organizers could set up an extended event section where they list and aggregate distributed events and presentations complementing the event, that either take place on a platform provided to all those uninvited presents who want to contribute their ideas, or which take place directly on the site and presentation locations chosen by the presenter. Such setup would allow for much greater participation and contributions from any people, while clearly requiring a small dedicated team to manage and organize the output generated by the extended event.

Open SourceIt is the first time I am including "open source" as a relevant new media theme to be included in these new media trends and predictions. From WordPress to BlogBridge, open source tools and applications are increasingly part of my work life and I am increasingly strong supporter of their benefits and advantages over traditional commercial applications.A full professional web publisher toolkit could be made entirely of open source tools like these:

• CMS - WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Joomla, Moodle
• Audio production - Audacity
• Multimedia playback - VLC, Miro
• Recording, conversion and streaming solution for audio and video - FFmpeg
• RSS Aggregation and NewsMastering - Blogbridge
• File Sharing - Limewire and Shareaza
• Video Sharing - Ourmedia - Internet Archive
• Screencasting - CamStudio
• Image editing - Gimp
• Multimedia presentations - Impress
• Instant Messaging - Audium, GAIM, Miranda
• Online Collaboration (real-time) - DimDim
• Operating System - VirtualBox (makes you run a Windows PC inside your Mac)

and the list could go on.If you believe that Free Software and Open Source ideas can help you create better foundations for the future, adopting, contributing to and promoting the use of such technologies can give some tangible force to your ideals.While this isn\'t a prediction at all, I expect to see a growing trend of open-source supporters become more vocal in evangelizing the true benefits of their tools, rather than isolating and separating themselves from the open conversation. Just like for the Linux world, I see a need for less self-referential preaching and for a more humble, open and friendly attitude toward popularizing all of the benefits of this great co-operative approach to life and work.

P2P Peer to Peer2009 will be the year in which newP2P tools and applications will be released. P2P will keep growing and getting more traction and adoption. From file sharing, to content distribution P2P technologies offer a wealth of benefits and opportunities that have not yet been understood and used by those commercial entities who would most benefit from them.Peer to peer technologies are also a natural extension of social collaborative networks and of the need to de-centralize from big corporate hands the monopoly of publishing and sharing information.I also predict that new attempts at creating parallel P2P internets, or alternative support networks that would connect individuals even if and when the established Internet would not be in the position to respond as needed. There are already working examples of such parallel networks in existence and there are bright individuals studying and working on ways to make this possible.

Online CollaborationOnline collaboration technologies from web conferencing to persistent collaborative spaces have yet a long way to go to reach some kind of maturity and 2009 will offer once again an opportunity for new ones to jump in and for many of the established players to deeply innovate and improve on their existing good work.The classic, all-round web conferencing platforms have been given lots of way to new, smaller, faster and easier to use collaboration tools. The past trend has been from large and complex to small, modular and easy to use solutions. Prices for big, top brand web conferencing and collaboration services have been dropping all along, and, from what I see, will need to drop some more to be able to compete with this growing group of smaller and highly performing collaboration tools. If you have no idea of who I am talking about give a look to the over 200 collaboration tools that have been mapped by over 150 participants at my live session at LearningTrends 2008.I am not expecting to see a decrease in the number of tools listed in that collaboration map 12 months from now.You are indeed going to see more and better conferencing, collaboration and live presentation tools come to market, as there is a growing demand for such tools, and existing solutions are often still too clunky, unreliable or difficult to be used by non-technical people.Innovation and new collaboration tools you will see in 2009 will include:

• One-click screen-sharing with people in your social network
• One-click voice chatting with anyone in your social network
• Powerful dedicated online web seminar services
• Free multi-party videoconferencing
• New very innovative presentation tools
• Audio-casting technology allowing anyone to hold an online audio conference(Skypecasts has closed and existing solutions are somewhat clunky and not so reliable)
• Visual presentation and whiteboarding tools
• Integration of mind-mapping as standard tools inside typical whiteboards
• Recording and sharing / republishing features of your collaboration sessions
• Much greater usability and very cool and easy to use interfaces

The ideal collaboration architecture is modular and highly flexible. You subscribe to a service and activate the collaboration features you need on-demand. Such architecture is embedded and contextual to the production and office tools you use daily, much like Google will be doing in 2009 thanks to its integrated web-based approach.The winning business model is free basic services, with premium paid accounts getting advanced, business-oriented features. Period. Free trials are a thing of the past. Instead now collaboration providers will move to proactively reward customers who will invite and extend the customer base by providing them with free or extended account plans. This also is a winning strategy. Technology-wise Adobe Flash is going to be the fundamental technology behind many of these new tools. Whether you like it or not Flash is now the best portable multimedia publishing technology out there, supporting text, audio, video and interactive collaboration right from within its basic engine. Its upcoming and announced capabilities in managing different bandwidth streams requests intelligently as well as its promising auto text transcription abilities may prove to provide huge benefits for anyone using them.

The Ongoing Virtual Conference ProjectIn 2009 an ongoing virtual conference venue will open in hundreds of speakers and topics will be explored both live and in a recorded format. This will be kind of a YouTube of live powerful presentations, and while anyone can sign-up to present in the available slots, it is the public who decides who is featured and who should get the most promotion and visibility.This non-stop conferencing stage will likely offer multiple thematic channels, and the opportunity for anyone with good ideas and an ability for presenting them to do so in front of a potentially unlimited audience. Just like on YouTube.AdobeorMicrosoftcould be ideal sponsors of such an idea but it may be that a small company with a quicker ability to move could steal this opportunity from the one of these big names. Better yet an academic institution could have its way in organizing this idea, with the sponsorship of one of those big names providing the basic platform and with the public goal of creating a unique venue for cultivating knowledge, culture and ideas of all kinds.I am confident also that in 2009 online collaborative approaches and new tools will keep showing up also in other important areas of the media universe such as music production and performance, live video / television production and film-making, news reporting, news investigation, news production and newsroom teamwork.

Education and LearningAs I have written elsewhere, 2009 will see the raise of independent professional educator. This is the individual, who without the requirement of having an official certification, is willing to share his know-how or skills with others according to the terms and conditions sHe establishes.There have been many people doing this on the Web already, either moved by genuine educational motives, by marketing approaches or by the desire to simply share what they had just discovered for themselves. What changes now is a rapidly increasing awareness that those capable of doing this, whatever the real of their knowledge is, will become increasingly useful and in-demand by others.So, it is not so much what you know, but how much of what you know can you actually share and teach to others effectively?Knowing thingsper se, having lots of information in your head without having the ability to put it into useful practice is going to have less and less value in most professional endeavours. What will be increasingly valued instead will be your ability to search and find resources, tools and relevant information on any topic just-in-time, when you will need it.New tools and services to support such emerging new role are going to appear in 2009. Good initial examples of these are new web services like Wiziq and BuddySchool which provide anyone with a platform for sharing, presenting and teaching to others with their preferred method and approach.

Certifications and TestsCertification and tests are going to lose value progressively. What will increasingly count is what you have done and what other people say of you in one way or another.What university you have attended and what score you have graduated with are becoming increasingly irrelevant, as the ability to be able to confront brand new problems and issues, being able to collaborate efficiently with peers, having the skill to communicate clearly and effectively your ideas have become much more important assets than the number of years you have spent studying.Who you know, who you have worked with, and who is willing to recommend and reference your skills are the strategic assets you should start cultivating more in 2009.Test and certifications measure your ability to answer pre-determined questions and to see whether you have properly memorized information about something.Tests are very bad at measuring how well you will perform in a real-life situation and this is why i think they are a fundamentally bad strategy to build our future. By training our kids not to learn how to manage complexity and issues but to guess well in advance of time what the questions at the exam are going to be we dumb down all of their creative possibilities and we certify well ahead of time their inability to be able to cope with the world of complexity and fast change we live in.

What I Will Do in 2009For one, I have decided that in 2009 I will want to make greater sense of where things are going by video interviewing those that see a bit ahead of everyone else - lots of video interviews and analysis of how others are doing things is going to be a central theme of MasterNewMedia in 2009. Be your own boss and how others have been successful at achieving it is going to be the underlying theme driving this extended video series.As already announced in the first part of this report I am launching a new MasterNewMedia design right this month (a small preview was showcased yesterday as well) while still engineering the best way to bring Robin Good\'s international community of followers and fans to life. Unhappy with existing traditional forum solutions and with the first community building tools available now. I am pretty sure though that soon enough I will be provided with the technology I need to realize this ideal.As I see it this would be a mashup between what I can do via blog comments, a forum, a community platform like Ning, a localized Seesmic, a community oriented version of Twitter, all packaged as a portable, distributed Facebook-like service to create a rich, and well organized community space that can exist both on my site as well as any other place where I or others will want to replicate it. On the video front I am going again to bring a live video show to everyone, and focusing on web publishing as my key focus area.In the last year I haven\'t been able to do as much as I had desired on this front due to many technical connectivity issues at my studio location here in Rome. I need a fast and reliable connection no matter what it costs, and I need someone that is properly skilled to reconfigure and upgrade my small studio network so that there are no bottlenecks or data loss. My bet is that we kill the bull right away and that this will give me some too long awaiting opportunities for sharing and helping other online publishers out.In 2009 I will also experiment with the launch of some information products and learning services again connected to my professional web publishing focus and I will keep myself on the lookout for new candidates to my new media publisher internship program (for more info see here).I guess there would be a lot more to talk and say about what is coming next... but for the time being I leave it here.Your feedback, comments, tips and suggestions are always welcome.
Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 1st, 2009 as "New Media Trends And Predictions 2009: What Independent Web Publishers Should Expect - Part 2". ...

In this first 2009 issue of Media Literacy digestGeorge Siemens focuses on cloud computing, connections in social networks, changes in education, and on a cool resource for education technology-related conferences.Photo credit: Cyprien LomasAnd to make 2009 an opportunity for personal change and innovation, George Siemens has decided to experiment a new way of dealing with his everyday tech life by embracing the cloud computing lifestyle.What does that mean? Cloud computing is a way of referring to using software and data that do not reside locally on your computer, but which reside on public commercial services accessible from anywhere you have an Internet connection. So, no need to be confined to your own machine to access your data, you just can use any computer connected to the Internet et voilà, you\'re set.The jump to cloud computing is often much smaller than one would think as many have already adopted web-based software and tools which are now integral part of their workflow. Take Gmail, Flickr or YouTube; both the software and the data in these cases are all in the cloud. And if you are not quite ready yet for the dive into the cloud, you can still go home with some cool new tools to try out immediately. Dr. Siemens features in fact to a brand new software list by Jane Hart with the likely-to-be top tools you may want to consider for adoption in 2009. To dive in, is the only wise step if you want to make you greater sense of the disruptive changes that our society is facing.Here all the details:

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

Year of the CloudCloud computinghas been a common, but somewhat subdued, topic on technology sites. The cloud metaphor is appealing, though what it exactly means is still somewhat unsettled. In a technological sense, cloud computing refers to a service-view of computing, where technical details are largely hidden from end users. Which means, it is driven by financial considerations, as companies can extend their infrastructure without heavy investments in personnel or technology.I'm more interested in the impact of cloud computing. How will my communication and information processing habits change when I don't need to confine myself to a particular computer? What types of software do I need when I don't want to be tied to a particular laptop? So, I've decided to embrace the cloud. On myUniversity of Manitoba blog, I'll be posting my experience to move to device neutral computing… where I have access to what I need as long as I have an internet connection. First post - Year of the Cloud: "My goal: to be device neutral by the end of 2009. Any data accessible in any device from anywhere."

What Will Change Everything?Every year, The Edge asks prominent individuals a big question. This year, with the humble introduction of "New tools equal new perceptions. Through science we create technology and in using our new tools we recreate ourselves" (sounds like McLuhan's "We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us"), The Edge asks: What will change everything?Responses cover enormous territory, including the mind, human nature, technology, biology, and more. A bit of skepticism is found as well - nothing will change everything. Edtech folks will find a bit of hope in At Last: Technology will change educationIt's not light reading, but well worth the time.

Top 10 Future ToolsJane Harthas served the elearning field well this year, taking a Techcrunch role for learning technologies. In her recent post, she turns her attention from looking at the most popular tools today and focuses on what she feels will be the top tools of 2009. Most of the tools listed assume traditional desktop / laptop access to the internet. I think 2009 will be a year where mobile applications continue their enormous growth. In the last several months, I have shifted significantly from my laptop to my mobile (for maps, gmail, twitter, Facebook, news, tracking financial markets).

This Thing Called DepthEnd of the year / start of the new year reflections always seem to centre on meaning and depth. We desire to eliminate meaningless and shallow pursuits in favor of more substantial ones. John Connell asks how to best move to greater depth: "Do we need the bloggers' equivalent of the Slow Movement? Authentic blogging? Critical blogging? Reflective blogging? Blogging09?"Will Richardsonpicks up on a similar theme: "I did some counting yesterday. Totalled up all of the blog posts and comments on those posts for the last three years, and found a pretty interesting relationship. Seems the less I write, the more people comment."A healthy sign of maturity for any field is the recognition, partly reflected in Perry's scheme of intellectual and ethical development, that a larger reality exists outside of the field where we personally spend most of our time. New literacies do not necessarily replace what was important previously. Previously important literacies are at least partly subsumed in new literacies. The maturation of blogging is partly found in main stream media adopting blogs. The other critical ingredient in maturing the field will be found in bloggers participating in previous publication forums (journals, books, etc.).

Twitter, Networks, and "Following" PeopleThe popularity ofFacebook, Twitter, and other social software has resulted in a popularization of network terminology. How networks work and how information flows is understood experientially by anyone who has used the software. As a result, the networking concepts long explored by sociologists and mathematicians are now being explored by Twitter users: How am I connected to others? Who do I need to connect to? What is the balance between having only a few vs. many connections? Valdis Krebsoffers his position on finding the right mix between diversity and depth: "Strategically I am building a small, yet efficient, group that reaches out into the many diverse information pools I am interested in. I know I am finding good people to follow on Twitter by the number of great exchanges that emerge on many topics. Think before you follow, use your time and ties wisely!"

NY Times and VisualizationsWe have hit our scale limit in managing information. We need new processes to make sense of abundance. One approach is found in the use of social networks for filtering important ideas and concepts. A technical approach is found in data visualization. Bill Ives links to the NY Times Visualization Lab. The site is based on IBM's Many Eyes, and allows visitors to create and share visualizations. Visualization will become more prominent, as will our need for literacy with reading and creating different representations of data.

Educational Technology ConferencesClayton R. Wright compiles the most comprehensive list of educational technology conferences. With his permission, I have posted his list for ed tech conferences from Jan-Aug 2009 (.doc). Great resource!

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace and first published on January 2nd 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:Year of the Cloud - pikselWhat Will Change Everything? - maria gritsaiTop 10 Future Tools - Kirsty PargeterThis Thing Called Depth - Erik ReisTwitter, Networks, and "Following" People - ndnlNY Times and Visualizations - The New York TimesEducational Technology Conferences - Clayton R. Wright ...

Coordinating assignments and collaborating effectively on your projects can be a huge pain without the right tool. You need to have an efficient way to communicate, share notes, share documents, share files, and more in order to work together effectively and maximize productivity. Photo credit: Irochka edited by Andre DeutmeyerHere for you today I have selected a set of interesting new tools that bring all those features together into one easy to use interface as well as a new innovative independent platform for teaching and learning. In today\'s issue of the Sharewood Guide, I have brought together eight new hot online collaboration tools. From new Skype alternatives to file sharing services, the online collaboration tools showcased here today were selected with one thing in mind: to make your job easier by facilitating communication and information exchange between you and your team.This is my list of selected online collaboration tools for this week:

• WizIQ - independent online learning and teaching platform integrates audio and video
• Collanos - provides a free project management platform for you and your team
• Broadchoice - enterprise level project management platform that offers a free 30 day trial
• eLecture - allows you to broadcast your own interactive lectures on the net
• VoxOx - like Skype but with text messaging to mobile phones and social network integration
• Vyke - VOIP provider with a focus on free mobile VOIP
• Stinto - allows you to create private and temporary chat rooms
• Limewire - the newest release allows you to set up private p2p networks

Here all the details:

1. WizIQWiZiQ is a web-based platform for anyone who wants to teach or learn live, independently of schools, universities, exams or certification degrees. Teachers and students use WiZiQ for its state-of-the-art virtual classroom, to create and share online educational content and tests, and to connect with persons having similar subject interests. In the Wiziq virtual classroom you can interact online using PowerPoint presentations and documents as well as text chat and full audio and video sharing. Not only. All sessions on WiZiQ are automatically recorded so that you can revisit and even search for a certain topic anytime at your convenience. Last but not least WiZiQ lets you easily share your teaching contents online so that it can be easily embedded on sites and blogs.http://www.wiziq.com
2. CollanosCollanos is a new online collaboration tool targeting non-enterprise organizations that provides users with and single, consolidated workspace that allows you to integrate and share any of your project related content with your team members. From simple documents to images, music, and even video, any type of media can be shared through the Collanos workspace. To facilitate collaboration between team members, Collanos allows you to send instant messages to others and create alerts so that you know when updates have been made to different parts of the project. Collanos does not yet have built in voice communication, but they are planning to add voice chat functionality in the future. Collanos is built on a a peer-to-peer solution that allows you to work on your computer both online and offline. If you have no choice but to work offline, there is no need to worry. Once you get online, your workspaces synchronize automatically with your team members. Best of all Collanos Workplace is completely free to download and use.http://www.collanos.com/
3. BroadchoiceBroadchoice Workspace is an online collaboration tool that provides fast, easy messaging and file sharing between members of your team to help you stay in sync in real time. To collaborate with a group of people, you can create a space and publish content into that space. Spaces serve as your online communication and collaboration area, and a different space can be created for each of the projects you are working on. Through Spaces you can track your different projects, sales opportunities, or even create your own community. Spaces have access controls that allow content owners to publish securely to a private group or open it up to other users within the organization. If your organization uses Salesforce, Broadchoice Workspace integrates seamlessly with your Salesforce contacts so that you can quickly and easily open new channels of communication and collaboration with them. Additionally, Broadchoice Workspace is mobile, although at the moment it only works with the iPhone. If you want to try Broadchoice Workspace out, it is free for the first 30-days, after that you have to sign up for one of their subscription plans, unless you qualify as a non-profit, in which case it is free for you even after the initial 30 day trial.http://www.broadchoice.com/
4. eLectureeLecture provides a virtual classroom software product which allows you to conducte live interactive lectures over the internet, with students/participants attending the lectures virtually. eLecture allows broadcasting of near real time audio and video from the lecturer\'s camera as well as screen capture of the lecturer\'s desktop. Students/participants can submit feedback, post questions and receive answers via eLecture\'s built in text chat. Lecturers can limit the number of participants and number of questions each participant can ask. eLecture also has built in multi-lingual support for English, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, German, Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese. If you are looking for a solution for corporate training or distance education, then eLecture is worth checking out.Unfortunately eLecture is a Windows application for the time being. Before you go download eLecture, realize first that it comes in two parts. If you want to broadcast your lecture, you need to download the Electure Server and install the program onto your server. Once installed, you can begin broadcasting your lecture. But in order for participants to view your lecture, they must download Electure Console.http://www.umediaserver.net/electure/
5. VoxOxThe best definition of VoxOx that I have seen is "Skype on steroids" because that is exactly what VoxOx is. Like Skpe, VoxOx offers free VOIP services to its members when you are calling computer to computer. When calling from computer to land / mobile phone then you will have to dish out some cash but not much. Also similar to Skype, VoxOx allows you to instant message and share files with people that you are talking to.Where VoxOx differentiates itself from Skype is its integration of social networks like Facebook and MySpace into its communication platform so that you can instant message friends on those networks without having to enter those networks directly. VoxOx also provides you with the ability to send and receive text messages from VoxOx to and from a mobile phone. VoxOx is free so check it out. http://www.voxox.com/
6. VykeVyke is not technically an online collaboration service as much as it is an online communication service. Like Skype, Vyke is in the business of providing VOIP services to its members. But what separates Vyke from Skype is their focus. Unlike Skype which focuses primarily on PC to PC VOIP, Vyke does not serve the PC to PC market. Rather they are focused on providing mobile to mobile, mobile to PC, and PC to mobile VOIP and text messaging services. Vyke is free to download, and you only pay if you use Vyke to call to fixed line phones from your mobile or PC device.http://www.vyke.com/
7. StintoStinto is a new collaboration service that allows you to create your own temporary chat room instantly. After you have created the chat room, your friends and colleagues can join and you can begin plotting and scheming to your heart\'s content. Once you have finished making your plans for world domination, your chat room is deleted automatically after a set period of inactivity, thus erasing all trace of your evil plans. If world domination doesn\'t float your boat, you can also participate in more innocuos activities like conferences with business partners, planning for the evening with friends, and gamer meetings. http://www.stinto.net/
8. Limewire 5Limewire is a P2P file sharing service that has been around for a long time. Normally an established service like Limewire would not be covered here, but Limewire is alpha testing their newest version... Limewire 5. And one of the features that is being included in this newest update is the ability to set up private torrent networks. Which means that only your friends and others that you invite will beable to access this network and download the torrents that are being offered there. This feature allows you to very quickly share files - large and small - with team members, friends, and family without having to worry about strangers getting their grubby hands on your data, home movies, etc.http://limewire.com/

Would you like to suggest other online collaboration solutions? Would you like to share your own experiences with any of the solutions reviewed? Please leave a comment below.

