Steve Garfield examines the iPhone at Boston Media Makers, July 1, 2007.
Author: Christopher S Penn
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Web 2.0 Domain Names doomed on iPhone
Web 2.0 Domain Names doomed on iPhone
Watching the iPhone keyboard video, I thought this snippet was interesting:
“iPhone uses its built in dictionary to predict the next letter you might tap, and dynamically resizes the tap zones. It makes the next predicted keys larger in area, and the others smaller as it zeroes in on the particular word you’re typing. Let’s say you’re typing the word time in an email. I type tim. Since there are no common words spelled timr or timw, iPhone creates a larger target zone over the letter e and shrinks the target areas over r and w.”
How well will these sites do, do you think?
Flickr
Zoomr
Jaxtr
Expensr
BlubrryIf you’re a domain name investor, might be time to find out if any of the common English spellings of these sites are available – they may suddenly be getting a lot of iPhone users whose phones are correcting brand names to the English dictionary.
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Podcaster iPhone Kit
Giving away the Financial Aid Podcast Podcaster iPhone Kit which makes a simple page for iPhone goodness. Enjoy!
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What to do when your intellectual property is violated
What to do when your intellectual property is violated
Brian from Audio Attitude and the Procrasticast recently emailed both Adam Curry and me to let us know that EveryZing, formerly Podzinger, was infringing on the copyrights of our respective online properties. In Adam’s case, it’s a violation of Podshow’s IP, and in my case, a violation of the Creative Common Non-Commercial clause in my show’s license.
Because my show is the property of the Student Loan Network, our lawyers from Holland and Knight will just send a simple cease and desist letter, but Adam asked a very good question – what do people who don’t have a squad of lawyers do?
At PodCamp Boston last year, the fine folks from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society – a part of the prestigious Harvard Law School – gave out guides to Internet and intellectual property law, but if you weren’t there, here’s the short version.
Disclaimer: I AM NOT A LAWYER. I know a few lawyers, and have some lawyers, but I am not a lawyer and this blog post is NOT LEGAL COUNSEL OR ADVICE. Also, I’m speaking as a citizen of the United States, which means that if you live, work, or podcast outside of the US, or the dispute you have is with an entity outside the US, you will need to check local laws to see what applies. Always get a real lawyer for your specific situation.
First, understand what copyright is and what fair use is. You can determine if your copyright is being infringed by this primer on copyright law from Harvard Law.
Second, if your copyright is being infringed, document it by taking screenshots, photos, or video, printing them out, and send a Cease and Desist letter. The University of Texas has a great sample of a Cease and Desist letter here. It’s best to get any kind of legal notice notarized; a friend with a legal background recommended getting the notarization done by a court clerk or other court official, but if push comes to shove, any notary public will do. Make two copies and retain them, fax it, then send the original by certified mail or any delivery service that certifies a package was received and signed for.
At this point, most responsible companies will remove the infringing property and notify you as specified in the cease and desist letter. If they don’t, you’ll need to acquire legal representation. Depending on the potential damages involved, you may be able to find a lawyer who will either work pro bono or on a contingency basis; otherwise, you can also inquire with the National Legal Aid and Defender Association or your state’s Legal Aid organization.
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Why should a company engage in new media?
Lorri Randle wrote:
I read your blog and listen to your podcast and thought you’d be great in answering this question:
What do you tell a company that is scared to blog or do any new media because of the possibility of bad comments and bad press? I have a friend in an agency who says that the number one response from big companies about new media is: “we can’t control it, what about the bad comments.” He used the example of Apple hating its blog because of all the negative comments and GM and how their commercial backfired.
I wanted to get your opinions as to what you would say if someone asked you this question?
Good question, and a tough one if a company is not already in the new media space. I’d say this – a company that wants to participate in new media has to be a lot like a company that’s ready to go public on the stock market. You have to do your due diligence internally, decide how much information can be made public, and if you have skeletons in the closet, either resolve them or reveal them up front so that it won’t come back to bite you later on.
The reality is that every company has done something to tick off at least one customer, and that customer has the same power voice online as the company itself does. The real question is – if that company encounters negative press online, is it ready, is it prepared to engage and discuss? If you just sit on your hands and do nothing, you’ve effectively surrendered to the negative blog comments and conversation online. Mitch Joel often cites the Kryptonite Lock example as a company that could have joined the conversation but sat it out, and lost millions of dollars in the process.
Think carefully about how a company can turn negatives into positives, or at least provide an alternate perspective. In GM’s case, they could and should have highlighted very publicly some of the great examples customers had turned in, PLUS highlighted some of the best “negative” videos, along with a senior executive explaining what environmental research they’re doing to mitigate the damage their giant SUVs do, be it advances in hybrid technology, fuel cells, batteries, etc.
If a company has NOTHING positive going on inside, then of course, it’s best to stay out of the conversation. If you’re an employee at a company which has no redeeming value to society, you probably should think about a job elsewhere, anyway.
Bottom line: you will get bad press no matter what. You will get good press, too. If you’re not already participating in the conversation, when the bad times come, you’re going to get stomped.
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Stabilization equipment for handheld video
We in new media have enjoyed access to smaller, lighter, less costly equipment as the years have gone by. I remember when my father got our first VHS video camera. It shot at 320 x 240, 30 fps, weighed 17 pounds, sat on your shoulder, and cost a thousand bucks. Today, I carry a small Canon SD130IS and a Nikon DSLR which can crank out HD videos all on its own. The Canon weighs so little that I forget I have it with me half the time.
