Online professional independent publishers rejoyce! 2008 promises to be a year of great innovation for everyone publishing online as opportunities to expand or start your own micro publishing company will only increase. New powerful publishing and content distribution tools will make their debut in 2008 while some of the existing technologies and services will greatly refine, consolidate and expand their present offerings. Change is the name of the game, meaning that in as much as you can't follow, participate and understand fully the logic of today's web, the changes search engines are going through, the rise of social media, it is going to be increasingly hard for new publishers to successfully enter and survive in this extended marketplace. As opportunities and tools to do better as an online publisher will dramatically increase, also the number of independent web publishers failing will skyrocket due to many having come late to the game and not having really understood fully how things are changing. This is why as we progress it becomes increasingly critical to leverage pivotal business opportunities situated not exclusively in the creation and re-distribution of fresh news and information but rather more in the direction of aggregating, contextualizing, explaining and "making-sense" of all this information effectively. For however this may appear simple and obvious to the non-expert mind, these are truly the crucial innovation areas in which I expect to see major innovations and changes coming next: Making sense of things in new highly effective, interactive, just-in-time, informal and entertaining formats. Isn't that promise of the Semantic web anyhow? So, what has 2008 in store for you? Here's in a two-part summary report, check out at a glance, what I see ahead:

2008 Media Predictions - Part 1

Here below the areas that I believe you should pay most attention to in the upcoming 12 months. I expect these areas to be very live with announcements and useful innovation. Since there are over twenty personal publishing-related areas I personally follow I am structuring these predictions in two parts. Eleven areas today and the rest tomorrow, January 1st inside my Part 2 of these New Media Predictions 2008.

• Social Networks

  The number of social networks will keep increasing though only few will consolidate as key social hubs worth investing serious time into. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, you know the names, though new ones will keep showing up. For many of you, joining these networks will mean maintaining one profile on a major social network among those above along with a presence in one specialized niche social/business network in the specific areas / industries you are most interested into. Especially for those just starting up or wanting to gain an extra visibility edge in a reduced time, social networks may indeed offer a viable short-term solution. One of the key revolutionary advances in social networking tools of 2008 will be the ability for you to update all of your multiple social profiles across different networks from one interface (lifestreaming).This is something many have been waiting for as the implications, efficiencies and opportunities this creates are rather impressive. See the next point for more detail.




• Lifestreaming

  Lifestreaming offers you a single solution for gathering and publishing to all of your various online identities from a single social media space. Let's say you use Twitter for short messages to friends, Flickr for photo-sharing, YouTube for uploading video, Google Reader for your RSS feeds, del.icio.us for social bookmarking, and on and on. Sooner or later you might start suffering from social networking fatigue, dreading the prospect of signing into these various accounts to check up on or produce content. Add to this the ability to create various profiles for friends, work, and even lovers, depending on what you want to share with each of them, and you have not only a powerful aggregation and authoring tool but also an excellent way to control what you share with your different online social media contacts.




• Search

  Search will continue to be one of the critical pivot points around which we find, discover and access specific information online. But search engines are changing and deeply so. Starting with Google all of the major search engines will continue to adopt new algorithms and technical solutions that take into larger account user views and preferences especially when these come from a trusted group of selected friends. Greater availability of simple to use solutions that will allow you to create and customize your own public search engine(s) will further grow while becoming more integrated with advertising and sponsorship tools. Widget-based search will also gain more traction as online publishers will start to create mini-custom-search boxes focused to specific issues as an integrated content inside their most valuable articles. PageRank: if you haven't yet realized does not have any more significant value and your level of visibility inside Google search engine result pages is not connected to it anymore.




• Live Blogging

  Live blogging is a fast-growing trend as more and more web reporters cover live events and demand specialized tools to support them in this challenging task. In 2008 I expect to see more tools and services appearing in this space and a stronger adoption of dedicated live reporting tools versus "adapted" live blogging solutions like chat rooms, blogs and social conversation tools like twitter and jaiku.