Originally written by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 4th 2009 as Online Collaboration Tools - New Technologies And Web Services - Sharewood Guide Jan 04 09 ...

When ad networks alone are not enough to sell all of your ad inventory, ad exchanges step in to help you maximize the money you make. Put simply, ad exchanges work on the same idea as stock markets. They allow buyers to bid on your inventory, and the demand for your inventory determines the price at which you can sell it.Photo credit: Travel Aficionado edited by Andre DeutmeyerMaking a living as an independent web publisher means that you have to do one thing very well: monetizing your content. Google AdSense is where most publishers start because it is easy to set up. But how do you do ensure that you are getting top dollar for your ad inventory? Joining a vertical ad network to sell your inventory is a good idea. But the problem with ad networks is that even if they are good, you will have a hard time selling 100% of your ad inventory all the time, and there is no easy way to know if you are getting the most you can out of your available ad inventory.Ad networks play an important role in bringing you and similar web publishers together with online advertisers. But because ad networks are typically disconnected from the rest of the market (i.e. any given network only works with a small percentage of the available advertisers and publishers, rather than the whole market), they can limit profitability because they offer limited supply and demand. For publishers who link or daisy chain ad networks together, manually prioritizing ad inventory to networks can be a hassle. And there is no way to guarantee that your set up is making you the most money.This is where the ad exchange steps in. In the exchange, all market players - advertisers, publishers, and networks - are interconnected on a common platform. If your ad spot can\'t be sold at a premium price set by you, it is auctioned off in the exchange. You set the minimum bid price and then simple supply and demand economics take over. All advertisers have access to and compete for your ad spots in real-time. The advertiser with the highest bid purchases any given ad spot and the process begins anew as your ad inventory opens up.Currently, ad exchanges seem to be relegated to the remnant ad market (the leftover ad inventory spaces available on your site). But the real potential for online ad exchanges lies in not just maximizing the return on your remnant ad inventory, but in opening up your entire ad inventory to real-time bidding.If you have ever considered using an ad exchange... or even if you have never considered using an ad exchange and you have no idea where to start and what to look for, then there is no better place to start than here. In this article I have brought together some of the largest ad exchanges - AdBrite, ContextWeb\'s ADSDAQ, Yahoo\'s RightMedia Exchange, and Google\'s DoubleClick Advertising Exchange - with some of the newest entrants into the ad exchange space - TRAFFIQ and Turn - for a comparison of their unique traits and characteristics.If you are looking for ways to improve the monetization of your existing site and are caressing the idea of opening up your ad inventory placement opportunities to real-time bidding then you may find some useful information in this guide..Here all the details:

Ad Exchanges ReviewedThe ad exchanges reviewed below were selected because they allow independent publishers to submit their ad inventory directly to the exchanges.

• AdBriteAdBrite ad exchange aggregates more than 45,000 publishers including big names like LinkedIn and the Drudge Report as well as thousands of long tail small niche publishers with over 7000 advertisers including big brands like Verizon and the US Navy. Additionally, AdBrite teams up with over 20 of the leading ad networks, thus helping to ensure a dynamic marketplace for ad trading.Every ad that is served is served on a eCPM (effective CPM) basis. So it doesn't matter whether or not the ad being served is a CPM, CPC, or CPA ad, each is converted to eCPM to determine which ad will be the most profitable for you. Each time there is a page view, AdBrite calculates the demographics and geo-location of the user, the contextual meaning of the page and other factors, and runs an auction for all interested advertisers.The AdBrite ad exchange service can be integrated with other ad management platforms. And AdBrite serves both your standard graphical display ads and rich media ads; text ads like Google AdSense; as well as interactive interstitial ads (full page ads).Publishers have complete control over the ads to be displayed. You can review and if necessary remove any ad before or after it appears on your site. Furthermore to maximize revenue you can set your own reserve price. For example, if you believe that you could make a minimum of $2 CPM for a specific ad spot, you would set your reserve price at $2. If AdBrite can't beat the reserve price, your backup network (Google AdSense or another of your choice) will fill the ad spot. Additionally you can control the look and feel of ads so that the ads best fit your site design.Unique Feature: With one snippet of AdBrite HTML code, each publisher has the choice of displaying banner ads, rich media ads, text ads, inline ads (double-underlined words that display a relevant ad when the mouse hovers over it) or full-page interstitial ads. Additionally, AdBrite InVideo enables ads in videos, and BritePic enables advertising on still images.All AdBrite features can be accessed by anyone, instantly, using a self-service interface at http://www.adbrite.com/.
• ADSDAQSince its inception in early 2005, the ADSDAQ (think NASDAQ for ads) ad exchange was built by offering a CPM AskPrice to publishers. ADSDAQ offers a self-service desk for publishers, which allows smaller, long-tail publishers to take advantage of market dynamics to sell off their ad inventory.The ad exchange brings together more than 7,000 publishers, including 100 of the comScore 250 websites, including Fox News, Accuweather, and Belo Interactive Media and many smaller niche sites with interactive ad agencies, including Digitas and Modem Media (Publicis), Agency.com (Omnicom), and more than 350 advertisers run on the ADSDAQ exchange, including some of the biggest brands in automotive, pharmaceuticals, travel, consumer electronics, insurance and financial services.ADSDAQ only sells graphical display ads. ADSDAQ support standard IAB sizes and runs standard graphical and various rich media formats.If ADSDAQ is unable to clear inventory at the publisher AskPrice, ADSDAQ enables each one to specify backup networks such as BURST, Tribal Fusion, Google AdSense and many others to sell your remnant inventory.However, ADSDAQ touts itself as an ad exchange for premium ad inventory, not remnant. Since the publishers will set their CPM AskPrice, the ADSDAQ exchange is a first stop for inventory prior to a publisher\'s ad network remnant alternatives.Unique Feature: One of the things that make ADSDAQ unique is that it has focused on direct relationships with ad agencies, advertisers and publishers rather than working with existing ad networks like the other ad exchanges do.Contact one of the ADSDAQ representatives for more information at http://exchange.contextweb.com/sellingdesk/
• DoubleClick Advertising ExchangeBought by Google in 2007, the DoubleClick ad exchange brings together some of the largest publishers on the web with advertising from top firms representing a broad range of established Fortune 500 companies and newer, upstart brands. Additonally, DoubleClick works with ad networks to ensure a dynamic market driven trading environment for all.Although, the DoubleClick ad exchange tends to focus on large scale publishers, smaller niche publishers can also use the marketplace to sell their inventory.For publishers, DoubleClick Advertising Exchange attempts to generate maximum possible revenue for every single ad impression. The system enables sellers to dynamically allocate inventory to the highest-paying sales channel, rendering obsolete the arbitrary "premium" vs. "non-premium" (or "remnant") inventory distinctions. Publishers will always get the highest paying ad in the market.DoubleClick Advertising Exchange now supports the buying and selling of all standard types of online display advertising. However, the exchange was built to support a range of inventory, including graphical, video, and even in-game ads.The advertising exchange is tightly integrated with DoubleClick\'s existing DART ad management platform, enabling yield maximization across sales channels for sellers, as well as shared creatives, advertisers, Spotlight Tags and audience targeting for buyers. Dynamic allocation: For publishers, DoubleClick Advertising Exchange automatically determines how to generate the highest return for every impression by dynamically allocating to the highest paying sales channel.Publishers benefit from complete control over to whom impressions are sold, what ads are run and at what price. DoubleClick Advertising Exchange provides a single billing and payment point for all transactions, so you receive a single aggregate payment for all ads served, regardless of the number of buyers.DoubleClick ad exchange does not integrate with other ad management platforms easily, but if you use DoubleClick\'s ad management platforms and DART then the integration is seamless.In order to sign up for DoubleClick, you must contact a representative at http://doubleclick.com
• Right Media ExchangeRight Media Exchange is considered to be the founding father of the ad exchanges. Launched in 2005 and bought by Yahoo in 2007, Right Media Exchange works with top-tier publishers like Tickle, Looksmart, Fox, Yahoo! (obviously), and thousands of smaller, niche publishers on their direct media exchange platform. On the advertising side of this equation, Right Media works with the top 10 ad agencies in the US, as well as a range of ad networks including Revenue Science and Adtegrity.Right Media facilitates transactions for all rich media, graphical, and text based IAB-approved ad units.Right Media provides an extensive set of classification and protection mechanisms for both buyers and sellers in the exchange. Ads and sites can be filtered using approximately 160 different attributes. Furthermore, before any ad is served it is scrutinized by an automated (creative tester) and human review process to stop potentially harmful creative from flowing through the exchange and ending up on your site.Like most of the ad exchanges featured here, Right Media makes its money by taking a cut of each transaction from ad networks and publishers.Unique Feature: Right Media offers APIs to outside developers. The APIs allow businesses to seamlessly plug into and develop technology for the exchange so that a tremendous amount of new services and value can be brought to the exchange community by third party developers.To sign up for the Right Media Exchange, go to https://direct.rightmedia.com/tour/index3.php
• TRAFFIQTRAFFIQ is one of the newest entrants into the ad exchange space, but has already been selected for the Silicon Alley Insider 25 list honoring the world\'s most valuable digital startups. TRAFFIQ is a self-serve platform designed to help publishers of all sizes sell their inventory to advertisers. Since launching in August 2007, TRAFFIQ has brought together 1,500 brand name and quality niche publishers with more than 400 leading agencies and advertisers. TRAFFIQ partners include most of Fortune 1000 advertisers, mid-size advertisers, and premium and niche publishers, including: Federated Media, Healthcentral.com, Sky Sports, PerezHilton, and more.Using TRAFFIQ publishers can setup storefronts, segment, bundle, and list their inventory according to highly targeted premium and niche attributes. TRAFFIQ also offers full-path conversion tracking and reporting which allows publishers to completely capture of the full path of user engagement allowing publishers to gain a deeper understanding of the role of their inventory relative to other touch points, and price their inventory accordingly. Because TRAFFIQ allows publishers a lot of flexibility to describe their audience, advertisers can more easily match their preferences with your ad inventory. Advertisers are happy because they can easily launch highly targeted advertising campaigns ensuring that the ads are placed on a pre-approved list of sites and publishers. Publishers benefit because they get highly relevant ads.Like DoubleClick, TRAFFIQ handles all reconciliation and billing, so that publishers receive one check with all their ad revenue, rather than having to receive a separate check from each advertiser. And like the other ad exchanges reviewed here, there is no upfront cost to join TRAFFIQ, instead sellers pay a fixed percent commission on ads sold.Unique Feature: Using the publisher storefront, TRAFFIQ can serve as a rudimentary futures markets, letting publishers sell ad space several months in advance.To find out more about TRAFFIQ check out https://itx.traffiq.com/register/default.aspx
• TurnThe Turn Smart Market is the other new entrant into the ad exchange space. Turn targets mid-size to larger publishers typically generating at least 100,000 ad impression per month. But any publisher can technically become a participant in the market, regardless of size, if the site is well built and serves a targetable niche.The Turn web-based publisher console gives you control over which advertisers, ad types, and ads are delivered to your website.Turn provides a single billing and payment point for all transactions, so you receive a single aggregate payment for all ads served within 30 days of the last day of the month in which ads were served.The Turn Smart Market is a "revenue ranked" auction, in which the ad with the highest predicted eCPM (effective CPM) wins the auction. As such the ad exchange can basically any type of ad, regardless of pricing structute (CPM, CPC, and CPA pricing). For every ad served, Turn automatically calculates the eCPM real-time, ranks every eligible ad, and the one with the highest eCPM wins the auction.To find out more information about Turn, visit http://www.turn.com/corp/publishers/publishers-overview.jsp

N.B.: One ad exchange that I would have liked to include in this guide is Microsoft\'s AdECN. Although Microsoft's AdECN is one of the largest ad exchanges, AdECN Exchange offers membership only to advertising networks, advertiser and publisher brokers, and agencies. According to their website, in order to remain "neutral and not compete with its members, AdECN does not work directly with advertisers or publishers". Because AdECN does not allow publishers to join the ad exchange directly, AdECN was not reviewed here.

Would you like to suggest other ad exchange solutions? Would you like to share your own experiences with any of the ad exchanges reviewed? Please leave a comment below.

Originally written by Andre Deutmeyer for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 5th 2009 as Advertising Exchange: Ad Exchanges Open Up Your Ad Inventory To Real-Time Bidding - Best Ad Exchanges Reviewed ...

It\'s all so good to talk aboutnew media, 2.0, participation, collaboration, real-time web, mashing-up, agile development, remixing, or lifestreaming but what value do these discoveries have when as soon as we turn our heads home and to our kids we still force them to go through an education system that embraces none of such fantastic discoveries?Photo credit: Dmitriy ShironosovWhy has it that advertising, marketing and new media have been able to rapidly deeply transform their own survival paradigms and have embraced principles exactly opposite to those that made them rich before but none of the discoveries and realizations we have made in this paradigm shift have contaminated our world wide educational system? Too early to ask?Why? Is it because we have often no direct business interest in education? Or is it because we have long stopped asking some good questions about what kind of value such school systems really provide?The tacit assumption here is that it is that we have been realizing for a while that true, useful, memorable learning takes place when there are conditions and a setting very different from the one offered by a classroom: Focus on the learning, not on the teaching, getting away from information stuffing and realizing the value of direct understanding and engagement, discovery work, exploration, opportunity to make lots of mistakes, interaction with elders/ experts, passionate peers, are just some key elements we have realized make a true difference in creating a setting where true learning can take place. And the internet itself offers so many great opportunities to bring together those who really want to learn with those who know and want to share. Why then do we need to compromise for second-hand experts and hand over the greatest amount of official learning time our kids will spend with someone whose only credentials are mostly made up of certifications of tests sHe has taken? Given the times, wouldn\'t reputation and work produced be better "metrics"?I think it is about time that each kid wanting to learn something seriously should have the opportunity to do so by accessing the real world, he is supposedly being prepared for, and being granted a passport to access it as an explorer / assistant / lurker / collaborator depending on the situation. Newsrooms can open up to those who want to learn how to online media, just as much as a shoe shop or an auto mechanic can reserve days or time slots for having people who are there to watch, help, learn. For what are more theoretical matters students should be free to choose their teachers, and not be forced to be matched by sheer chance to instructors and peers who have nothing do with their interests and preferences. If the learner is the one who needs to come out with something of value from this long forced confined training, sHe should at least have the option to choose from whom to be instructed and be given the opportunity to do that learning path with other people cultivating the same interest and preference. Or not? Collaboration, conferencing and video technologies offer the opportunity to any student to potentially attend and make up a personalized curriculum of instructors and experts to learn from that doesn\'t require moving to Stanford, California, nor to wake up everything morning at 5 to take a train and two lousy buses. Or not?So, what\'s up everyone? Besides the few guys out there spending serious time researching and lecturing on today\'s educational challenges what are you doing to harmonize a little more what you have learned in the world of media and communication to the universe of learning and education your kids are immersed into?Feel free to shoot me back your criticism or ideas in the comments section of this post, and allow me to share with you a first short set of very brief video clips I have asked a few friends to record while I was preparing my LeWeb08 presentation: Howard Rheingold, Jay Cross, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Nancy White, Gerd Leonhard and Teemu Arina have all accepted to record a few short videos for me while addressing some of the issues relating to our educational system and its future.In this first part (tomorrow Part 2) my questions are targeted at understanding what kind of education system we have, what do we really get out of it, and whether the infinite exams, tests and pieces of paper we get from them are really useful for living a successful / meaningful life. Well, here are some interesting views to start.

Is Our Educational System Broken?
The Paradox of 2.0 - Robin Good
Robin Good on the Paradox of 2.0 - Le Web 2008 from Erno Hannink on Vimeo.Duration: 2\':35"
What I Learned in the School System - George SiemensDuration: 1\':16"Most of what I\'ve learned in the formal education system, especially at a K-12 level, doesn\'t necessarily have a huge impact to where I am and what I am doing today.If I was to say what\'s the one skill that\'s most critical, I\'d have to say typing. That\'s the one skill that I learned in K-12 system that, to this day, serves me on a daily ongoing basis.Otherwise, so much of what I need today, I encounter, whether it\'s a skill that I need to develop, which is driven by passion and interest, sometimes by work requirements, or whether it\'s knowledge that I need to complete a particular task, whether it\'s in work or just through my personal hobby or interest, almost everything that I use on a regular basis today has come as a result of me wanting to learn it, rather than being forced to or being put in a position where it was part of a curriculum.So if anything, our schools system today should foster the creation of a passion, it should encourage individuals to pursue what it is that they most love doing and eliminate barriers to achieving what people actually want to do.