The downside of gear this small and light is that it’s extremely unstable. Human hands are not known for stability, and gear that light doesn’t weigh enough (and therefore have enough inertia) to self-stabilize. What to do? Well, some folks have come up with very innovative products to do things like stabilize video or enable hand-held distance pictures. Two such products are Manfrotto’s Fig Rig, and PixPal’s camera extender. The Fig Rig will set you back about 300, and a camera extender another30.
This, then, is how to do it all on $7.
First, go to the hardware store and pick up a 5 foot length of PVC, two 90 degree elbows, one 45 degree elbow, one T junction, 2 female-female pipe connectors, 2 1/4″ x 3″ carriage bolts, and 2 wingnuts, 1/4″. You’ll also need a drill with 1/4″ bit and a saw. The pipe can be any width that feels comfortable, but make absolutely sure you buy connecting pieces to fit that width, and buy them all at the same store, since some piping systems are – yes – proprietary.
Note: the 2 connectors are NOT shown here.
Start by drilling a hole in the bottom of the T junction. You may want to use a kitchen knife to pare off any bits of plastic left over.
You’ll also want to drill a hole in the elbow. Aim the drill for the center of where the pipe will be.
Saw the pipe into 5 equal sections.
Assemble the pieces as shown below:
Now attach your camera(s) using the carriage bolt and wingnut. Do NOT overtighten or you’ll wreck your camera. Tighten until the camera doesn’t easily rotate, but not so tight that it won’t budge.
You’re ready to go. Use the video stabilizer to walk around and shoot video, and the camera extender to take pictures of yourself at a distance.
The best part of all this is that this all breaks down into small segments and transports easily in a suitcase or backpack.
And that’s the new media DIY project for the day. And the cost for this project, assuming you already own a drill and saw?
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Chris Brogan Must Make His Brain API-Aware
Chris Brogan Must Make His Brain API-Aware
One of the slides in my presentation about derivative thinking is the black box slide. You don’t care what’s in the box – you know what comes in and what goes out, and that’s all that matters. The contents of the box, as long as they work reliably, can be invisible or opaque.
This is the essence of an API. You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. You do know that reliably, when you put beef in the machine, burger comes out. You know that when you hit send on your end, data appears at the destination location, but what happens in between here and there isn’t important.
Black box API thinking is one of the skills that I promote. You don’t care what something does, you just care that it does it. Then you start bonding things together, a bit like Legos from our childhood. Building block by building block, you assemble the pieces together in different combinations to yield powerful tools.
So when I say I want a project lead, this isn’t a job. It’s not a technology (though it could be). I want someone to volunteer their blog, a sliver of their focus, a fraction of their time, and some of their interviewing skills to finding out whether the existing social media tools, when harnessed and dashboarded, might make some kind of formidable tool in the world of drawing attention, establishing a relationship, and then driving part of the relationship’s actions towards an outcome.
When you have a pile of tools, examine what they do, learn what they do singularly, and then start plugging one into another to derive greater powers. Plug Feedblitz into WordPress, plug MySQLAdmin into both of those, then plug MySQLAdmin to LinkedIn to get a cleaned list of people. Suddenly, each individual tool’s powers are magnified.
The thing Chris is looking for isn’t a technology or even a project lead. He’s looking for someone who can combine tools into great powers.
What tools in your toolbox do you have that can be bonded together to make even more powerful tools?
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PAB2007: Mitch Joel and I present Podcast Marketing Toolkit
Mitch Joel is a rockstar. An honor and pleasure to present with him.
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Another drop of water outside the podcasting fishbowl
Podcasters Across Borders was incredible this weekend, with so many great presentations, so many good friends, and lots of discussion about podcasting. It was the quintessential community-centered event, deep inside the fishbowl, in the echo chamber, and that’s a good thing.
Events like PAB are essential for podcasters to recharge, to regroup, to get together and share and reaffirm that podcasting is still the exciting venture it was when they started. It’s a source of energy, a source of inspiration to help people motivate or remotivate themselves to produce new media.
On the way home, Bryan Person and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Oneonta, New York. There, a senior in high school who had just graduated came up to me at the table (Bryan was still in line) and asked, “Hey, my friends and I saw your shirt – what’s a podcast?”. (for the record, I was wearing the PAB2007 shirt, skillfully designed by Nico Pin of Snowy Day Design)
Full stop.
Here’s someone who is probably as ideal a candidate for new media as you can get, and they don’t know what a podcast is. When I said “it’s an MP3 internet radio show” she got it immediately as to what it was, but didn’t know what kind of content was available.
We have a lot of work to do.
The conclusion of PAB kicks off the promotional season of PodCamp Boston 2 for the PCB team. We’re rested, recharged, and ready to bring new media to the mainstream, and the best way we can do that is to do as much outreach as possible. PodCamp Boston 2 will ideally be the largest, best, most exciting PodCamp ever – until the one that follows it. We’re going to take the lessons of previous PodCamps and put together what we hope to be the best community UnConference we can, and we’ll need your help.
In the weeks to come, we’re going to be talking a lot more about what we need for PodCamp Boston 2, but immediately, we’d love your help in directing people to the registration page. The URL is easy to remember: https://www.PodCampBoston.org/register
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Home from PAB2007
Tired. Worn out. Very, very happy. Tomorrow begins one of several new ideas that came from PAB for the Financial Aid Podcast, which will bring a lot of new value to SLN, I think. So many good friends at PAB, so many more new ones. Lots to think about, lots to process. Hours of video.
Mark and Bob – FANTASTIC job. Thanks for having us.
Oh, and Neil Gorman’s session video is up on the podcast site.