• Web video - Net TV

  Web television channels, net tv and other independent web-based television offerings will keep growing in number and quality also during 2008 with interesting innovations and changes to be expected. On the front of content production you should expect to see lots of failures and super-hyped shows that will last only a limited time before folding. Watch out for the unique traits that pioneer web tv producers will use in creating some of the first successful net tv shows. On the front of web-casting platforms some of the few existing players will consolidate their position or get bought up while some others will fold. There will also be some unexpected big new entries in this space that will solidly redefine the profile of an independent web television channel. The best of Mogulus and Ustream will come together in a package that offers greater ease of use, better quality, and much greater reliability.




• Newsmastering

  What's this Robin? I know most of you haven't heard this word before but this is definitely something you have seen the results of in front of your eyes without realizing it. Newsmastering, at least in my own definition, is the art of aggregating and splicing together a large number of source news feeds, persistent searches and other information sources from which one manually selects, edits and publishes a curated digest with a specific editorial style or focus. With the continuous increase in the amount of news sources and content being published daily there is no escape from having to rely on some intermediary and trusted news filterers or to succumb in an ocean of feeds that take hours to skim through. This is where newsmastering plays a key vital role among the online news publishers of all kinds as well as among those that are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to provide a greater service to the readers while creating a new effective opportunity for sponsorship/ monetization. Since there are still very few tools covering this area I do expect new entries in this arena and a positive growth for the few players that will innovate and market themselves intelligently in the coming months.




• Online Advertising

  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. As a web publisher I see an increase in advertising and monetization opportunities becoming available. New solutions will offer more controls and features to test and optimize, sometimes in real-time, your ad selections. Services acting as intermediaries for major advertising networks will increase in number and quality of service and are going to be ready for adoption by many small and medium-sized online publishers.




• Google AdSense

  Google AdSense will likely gain further in quality and revenue while losing many online publishers discouraged by its lack of transparency and open policies when it comes to penalizing sites, or establishing ethical rules that Google itself does not respect, or having to deal with a rapidly losing value of the dollar which significantly impacts non-US based AdSense publishers. In fact I expect many small online publishers to move away from AdSense and to invest larger amounts of time and resources in alternative monetization and advertising solutions. This may likely be a win-win evolutionary step for both sides, as Google AdSense may be able to strengthen its weak points while relying on a more selective network of sites and small publishers may find unexpected monetization nirvana in directions they had not even considered until now.




• Entertainment Meets Education

  Sounds like something I have heard before. The news here is that just-in-time, informal learning and connectivism are all getting together and providing smart online independent publishers with a first killer set of tools that will allow many to gain much greater success and revenue than contextual advertising ever did. What do I mean? Awareness and some rare examples are appearing showcasing the huge value and vast demand that there is from professionals wanting to learn and keeping themselves updated in new, enticing ways. No-body wants to read another 220-page book to learn something. On the other hand many enjoy watching short video tutorials, listening to interesting podcasts, reading through link-rich and well-illustrated article-guides or better yet by discussing the matter with other interested individuals, as all these approaches offer multiple and redundant ways to understand something from a number of different perspectives and learning styles. It is in this direction that talented communicators, established online publishers and niche experts will move next to further capitalize their knowledge assets.




• Google and SEO

  Whether you like it or not Google has given a very strong shake to the minimum requirements necessary to independently host a web site without incurring in any of its severe penalizations. This makes it next to impossible for non-expert webmasters to maintain control of their web sites reach and visibility within Google search results as the amount of know-how and technical expertise required is not anymore in anyone's reach as it used to be until mid-2007. This will force online publishers to become more knowledgeable and aware of lots of things ethical, editorial and technical they have been ignoring until now. There will be an evident increase in those seeking to publish their content via "trusted" platforms which are already integrated within a larger system. Content publishing networks such as Mochila or Blogburst, Squidoo, Google Knol and similar solutions may provide to be initial solutions to this trend. The overall result should be a general and sharp increase in the overall quality level of content and information web sites that will leave behind the neophyte phase of hippy blogging to those who are indeed there exclusively for the sheer passion of sharing their personal stories, to extend and broaden the personal publishing panorama with a more varied spectrum of highly focused and well-planned online content publishing solutions.