Are Schools Useful Learning Environments? - Jay CrossDuration: 0:44"..... is what I\'ve learned in school. Schools are for socialization, not for learning.I was happy to have a good sendoff with school, but I have learned more in every six months on the Web that I\'ve learned for instance in Princeton and Harvard, I can tell you that.It\'s not what people teach anyway, It\'s what people learn, and learning is the responsibility of the learner not the teacher.I\'m a little down on universities, although I know it\'s good to have resource centers and things like that, but increasingly the knowledge of the past is not the wisdom of the future.

What Interests Do Universities Serve? - Gerd LeonhardDuration: 0:52""Whose interest do school and universities currently serve?"I think of course in many cases they kind of serve their own interest and... well, maybe not entirely serving their own interest, but it is something of course that has become a self-perpetuating thing.I think academia general needs to really open up and see what\'s out there in terms of knowledge and intelligence that\'s not part of this kind of world yet.To me learning is something that goes on everywhere between people, not between authorized professionals. Of course the question of quality comes up here. I think that is a real concern that we create peer pressure, so to speak, about quality and merit which we have on the Web in many cases.I do think that there\'s a huge trend towards the Web becoming the open learning platform. I hope it\'s not going all be about "Google.edu", but chances are that is going to be a substantial part of it.

What Kind of Education Do We Get in Schools? - Nancy WhiteDuration: 0:21""What kind of education do we get in today\'s school?"I think I\'d have to turn the camera around at my son to answer that question, but I know that by watching as a parent, I\'m worried about what I see in school, I see people trying to get in the "test score mode" rather than really learning. And if learning is to become a life-long practice, which I believe it is, we need to change the way we\'re teaching in schools.

Whose Interests Are Universities Serving? - Teemu ArinaDuration: 1\':21""Whose interest schools and universities serve?"I think that schools who have adapted something like learning management systems, are not really serving learning, but they\'re serving teaching and control.And from that point of view, these systems are none the best methods for learning. There are more like good methods for managing people, courses, information. But not learning.On the Web people have been talking about personal learning environments. That\'s the idea that you construct your own learning environment. And in that world I see the future of these institutions and universities to be more like learning resource centers.Where you go, it provides a meaningful environment networks, and the people who are working on these things, may be even coaches who can help you to find the right communities, sort of tap into the right information. This come up with your own way of understanding these things.It\'s about scaffolding. These institutions will be about scaffolding, and it\'s not a tight-up environment with walls, but rather part of a network itself and interacting with the networks at the same time.

Do We All Need a Degree to Be Successful? - Nancy WhiteDuration: 0:35"My son\'s going to take this video, so he\'s going to love this one. The question is: "Do my sons need a degree and why?". This is a really interesting question because both my sons stepped out of schools and one is going back.I think there\'s this push in the US that you need a degree in order to make a decent wage. But I look at what I do now, and a lot of what I do now has been formed by things I\'ve learned since I left school.So, I think it depends on how motivated you are and how much you\'re an ongoing learner.I think there\'s definitely a place for certain kinds of degrees but... everybody? I don\'t know!

Will We Need Degrees in the Future? - Teemu ArinaDuration: 1\':17""Would someone need a degree in the future?"I think in the future we will learn from multiple sources, from multiple people, from multiple information systems, and also from the past as well as current future.In that world we will also provide degrees not based on one single source: the university. But we will gather these fragments which happen in interactions online.When I\'m going to one school, to one course, to one conference like LeWeb, or I\'m blogging, whatever these different events are, someone could go through that and provide me some kind of evaluation for my future boss: "This guy has been really thinking about these things many years." It\'s not just what he\'s done and written down, and what kind of numbers you got in tests, but also what other people are saying about him.It\'s also about what other people say about you, what is your impact on the network, and how you manage to do that impact, that is going to get you forward.

Will We Need Degrees and Certificates? - Stephen DownesDuration: 1\':02"We can ask: "Do my sons or my daughters need a degree to get ahead in tomorrow\'s world?", and the question really depends on what they\'re trying to do.if they\'re going to be involved in academic employment where they\'ll be judged, lacking if they don\'t have a degree, then they\'re going to have to get that piece of paper. That\'s a matter of pragmatic practicality.But if they are involved in creative or artistic fields, in fields where your work is your calling card, where you can prove your worth with good code, good work, good writing, whatever, then NO, they are not going to get a degree.I think in the future we\'re going to see more and more scope for employment in the creative fields, and less for employments in more traditionally academic fields.So I think they\'ll be able to get by without a degree. But, again, it would depend on their choices.

Special thanks go to the kindness and generous sharing attitude of my friends:

• George Siemens - eLearnSpace
• Jay Cross - http://www.linkedin.com/in/jaycross">Internet Time Blog
• Gerd Leonhard - Media Futurist
• Nancy White - Full Circle Associates
• Teemu Arina - Dicole
• Stephen Downes - Stephen\'s Web

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 6, 2009 as "Education And Learning: A Paradigm Shift? - Part 1 - Is Our Educational System Broken?" ...

What kind of approach to education and learning must we have, if the end result we want to provide to our kids is to enhance their ability to self-direct themselves into living a sustainable, meaningful and successful life?Photo credit: Dmitriy ShironosovIf our goal is the one of truly having our children learn the ins and outs of life and the strategies and skills to challenge them, why are we segregating them out of our world and excluding them from the opportunity of learning from real-life experts the things that they are mostly interested in?If modern life is all about faster change, complexity, diversity and information / communication how can we expect to prepare our kids for the future when all we provide to them is a static and pre-defined curriculum of topics that is one and the same for everyone?Helping me out in this quest are againHoward Rheingold, Jay Cross, Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Nancy White, Gerd Leonhard and Teemu Arina who have kindly accepted to record a few short, one-minute-long video thoughts on these topics.Here, in Part 2 of this article (Part 1 here) their one-minute views on some these key questions:

What Education Can Prepare You For A Meaningful Life?
The Importance of School - Jay CrossDuration: 0\':38\'\'You ask how important is school.School, because you\'re taught things and only part of that is learned, and then most of that is forgotten because there is a lack of application, before you have a chance to really use any of these things.What I learned in school is almost worthless.However, school is a great socialization device. I guess if you think if the learning is not the academics, but learning how to get along with people, I learned some very useful things in school.

Learning to Inquire - Howard RheingoldDuration: 1\':20\'\'What I learned in high school was how to get into college. When I got into college it just didn\'t make sense to me to continue to pursue the collection of nuggets of knowledge that I could then regurgitate at tests.At the time I was really interested in learning, so I went to a place called Reed. I\'d say that the one thing that I\'ve received in my college education was a real dedication to inquiry.Instead of collecting knowledge, discovering it. Instead of receiving it, trying to seek it, to answer some kind of questions, something that\'s meaningful to me.Of course, the whole business of "How do you find the answer to questions", back in the old days it was libraries, today it\'s search engines. And how do you judge what you find, how do you analyze it, how do you know it\'s for real, how do you fit it together into a structure of meaning?Those were the things that I learned in college that didn\'t make a lot of sense, then, in regard to what I would do with my life, but actually had a lot to do with what I\'ve ended up doing.

How to Live a Meaningful Life? - Nancy WhiteDuration: 0\':21\'\'"How to prepare ourselves to live a meaningful life?"Be curious, know how to ask questions, know how to communicate, know how to read, know how to cook, know how to drive, know how to saw a button, know how to balance your checkbook, but I think it goes back to curiosity. You can never ever ever ever stop being curious.

How to Prepare Oneself for a Meaningful Life? Stephen DownesDuration: 1\':03\'\'Probably the hardest question to answer is: "What can I do to best prepare myself to have an educated, meaningful life?" And there\'s no simple answer to that question, because it\'s going to depend a lot on what your own interests, and your own inclinations are.If I had to say anything, I\'d tell people: "Follow what interests you! Follow what gets you excited! And pursue that, and not be distracted by the many other things people would tell you that you absolutely have to do."In my own case, it was reading and writing. And while people were trying to get me to do other work, I would be reading. When people were trying to get me to do schoolwork, I would be writing. These are the things that I pursued in my life to make my life better.For you it may be very different, it may be technology, it may be science, may be auto mechanics, it may be industrial design, it may be any of the million things, but whatever it is, follow it.

What to Do to Prepare Your Kids for Life - Gerd LeonhardDuration: 0\':28\'\'"What\'s the best way today if you have kids to prepare them for life?"I think to expose them to lots of different ideas, to have them travel, look at things, and experience things. To have them teach how to use the Web to reach people and to be reached by others, how to connect, and how to interchange.I think one thing that\'s crucial in today\'s world is how to learn how to juggle with this huge river, ocean of information. That learning to learn, to me, I think is one of the key things.

What Is Learning For Me? - George SiemensDuration: 1\':12\'\'What is learning for me?I have to rely on a statement that E.M. Forster famously made, which is "Only connect". I think in a very real sense.For me to learn today is about being properly connected to other people, being able to find information when I want. Having tools at my disposal that allow me to access different sources of information, and also having a network of people that enables me to reach out, ask questions when I need it. These networks are obviously based on trust, these are people that I have followed for a while, who I\'ve been aware of over the last several years.In a real very practical sense, my ability to connect to other people, is learning for me.My ability to find information sources through easy-to-use tools is learning for me. And ultimately, anything whether it\'s policy, government initiatives, copyright, or any other system that puts up barriers between me and my ability to connect to others and information, it is ultimately a barrier to my learning.

Preparation For Life - How To Live Successfully - Jay CrossDuration: 0\':22\'\'Preparation for life?Be relentlessly curious, ask questions all the time, join in your exploration with others, be aware that everything flows, nothing is for certain, it\'s all in flux. Life is beta, hop in and enjoy it.
End of Part 2Part 1 - Education And Learning: A Paradigm Shift - Part 1 - Is Our Educational System Broken?

Special thanks go to the kindness and generous sharing attitude of:

• Jay Cross - Internet Time Blog
• Howard Rheingold - Smart Mobs
• Nancy White - Full Circle Associates
• Stephen Downes - Stephen\'s Web
• Gerd Leonhard - Media Futurist
• George Siemens - eLearnSpace

Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 7, 2009 as "Education And Learning: A Paradigm Shift - Part 2 - How To Prepare You For A Meaningful Life?" ...

If you are struggling to understand the fundamentals ofonline video publishing, as well as how to use videos to do marketing, this video article with Lasse Rouhiainen gives you some good basic information on how to get started.Lasse Rouhiainen and Robin Good - Photo credit: Robin GoodLasse Rouhiainen is a passionate YouTube video publisher based in Alicante, Spain. Lasse who is a passionate video marketing evangelist, works a lot with the tourism sector, helping travel agencies and professionals get familiar and proficient in their use of online video to market and promote their offerings.Having Lasse been a long-time fan of MasterNewMedia by sharing and commenting back on much of my work, I have kindly invited him to join me for an online video interview focusing on the basics of online video publishing and marketing. What I wanted to get from him was some simple and immediately applicable suggestions on what is probably the most difficult part of a video publishing career: getting started. What do you need to do and which are the key problems you will need to face to start publishing your video clips on popular video sharing sites like YouTube?Which is the main mistake that people make when publishing videos online?What is the ideal length for a video?How to choose a good topic for your next video?How to get a video to be viral?Here my short video interview with Lasse along with a full text transcription:

Online Video Marketing - Video Interview With Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 1Duration: 8\' 43"
Full English Text Transcription
IntroRobin Good: Hi guys this is Robin Good from Rome, Italy, and today I am with Lasse Rouhiainen, who\'s not where you think he is, because yes, he\'s from up there in the Scandinavian countries (he will tell us more about it), but he\'s somebody who has moved as a pioneer away from his nice and sunny warm land down to the cold, icy south of Spain. Is that correct?Lasse Rouhiainen: That\'s right, thanks Robin for inviting me. I\'m here in Alicante, it\'s just another place in the Mediterranean like you. We\'re neighbors, kind of.Robin Good: Good! And why did you decide to go the way down to Spain?Lasse Rouhiainen: When I came I just had a job opportunity. I had faith because I really liked the weather, and nowadays thanks to Internet you can work wherever you like. I really like the weather here, and the atmosphere, and the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Meet Lasse RouhiainenRobin Good: Fantastic. I got Lasse here, because Lasse is an interesting guy who\'s working on how to market your videos on the Internet, how to make your message effective by using video. He\'s also part of a major public training evangelism program on how to better use new media, that is part of the Spanish government sponsorship for creating a better culture around the use of these communication tools.He acts like some kind of expert, tutor, advisor, to many people, especially in the filed of tourism, to help these agencies and these tourist operators understand how they can use YouTube and similar services to get their messages out. Did I get this correct?Lasse Rouhiainen: That\'s right, yes.

Main Mistake in Video PublishingRobin Good: Good. My first question to you Lasse, because my readers like you are very much web publishers of all kinds, is: what have you discovered, while you\'ve specialized in this sector of video publishing, is the number one mistake that people make when they put their videos up on YouTube?Lasse Rouhiainen: I would say that the number one mistake is that they wait until the video is perfect. They want to be like Tom Cruise or Penélope Cruz. They like to be like actors and in online media today and Web 2.0 you just have to be yourself. The number one mistake I would say is that people want to act like somebody they are not, or they are waiting too long before they start to do a lot of videos.The most important thing it\'s the same as thinking that you would have some customers visiting your office, and you would have a chat with them. It\'s a simple step, and I think now in 2009 more and more video content will be in different formats on the Internet. We just have to be ourselves. Click the "play" button, and just record how we are and what we do and communicate better with our customers.

Ideal Video LengthRobin Good: That\'s cool, I fully agree with you. One thing that most people ask me nowadays, when it comes to video, tough, is: what is the ideal length of a proper clip? Is there an ideal answer for everybody? Lasse, what do you think, what\'s your take on this?Lasse Rouhiainen: First of all, you can use video in so many formats. You can do video which is like half an hour, or one hour video where you show a conference or something like that, and that kind of video is kind of like relationship building video or credibility video. Then you can do short commercials, which are only like 10 seconds or 20 seconds, or something. It really depends a lot. I would say that when you start, I would start by doing a series of short clips rather than one really long one, because when you are trying to do long one, when you start you just get nervous.Start with selecting like two or three topics that you like, and your customers like, and I would do a video series of those topics. And those videos would be something like two minutes or under 2 minutes. 1 minute, 2 minutes. That\'s a good way to start.

How to Choose a Good TopicRobin Good: Next question people ask me then is about what topic... how should they go about it. You\'re serving a specific audience, which in theory is speaking about touristic destinations. Do you recommend to these people how to take their specific topic, how should they find something that they feel compelled to talk about and that they get a little emotional and interested while presenting, and not being boring when they present? What do you say to them?Lasse Rouhiainen: Yeah, that\'s a good point, and I would add that I also work with other sectors, but tourism is by far the biggest. I would think that it\'s the same question, as you have to think what your customers need to know right now about yourself, about your products and services. Try to think what kind of questions your customers are asking, and make a video based on those questions. You can use surveys or you can think what your customers have been asking before.Just try to focus and think about the video from the viewers\' point of view, and don\'t just talk about yourself and how great you are and all those things.Just focus on the viewer and the customer who is watching the video. That way the video would be really interesting, and that way it can also become a viral video where people start sharing it, if they find it that it\'s adding value and is something useful.

Viral VideosRobin Good: You talk about viral video. Everybody says "I want to get a viral video", but while the definition is somewhat clear to everybody (that is somewhat of a video that gets spread by word of mouth and people telling other people more and more rapidly so that you get thousands and thousands of views), the strategies behind getting a viral video, is that something that you have a formula for?Lasse Rouhiainen: Let\'s say that is something that I have opinion about. I would say that most people like to do viral videos because those are the videos that they hear in the newspapers, on tv, or Internet. But rather I would think that I would like to do video marketing which is profitable, it means that it can move your products, or move your business ahead, or get you more customers or get better relationships. Rather than having one viral video that has millions of views, I would do several videos that don\'t have millions of views, but have let\'s say hundreds of viewers, and those viewers are in your target market. That way it would be much better for your business or whatever you\'re doing.I think viral videos... it\'s really cool to talk about it, but in my opinion there\'s a lot of viral videos that are totally... they\'re just viral, there\'s no business behind. They\'re just one million views and no call to action, and nothing. I think people get distracted there. They think that "the only way for using video in my business is that if I have one million views".That\'s my opinion. We have to think of it as a bigger picture, and not just focus on viral video.
Robin Good: Great answer indeed. I fully share what you say, and I\'m going to take up your advice immediately. For the many other interesting questions that you guys may have for Lasse, you got to come for the next part, because this is only part one of several ones, I guess. Giusto Lasse?Lasse Rouhiainen: Yes, that\'s right.Robin Good: Talk to you in the next one! Thank you Lasse, see you soon!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 8, 2009 as "Online Video Marketing: Basic Tips And Advice From A Video Marketing Evangelist - Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 1" ...

Should news content be the result of the aggregating and selecting from many and varied sources or the word coming from one single perspective? John Blossom analyzes the future of newspapers and openly asks some hard questions in this fascinating and scary article.Photo credit: Paul Turner and Max Gladwell mashed up by Daniele BazzanoWhat do you say? Should newspapers completely rethink their model of journalism? Where are you more likely to read your personally most relevant news today? On a newspaper, on a blog or on Twitter? Why?What should newspapers then do to survive with the web before their dwindling numbers make them crumble?Here the insightful analysis from media and business content expert John Blossom:Intro by Robin Good

Newspaper Apocalypse: What\'s the Next Right Step?by John Blossom

IntroductionGood news about the newspaper industry has been an oxymoron at best in a sinking global economy, and today is no exception. TheStreet.com confirms the buzz that The New York Times is taking out a USD 225 million loan against its new office building off of Times Square while The Wall Street Journal notes that Sam Zell\'s Tribune Co. is sniffing out options for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. Quite a change of pace from last year\'s triumphal posturing of new media headquarters and highly unrealistic revenue goals for private acquisitions would eventually lead to new glories. \'T\'ain\'t working, apparently, as print ad revenues continue to crater except for feature article sections that vie with magazines for more targeted interest groups. As was noted in a study from earlier this year37 percent of Americans go online for their news, while only 27 percent were picking up a newspaper on any given day. Newspapers in the U.S. are now officially a legacy product, though they still represent the majority of ad revenues for most news organizations. The only large markets where newspapers are growing significantly are in nations such as India, where the penetration of the Web still lags behind the thirst for news.While some well-diversified media companies are prepared for the long run of news\' transition into a more electronic future, 2009 is shaping up to be the year in which the newspaper industry begins to face either massive restructuring or widespread collapse. Yet there is hope for traditional providers of news - if they can put their best efforts behind the most profitable opportunities. Here are a few thoughts as to where traditionally print-oriented news organizations must be headed in 2009 to build a more profitable future:

Get Better Than Bloggers and Search Engines at Aggregating NewsMainstream journalists are still equipped oftentimes with the personal networks that enable them to deliver breaking news effectively, but nobody trusts any single news organization as their source for news. Instead, many online news users are turning to bloggers, search engines and messaging services such as Twitter to aggregate breaking news on the topics that matter most to them. In other words, while referral links are highly valuable for people who bother to engage full-length news stories, the sites that provide them are the "go-to" stops for a rapidly growing number of news hounds. Getting breaking news to appear more automatically in these other venues - and to have revenue-producing ads and partnership "hooks" in that remote content - is a key factor for making the most of these aggregators. However, it also points to the lingering question: why aren\'t more mainstream news organizations aggregating more links from other sources in their own core news coverage? I would agree that automated aggregation services like Sphere are of limited value in this regard, but the source-agnostic form of editorial content aggregation favored by bloggers and outlets such as the Huffington Post and Newser appear to be enabling far more engagement for online audiences than "not invented here" news organizations that still insist that their own teams must create most every drop of news that they monetize.

