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Busy Times for Foursquare

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-10-27T19:32:06-07:00

Foursquare works via GPS and the ISS travels at 17,500 mph. Now, I don’t know about you but when I’ve tried checking in on the highway...that is my Foursquare assistant...... I am out of range of my spot before a minute passes. At 75...that is to say 55 mph. How you can check in at 17,500 mph? Well, like I said, the cool factor makes up for it. Foursquare also announced you can get a badge for voting, which is also pretty neat. I’m the mayor of 17 places, have 18 badges and I’m the owner of 3 locations. ... It took me months to become mayor of my favorite breakfast place. ... Being the owner of three locations has shown me what business get to see if they play along. ...And now that Foursquare is at 4 million, I am getting friend requests from people I have never heard of. I’m thinking of changing my profile photo to look like a bank robber. SAFETY TIP: When typing in the URL for Foursquare, be careful. There is a similar URL that is...well...not family friendly. I found this out during a presentation...on a 6 foot screen.

World Cup Twitter

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-06-19T10:49:52-07:00

I have been trying to use Twitter to keep up with the games and have not found it to be the solution I was hoping for. Instead of informative posts like “US now ahead by 1” or “US ties England, take that BP!”, Twitter is flooded with “Nice pass!”, “hey, offsides Ref!” or “you call that a corner kick?.” I’ve seen more “WTF!! #soccer” posts to think it’s a bot. The Twitter crowd is all in the same room, electronically. The World Cup is being a shared experience, not a broadcasted experience. If you are not in the room, the Twitterverse is not interested in letting you know what’s going on. It seems even in global Social Media, if you want to take part, you have to show up.

Checking in. 4 Months on 4Square

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-06-03T09:10:25-07:00

I’ve know about 4Square from it’s start but didn’t find much use for it. I was a very early Twitter-adopter and I recall the experience...nobody to talk to except Kevin Rose and I could care less that he was eating a burrito. ... I come to your store, you give me stuff cheaper in exchange for me telling all my friends I come to your store. ... And get’s people past the “oh, not another thing I have to do” issue. ...So, about 4 months ago, I become an active 4Square user, becoming the mayor of 10 locations. My joke was it seems I only go to the unpopular places. I had to reenter many of the places in my town because whoever did it the first time did it all from their house. ... I got a bit excited when a local business had a “special offer”. 20% off for the mayor. That was great until I realized that only one person was getting the discount and the rest of us had little chance of ever getting involved unless we checked in every day atleast. ...Once I became mayor of my local Starbucks, I joked about it with the young staff here. ... I began to imagine the 4Square logo on the sidebar of the wiki page for “Half-Baked-Idea.” ...4Square is listed on Time Magazine’s Top 50 Worse Inventions, along with Agent Orange and Subprime Mortgages. ... It’s a great invention actually, it just has not caught on and I don’t see 4Square being very aggressive in fixing that, and I’m wondering if it waited too long. ... 4Square is only just past a year old...and Yahoo seems to like the idea. ...Share

Facebook Needs To Lead

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-21T09:25:33-07:00

Facebook's Terms of Service should exist on the sidebar and be this simple: We will give your information to everyone, unless you tell us otherwise. Here is how you tell us otherwise (link). And then they should follow this completely. Period. Facebook knows it is up for a battle. It hired former Bush regulator Tim Muris to defend it against the US Congress. Many in the “main stream” media are already fearful of Facebook (see this article), and would love to use them as the poster child for what’s dangerous about social media. It is only going to take one story of a 15 year old girl murdered after being stalked on Facebook's new geo-aware app and the industry will be forced to lock down much further then it needs or should. For the sake of Social Media's future for users and business, Facebook needs to take the lead on protecting privacy and stop fighting against it. ADDITIONAL READING: Time Magazine: How Facebook is redefining privacy AT&T Labs Research White Paper: Leakage of Personally Identifiable Information Via Online Social Networks ... Post UPDATED at 10:55am PDT