• Presentation Tools

  After one explosive year of new web-based presentation tools and services you have seen nothing yet of what it is to come in this direction. The metaphor adopted is so far is the one of replicating while simplifying the existing PowerPoint presentation paradigm. Unfortunately the PowerPoint approach loses water from all sides and it is also a bad foundation approach for those needing to develop better visual communication skills. But a small army of new cross-media presentation tools is coming to serve you in 2008. Not only will you be able to easily sync and match your selected slides to music and narration in an online slideshow, but you will start to get better tools to put together truly engaging visual presentations. For those who have seen Animoto or Splashcast and have already gotten very excited, let me tell you you haven't seen anything yet.

end of Part 1 - Part 2 tomorrow
Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on December 31st 2007 as "New Media Predictions 2008: What Online Independent Publishers Should Expect From The Future - Part 1"
Photo credits: Kirsty Pargeter Marcin Balcerzak Emsago

If you are on the lookout for some new useful tools that can help you better manage your distributed virtual room or your vacationing class of students, here is Master New Media new weekly set of cool online collaboration tools that you may have recently missed on their launch date and that Nico Canali De Rossi has carefully hand-picked and summary-reviewed for you. Photo credit: Daniel Gilbey - edited by Robin Good This week online collaboration technologies selection includes these eight tools:

1. Beam It Up: Compress your music, pictures or videos, and share them with a text message
2. ScreenStream: Free downloadable software allows you to show your screen to other people
3. Ulteo: Run OpenOffice online, and share your editing sessions in real time with anyone
4. Centericq: Text mode multi-protocol instant messenger connects you to major IM services through a simple interface
5. Easy Message: Smallest downloadable multi-protocol IM client allows you to connect to the major IM networks
6. Mindomo: Online mind-mapping tool lets you create and share mind-maps with your team
7. SmartSheet: Online task manager and spreadsheet editor allows you to collaborate with your colleagues
8. Wippien: Multi-protocol instant messenger with VPN enables you to chat and collaborate with your friends

Here the details:

1. Beam It Up Beam It Up is a free online service that you can use to compress files and send them on any mobile phone. It is really fast and easy to use: just select a file to upload(music, pictures, videos or docs), choose the compression settings, type the mobile number, and a download link will be automatically sent to that number via SMS text message so that your friend can pick the file up. Free to use, no registration needed. http://beam-it-up-scotty.com/


2. ScreenStream ScreenStream is a free downloadable software that lets others 'watch' your screen on their computers. After you have downloaded the small application and started the sharing session, you just have to give people a link that they will have to paste into their browser without installing anything. They can continue to watch your screen until turn off screen sharing. Free to use. http://www.nchsoftware.com/screen/index.html


3. Ulteo Ulteo is a web-based tool that lets you run OpenOffice 2.3 online. You can manage all of your documents online in various formats(OpenDocument, Microsoft, and PDF...), up to 1GB per account, and collaborate with people: all you need is a web-browser with Javascript and Sun Java Runtime 1.4+. OpenOffice sessions can be shared with anyone. Free to use, registration needed. http://www.ulteo.com/


4. Centericq Centericq is a text mode multi-protocol IM client that supports the ICQ, Yahoo!, AIM, IRC, MSN, Gadu-Gadu and Jabber protocols. Despite its old-style light interface, it fully supports all of the other clients' features, such as text-chat, file transfer, contact list groups, group chats, invisible mode, and more. Completely free, it is available for download and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. http://thekonst.net/en/centericq