Love Print as a Service, Not as Your BrandIn the nineteenth century newspapers grew up in buildings that housed their editorial staffs, printing presses and loading docks - self-contained factories very much in the model of that era\'s mass manufacturing. In the twentieth century printing presses in many markets moved away to remote locations but most still produced newsprint products only for one source of editorial content and ads. In an era in which news can be aggregated effectively by anyone, that model is no longer a cost-effective approach to print production. Print will continue to thrive as a reading format for some time, but it\'s far less likely that printing presses are going to be running news and ads from only one source. It\'s far more likely that new types of newspapers are going to be with us very shortly, ones which license news from today\'s newspaper staffs and other news sources and share revenues and links to online materials via Data Matrix codes and other print-to-online linking technologies. Individual news organizations are not likely to invest enough in these new kinds of source-agnostic aggregation technologies fast enough to make a difference to their bottom lines, so suffering news organizations would be smart to band together to make such technologies happen sooner rather than later. Alternatively, the time for a "Google Newspapers" printing plant in major markets that aggregates content from many sources agnostically may have come at long last.

Enable Community-generated News More Effectively Small-market newspapers and television cable news outlets have become fairly aggressive in embracing their audiences as sources of news and entertainment. Yet major newspaper chains in many markets are still struggling to get their hands around what it means to empower everyday people as news producers. Social media provides some of the most engaging content online today, yet many publishers still shy away from empowering local news gatherers that do not conform to traditional models of journalism. But many sources of community-generated content - sports scores, traffic reports, eyewitness news - are highly engaging sources of content that can be monetized easily. In an era ofreal-time broadcast news alerts from anyone on services such as Twitter newspapers need to rethink what\'s the best way to engage a community that already knows how to publish to one another.

ConclusionThere\'s no doubt that many news organizations are hitting the right buttons in making decisions on the future of making money from news, but the pace at which those decisions are being made has left a gaping chasm between the cost of sustaining their greatest revenue-generator - print publishing - and the cost of investing more heavily in online publishing methods that will carry them forward to long-term profitability. As much as online is the answer, though, I think that it\'s time for publishers to take a far more radical approach to print as soon as possible. Print will survive and thrive - the only question is, in whose hands? The time to release the medium from the brand is at hand, and it can come none too soon for most news organizations\' bottom lines.

Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published on December 8 2008 as "Newspaper Apocalypse: What\'s the Next Right Step?".

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:Get Better Than Bloggers and Search Engines at Aggregating News - Janaka DharmasenaLove Print as a Service, Not as Your Brands - Ruslan GilmanshinEnable Community-generated News More Effectively - Robin Good ...

Here the best 2008 media literacy tools and resources hand-picked from George Siemens\'s weekly Media Literacy Digest published here on MasterNewMediaPhoto credit: Dawid Krupa and t_rust mashed up by Robin GoodIn this collection you will find the best resources and hundreds of tools relevant to your personal growth, learning and educational resources, as well as to social media, video and business that Dr. Siemens has picked, collected and reviewed for you.Here this unique collection:

Media Literacy Toolsby George Siemens

More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and CountingGreat resource, providing a sampling of how much learning material is available for informal and formal learning: More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and CountingPublished on MasterNewMedia on Mar 15

Over 2300 Learning ToolsJane HartatCentre for Learning and Performance Technologies has been putting together a list of learning tools and technologies. Her directory now includes over 2300 tools. Great place for educators, marketers, people who are randomly bored, to get some new ideas and approaches to teaching and communicating. Jane has split the tools out in "free" and "non-free" categories.Published on MasterNewMedia on May 26

Top 10 Future ToolsJane Harthas served the elearning field well this year, taking a Techcrunch role for learning technologies. In her recent post, she turns her attention from looking at the most popular tools today and focuses on what she feels will be the top tools of 2009. Most of the tools listed assume traditional desktop / laptop access to the internet. I think 2009 will be a year where mobile applications continue their enormous growth. In the last several months, I have shifted significantly from my laptop to my mobile (for maps, gmail, twitter, Facebook, news, tracking financial markets).Published on MasterNewMedia on Jan 3

Social Media Starter KitSocial Media Start Kit is a useful resources intended to "build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world."Weekly modules are still in development (looks like they\'re up to week two), but it looks like a valuable resource.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jul 12

20 Free Ebooks On Social MediaI haven\'t read all of theebooks listed... but this is a useful listing of 20 free ebooks on social media. The list includes resources on podcasting, blogging, usability and related subjects. I\'m not entirely convinced I like the term social media anymore. In the sense that all media (whether creation/production, transmission, reception... and even when media is treated as storage, it still aspires to be viewed) require a producer and consumer, doesn\'t the notion of media have an inherent social trait?Published on MasterNewMedia on Aug 23

Personal SearchPersonal search (based on preselected sites, not the whole web) has been around for a while. Rollyo was one of the first I came across.Basically, a person enters sites they want to search, and when some enters a query into the text box, it search only those sources.Google now offers a similar service (where Google once was an innovator, they are increasingly becoming an imitator - bookmarks, reader, iGoogle, Orkut, etc.): Google Custom Search.Stephen Downes has created a custom edublog search tool from about 450 sources.Lijit is a similar service - you can add all your sites, del.icio.us bookmarks, digg submissions, and so on. The Lijit search of my online identity is here.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jan 12

Tools for Your Video CareerOnline video is where blogs were about 7 or 8 years ago - on the threshold of large scale adoption for content creators due to ease of creation and sharing. Tools for your video career is a useful, though basic, resource on how to get started with creating, sharing, and streaming video.Published on MasterNewMedia on Apr 19

KnolWith up to 30% of Google / Yahoo searches returning links to Wikipedia, Google sees an enormous non-adsensed space. The traffic of Wikipedia makes ad providers salivate. To combat this untapped market, Google opted to create a service called Knol, where articles can be written by experts (sometimes). Anyone can create a knol and invite others to contribute. If several people decide to write a knol on elearning, both are allowed to exist. The community can vote and rate article quality. Authors of knols can also add Google\'s AdSense service to the site and make money in the process. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.Google is essentially stating that individual ownership of articles is important. How will knols be listed in Google searches? Will they receive better search returns than Wikipedia articles? A part of me would like to dislike this service (how much more of our soul must we give up to Google?). But the idea is well conceived. The service seems to function well, without the hideous editing text of mediawiki. Feedback loops are in place through comments and ratings. The opportunity for economic gain will likely also draw some participants. All those factors combine to suggest Knol has a real chance for success. Currently, the resources on the site are quite scarce, however.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jul 26

Microblogging Tools For Your NewsroomThe focus is not purely on education, but Microblogging Tools for your Newsroom is worth a review. Organizations, distributed teams and networks will likely find some of the tools interesting. Usually microblogging refers to twitter, but in this case, the author looks at tools that are used for a particular purpose - such as informal project management, backchannel, etc.Published on MasterNewMedia on Oct 18

Lots of Tools...I should reference where I found this site - 270 tools for your online business - but I\'m clueless as to where I found it. The list includes a combination of free and for-fee applications. Includes tools for roughly every conceivable task: accounting, communicating, planning, brainstorming, project management, and on and on. Educators will likely find a few new tools in the mix...Published on MasterNewMedia on Sep 27

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News. Selection by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano.

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:More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and Counting - Mission to LearnOver 2300 Learning Tools - Centre For Learning & Performance TechnologiesTop 10 Future Tools - Kirsty PargeterSocial Media Starter Kit - We Are Media20 Free Ebooks On Social Media - One Laptop per ChildTools for Your Video Career - YouTubeKnol - KnolMicroblogging Tools For Your Newsroom - Richard BarleyLots Of Tools... - Ricardo Alves ...

In this article you\'ll find more than 30 cool WordPress plugins to customize and tweak the performances of your blog site. Do you want more SEO control, embed videos, or track your RSS feed subscribers? Here\'s some good stuff for you.Photo credit: egalThere are many blogging platform out there and they all do pretty much the same: get you started to publish your own content. But WordPress is by far the favorite one by bloggers. Why? WordPress has an awesome list of plugins to help you personalize your blog and add extra features. So I decided to start from the list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, and extend it with some kind suggestions from Robin Good and MasterNewMedia SEO expert, Matteo Ionescu. The result is a collection of more than 30 plugins for professional web publishing with WordPress, organized in specific categories:a) Content sharingb) Spam Fightingc) SEOd) Navigation Enhancemente) Statsf) WordPress Admin Enhancementg) Content Embeddingh) MiscellanousEnjoy!

30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers

Content Sharing

• FeedBurner FeedSmith The FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin detects all ways to access your feed (e.g. yoursite.com/feed/ or yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php etc) and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally, your comments feed as well.http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78483&topic=13252Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• SociableSociable automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages, and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

Spam Fighting

• Akismet Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's comments admin screen. With the ever increasing amount of spam on the web, you'd be dumb not to get this plugin.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• WP-Spam FreeFed up of all that comment spam?http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Simple Trackback ValidationThe Simple Trackback Validation plugin helps to eliminate trackback spam by performing a simple a simple but effective test on all incoming trackbacks.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-trackback-validation/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

SEO

• All-in-One SEO Pack The All-in-One SEO Pack is the ultimate SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin out there. It automatically optimizes your blog for search engines, and has several options for the more advanced users.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Google XML Sitemaps Generator The Google XML Sitemaps Generator plugin generates an XML sitemap of your WordPress blog. Ask, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN support this format. Having an XML sitemap and submitting it to the search engines that support it can really increase your blog's search engine visibility, especially when it's new.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• RedirectionRedirection is a solution to manage 301 redirects. Very useful if you ever need to change the URL of a post / page, Redirection becomes essential when migrating from another platform. http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• HeadSpaceHeadSpace is meta-tag management on steroids. A great alternative to the popular All In One SEO Pack supporting an incredible number of features.http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/Review by Matteo Ionescu

Navigation Enhancement

• Yet Another Related Posts PluginYet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) inserts a list of related posts below each post on your blog, and in your blog's RSS feed. It's extremely configurable, and a must-have.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• TweetBacksTweetBacks allows you to search the popular microblogging service Twitter for tweets that link to your blog posts. These tweets are then displayed under the entries on your blog site so that you and your readers know how many people shared your thoughts. http://danzarrella.com/wp-tweetbacks-plugin.htmlReview by Daniele Bazzano
• SRG Clean ArchivesThe SRG Clean Archives plugin displays your archive listings in a clean and uniform fashion, that's search engine and user-friendly, on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. If you're still manually updating your archives page, stop doing it!http://www.idunzo.com/projects/clean-archivesReview by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Contact Form 7Even though there are tens of contact form plugins out there, I've always liked Contact Form 7. The problem with most contact form plugins is that either they are too simple or way too complex. Contact Form 7, on the other hand, is extensible yet easy-to-use. It supports Ajax-powered submitting, multiple forms, CAPTCHAS, and Akismet spam filtering.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• DemocracyDemocracy is a simple but effective way to add polls to your WordPress website and enhance user interaction.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/democracy/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• Wp PostRatingsWith Wp PostRatings you con allow your readers to rate your posts. Written in Ajax, is very light and unobtrusive. http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/Review by Daniele Bazzano

Statistics

• WordPress.com StatsWordPress.com Stats is a traffic statistics plugin that shows only the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track – such as page views, referrers, top posts & pages, search engine terms, and clicks – and provides them in a clear and concise interface.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Google Analytics for WordPressThe Google Analytics for WordPress plugin lets you insert the Google Analytics code automatically throughout your blog. It discounts your own visits, automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links, and downloads. It even allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, and track image search queries.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

WordPress Admin Enhancement

• One ClickThe One-Click plugin allows you to upload themes and plugins straight to your WordPress blog from the browser. Just upload the zip file, and it'll automatically unzip the contents and install the plugin for you. Now you never have to use FTP again!http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/one-click-plugin-updater/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Dashboard Widget ManagerEver felt your dashboard was too cluttered? Then download Dashboard Widget Manager. It allows you to remove unnecessary widgets from your dashboard so it'll look clean and load faster.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Lighter MenusLighter Menus creates drop down menus instead of the regular admin menus for WordPress, so you can browse items in one click. It's fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, and comes with some sleek icons.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lighter-admin-drop-menus/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• PageMashCustomize the order of your pages, manage their parent structure, and hide them, all using PageMash. It features an Ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface, and is a great tool to re-arrange the order of your pages quickly.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• ManageableManageable allows inline editing of the date, title, categories, tags, status, and more of both posts and pages without ever having to leave the "Manageable" admin section. No need to load each post or page individually. Simply double-click anywhere in the post or page row and when you're done, press enter.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/manageable/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Role ManagerRole Manager is a solution to handle user levels and allow deep customization of individual permissions. Very useful if you manage a multi-user blog!http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/Role+ManagerReview by Matteo Ionescu

Content Embedding Utilities

• EmbeditEmbedit is a very light plugin (ionly 10 lines of code) which lets you easily embed any HTML code into a WordPress page / post. Works seamlessly across different versions of WordPress.http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/Review by Daniele Bazzano
• Samsarin PHP WidgetVery simple but effective way to add custom widgets into sidebars with your PHP / HTML code. Samsarin PHP Widget functionality should be really implemented in WordPress itself!http://www.samsarin.com/blog/2007/03/10/samsarin-php-widget/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• Exec-PHPExec-PHP lets you execute PHP code in posts, pages, and in the text widgets of your sidebar.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

Miscellaneous

• WP Super CacheI\'m sure you've heard of the Digg Effect and the Slashdot Effect. They can cause a server meltdown, and if you're on shared hosting, get your ass kicked out. To Digg-proof your blog, get WP Super Cache. It reduces the load on your server by generating static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• WordPress Database BackupYou should always backup your WordPress database regularly. However, doing it manually every time can be difficult and time consuming. The WordPress Database Backup plugin lets you easily backup your WordPress database tables. You can even schedule a backup, and it\'ll email the file to you every day!http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• OIO PublisherOIO Publisher is the ultimate ad management plugin. It's great for those who want to sell ads on their blog by themselves. The great thing about OIO is that it removes all the hassle one gets from self-selling ad space: you only have to approve purchases. OIO Publisher handles everything else. Using OIO, you can sell reviews, links, ads, and even your own products! Heck, it even allows you to create your own affiliate program, so other people can sell your ads and products for you.http://www.oiopublisher.com/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• qTranslateMultilingual support is one of the biggest missing features of WordPress, but with qTransalate you can easily accomplish the task of managing different languages for your blog site.http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/Review by Daniele Bazzano
• WP LyteboxWP Lytebox lets you easily add a lightbox effect when clicking a thumbnail to display the fullsize image.http://grupenet.com/2007/08/03/wp-lytebox/Review by Matteo Ionescu

Original list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, extended with the contributions of Robin Good and Matteo Ionescu. First published for MasterNewMedia on December 11, 2008 as "30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers".

Photo credits:Content Sharing - benseguenia khaledSpam Fighting - Andrea DantiSEO - Marco RullkoetterNavigation Enhancement - PhecsoneStats - Janaka DharmasenaWordPress Admin Enhancement - WordPressContent Embedding - norebboMiscellanous - Vitaliy Tumanyan ...

What does it take to make it as a startup in the web 2.0 world? Does it matter whether you are a European company or a Silicon Valley one? Are the chances and opportunities the same? Photo credit: LeWeb \'08 and UstreamJust a month ago atLeWeb08, the two-day Paris event was concluded by a great live session with the Gillmor Gang, a small group of high caliber media technologists and entrepreneurs who, back in 2005 launched a podcast based on a conference call among them to discuss whatever felt hot at the moment.From this unique and memorable live session of the Gillmor Gang, in which LeWeb organizer Loic LeMeur participates actively, I have extracted this delicious 11 minutes of conversation focusing on the differences, the pros and cons, the prejudices and myths, the stereotypes and untold truths about how the real and imagined differences between entrepreneurship on this and that side of the ocean. Steve Gillmor, Hugh McLeod, Marc Canter, Loic LeMeur, Michael Arrington and Loren Feldman give life to a hot and fascinating discussion about the differences between USA and Europe when it comes to launching your own Internet company.Check it out. I found it both enjoyable and insightful. Here is the video with its text transcription:

Entrepreneurship Styles: USA vs Europe - The Gillmor Gang At LeWeb \'08Duration: 11\'10\'\'
English Text Transcription
Entrepreneurs in America Just Have to Play the GameThe tech conferences in Europe, this is my first tech conference in Europe... they seem different.
American events tend to be a lot more elevator pitches, it\'s kind of people coming to you and talking like a robot: "Hi, I got this little startup, here\'s what I do". The European ones... they don\'t do that so much, but they\'re very understated... and it\'s like, to work, to get really pumped up about something takes a lot more work. That\'s my observation.
Marc Canter, you spent a lot of time in Europe, what do you think about the differences between conferences the Valley and Europe.
Ok, so the game, the reason why Loic moved to America, is to play the game. To suck up to the VCs, go over and hang out with Michael Arrington, and that\'s the game.But here in Europe you don\'t have a game like that! You got to go out there and hassle on your own, with your own company, with your own ideas, maybe you don\'t even speak English as your first language...
Yeah, which is insane right?
Yes, it\'s fucked up! But here\'s the thing... In one sense an European entrepreneur is more pure entrepreneur. Because he can\'t play the game. So, he, or she, has to stand on their own, whereas Americans, you go sleep with somebody, whatever...
That is a bunch of horseshit, ok? Real horseshit. [...] I find it offensive.