5. Easy Message Easy Message is the smallest downloadable instant messenger, just 240 kb, that allows users to chat on multiple instant messaging networks from one place, supporting MSN, AOL, ICQ and Yahoo. Its main features are file transfer, group chat and mail notification. It is completely free and you can download it here. http://www.easymessage.net/


6. Mindomo Mindomo is an online mind-mapping tool that you can use to create and share mind-maps with any PC and browser. Mindomo free version lets you store up to 7 maps and invite as many people as you want to see and edit them. You can also check out other versions. http://www.mindomo.com/


7. SmartSheet SmartSheet is a web-based spreadsheet editor that lets you create and share spreadsheets with your team mates. With the free plan you can create and share up to five spreadsheets, with an unlimited number of people. You can use it for free or check the advanced plans. http://www.smartsheet.com/


8. Wippien Wippien is a full featured instant messaging client that supports the major chat protocols, including AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, GTalk, Jabber, and ICQ. The unique feature of Wippien is that it has a VPN (Virtual Private Network) baked right in and can be used to manipulate your online buddies' network shares, printers, desktop, and more. Free to download http://wippien.com

Originally written and prepared by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media

January is going to be a busy month for me. As I said before, three films are down, four to go. These four are all ATL jobs, and are every Friday-Saturday for the next four weeks when school starts up again on the 7th.

Week 1 - Director of Photography

This is a sci-fi period film, taking place in the 50s about a spaceship that crashes into a barn and a young boy is the only one that believes they’re good. The script has gone through a variety of location changes.

First it was interior, barn, night. Mysterious and dramatic. We have to shoot during the day, so we would have blacked out the outside of the barn to fake night inside.

Production team had some trouble finding a barn, so it switched to night, exterior, in a field - meaning it would be shot day for night, something I hate. And the director knows that.

I was able to convince the director to keep searching for a barn, and they finally found one. The only problem is the sides are open, so now it’s day, interior, which I kind of like.

When the director gives his story pitch to people that ask about it, they generally say, “Oh, like ET.” I think that by doing the movie in the day time, it will at least visually make the film different and break from the typical “aliens only crash at night” business.

Week 2 - Producing - The Return

This film is about a hostage situation in a dystopian future. One location, which makes life easy.

My main job with this is to get futuristic looking army vehicles. And the director doesn’t want to pay a lot for food, something I might have to talk to him about in the near future.

Week 3 - Production Design

Plain and simple, this film is about a guy that swallows a seed before his wedding and turns into a tree.

I just had a 20 minute conversation with the director about the science of metamorphosing from a human to a tree. Does he just become a straight-up tree with a suit? Or is he more of a hybrid tree-human, like an Ent?

I’m really looking forward to designing this film, it should be a lot of fun.

Week 4 - Direct

My movie. It’s about a guy that sells his soul for the corner office. I’ll probably, or at least try, to keep detailed updates, since I know the most about what goes into making this movie.

Since I’m last, and have been working on other people’s projects, not a lot is done with mine. I still need actors and locations, and just about everything else.

In looking at past posts, I realized I never laid out what exactly an F3 is, the project that has and will be taking my attention and life for the next few months.

The F stands for Filmmaking. The F1 was our little digital short, the F2 the half day film exercise, and now the F3. Here’s a basic rundown:

• 6 Page Script
• 6:30 Minute Runtime plus 1 for Credits
• 2 Production Days of 12 hours plus 1 for lunch
• 2 Hours Overtime
• 1600 ft of film (about 44 minutes)

We have a full crew composing of first and second years. (1 is a first year position, 2 second year. Bold is what the Film School considers ATL)

• Director (2)
• Producer (2)
  
• Director of Photography (2)
  
• Production Designer (2)
  
• First Assistant Director (2)
  
• Second Assistant Director (1)
• Script Supervisor (1)
• First Assistant Camera (2)
• Second Assistant Camera (1)
• Key Grip (1)
• Gaffer (2)
• Best Boy Grip/Electric (1)
• Sound Mixer (2)
• Boom Operator (1)

For me, it’s three sets down, four to go.