Is Silicon Valley an Insiders\' Game?I want to finish. Loic, you moved to San Francisco, you live up a 101 or 280, you go hang out on Sand Hill Road. That is an insiders\' game, you got an insiders\' track, you have a much greater likelyhood success.
It\'s not an insiders\' game, that\'s a loser attitude!
It is a loser attitude. Marc, calling Silicon valley an insiders\' game is...
Totally!
...you\'re not the loser, you\'ve made some incredible things in life, but people who tend to that, tend to be losers.It\'s not that... people who say "I\'ve been unsuccessful in Silicon Valley", which is probably the most merit-based society in the world, it is to say: "I just wasn\'t successful so somebody caused failure".I would actually like to hear Loic talk about the differences because he\'s been an entrepreneur in both continents, and I think he\'s going to disagree with you.

In Europe You Have Time for LunchThe differences? You don\'t know how to take time and have lunch. Here, especially here in Paris, we take like two or three hours to have lunch. Because you want to know people, and "there" I feel that it\'s something which is like you want to go so fast, and there\'s always a point.Like if I\'d call you Michael, you\'d be like: "Why are you calling me?"By default it\'s like "what\'s the point?", "why are you calling me?" I invited someone out to a dinner and he said: "Why?". "Why?" Why should we have dinner? It\'s like always why. Why, what\'s the purpose. Always. ...and here we just have a lunch for two hours and we have fun and there\'s no why. That\'s one (difference).
Is it the two-hour lunches and the constant pleasantries? And all the wine drinking? That\'s the reason why Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, are all American companies? Why Skype was sold to an American company? Why Europe constantly looks to United States for leadership and technology? It\'s because you spend your days...(The crowd boos)Go ahead and cheer, but the point is: look how many American speakers did Loic brought to this conference to come and talk on stage. Why isn\'t it the other way around?
I can answer that. I can already feel the shit I\'m going to get for getting so many Americans here at the last session.But I think it\'s very good that you take the time and come here, because we can understand better why. And I still don\'t know exactly the answer, but one of the answers is obviously that you\'re all at the same place.

Silicon Valley Is The Center of the Business WorldSo, Silicon Valley is fantastic and that\'s one of the reasons why I moved there, even tough I really love here up in France, is that: you want to do a deal with FriendFeed, you drive around the corner and what I love, now that I gave you some shit about the lunch, is the deal with Bret Taylor was... Let me tell you the story: when I wanted to integrate my company with FriendFeed, I e-mailed on a Sunday at midnight Bret, the founder of FriendFeed. Midnight. I got a mail in ten minutes, back: "Hey sure, that\'s interesting. Let\'s talk."Another cultural difference, now to your advantage, is in Europe you tend to say: "Ok, alright, for an appointment we\'ll see, we\'ll plan", and it\'s already a little complicated. Bret, he just said: "Yeah, just come by". I said: "When?" "Well, just come by", so that\'s something you need to learn. And I took my car and I went there, on Wednesday, three days after, we were integrated with FriendFeed. That is the part of Silicon Valley which I really really love, is that everything is centered. Here you have to fly, you have to fly to UK, you have to fly to Germany, you have to fly to all around, and that\'s one of the reasons why I started this. At least for two days we\'re in the same room.

Another Difference between American and European Entrepreneurship StylesI want to say something, ok? Europe! You can be more efficient, you can integrate features in three days. America! enjoy your meals. Do you know what I\'m saying? Both are kind of wrong.We need the joie de vivre, we have to enjoy life, you only have one life, you know? Silicon Valley, they don\'t have lives. All they do is work, alright? But see how efficient it is. So, Loic, he gets some work done. So I say to Europe, please work more efficiently,
But you\'d be surprised how much joy you get out of winning. It\'s important. If you\'re going to put the effort into creating a startup, but you\'re only going to be half-assed about it, because you need to balance your life out, you\'re going to lose, because you have to compete with people... I mean, in the United States, we\'re starting to get our ass kicked by Asia, because they work harder than us.And the problem is Europe\'s rich and people like working 35 to 40 hours a week, and so if you\'re an entrepreneur, and you work 50, 60 hours a week you think you\'re really put (I know, I\'m just talking out of my house right now), but there are reasons...I\'ll tell you, the other reason why is the tax structure. The tax structure here is just ridiculous. If you have a startup, and you make it big here, here in Paris... Are you looked down on for being successful? Are you looked down on for making money?

The Vente-Privee ExampleIt\'s more complicated than that Michael. Have you heard of Vente-Privee? Michael? Have you heard of a company, a startup called Vente-privee? (Loic LeMeur asks other panelists).
I\'m sorry, but it isn\'t a matter of we don\'t know the company. I don\'t understand what the hell you\'re saying. I don\'t understand the words that you\'re saying.
I\'m trying to make a point here. This startup you\'ve never heard of is doing 600.000.000 euros in revenue. And the point is none of you have heard of it. Why? Because you don\'t care. You don\'t give a shit.
That\'s bullshit. I\'m sorry, but that\'s bullshit. You don\'t think that in a worldwide depression we\'re not interested in somebody who\'s is making 600.000.000 euros? Come on! It\'s bad PR, it\'s what it is.
Loic, what the hell is your point? I\'ve three full-time writers covering Europe by the way. I didn\'t know what company you said because I didn\'t understand what you said. It\'s great that they\'re making 600.000.000 euros in revenue, but what\'s your point? That there\'s a company here doing well that most of us haven\'t heard of?
Yes, that\'s the point.

American Startups Have More News CoverageAnd somehow that proves that European entrepreneurs are as good as American entrepreneurs?
You don\'t get the same coverage, we\'ve been hugely...
So start blogs! Start a blog, and...
I know that and you\'re covering Europe and that\' great, but the point is: it\'s very very tough for hugely successful companies to get above national borders. Like Vent-Privee is very very well-known here and honestly doesn\'t really care of being on TechCrunch. And it\'s just super successful. I didn\'t mean it in any bad way, but my point is that if you\'re a startup in Germany and you\'re extremely successful, before you\'re known globally it takes a lot more time than if you were in Silicon Valley.And how do we fix this? By having TechCrunch France, and UK, and by having Robert come here, and so I think it\'s great you\'re here, now that I have said that, but it\'s also in both sides. It\'s us trying to connect more with you guys there, but it\'s also you trying to understand more what\'s happening here...
End
Watch the full video of the Gillmor Gang session at LeWeb08.(note: in the transcription, I have left out a couple of comments made by Robert Scoble, not to censor him, but because I personally didn\'t find them very relevant to what was being discussed - Scoble\'s words are left intact in the video but have been edited out in the text transcription in order to make the text of the whole discussion easier to understand for who cannot see the video)

Originally broadcasted by Ustream during LeWeb \'08 and first published on January 12th 2009 as "Entrepreneurship Styles: USA vs Europe - The Gillmor Gang At LeWeb \'08". ...

ScreenToasteris a newscreencasting web-based service which provides high-quality screen video recordings ready for immediate web publication. ScreenToaster works on Macs, PCs and Linux computers and requires no software to downloaded or installed on your end. To me this looks like the best and most promising free / low-cost screencasting solution available out there. More than anything else it is by far the simplest and most immediate to use.Photo credit: ScreenToasterThough the guys atScreenToaster.com have been working hard at this since last August (2008), and though MasterNewMedia had already announced the availability of their service some time ago, I have been waiting for the availability of what I consider the key features of this new, impressive screencasting tool. And now, they are all there. Tomorrow, January 15th 2009, ScreenToaster will officially launch publicly the new version I have been able to review and test ahead of the official release.As you probably know, I don\'t give anymore that much space to in-depth reviews of new tools, as there are many well equipped bloggers who already are doing this, but when it comes to technologies that are really disruptive to existing status quo and which do offer enormous potential for independent online publisher, I can\'t hold myself silent.ScreenToaster is a dream come true. To do a powerful and effective screencast and have it published online on your site you now need nothing more than registering at ScreenToaster.com and start recording now. In no time at all you can have a quality video screen recording, with your voice over ready to be embedded inside your blog site.It doesn\'t matter whether you are on a PC, Mac or Linux machine. ScreenToaster works everywhere.Here all the details:

ScreenToaster PreviewDuration: 3\':57"

Key Features

• Extremely Simple to Use
  This is probably ScreenToaster key winning feature. Even my uncle, who doesn\'t know yet how to listen to music online or how to upload a video to YouTube, can use ScreenToaster in no time at all. And this is the right way to go for any software, web-based or not, which wants to make a significant impact. Make it stupid-proof when it comes to usability. No doubt that there are still a few rough corners, but overall this is a tool to imitate, not so much for its clever usability or interface design solutions, but for having restrained itself so far in adding too many features and commands. The essence is all there, and if it works, there is really no need to add any more frills unless they are very cleverly hidden from the default view.
• Records All of Your Screen Activities in Real-timeScreenToaster records all screen activity on your computer into a video clip, independently of the software, web site or utility you are displaying on your computer. ScreenToaster records everything that appears on your screen. If you can see it, ScreenToaster can record it.
• Records Your Audio in Real-timeOne key important and very useful feature is the ability to record your audio commentary while you are recording the screen. While screen capturing a software demonstration or explaining how to use a certain feature, ScreenToaster is capable of recording non-stop both your computer screen activity as well as the audio input from your microphone or other connected audio device. In addition, it is also possible to record the audio after the video has been captured, a feature that video professionals and voice professionals will likely prefer over the spontaneous and direct approach of live audio recording.
• Records and Overlays Your WebcamScreenToaster is also capable of recording your own video in a small window that can be superimposed near one of the corners of the screen recording. This allows you to show also your face, or to provide a mute language video track alongside the main screen recording.
• Full-screen Recording or via Resizable ViewportOne great and extremely useful feature offered by ScreenToaster, is the ability to choose between full screen recording and partial screen recording via a resizable viewport which can be sized and positioned anywhere you want on the screen.
• Immediate Video PlaybackAs soon as you end a screen recording the video recording is immediately available for you to play back and check. ScreenToaster serves it to you right after you click to Stop Recording button and this by itself is a supercool and useful feature. It even beats classical software solutions, where you often need to wait for a long save before you can actually see your recording.
• Download Video RecordingsScreenToaster provides you with the option of also downloading your recorded screencasts in two standard video formats: AVI or Flash SWF. Both formats are widely used and well supported providing the ScreenToaster user with the ability to master these videos on different media such as CD or DVD as well as to edit them with standard video editing tools. Additional formats, more suited for online video distribution are not needed, as ScreenToaster integrates the capability to directly upload to YouTube and other video sharing sites.
• Post Directly to YouTubeYou can post in one-click any screen recording done with ScreenToaster to YouTube, and to the ScreenToaster.com own public video directory. This is a vital, strategic feature, and if the quality of the videos uploaded on standard video sharing sites holds up, one of those that will bring rapidly thousands of would-be screencasters to this tool. It is just too useful.
• Add Text Notes and CaptionsAfter you have recorded a screencast you can easily add multiple subtitles or captions right under the video. A dedicated tool, makes it extremely easy to add any text you want at any point in the video. Very useful.
• Select Still Frame for ScreencastScreenToaster.com provides a tool to easily select which frame of your screen recording should be utilized as the opening still for your video. Touch of class.
• Fast MotionUnique in its category, SCreenToaster provides the ability to speed up the playback up to 10x. This is a very effective solution for demonstrations and tutorials where you need to compress the showcase of certain operations to a fraction of their original time.
• Embeddable Player WidgetScreenToaster provides a ready to embed snippet of code to embed instantly any screencast into your blog or web site. Just copy and paste the code and you are done.
• Upcoming Additional FeaturesThere are a number of additional cool features coming up inside ScreenToaster including slow-motion, personal profiles, advanced video and audio controls and a lot more. A set of API, a direct video upload facility and the ability to upload to other video sharing sites will be rolled out in the coming weeks and will complement an already solid basic toolset.
• PriceAmazingly, all of these features come to you at zero cost. You can start recording screencasts now at absolutely zero cost.

How Does It WorkWorking with ScreenToaster is as simple as going to its site, signing up and the clicking on the Record screen button appearing on the home page. Once you do that, ScreenToaster will download a small applet and will request your permission to use it. Then, all you need to know is to press Alt-S to start a video recording. To stop or pause the key combination is the same, so one command is all you need to memorize. Before starting a screen recording you can open any software you want to demonstrate or showcase or you can navigate to any web page you wish to illustrate. Once you are set and ready you can press the Alt-S shortcut, and after a brief, 5-second visual countdown your screen recording will automatically start.To pause or stop all you need is to press Alt-S again and a dialog box will pop-up (this may appear on your ScreenToaster page) prompting you to choose whether you want to continue recording or complete and end the recording. If you decide to stop the recording, ScreenToaster will immediately display the video you have just recorded giving you the opportunity to review it.Next to the player showcasing your newly recorded video you will also find a few controls allowing you to start a new recording, edit captions, remove audio or video of the newly recorded one, and the options to save / download and to directly upload to YouTube and to ScreenToaster.com.

Short Video Interview with Marco Fucci CEO of ScreenToaster.comHere is short video conversation withMarco Fucci, CEO and founder of ScreenToaster.com. Marco is based in Paris, France and has been very kind to spend a few minutes explaining why he chose to invest in developing a screencasting tool of this kind, who he thinks are his direct competitors and how ScreeToaster is going to win over them and which business model he is planning to use to make his service sustainable.

Review SummaryKey Strengths

1. Extreme simplicity and ease of useThis is a winning key strength. Few commands and controls. Next to nothing to configure or set. Everything falling into place without needing to be a geek. This is the way all digital tools will need to become.
2. Cross-platform CompatibilityAs a Web-based solution, ScreenToaster has all of the advantages of not being tied to anyone specific operating system. Users on Macs, PCs and Linux computers can all use without any difference in the functionalities available the ScreenToaster screen recording platform.
3. High-quality Video RecordingThe quality of ScreenToaster screen video recordings is impressive and when played back in full screen mode often indistinguishable from a live original. This is vital for screencasters as most of the solutions that have been available until now were not generally suitable for video distribution and almost never provided the ability to watch the screencast in full screen in such high definition.
4. No Software to Download or InstallScreenToaster requires no installation or configuration of dedicated software making it extremely easy for non-technical users to approach this tool and try out its impressive abilities.
5. Extra FeaturesUseful extra features, like webcam integration, recording pause and text captioning are all great additions to an already good screen recording setup like this one. Hats to the product design and engineering team.
6. Direct Upload to YouTubeThis by itself is a great and extremely useful feature as most any video publisher wants to make his content available on YouTube.

N.B.: Some of the features I have listed above are not yet available to the public at large but will become accessible in the coming days.
Areas for Improvement

1. UsabilityWhile there is little to say to such a useful tool, there is definitely space for improvement in the usability and accessibility of this screencasting service. Most of all, easier control of the start, stop, pause commands, possibly via an always visible mini panel would be useful for those who prefer to hit just one button or a key. One key issue right now for non technical people is understanding what is happening and what to do when they hit Alt-S during a recording. While the cool mini display appearing next to the cursor shows a P, standing for Pause, the non tech-savvy user will not know what to do right there and then. As a matter of fact sHe will likely keep pressing Alt-S a few times, without realizing that to bring to a complete end the recording sHe will need to bring up to the front the ScreenToaster page where a dedicated dialog box provides the option to do so.
2. Elapsed Time CounterA digital display of the elapsed time while recording would be a welcome addition.
3. Viewport ControlThe resizable and movable frame that allows to capture specific parts of the screen could be made easier to grab, move, resize, going beyond the present standard abilities. Larger frame borders, larger handle / resize buttons could significantly enhance usability for the non tech audience wanting to use this tool effectively. Also welcome would be a small interactive display of the width and height of the area framed in pixels.
4. Integration with Heyspread or TubemogulScreencasting is definitely a hot and fast growing market, and the surge in personal educational resources will keep boosting this front for a long time to come. Why not partnering then with one of the two powerhouses of online video distribution, Tubemogul and HeySpread to strike a partnership providing screencasting publishers with the option to deliver their screen recording to multiple video sharing sites instead of just one?
5. Integrated Annotation ToolsScreencasting is a promising sector mostly because the demand for customized and specialty video learning opportunities is increasing very fast. With a screencast software can be explained, demos can be imparted to distant listeners and training becomes more personal and enjoyable. For all these reasons integrating a small set of really smart mark-up and annotation tools (nothing like what you see around today) could make a further significant positive difference to those considering to use such a tool.
6. LicenseIntegrating options to license ScreenToaster-produced screencasts under Creative Commons and Public Domain licenses would be a necessary addition too.
7. Support for HDScreenToaster can theoretically record HD video quality from your computer screen. Will it offer this option as an official feature that is well integrated with the increasing number of video sharing sites supporting HD video?

Editor\'s CommentsScreenToaster is a winner. It has a fast growing market, a technology that works across platforms and operating systems, the right attitude when it comes to product development, a desire to build a service that is first of all EASY, and a bunch of features that make it very difficult for non-advanced users to resist adopting it. ScreenToaster is whatJing should have been a long time ago and never was. It is not a free version of Camtasia, nor it pretends to be so. ScreenToaster is the tool, that more than any other one I have seen until now allows you to produce a very good quality screencast with the minimum effort and time.ScreenToaster surely beats what had recently become my first choice for screencasting work on the Mac: ScreenFlow. ScreenToaster, which is free, offers key advanced features like partial screen recording, pausing, uploading to YouTube or adding text captions, which are not even available in what until yesterday was among the best paid screencasting solutions on the Mac. On the PC side I haveCamtasia, a wonderful, pro-level solution. But will I be wanting to go for all the extra features and precision control that Camtasia offers me (at a price), when in many cases I really only need a quality recording that looks good and maximum simplicity of use? Techsmith may have to look into answering this one before its Camtasia sales start to drop rapidly.And again, more than anything else ScreenToaster is by far the simplest and most immediate screncasting tool to use out there. If you want to know what I think, here it is: ScreenToaster is going to toast them all. Seriously.

Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 14th, 2009 as "Web-Based Screencasting Service Integrates High-Quality Screen Recording And Online Video Distribution: ScreenToaster Is Here". ...