This may be old news to some of you, but it was news to me: You can burn HD-DVDs (not Blu-Ray) on a Mac using a standard DVD burner, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, and DVD Studio Pro. I tried it last night. It works.

The limitations?

- Standard single-layer DVD media storage limits mean that you’re limited to burning shorter projects (under 60 min).
- The article states you can’t play these on an HD-DVD player. I don’t have an HD-DVD player, so I haven’t verified this. You can, however, play them on a Mac.

Hooking up my MacBook Pro to a television and screening the DVD played flawlessly. And it looked a lot better than a standard definition DVD.

The trade-off? As anyone who’s done it before can tell you, encoding a project to H.264 takes a long, long time.

Gels are useful, but pricey. Any budget-minded filmmaker should take good care of them. Here’s a helpful post from David Tames at Kino-Eye that details some simple ways to organize your gels so that they last longer.

New show. I’m now First Assistant Camera (1AC). Above in the photo is Matt, my second. The first day is done and we have one roll to download, Matt’s first full on downloading experience.

Of course I’ve told him all about my previous experience, and tried to give every pointer to avoid spooling, but I must bring bad spooling karma.

“Joey, I think I might need your help.” I hear the crinkle of a pile of film in the tent. I tried to talk him through it but he couldn’t get the center back in. He wanted me to go in.

So I threw a sound blanket over our hands and made the swap. It was the same exact problem, though maybe slightly better. A pile of film had spooled out the center. I tried to wind it back in the center, but this time I discovered a trick. Slowly, but surely, I was able to wind all the film back in.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I seem to be getting better at this.

Charles’ F3, the one that I redeemed myself on, went pretty well last Sunday and Monday. The house we shot at was amazing, all ten cast members arrived on time and were great, and even Goodwood went off without a hitch. Of course a show can’t be perfect, which is why we had a little snag at the end of the day.

Just to give a little background on film, we shoot Super 16. It comes in rolls of 400 feet which must be loaded into a magazine in a light tight tent that your hands fit into. If you took a photography class in the pre-digital days it’s quite similar. The roll is threaded through the mag, loaded on the take up side and snapped onto the camera. Once shot the mag is taken back into the bag with a film can and downloaded, or moved from the mag into the light tight can. While we have, or should have, a workshop covering this with dummy rolls (small short ends or rolls that were flashed), nothing compares to loading a fresh, full roll. Or downloading it.

Downloading is obviously much more important and nerve wracking, as you are handling everyone’s time and hard work. It’s also slightly trickier. While a new roll has a core that snaps on, an exposed role must be removed without a core. If you’re not careful, the film can spool out, meaning the inside begins to unwind, which is exactly what happened.

Camera was wrapped, I was cleaning up, getting ready to move out when Justin, the First Assistant Camera, comes to me. “I think we might have a problem downloading.” I go inside to find the Second AC with hands in the tent, fortunately only downloading a 100ft roll. Charles and I try to diagnose the problem. He says the inside has come undone, which means it spooled. Typically the fix for this is to slowly wind the inside back in the center. It doesn’t have to be tight, just flat for transport.

The AC couldn’t do it. So I offered to go in the bag. We went into a bathroom, where it was fairly darker, and switched places. I felt around and got my bearings. I tried to wind the center up, but so much had spooled out I couldn’t wind it tight enough and get everything in.

My only solution was to take the other end and load the film backwards, winding it back on the mag and using that to keep it tight. I started doing this and it worked for a while, until the film started to wrap around itself and become one giant, tangled mess. Of course I couldn’t see it, but I’m pretty sure it creased a few times, which could put some light spectacles on the film. And just handling the film so much is not good.

Eventually the film tangled so much it could not go into the mag. It was late, we were still at the location, keeping the owner up, and the darkroom at school was locked. So I had to tear the film, untangle the mess, and start a second roll.