ScreenToasteris a newscreencasting web-based service which provides high-quality screen video recordings ready for immediate web publication. ScreenToaster works on Macs, PCs and Linux computers and requires no software to downloaded or installed on your end. To me this looks like the best and most promising free / low-cost screencasting solution available out there. More than anything else it is by far the simplest and most immediate to use.Photo credit: ScreenToasterThough the guys atScreenToaster.com have been working hard at this since last August (2008), and though MasterNewMedia had already announced the availability of their service some time ago, I have been waiting for the availability of what I consider the key features of this new, impressive screencasting tool. And now, they are all there. Tomorrow, January 15th 2009, ScreenToaster will officially launch publicly the new version I have been able to review and test ahead of the official release.As you probably know, I don\'t give anymore that much space to in-depth reviews of new tools, as there are many well equipped bloggers who already are doing this, but when it comes to technologies that are really disruptive to existing status quo and which do offer enormous potential for independent online publisher, I can\'t hold myself silent.ScreenToaster is a dream come true. To do a powerful and effective screencast and have it published online on your site you now need nothing more than registering at ScreenToaster.com and start recording now. In no time at all you can have a quality video screen recording, with your voice over ready to be embedded inside your blog site.It doesn\'t matter whether you are on a PC, Mac or Linux machine. ScreenToaster works everywhere.Here all the details:

ScreenToaster PreviewDuration: 3\':57"

Key Features

• Extremely Simple to Use
  This is probably ScreenToaster key winning feature. Even my uncle, who doesn\'t know yet how to listen to music online or how to upload a video to YouTube, can use ScreenToaster in no time at all. And this is the right way to go for any software, web-based or not, which wants to make a significant impact. Make it stupid-proof when it comes to usability. No doubt that there are still a few rough corners, but overall this is a tool to imitate, not so much for its clever usability or interface design solutions, but for having restrained itself so far in adding too many features and commands. The essence is all there, and if it works, there is really no need to add any more frills unless they are very cleverly hidden from the default view.
• Records All of Your Screen Activities in Real-timeScreenToaster records all screen activity on your computer into a video clip, independently of the software, web site or utility you are displaying on your computer. ScreenToaster records everything that appears on your screen. If you can see it, ScreenToaster can record it.
• Records Your Audio in Real-timeOne key important and very useful feature is the ability to record your audio commentary while you are recording the screen. While screen capturing a software demonstration or explaining how to use a certain feature, ScreenToaster is capable of recording non-stop both your computer screen activity as well as the audio input from your microphone or other connected audio device. In addition, it is also possible to record the audio after the video has been captured, a feature that video professionals and voice professionals will likely prefer over the spontaneous and direct approach of live audio recording.
• Records and Overlays Your WebcamScreenToaster is also capable of recording your own video in a small window that can be superimposed near one of the corners of the screen recording. This allows you to show also your face, or to provide a mute language video track alongside the main screen recording.
• Full-screen Recording or via Resizable ViewportOne great and extremely useful feature offered by ScreenToaster, is the ability to choose between full screen recording and partial screen recording via a resizable viewport which can be sized and positioned anywhere you want on the screen.
• Immediate Video PlaybackAs soon as you end a screen recording the video recording is immediately available for you to play back and check. ScreenToaster serves it to you right after you click to Stop Recording button and this by itself is a supercool and useful feature. It even beats classical software solutions, where you often need to wait for a long save before you can actually see your recording.
• Download Video RecordingsScreenToaster provides you with the option of also downloading your recorded screencasts in two standard video formats: AVI or Flash SWF. Both formats are widely used and well supported providing the ScreenToaster user with the ability to master these videos on different media such as CD or DVD as well as to edit them with standard video editing tools. Additional formats, more suited for online video distribution are not needed, as ScreenToaster integrates the capability to directly upload to YouTube and other video sharing sites.
• Post Directly to YouTubeYou can post in one-click any screen recording done with ScreenToaster to YouTube, and to the ScreenToaster.com own public video directory. This is a vital, strategic feature, and if the quality of the videos uploaded on standard video sharing sites holds up, one of those that will bring rapidly thousands of would-be screencasters to this tool. It is just too useful.
• Add Text Notes and CaptionsAfter you have recorded a screencast you can easily add multiple subtitles or captions right under the video. A dedicated tool, makes it extremely easy to add any text you want at any point in the video. Very useful.
• Select Still Frame for ScreencastScreenToaster.com provides a tool to easily select which frame of your screen recording should be utilized as the opening still for your video. Touch of class.
• Fast MotionUnique in its category, SCreenToaster provides the ability to speed up the playback up to 10x. This is a very effective solution for demonstrations and tutorials where you need to compress the showcase of certain operations to a fraction of their original time.
• Embeddable Player WidgetScreenToaster provides a ready to embed snippet of code to embed instantly any screencast into your blog or web site. Just copy and paste the code and you are done.
• Upcoming Additional FeaturesThere are a number of additional cool features coming up inside ScreenToaster including slow-motion, personal profiles, advanced video and audio controls and a lot more. A set of API, a direct video upload facility and the ability to upload to other video sharing sites will be rolled out in the coming weeks and will complement an already solid basic toolset.
• PriceAmazingly, all of these features come to you at zero cost. You can start recording screencasts now at absolutely zero cost.

How Does It WorkWorking with ScreenToaster is as simple as going to its site, signing up and the clicking on the Record screen button appearing on the home page. Once you do that, ScreenToaster will download a small applet and will request your permission to use it. Then, all you need to know is to press Alt-S to start a video recording. To stop or pause the key combination is the same, so one command is all you need to memorize. Before starting a screen recording you can open any software you want to demonstrate or showcase or you can navigate to any web page you wish to illustrate. Once you are set and ready you can press the Alt-S shortcut, and after a brief, 5-second visual countdown your screen recording will automatically start.To pause or stop all you need is to press Alt-S again and a dialog box will pop-up (this may appear on your ScreenToaster page) prompting you to choose whether you want to continue recording or complete and end the recording. If you decide to stop the recording, ScreenToaster will immediately display the video you have just recorded giving you the opportunity to review it.Next to the player showcasing your newly recorded video you will also find a few controls allowing you to start a new recording, edit captions, remove audio or video of the newly recorded one, and the options to save / download and to directly upload to YouTube and to ScreenToaster.com.

Short Video Interview with Marco Fucci CEO of ScreenToaster.comHere is short video conversation withMarco Fucci, CEO and founder of ScreenToaster.com. Marco is based in Paris, France and has been very kind to spend a few minutes explaining why he chose to invest in developing a screencasting tool of this kind, who he thinks are his direct competitors and how ScreeToaster is going to win over them and which business model he is planning to use to make his service sustainable.

Review SummaryKey Strengths

1. Extreme simplicity and ease of useThis is a winning key strength. Few commands and controls. Next to nothing to configure or set. Everything falling into place without needing to be a geek. This is the way all digital tools will need to become.
2. Cross-platform CompatibilityAs a Web-based solution, ScreenToaster has all of the advantages of not being tied to anyone specific operating system. Users on Macs, PCs and Linux computers can all use without any difference in the functionalities available the ScreenToaster screen recording platform.
3. High-quality Video RecordingThe quality of ScreenToaster screen video recordings is impressive and when played back in full screen mode often indistinguishable from a live original. This is vital for screencasters as most of the solutions that have been available until now were not generally suitable for video distribution and almost never provided the ability to watch the screencast in full screen in such high definition.
4. No Software to Download or InstallScreenToaster requires no installation or configuration of dedicated software making it extremely easy for non-technical users to approach this tool and try out its impressive abilities.
5. Extra FeaturesUseful extra features, like webcam integration, recording pause and text captioning are all great additions to an already good screen recording setup like this one. Hats to the product design and engineering team.
6. Direct Upload to YouTubeThis by itself is a great and extremely useful feature as most any video publisher wants to make his content available on YouTube.

N.B.: Some of the features I have listed above are not yet available to the public at large but will become accessible in the coming days.
Areas for Improvement

1. UsabilityWhile there is little to say to such a useful tool, there is definitely space for improvement in the usability and accessibility of this screencasting service. Most of all, easier control of the start, stop, pause commands, possibly via an always visible mini panel would be useful for those who prefer to hit just one button or a key. One key issue right now for non technical people is understanding what is happening and what to do when they hit Alt-S during a recording. While the cool mini display appearing next to the cursor shows a P, standing for Pause, the non tech-savvy user will not know what to do right there and then. As a matter of fact sHe will likely keep pressing Alt-S a few times, without realizing that to bring to a complete end the recording sHe will need to bring up to the front the ScreenToaster page where a dedicated dialog box provides the option to do so.
2. Elapsed Time CounterA digital display of the elapsed time while recording would be a welcome addition.
3. Viewport ControlThe resizable and movable frame that allows to capture specific parts of the screen could be made easier to grab, move, resize, going beyond the present standard abilities. Larger frame borders, larger handle / resize buttons could significantly enhance usability for the non tech audience wanting to use this tool effectively. Also welcome would be a small interactive display of the width and height of the area framed in pixels.
4. Integration with Heyspread or TubemogulScreencasting is definitely a hot and fast growing market, and the surge in personal educational resources will keep boosting this front for a long time to come. Why not partnering then with one of the two powerhouses of online video distribution, Tubemogul and HeySpread to strike a partnership providing screencasting publishers with the option to deliver their screen recording to multiple video sharing sites instead of just one?
5. Integrated Annotation ToolsScreencasting is a promising sector mostly because the demand for customized and specialty video learning opportunities is increasing very fast. With a screencast software can be explained, demos can be imparted to distant listeners and training becomes more personal and enjoyable. For all these reasons integrating a small set of really smart mark-up and annotation tools (nothing like what you see around today) could make a further significant positive difference to those considering to use such a tool.
6. LicenseIntegrating options to license ScreenToaster-produced screencasts under Creative Commons and Public Domain licenses would be a necessary addition too.
7. Support for HDScreenToaster can theoretically record HD video quality from your computer screen. Will it offer this option as an official feature that is well integrated with the increasing number of video sharing sites supporting HD video?

Editor\'s CommentsScreenToaster is a winner. It has a fast growing market, a technology that works across platforms and operating systems, the right attitude when it comes to product development, a desire to build a service that is first of all EASY, and a bunch of features that make it very difficult for non-advanced users to resist adopting it. ScreenToaster is whatJing should have been a long time ago and never was. It is not a free version of Camtasia, nor it pretends to be so. ScreenToaster is the tool, that more than any other one I have seen until now allows you to produce a very good quality screencast with the minimum effort and time.ScreenToaster surely beats what had recently become my first choice for screencasting work on the Mac: ScreenFlow. ScreenToaster, which is free, offers key advanced features like partial screen recording, pausing, uploading to YouTube or adding text captions, which are not even available in what until yesterday was among the best paid screencasting solutions on the Mac. On the PC side I haveCamtasia, a wonderful, pro-level solution. But will I be wanting to go for all the extra features and precision control that Camtasia offers me (at a price), when in many cases I really only need a quality recording that looks good and maximum simplicity of use? Techsmith may have to look into answering this one before its Camtasia sales start to drop rapidly.And again, more than anything else ScreenToaster is by far the simplest and most immediate screncasting tool to use out there. If you want to know what I think, here it is: ScreenToaster is going to toast them all. Seriously.

Originally written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 14th, 2009 as "Web-Based Screencasting Service Integrates High-Quality Screen Recording And Online Video Distribution: ScreenToaster Is Here". ...

What does it take to make it as a startup in the web 2.0 world? Does it matter whether you are a European company or a Silicon Valley one? Are the chances and opportunities the same? Photo credit:LeWeb \'08 and UstreamJust a month ago atLeWeb08, the two-day Paris event was concluded by a great live session with the Gillmor Gang, a small group of high caliber media technologists and entrepreneurs who, back in 2005 launched a podcast based on a conference call among them to discuss whatever felt hot at the moment.From this unique and memorable live session of the Gillmor Gang, in which LeWeb organizer Loic LeMeur participates actively, I have extracted this delicious 11 minutes of conversation focusing on the differences, the pros and cons, the prejudices and myths, the stereotypes and untold truths about how the real and imagined differences between entrepreneurship on this and that side of the ocean. Steve Gillmor, Hugh McLeod, Marc Canter, Loic LeMeur, Michael Arrington and Loren Feldman give life to a hot and fascinating discussion about the differences between USA and Europe when it comes to launching your own Internet company.Check it out. I found it both enjoyable and insightful. Here is the video with its text transcription:

Entrepreneurship Styles: USA vs Europe - The Gillmor Gang At LeWeb \'08Duration: 11\'10\'\'
English Text Transcription
Entrepreneurs in America Just Have to Play the GameThe tech conferences in Europe, this is my first tech conference in Europe... they seem different.
American events tend to be a lot more elevator pitches, it\'s kind of people coming to you and talking like a robot: "Hi, I got this little startup, here\'s what I do". The European ones... they don\'t do that so much, but they\'re very understated... and it\'s like, to work, to get really pumped up about something takes a lot more work. That\'s my observation.
Marc Canter, you spent a lot of time in Europe, what do you think about the differences between conferences the Valley and Europe.
Ok, so the game, the reason why Loic moved to America, is to play the game. To suck up to the VCs, go over and hang out with Michael Arrington, and that\'s the game.But here in Europe you don\'t have a game like that! You got to go out there and hassle on your own, with your own company, with your own ideas, maybe you don\'t even speak English as your first language...
Yeah, which is insane right?
Yes, it\'s fucked up! But here\'s the thing... In one sense an European entrepreneur is more pure entrepreneur. Because he can\'t play the game. So, he, or she, has to stand on their own, whereas Americans, you go sleep with somebody, whatever...
That is a bunch of horseshit, ok? Real horseshit. [...] I find it offensive.

Is Silicon Valley an Insiders\' Game?I want to finish. Loic, you moved to San Francisco, you live up a 101 or 280, you go hang out on Sand Hill Road. That is an insiders\' game, you got an insiders\' track, you have a much greater likelyhood success.
It\'s not an insiders\' game, that\'s a loser attitude!
It is a loser attitude. Marc, calling Silicon valley an insiders\' game is...
Totally!
...you\'re not the loser, you\'ve made some incredible things in life, but people who tend to that, tend to be losers.It\'s not that... people who say "I\'ve been unsuccessful in Silicon Valley", which is probably the most merit-based society in the world, it is to say: "I just wasn\'t successful so somebody caused failure".I would actually like to hear Loic talk about the differences because he\'s been an entrepreneur in both continents, and I think he\'s going to disagree with you.

In Europe You Have Time for LunchThe differences? You don\'t know how to take time and have lunch. Here, especially here in Paris, we take like two or three hours to have lunch. Because you want to know people, and "there" I feel that it\'s something which is like you want to go so fast, and there\'s always a point.Like if I\'d call you Michael, you\'d be like: "Why are you calling me?"By default it\'s like "what\'s the point?", "why are you calling me?" I invited someone out to a dinner and he said: "Why?". "Why?" Why should we have dinner? It\'s like always why. Why, what\'s the purpose. Always. ...and here we just have a lunch for two hours and we have fun and there\'s no why. That\'s one (difference).
Is it the two-hour lunches and the constant pleasantries? And all the wine drinking? That\'s the reason why Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, are all American companies? Why Skype was sold to an American company? Why Europe constantly looks to United States for leadership and technology? It\'s because you spend your days...(The crowd boos)Go ahead and cheer, but the point is: look how many American speakers did Loic brought to this conference to come and talk on stage. Why isn\'t it the other way around?
I can answer that. I can already feel the shit I\'m going to get for getting so many Americans here at the last session.But I think it\'s very good that you take the time and come here, because we can understand better why. And I still don\'t know exactly the answer, but one of the answers is obviously that you\'re all at the same place.

Silicon Valley Is The Center of the Business WorldSo, Silicon Valley is fantastic and that\'s one of the reasons why I moved there, even tough I really love here up in France, is that: you want to do a deal with FriendFeed, you drive around the corner and what I love, now that I gave you some shit about the lunch, is the deal with Bret Taylor was... Let me tell you the story: when I wanted to integrate my company with FriendFeed, I e-mailed on a Sunday at midnight Bret, the founder of FriendFeed. Midnight. I got a mail in ten minutes, back: "Hey sure, that\'s interesting. Let\'s talk."Another cultural difference, now to your advantage, is in Europe you tend to say: "Ok, alright, for an appointment we\'ll see, we\'ll plan", and it\'s already a little complicated. Bret, he just said: "Yeah, just come by". I said: "When?" "Well, just come by", so that\'s something you need to learn. And I took my car and I went there, on Wednesday, three days after, we were integrated with FriendFeed. That is the part of Silicon Valley which I really really love, is that everything is centered. Here you have to fly, you have to fly to UK, you have to fly to Germany, you have to fly to all around, and that\'s one of the reasons why I started this. At least for two days we\'re in the same room.

Another Difference between American and European Entrepreneurship StylesI want to say something, ok? Europe! You can be more efficient, you can integrate features in three days. America! enjoy your meals. Do you know what I\'m saying? Both are kind of wrong.We need the joie de vivre, we have to enjoy life, you only have one life, you know? Silicon Valley, they don\'t have lives. All they do is work, alright? But see how efficient it is. So, Loic, he gets some work done. So I say to Europe, please work more efficiently,
But you\'d be surprised how much joy you get out of winning. It\'s important. If you\'re going to put the effort into creating a startup, but you\'re only going to be half-assed about it, because you need to balance your life out, you\'re going to lose, because you have to compete with people... I mean, in the United States, we\'re starting to get our ass kicked by Asia, because they work harder than us.And the problem is Europe\'s rich and people like working 35 to 40 hours a week, and so if you\'re an entrepreneur, and you work 50, 60 hours a week you think you\'re really put (I know, I\'m just talking out of my house right now), but there are reasons...I\'ll tell you, the other reason why is the tax structure. The tax structure here is just ridiculous. If you have a startup, and you make it big here, here in Paris... Are you looked down on for being successful? Are you looked down on for making money?

The Vente-Privee ExampleIt\'s more complicated than that Michael. Have you heard of Vente-Privee? Michael? Have you heard of a company, a startup called Vente-privee? (Loic LeMeur asks other panelists).
I\'m sorry, but it isn\'t a matter of we don\'t know the company. I don\'t understand what the hell you\'re saying. I don\'t understand the words that you\'re saying.
I\'m trying to make a point here. This startup you\'ve never heard of is doing 600.000.000 euros in revenue. And the point is none of you have heard of it. Why? Because you don\'t care. You don\'t give a shit.
That\'s bullshit. I\'m sorry, but that\'s bullshit. You don\'t think that in a worldwide depression we\'re not interested in somebody who\'s is making 600.000.000 euros? Come on! It\'s bad PR, it\'s what it is.
Loic, what the hell is your point? I\'ve three full-time writers covering Europe by the way. I didn\'t know what company you said because I didn\'t understand what you said. It\'s great that they\'re making 600.000.000 euros in revenue, but what\'s your point? That there\'s a company here doing well that most of us haven\'t heard of?
Yes, that\'s the point.

American Startups Have More News CoverageAnd somehow that proves that European entrepreneurs are as good as American entrepreneurs?
You don\'t get the same coverage, we\'ve been hugely...
So start blogs! Start a blog, and...
I know that and you\'re covering Europe and that\' great, but the point is: it\'s very very tough for hugely successful companies to get above national borders. Like Vent-Privee is very very well-known here and honestly doesn\'t really care of being on TechCrunch. And it\'s just super successful. I didn\'t mean it in any bad way, but my point is that if you\'re a startup in Germany and you\'re extremely successful, before you\'re known globally it takes a lot more time than if you were in Silicon Valley.And how do we fix this? By having TechCrunch France, and UK, and by having Robert come here, and so I think it\'s great you\'re here, now that I have said that, but it\'s also in both sides. It\'s us trying to connect more with you guys there, but it\'s also you trying to understand more what\'s happening here...
End
Watch the full video of the Gillmor Gang session at LeWeb08.(note: in the transcription, I have left out a couple of comments made by Robert Scoble, not to censor him, but because I personally didn\'t find them very relevant to what was being discussed - Scoble\'s words are left intact in the video but have been edited out in the text transcription in order to make the text of the whole discussion easier to understand for who cannot see the video)

Originally broadcasted by Ustream during LeWeb \'08 and first published on January 12th 2009 as "Entrepreneurship Styles: USA vs Europe - The Gillmor Gang At LeWeb \'08". ...