At 1 AM, two and a half hours after going into the tent, the tangle was undone and the entire roll was safely in two cans. I wrote a nice, long essay to the lab and I’m hoping they can splice the two halves together after they’ve been processed. The bigger issue might be creases and over handling. We’ll find out Wednesday.

During this ordeal, Charles and I were talking about how this wouldn’t happen with digital and it’s insane that our original footage is subjected to this with no backup. I love film, but it’s experiences like these that make me want this.

I caught some flack this summer when I was complaining about all the sequels and remakes in theaters. The folks that were most frustrated with me almost seemed to be asking, “Okay, fine, smarty pants. What would YOU rather see?”

One easy answer to that question would be Billy The Kid, Jennifer Vendetti’s superb new documentary, which opens for a limited engagement tomorrow at the IFC Center in New York (more theatrical screenings are soon to follow nationwide). Don’t miss this one. It’s easily one of my favorite films — fiction or non-fiction — of the year, and probably the best film about growing up that I’ve seen since Spellbound.

The film is a portrait of a Maine teenager, an awkward, troubled, and wise kid named Billy. What happens? Just life. Billy meets a girl. He deals with kids that don’t like him. His mother loves him and talks straight with him.

As far as plot is concerned, that’s “it.” But to explain the appeal of this movie, I would have to relay specific scenes from it. And the last thing I want to do is spoil the moments of discovery that Vendetti captures. All I can say is that the film does an uncommonly good job of capturing the raw awkwardness, pain, anger and tenderness of life at 15. The moments of Billy’s I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself reactions to first love, and his mother’s sensitivity to his plight, are especially priceless.

Since Billy’s thoughts and feelings are so close to the surface, throughout I kept fearing that Vendetti’s might teeter into the realm of exploitation. For me, it didn’t. Billy’s an outsider, and while there are undoubtedly some very funny moments in the film, whenever I was laughing at Billy it was because there was a shock of recollection of some similar moment (like his scene of electric guitar heroics) from my own childhood. And even in these moments, I was cheering for him, admiring his combination of guts and innocence.

Billy The Kid opens today at the IFC Center. Theatrical screenings in Chicago, Seattle, and elsewhere are upcoming. Check the Billy The Kid website for details. It’s worth seeking out.

So tone of voice doesn’t come out in written communication. I’m sure you already knew that, but just in case you didn’t, it doesn’t, especially on Facebook wall posts.

It was the director, Charles’, birthday. His film has two locations - a plantation house interior and exterior. The interior is secured - it’s an amazing 170 year old inn downtown. For the exterior, he wanted to use Goodwood, a private mansion turned museum. This would be one or two shots to serve as establishing shots. We drove over there one day and spoke to the director. Our conversation went something like this:

C47: Hi, we’re from the Film School and were wondering if a small crew could come by in a few weeks to get a shot of the exterior of the house.

Director: Well, we usually don’t like people filming here.

C47: It would just be a small crew, not the normal large size, and we’d just need to get one shot of the outside. Should take about 30 minutes and we’d never have to go inside.

Director: Oh, well what day would it be?

C47: Either December 2 or 3, whichever works best for you.

Director: Oh, well that weekend we have holiday events and the place is very busy.

C47: The third is a Monday, would that be better?

Director: Well, Monday, yeah, that might work. Let me get your information, I’ll talk to the other directors about it and get back to you.

So we gave him our information, but never heard back from him. This was where we stood on Charles’ birthday. So I wrote him a message, saying to celebrate his birthday Goodwood called and wants us to film there, which they hadn’t and I was just being sarcastic.

Since tone doesn’t come out online, he thought this was true, which made me feel terrible for getting his hopes up. So now I was determined to get this location. I went to their website and looked up the Director’s e-mail. I started an e-mail correspondence with him, and things began to look promising. “The directors weren’t too excited about you filming here, but if you can do it Monday I think we can work something out.”

I arranged to meet him after the Thanksgiving break to sign the location agreement, and with that both locations are secured and I redeem myself as Producer.