In this article you\'ll find more than 30 cool WordPress plugins to customize and tweak the performances of your blog site. Do you want more SEO control, embed videos, or track your RSS feed subscribers? Here\'s some good stuff for you.Photo credit: egalThere are many blogging platform out there and they all do pretty much the same: get you started to publish your own content. But WordPress is by far the favorite one by bloggers. Why? WordPress has an awesome list of plugins to help you personalize your blog and add extra features. So I decided to start from the list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, and extend it with some kind suggestions from Robin Good and MasterNewMedia SEO expert, Matteo Ionescu. The result is a collection of more than 30 plugins for professional web publishing with WordPress, organized in specific categories:a) Content sharingb) Spam Fightingc) SEOd) Navigation Enhancemente) Statsf) WordPress Admin Enhancementg) Content Embeddingh) MiscellanousEnjoy!

30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers

Content Sharing

• FeedBurner FeedSmith The FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin detects all ways to access your feed (e.g. yoursite.com/feed/ or yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php etc) and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally, your comments feed as well.http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=78483&topic=13252Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• SociableSociable automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages, and in your RSS feed. You can choose from 99 different social bookmarking sites.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

Spam Fighting

• Akismet Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not, and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog's comments admin screen. With the ever increasing amount of spam on the web, you'd be dumb not to get this plugin.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• WP-Spam FreeFed up of all that comment spam?http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-spamfree/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Simple Trackback ValidationThe Simple Trackback Validation plugin helps to eliminate trackback spam by performing a simple a simple but effective test on all incoming trackbacks.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-trackback-validation/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

SEO

• All-in-One SEO Pack The All-in-One SEO Pack is the ultimate SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plugin out there. It automatically optimizes your blog for search engines, and has several options for the more advanced users.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Google XML Sitemaps Generator The Google XML Sitemaps Generator plugin generates an XML sitemap of your WordPress blog. Ask, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN support this format. Having an XML sitemap and submitting it to the search engines that support it can really increase your blog's search engine visibility, especially when it's new.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• RedirectionRedirection is a solution to manage 301 redirects. Very useful if you ever need to change the URL of a post / page, Redirection becomes essential when migrating from another platform. http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/redirection/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• HeadSpace2HeadSpace is meta-tag management on steroids. A great alternative to the popular All In One SEO Pack supporting an incredible number of features.http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/headspace2/Review by Matteo Ionescu

Navigation Enhancement

• Yet Another Related Posts PluginYet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) inserts a list of related posts below each post on your blog, and in your blog's RSS feed. It's extremely configurable, and a must-have.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/yet-another-related-posts-plugin/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• TweetBacksTweetBacks allows you to search the popular microblogging service Twitter for tweets that link to your blog posts. These tweets are then displayed under the entries on your blog site so that you and your readers know how many people shared your thoughts. http://danzarrella.com/wp-tweetbacks-plugin.htmlReview by Daniele Bazzano
• SRG Clean ArchivesThe SRG Clean Archives plugin displays your archive listings in a clean and uniform fashion, that's search engine and user-friendly, on a dedicated page or in your sidebar. If you're still manually updating your archives page, stop doing it!http://www.idunzo.com/projects/clean-archivesReview by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Contact Form 7Even though there are tens of contact form plugins out there, I've always liked Contact Form 7. The problem with most contact form plugins is that either they are too simple or way too complex. Contact Form 7, on the other hand, is extensible yet easy-to-use. It supports Ajax-powered submitting, multiple forms, CAPTCHAS, and Akismet spam filtering.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/contact-form-7/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• DemocracyDemocracy is a simple but effective way to add polls to your WordPress website and enhance user interaction.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/democracy/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• Wp PostRatingsWith Wp PostRatings you con allow your readers to rate your posts. Written in Ajax, is very light and unobtrusive. http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/Review by Daniele Bazzano

Statistics

• WordPress.com StatsWordPress.com Stats is a traffic statistics plugin that shows only the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track – such as page views, referrers, top posts & pages, search engine terms, and clicks – and provides them in a clear and concise interface.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Google Analytics for WordPressThe Google Analytics for WordPress plugin lets you insert the Google Analytics code automatically throughout your blog. It discounts your own visits, automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links, and downloads. It even allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, and track image search queries.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analytics-for-wordpress/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

WordPress Admin Enhancement

• One ClickThe One-Click plugin allows you to upload themes and plugins straight to your WordPress blog from the browser. Just upload the zip file, and it'll automatically unzip the contents and install the plugin for you. Now you never have to use FTP again!http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/one-click-plugin-updater/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Dashboard Widget ManagerEver felt your dashboard was too cluttered? Then download Dashboard Widget Manager. It allows you to remove unnecessary widgets from your dashboard so it'll look clean and load faster.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/dashboard-widget-manager/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Lighter MenusLighter Menus creates drop down menus instead of the regular admin menus for WordPress, so you can browse items in one click. It's fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, and comes with some sleek icons.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lighter-admin-drop-menus/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• PageMashCustomize the order of your pages, manage their parent structure, and hide them, all using PageMash. It features an Ajax drag-and-drop administrative interface, and is a great tool to re-arrange the order of your pages quickly.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• ManageableManageable allows inline editing of the date, title, categories, tags, status, and more of both posts and pages without ever having to leave the "Manageable" admin section. No need to load each post or page individually. Simply double-click anywhere in the post or page row and when you're done, press enter.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/manageable/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• Role ManagerRole Manager is a solution to handle user levels and allow deep customization of individual permissions. Very useful if you manage a multi-user blog!http://redalt.com/Resources/Plugins/Role+ManagerReview by Matteo Ionescu

Content Embedding Utilities

• EmbeditEmbedit is a very light plugin (ionly 10 lines of code) which lets you easily embed any HTML code into a WordPress page / post. Works seamlessly across different versions of WordPress.http://www.matteoionescu.com/wordpress/embed-html/Review by Daniele Bazzano
• Samsarin PHP WidgetVery simple but effective way to add custom widgets into sidebars with your PHP / HTML code. Samsarin PHP Widget functionality should be really implemented in WordPress itself!http://www.samsarin.com/blog/2007/03/10/samsarin-php-widget/Review by Matteo Ionescu
• Exec-PHPExec-PHP lets you execute PHP code in posts, pages, and in the text widgets of your sidebar.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exec-php/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry

Miscellaneous

• WP Super CacheI\'m sure you've heard of the Digg Effect and the Slashdot Effect. They can cause a server meltdown, and if you're on shared hosting, get your ass kicked out. To Digg-proof your blog, get WP Super Cache. It reduces the load on your server by generating static HTML files from your dynamic WordPress blog.http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• WordPress Database BackupYou should always backup your WordPress database regularly. However, doing it manually every time can be difficult and time consuming. The WordPress Database Backup plugin lets you easily backup your WordPress database tables. You can even schedule a backup, and it\'ll email the file to you every day!http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• OIO PublisherOIO Publisher is the ultimate ad management plugin. It's great for those who want to sell ads on their blog by themselves. The great thing about OIO is that it removes all the hassle one gets from self-selling ad space: you only have to approve purchases. OIO Publisher handles everything else. Using OIO, you can sell reviews, links, ads, and even your own products! Heck, it even allows you to create your own affiliate program, so other people can sell your ads and products for you.http://www.oiopublisher.com/Review by Ruchir Chawdhry
• qTranslateMultilingual support is one of the biggest missing features of WordPress, but with qTransalate you can easily accomplish the task of managing different languages for your blog site.http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/Review by Daniele Bazzano
• WP LyteboxWP Lytebox lets you easily add a lightbox effect when clicking a thumbnail to display the fullsize image.http://grupenet.com/2007/08/03/wp-lytebox/Review by Matteo Ionescu

Original list by Ruchir Chawdhry on TechVivo, extended with the contributions of Robin Good and Matteo Ionescu. First published for MasterNewMedia on December 11, 2008 as "30 Cool WordPress Plugins For Web Publishers".

Photo credits:Content Sharing - benseguenia khaledSpam Fighting - Andrea DantiSEO - Marco RullkoetterNavigation Enhancement - PhecsoneStats - Janaka DharmasenaWordPress Admin Enhancement - WordPressContent Embedding - norebboMiscellanous - Vitaliy Tumanyan ...

Here the best 2008 media literacy tools and resources hand-picked from George Siemens\'s weekly Media Literacy Digest published here on MasterNewMediaPhoto credit: Dawid Krupa and t_rust mashed up by Robin GoodIn this collection you will find the best resources and hundreds of tools relevant to your personal growth, learning and educational resources, as well as to social media, video and business that Dr. Siemens has picked, collected and reviewed for you.Here this unique collection:

Media Literacy Toolsby George Siemens

More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and CountingGreat resource, providing a sampling of how much learning material is available for informal and formal learning: More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and CountingPublished on MasterNewMedia on Mar 15

Over 2300 Learning ToolsJane HartatCentre for Learning and Performance Technologies has been putting together a list of learning tools and technologies. Her directory now includes over 2300 tools. Great place for educators, marketers, people who are randomly bored, to get some new ideas and approaches to teaching and communicating. Jane has split the tools out in "free" and "non-free" categories.Published on MasterNewMedia on May 26

Top 10 Future ToolsJane Harthas served the elearning field well this year, taking a Techcrunch role for learning technologies. In her recent post, she turns her attention from looking at the most popular tools today and focuses on what she feels will be the top tools of 2009. Most of the tools listed assume traditional desktop / laptop access to the internet. I think 2009 will be a year where mobile applications continue their enormous growth. In the last several months, I have shifted significantly from my laptop to my mobile (for maps, gmail, twitter, Facebook, news, tracking financial markets).Published on MasterNewMedia on Jan 3

Social Media Starter KitSocial Media Start Kit is a useful resources intended to "build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world."Weekly modules are still in development (looks like they\'re up to week two), but it looks like a valuable resource.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jul 12

20 Free Ebooks On Social MediaI haven\'t read all of theebooks listed... but this is a useful listing of 20 free ebooks on social media. The list includes resources on podcasting, blogging, usability and related subjects. I\'m not entirely convinced I like the term social media anymore. In the sense that all media (whether creation/production, transmission, reception... and even when media is treated as storage, it still aspires to be viewed) require a producer and consumer, doesn\'t the notion of media have an inherent social trait?Published on MasterNewMedia on Aug 23

Personal SearchPersonal search (based on preselected sites, not the whole web) has been around for a while. Rollyo was one of the first I came across.Basically, a person enters sites they want to search, and when some enters a query into the text box, it search only those sources.Google now offers a similar service (where Google once was an innovator, they are increasingly becoming an imitator - bookmarks, reader, iGoogle, Orkut, etc.): Google Custom Search.Stephen Downes has created a custom edublog search tool from about 450 sources.Lijit is a similar service - you can add all your sites, del.icio.us bookmarks, digg submissions, and so on. The Lijit search of my online identity is here.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jan 12

Tools for Your Video CareerOnline video is where blogs were about 7 or 8 years ago - on the threshold of large scale adoption for content creators due to ease of creation and sharing. Tools for your video career is a useful, though basic, resource on how to get started with creating, sharing, and streaming video.Published on MasterNewMedia on Apr 19

KnolWith up to 30% of Google / Yahoo searches returning links to Wikipedia, Google sees an enormous non-adsensed space. The traffic of Wikipedia makes ad providers salivate. To combat this untapped market, Google opted to create a service called Knol, where articles can be written by experts (sometimes). Anyone can create a knol and invite others to contribute. If several people decide to write a knol on elearning, both are allowed to exist. The community can vote and rate article quality. Authors of knols can also add Google\'s AdSense service to the site and make money in the process. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.Google is essentially stating that individual ownership of articles is important. How will knols be listed in Google searches? Will they receive better search returns than Wikipedia articles? A part of me would like to dislike this service (how much more of our soul must we give up to Google?). But the idea is well conceived. The service seems to function well, without the hideous editing text of mediawiki. Feedback loops are in place through comments and ratings. The opportunity for economic gain will likely also draw some participants. All those factors combine to suggest Knol has a real chance for success. Currently, the resources on the site are quite scarce, however.Published on MasterNewMedia on Jul 26

Microblogging Tools For Your NewsroomThe focus is not purely on education, but Microblogging Tools for your Newsroom is worth a review. Organizations, distributed teams and networks will likely find some of the tools interesting. Usually microblogging refers to twitter, but in this case, the author looks at tools that are used for a particular purpose - such as informal project management, backchannel, etc.Published on MasterNewMedia on Oct 18

Lots of Tools...I should reference where I found this site - 270 tools for your online business - but I\'m clueless as to where I found it. The list includes a combination of free and for-fee applications. Includes tools for roughly every conceivable task: accounting, communicating, planning, brainstorming, project management, and on and on. Educators will likely find a few new tools in the mix...Published on MasterNewMedia on Sep 27

Originally written by George Siemens for elearnspace in his newsletter eLearning Resources and News. Selection by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano.

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:More than 100 Free Places to Learn Online - and Counting - Mission to LearnOver 2300 Learning Tools - Centre For Learning & Performance TechnologiesTop 10 Future Tools - Kirsty PargeterSocial Media Starter Kit - We Are Media20 Free Ebooks On Social Media - One Laptop per ChildTools for Your Video Career - YouTubeKnol - KnolMicroblogging Tools For Your Newsroom - Richard BarleyLots Of Tools... - Ricardo Alves ...

Should news content be the result of the aggregating and selecting from many and varied sources or the word coming from one single perspective? John Blossom analyzes the future of newspapers and openly asks some hard questions in this fascinating and scary article.Photo credit: Paul Turner and Max Gladwell mashed up by Daniele BazzanoWhat do you say? Should newspapers completely rethink their model of journalism? Where are you more likely to read your personally most relevant news today? On a newspaper, on a blog or on Twitter? Why?What should newspapers then do to survive with the web before their dwindling numbers make them crumble?Here the insightful analysis from media and business content expert John Blossom:Intro by Robin Good

Newspaper Apocalypse: What\'s the Next Right Step?by John Blossom

IntroductionGood news about the newspaper industry has been an oxymoron at best in a sinking global economy, and today is no exception. TheStreet.com confirms the buzz that The New York Times is taking out a USD 225 million loan against its new office building off of Times Square while The Wall Street Journal notes that Sam Zell\'s Tribune Co. is sniffing out options for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructuring. Quite a change of pace from last year\'s triumphal posturing of new media headquarters and highly unrealistic revenue goals for private acquisitions would eventually lead to new glories. \'T\'ain\'t working, apparently, as print ad revenues continue to crater except for feature article sections that vie with magazines for more targeted interest groups. As was noted in a study from earlier this year37 percent of Americans go online for their news, while only 27 percent were picking up a newspaper on any given day. Newspapers in the U.S. are now officially a legacy product, though they still represent the majority of ad revenues for most news organizations. The only large markets where newspapers are growing significantly are in nations such as India, where the penetration of the Web still lags behind the thirst for news.While some well-diversified media companies are prepared for the long run of news\' transition into a more electronic future, 2009 is shaping up to be the year in which the newspaper industry begins to face either massive restructuring or widespread collapse. Yet there is hope for traditional providers of news - if they can put their best efforts behind the most profitable opportunities. Here are a few thoughts as to where traditionally print-oriented news organizations must be headed in 2009 to build a more profitable future:

Get Better Than Bloggers and Search Engines at Aggregating NewsMainstream journalists are still equipped oftentimes with the personal networks that enable them to deliver breaking news effectively, but nobody trusts any single news organization as their source for news. Instead, many online news users are turning to bloggers, search engines and messaging services such as Twitter to aggregate breaking news on the topics that matter most to them. In other words, while referral links are highly valuable for people who bother to engage full-length news stories, the sites that provide them are the "go-to" stops for a rapidly growing number of news hounds. Getting breaking news to appear more automatically in these other venues - and to have revenue-producing ads and partnership "hooks" in that remote content - is a key factor for making the most of these aggregators. However, it also points to the lingering question: why aren\'t more mainstream news organizations aggregating more links from other sources in their own core news coverage? I would agree that automated aggregation services like Sphere are of limited value in this regard, but the source-agnostic form of editorial content aggregation favored by bloggers and outlets such as the Huffington Post and Newser appear to be enabling far more engagement for online audiences than "not invented here" news organizations that still insist that their own teams must create most every drop of news that they monetize.

Love Print as a Service, Not as Your BrandIn the nineteenth century newspapers grew up in buildings that housed their editorial staffs, printing presses and loading docks - self-contained factories very much in the model of that era\'s mass manufacturing. In the twentieth century printing presses in many markets moved away to remote locations but most still produced newsprint products only for one source of editorial content and ads. In an era in which news can be aggregated effectively by anyone, that model is no longer a cost-effective approach to print production. Print will continue to thrive as a reading format for some time, but it\'s far less likely that printing presses are going to be running news and ads from only one source. It\'s far more likely that new types of newspapers are going to be with us very shortly, ones which license news from today\'s newspaper staffs and other news sources and share revenues and links to online materials via Data Matrix codes and other print-to-online linking technologies. Individual news organizations are not likely to invest enough in these new kinds of source-agnostic aggregation technologies fast enough to make a difference to their bottom lines, so suffering news organizations would be smart to band together to make such technologies happen sooner rather than later. Alternatively, the time for a "Google Newspapers" printing plant in major markets that aggregates content from many sources agnostically may have come at long last.

Enable Community-generated News More Effectively Small-market newspapers and television cable news outlets have become fairly aggressive in embracing their audiences as sources of news and entertainment. Yet major newspaper chains in many markets are still struggling to get their hands around what it means to empower everyday people as news producers. Social media provides some of the most engaging content online today, yet many publishers still shy away from empowering local news gatherers that do not conform to traditional models of journalism. But many sources of community-generated content - sports scores, traffic reports, eyewitness news - are highly engaging sources of content that can be monetized easily. In an era ofreal-time broadcast news alerts from anyone on services such as Twitter newspapers need to rethink what\'s the best way to engage a community that already knows how to publish to one another.

ConclusionThere\'s no doubt that many news organizations are hitting the right buttons in making decisions on the future of making money from news, but the pace at which those decisions are being made has left a gaping chasm between the cost of sustaining their greatest revenue-generator - print publishing - and the cost of investing more heavily in online publishing methods that will carry them forward to long-term profitability. As much as online is the answer, though, I think that it\'s time for publishers to take a far more radical approach to print as soon as possible. Print will survive and thrive - the only question is, in whose hands? The time to release the medium from the brand is at hand, and it can come none too soon for most news organizations\' bottom lines.

Originally written by John Blossom for Shore and first published on December 8 2008 as "Newspaper Apocalypse: What\'s the Next Right Step?".

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:Get Better Than Bloggers and Search Engines at Aggregating News - Janaka DharmasenaLove Print as a Service, Not as Your Brands - Ruslan GilmanshinEnable Community-generated News More Effectively - Robin Good ...

If you are struggling to understand the fundamentals ofonline video publishing, as well as how to use videos to do marketing, this video article with Lasse Rouhiainen gives you some good basic information on how to get started.Lasse Rouhiainen and Robin Good - Photo credit: Robin GoodLasse Rouhiainen is a passionate YouTube video publisher based in Alicante, Spain. Lasse who is a passionate video marketing evangelist, works a lot with the tourism sector, helping travel agencies and professionals get familiar and proficient in their use of online video to market and promote their offerings.Having Lasse been a long-time fan of MasterNewMedia by sharing and commenting back on much of my work, I have kindly invited him to join me for an online video interview focusing on the basics of online video publishing and marketing. What I wanted to get from him was some simple and immediately applicable suggestions on what is probably the most difficult part of a video publishing career: getting started. What do you need to do and which are the key problems you will need to face to start publishing your video clips on popular video sharing sites like YouTube?Which is the main mistake that people make when publishing videos online?What is the ideal length for a video?How to choose a good topic for your next video?How to get a video to be viral?Here my short video interview with Lasse along with a full text transcription:

Online Video Marketing - Video Interview With Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 1Duration: 8\' 43"
Full English Text Transcription
IntroRobin Good: Hi guys this is Robin Good from Rome, Italy, and today I am with Lasse Rouhiainen, who\'s not where you think he is, because yes, he\'s from up there in the Scandinavian countries (he will tell us more about it), but he\'s somebody who has moved as a pioneer away from his nice and sunny warm land down to the cold, icy south of Spain. Is that correct?Lasse Rouhiainen: That\'s right, thanks Robin for inviting me. I\'m here in Alicante, it\'s just another place in the Mediterranean like you. We\'re neighbors, kind of.Robin Good: Good! And why did you decide to go the way down to Spain?Lasse Rouhiainen: When I came I just had a job opportunity. I had faith because I really liked the weather, and nowadays thanks to Internet you can work wherever you like. I really like the weather here, and the atmosphere, and the Mediterranean lifestyle.

Meet Lasse RouhiainenRobin Good: Fantastic. I got Lasse here, because Lasse is an interesting guy who\'s working on how to market your videos on the Internet, how to make your message effective by using video. He\'s also part of a major public training evangelism program on how to better use new media, that is part of the Spanish government sponsorship for creating a better culture around the use of these communication tools.He acts like some kind of expert, tutor, advisor, to many people, especially in the filed of tourism, to help these agencies and these tourist operators understand how they can use YouTube and similar services to get their messages out. Did I get this correct?Lasse Rouhiainen: That\'s right, yes.

Main Mistake in Video PublishingRobin Good: Good. My first question to you Lasse, because my readers like you are very much web publishers of all kinds, is: what have you discovered, while you\'ve specialized in this sector of video publishing, is the number one mistake that people make when they put their videos up on YouTube?Lasse Rouhiainen: I would say that the number one mistake is that they wait until the video is perfect. They want to be like Tom Cruise or Penélope Cruz. They like to be like actors and in online media today and Web 2.0 you just have to be yourself. The number one mistake I would say is that people want to act like somebody they are not, or they are waiting too long before they start to do a lot of videos.The most important thing it\'s the same as thinking that you would have some customers visiting your office, and you would have a chat with them. It\'s a simple step, and I think now in 2009 more and more video content will be in different formats on the Internet. We just have to be ourselves. Click the "play" button, and just record how we are and what we do and communicate better with our customers.

Ideal Video LengthRobin Good: That\'s cool, I fully agree with you. One thing that most people ask me nowadays, when it comes to video, tough, is: what is the ideal length of a proper clip? Is there an ideal answer for everybody? Lasse, what do you think, what\'s your take on this?Lasse Rouhiainen: First of all, you can use video in so many formats. You can do video which is like half an hour, or one hour video where you show a conference or something like that, and that kind of video is kind of like relationship building video or credibility video. Then you can do short commercials, which are only like 10 seconds or 20 seconds, or something. It really depends a lot. I would say that when you start, I would start by doing a series of short clips rather than one really long one, because when you are trying to do long one, when you start you just get nervous.Start with selecting like two or three topics that you like, and your customers like, and I would do a video series of those topics. And those videos would be something like two minutes or under 2 minutes. 1 minute, 2 minutes. That\'s a good way to start.

How to Choose a Good TopicRobin Good: Next question people ask me then is about what topic... how should they go about it. You\'re serving a specific audience, which in theory is speaking about touristic destinations. Do you recommend to these people how to take their specific topic, how should they find something that they feel compelled to talk about and that they get a little emotional and interested while presenting, and not being boring when they present? What do you say to them?Lasse Rouhiainen: Yeah, that\'s a good point, and I would add that I also work with other sectors, but tourism is by far the biggest. I would think that it\'s the same question, as you have to think what your customers need to know right now about yourself, about your products and services. Try to think what kind of questions your customers are asking, and make a video based on those questions. You can use surveys or you can think what your customers have been asking before.Just try to focus and think about the video from the viewers\' point of view, and don\'t just talk about yourself and how great you are and all those things.Just focus on the viewer and the customer who is watching the video. That way the video would be really interesting, and that way it can also become a viral video where people start sharing it, if they find it that it\'s adding value and is something useful.

Viral VideosRobin Good: You talk about viral video. Everybody says "I want to get a viral video", but while the definition is somewhat clear to everybody (that is somewhat of a video that gets spread by word of mouth and people telling other people more and more rapidly so that you get thousands and thousands of views), the strategies behind getting a viral video, is that something that you have a formula for?Lasse Rouhiainen: Let\'s say that is something that I have opinion about. I would say that most people like to do viral videos because those are the videos that they hear in the newspapers, on tv, or Internet. But rather I would think that I would like to do video marketing which is profitable, it means that it can move your products, or move your business ahead, or get you more customers or get better relationships. Rather than having one viral video that has millions of views, I would do several videos that don\'t have millions of views, but have let\'s say hundreds of viewers, and those viewers are in your target market. That way it would be much better for your business or whatever you\'re doing.I think viral videos... it\'s really cool to talk about it, but in my opinion there\'s a lot of viral videos that are totally... they\'re just viral, there\'s no business behind. They\'re just one million views and no call to action, and nothing. I think people get distracted there. They think that "the only way for using video in my business is that if I have one million views".That\'s my opinion. We have to think of it as a bigger picture, and not just focus on viral video.
Robin Good: Great answer indeed. I fully share what you say, and I\'m going to take up your advice immediately. For the many other interesting questions that you guys may have for Lasse, you got to come for the next part, because this is only part one of several ones, I guess. Giusto Lasse?Lasse Rouhiainen: Yes, that\'s right.Robin Good: Talk to you in the next one! Thank you Lasse, see you soon!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 8, 2009 as "Online Video Marketing: Basic Tips And Advice From A Video Marketing Evangelist - Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 1" ...

How do you go about distributing your videos online in an effective fashion? How do you choose the right keywords to title your clips? If you are just starting up with online video marketing, these are probably some of your most pressing concerns. Lasse Rouhiainen and Robin Good - Photo credit: Robin GoodIn this second interview (here part 1) I asked Lasse Rouhiainen to share some basic tips and advice for those like you who are beginners in this field, and want to know more.Lasse Rouhiainen is a professional video publisher and web marketer who works in the tourism sector in sunny Spain. Lasse helps travel agencies and professionals become proficient in online video marketing and promoting their offerings in a better way.Given his passion and his desire to help other people, I asked Lasse to kindly share with you some of the stuff he teaches every day to his customers. Where to start and how to simply avoid common mistakes when you decide to approach the fascinating, yet competitive, sector of marketing through online videos. Here the video interview along with a full text transcription:

Online Video Marketing - Video Interview With Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 2Duration: 17\' 27"
Full English Text Transcription
IntroRobin Good: Hi everyone, this is Robin Good from Rome, and this is the second part of my insider video interview with Lasse Rouhianen, who\'s in Alicante, Spain, and is a video marketing expert.He works with all kinds of guys, especially in the field of tourism and he helps people understand how you can use your video to better market your message. How to use your video to do some serious business and not just get a million of views.If you haven\'t seen the first part, go check it out. It\'s on YouTube, on MasterNewMedia.org. Just search for it on Google, you\'ll find it right now.Lasse welcome again!Lasse Rouhiainen: Thanks Robin, it\'s great to be here!

The Key Factor to Increase Views on YouTubeRobin Good: Good, let me shoot at you immediately another good question: what is that one thing that, no matter what the video is, not changing the content, one thing you can do when you upload a video to YouTube, that if you do it right is going to positively increase the number of your views?Lasse Rouhiainen: You are meaning that when you upload your video to YouTube? When you have your video ready and you upload to YouTube? Is that your question?
Robin Good: Yeah, my question is what is one factor that can affect the number of views that your video will get independently of content, that you can become more aware of and use it better for your own sake.Lasse Rouhiainen: Yeah, I understand. That\'s a good question. To answer I\'d like to give a bit of background. I see a lot of people just uploading videos to YouTube, and one thing is that you upload the video, and the other thing is that you optimize the video.When you optimize the video, one of the most important thing is to use the right long-term keywords, and that\'s the same as writing an article, or writing a blog post, or publishing whatever. If you do some keyword research and if you use the right keywords you can have really nice results with your video. Because YouTube is kind of an authority site nowadays, and many YouTube videos will come up in the first page of Google search. Keyword research: I would say that\'s number one thing. Keyword research and using the right long-term keywords in the title of your videos is the number one thing I would say.

How to Find Relevant Keywords For Your VideosRobin Good: Well, those ideas are very clear for me, but let\'s say I am somebody who has a new book business and I\'ve got a new title and my book is about how to cultivate tropical flowers. What are these long keywords, and how do I go about finding them? You said that I have to use specific long-keywords in the title, can you give me an example on how you go about this?Lasse Rouhiainen: I would start by using some free tools that you can use to do keyword research and one of the great ones is by Google. In Google if you type "AdWords Keyword Tool", you will find the Google\'s own tool which will give ideas of what kind of keywords people are searching. So, there, you would type your main keyword which was "tropical flower... something", and then you would see what kind of variations there are and that\'s how you start your optimizing, or that\'s how you start finding keywords. By the way, I want to emphasize here that when you do this exercise it will also give you ideas for your next video because it will see what kind of other and related keywords people are searching for. It could be "how to best protect your tropical flowers" or something, and now you can do one video for that. It can also give you more ideas on doing more content.
Robin Good: Let\'s see if I understand this correctly. You suggest that every time I\'m going to title a video, I\'m going to try to find what people would be searching for, if they wanted to see that video. One way to do it you suggest is to use the Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool, and I just noted today that if you go just only also on a simple Google page, and you just type something, even before you click the search button, Google is going to show up for you a drop-down menu with all suggestions.These suggestions are very significant because they show how other people are thinking, or better how they are phrasing, what they are looking for, differently than you. So you think, because you wrote a book, that you\'re dealing with "cultivating tropical flowers", but maybe in the head of many people, this is just "raising flowers in hot climate". Maybe people think of it this way. Lasse seems to be suggesting you need to find out which way people think. the Google search box and the suggestions that come out is a way, the Google AdWords is another one. There are many tools out there that people can use for this purpose. Great, now I understand better what you\'re referring to.

Is Uploading Videos to Multiple Sites a Good Strategy?Robin Good: I\'ve heard a lot of people talking about getting your video to as many video sharing sites as possible. Is that a good strategy to use? Why?Lasse Rouhiainen: I think it\'s a good strategy, because there are tools, and let\'s say there are good sites, similar to YouTube, where people are searching for content. My answer would be that if your video is good there\'s a good reason to share it. It\'s kind of like if you have a good article, which is adding value to people. You want to share with as many people as possible. In addition to YouTube, there are great video search engines and video sharing sites. I would definitely share it and upload to those sites, but you have to have a good quality video so if you\'re just doing junk or something that doesn\'t make sense or add value, then of course there\'s no meaning. I would say that\'s a really important thing, and also for you to understand that YouTube is a great place but it\'s not the only place. There\'s like 20 or 25 really good video sites, and those can also rank in Google and also have their own traffic, and their own users that are looking for your content. I would definitely use them.
Robin Good: Ok, that\'s pretty much my general feelings, but as I\'ve been thinking about this, I\'ve realized that, first of all, Google evidently gives a lot of advantage to video results that are inside YouTube and Google Video. They will not bring up results from other video sharing sites if they have that stuff.

Let Each Video-Sharing Site Customize Your Video IndividuallyRobin Good: If you now go and upload your video to 25 different sites with the same title, and metadata, that is same tags, and same descriptions, you\'re actually replicating your content over the place.To me, and this is just my reasoning in the last 48 hours, it would be a really good feature, and I wrote this in the new media predictions, that these services are going to provide a feature whereby you can modify for each individual service at least the title, if not the description and the tags, so that you can differentiate and broaden up the number of all hooks from which the people can find your content. Because you may use your main keywords on YouTube, and then some other people may using those other different keywords, and so you\'re stuck. You got 20 videos all with the same label. A good innovation for me would be going that way. What do you think?Lasse Rouhiainen: I think that\'s fantastic. Sometimes I do that manually. I go to those sites that I\'ve uploaded the video and I change it there after uploading it. If there would be that kind of service, that would be fantastic because you could even optimize your video in all the sites much better. I really agree 100%.

Black-hat tactics in Online Video MarketingRobin Good: Ok, great. Let\'s talk more a little bit more about this black hat tactics. Black hat means they are not really official, orthodox approaches to marketing, but sometimes, tricky, underground, not very well known, sometimes borderline approaches. I don\'t use any of these normally but I\'d like to learn, experiment, and find out if and how they work.For example, I see that some of the other video publishers out there who get a lot of subscribers to their channel, seem to be using some kind of software that goes out and makes them subscribers to other people\'s channels over and over again. They appear to becoming friends of you, so you feel: "Oh, that\'s nice. Robin Good has come to become my friend, let me subscribe to his channel". So you get lots of subscribers and then these people get, I would guess, some kind of e-mail notifications of your videos, and so over time you should get more. Does that happen in your opinion and, is that ok? Should people do that, does it work well?Lasse Rouhiainen: I haven\'t used those kind of programs, but I can see that many people are using them with success. However, I don\'t think that they are necessary. YouTube is a great place, where there is lot of other professionals, and you can build relationship by really finding out who are those people and adding them manually. I like to do it that way, and I\'m not that excited of those kind of programs however I know that some people have a lot of success with them. However I\'d like to highlight that as the time goes on for most of us building out subscribers in YouTube is really important. It\'s kind of like building your e-mail list or building any other list. For that I would recommend also using the annotation feature in YouTube where they let you write any kind of annotation in your video. It\'s just giving people and saying them that remember to subscribe to my channel if you like this video. That\'s a really cool way to do it, I would say. That would be my recommendation there.Robin Good: Good suggestion Lasse, I appreciate that. So put on your notification overlay on your video remembering not only your site and URL but also to subscribe to your channel. Great stuff.

What\'s the Best Video Format?Robin Good: What about video compression and encoding. What\'s your secret recipe to get the best quality video out there?Lasse Rouhiainen: My secret recipe is just following your blog and what you have done! But, what I am teaching and mentoring people with video marketing is: number one problem, or challenge, for most people is producing video. That\'s the big thing, and even tough they have done three or five videos, my next goal is to get them to do 10, 20, 50 videos because then it\'s really when they start to get results. That\'s why in my seminar I focus mostly on how to find topics for your videos and what to say on the videos, and those kind of things. And I really don\'t talk that much about codec and the right format, and so on. However it\'s important, and maybe we can mention it now, that like many people know, in YouTube you can upload high-definition video which is really really interesting. YouTube normally allows many different formats and for me what seems to be best is the MP4 file format, seems to be really good for uploading videos. That\'s the thing there. I would say that kind of technical thing is really good to know when you\'re already doing a lot of video, but the first thing you need to know is how to get right action plan, how to get ideas for doing videos, and above all how to do a lot of videos, because at each video you will learn and improve. So, MP4 would be my selection, and maybe you have much more to add in that topic.
Robin Good: But as I learned from you, that will be in a separate video! "Find out everything on how to encode the video for YouTube!" You need to Google that one separately to get my video on that one.

Cool Video Marketers to Follow on YouTubeRobin Good: Last but not least, a difficult question, but one that people want to learn. I\'m going to ask anytime and that is: "Come on Lasse, give me one or two guys you look on YouTube to get some inspiration and good ideas on how to do the video, come on!"Lasse Rouhiainen: You mean video producer, people who are adding videos on YouTube?
Robin Good: Yeah, people you would recommend to your own students. I mean if they say.: "Oh, but besides you Lasse, what can we look at, do you know some guy who does video that can inspire me and make me feel okay after I look at him? What do you tell them to go to see?Lasse Rouhiainen: When I was starting I got a lot of inspirations and a lot of ideas from Dennis Karganilla. I can\'t remember his YouTube channel, but he really is a great teacher and YouTube marketer. But there\'s a lot of good people and in the Spanish Internet marketing. For example, I have one friend who\'s doing one video every Sunday to his people, the people who watch his videos, and who are in his e-mail list. I think that\'s a great strategy when you do one video without any agenda, and the only agenda there is just to build relationships that tell how was the week and tell the news, and what\'s up and so forth. That was great thing, and he was marketer who\'s not like video marketer, but he was just so inspired of using video so he got to using it. His name is Phil Alfaro, he lives in San Francisco. For me, I\'d just check what other marketers are doing and just get inspiration from them, and what kind of videos they are doing. For myself, for 2009, I think I\'ll do more those kind of videos rather than doing just a video per week, and not selling anything, but just improving the relationship with my viewers, and people in my e-mail list.
Robin Good: Very good, thank you very much for sharing Lasse and all the best for you to 2009 for your video marketing evangelism.Keep us updated, and you guys who want to follow more directly his stuff, Lasse why don\'t you share your web site URL for everyone?Lasse Rouhiainen: My web site in English language is powerfulvideomarketing.com, and as Robin said also does something in the Spanish marketing. But for this interview I think powerfulvideomarketing.com is the good one to go to.Robin Good: Can the Latino readers find from powerfulvideo...?Lasse Rouhiainen: The Latino viewers can go to marketingconvideo.com. It\'s for Spanish and Italian people.
Robin Good: ¡Perfecto! Thank you Lasse, have a great day! Much appreciated indeed, look forward to another one soon!Lasse Rouhiainen: Thanks Robin!
Robin Good: Ciao ciao, ¡hasta luego!Lasse Rouhiainen: ¡Hasta luego!

Originally shot and recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published on January 15, 2009 as "Online Video Marketing: Basic Tips And Advice From A Video Marketing Evangelist - Lasse Rouhiainen - Part 2". ...