School's out

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-20T09:00:03-07:00

The concept of using social media as a professional tool was the focus of the class, starting with a Google account and creating content on Blogger. ... Buzz is still like my experience with the then-new Twitter when I first opened my account. ... But we used it as a “crowdsource” experiment and the expected negative results were most enlightening. ...We moved to Twitter as a means of gaining reader/followers and by connecting with others in the same field. While most of the students were familiar with Facebook, Twitter was a site they heard about but had very little interest in. ... It was a struggle to keep the class interested in Twitter and to see any value in it. ...Since this was a New Media Technologies class, I wanted to try as many web apps as I could with Google apps. ... When you are sending an email out to many people, and they reply at different times, it’s difficult to see when a new reply comes in. ... Buzz has not reached practical users levels and I’m not sure it will soon based on the trend. ...It’s fascinating to see how other people accomplish the same thing in different ways. ... One of my students was a regular on a site that looked quite familiar, except for the colors and characters. I failed to note the URL, but imagine this site with red text and Han letters. ...Finding different ways of using 4 Square and the other geo-aware apps could be another. Like business, I am looking to find new ways to use social media in a professional way. And like business, I am finding that sometimes you need to look past the media buzz about the latest thing, and find out how it’s actually being used.

Happy Birthday, HoffPo

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-19T09:56:12-07:00

Only 36 months ago, The Huffington Post received a bit over 1 million visitors a month. Nothing to sneeze at but it didn't look threatening to, say, The New York Times with it's 11 million visitors. Or that scary to The Wall Street Journal's site with almost 3 million visitors. Now at over 12 million visitors, people have taken notice. Among the initiated, it even has an internet-coolness shortname: TheHoffpo. Interneters don't have time to use full names. The HuffPo took in $15 million last year, with Greg Coleman at HoffPo thinking that will double this year. NYTimes.com is still a bigger site, by visitors and revenue, but on the revenue side, the Times is trending downhill. HuffPo is part blog, part politically radicle diatribe and part aggregator. What happens if the end up burying the very sites they aggregate from? ADDITIONAL READING: What people are reading on the Huffington Post

News you can use

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-13T08:29:20-07:00

The Wall Street Journal uses Four Square to push breaking news. This screen shot from dpstyles is manufactured, but does display what Four Square really looked like on a certain day if you were in Times Square. ... I’m sure by mid-summer someone will add picture capability. ...Make yourself a mic flag, you’re on TV. And does this reporting need to be one way? Does the future of journalism include at least some aspect of everyone “shouting out” using mobile apps? In a society that seems to be devaluing the talents and skills of true journalism for the scream and noise of news commentators, I wonder how this will play. Additional Reading from Nieman Journalism Lab ShareThis ... var shared_object = SHARETHIS.addEntry({ ...shared_object.attachButton(document.getElementById("ck_sharethis")); shared_object.attachChicklet("facebook", document.getElementById("ck_facebook")); shared_object.attachChicklet("twitter", document.getElementById("ck_twitter"));

Facebook knows where you are

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-11T08:48:37-07:00

Like FourSquare, Facebook will know your location, allowing you to check-in. ... Now they are just going to use that information to make money. And like FourSquare and other geo-aware apps, the store you are getting your morning mocha from could thank you by offering free wifi or, like a store near me, a discount. Find a cheaper price from your phone like Red Laser, but with it all local. ... Maybe soon we can dump all those plastic cards from our wallets. For advertisers, Seth Goldstein, co-founder of the excellent SocialMedia.com is quoted in this AdAge.com article; “If you know where the consumer is, and that she is physically touching your brand, then you do not need to rely upon traditional mass-media channels to reach her." What if your store had an event and half of the people there telling their friends about it via Facebook Mobile (Maybe Facebook Mobile will now get a much much needed fix! ...Geo-location marketing has been the baby-waiting-to-be-born for some time. But apps like FourSquare have not reached a tipping point. Now, with Facebook in the game, the scale has pretty much tipped and fallen to the floor. GEOFocus was started just last month to catch hold of this new market. Look for McDonald’s to be a player when Facebook starts to integrate companies into it’s geo-aware plans. So is this a good time to discuss Facebook’s reluctance to plug into privacy concerns? ...There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice more active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

Newsweek Gets It Too Late

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-05-07T09:14:42-07:00

That’s Newsweek editor Jon Meacham on The Daily Show this week. The day when parent company The Washington Post announced the news weekly was up for sale. ... It’s safe to say the new owner will find some niche market to try to succeed in. It will acquire an agenda and so will go another blow to journalism. “We produce a magazine all week...the emphasis has been on print. ... Unfortunately he has seen it a few years too late and his fine magazine will soon be a memory. ...“Are we ready to get what we pay for?” ... “And if you’re not willing to pay you are going to get a different kind of news.” ... The financial crash was an opportunity for business news to be journalist, and they failed. Fox has been allowed to call itself “news” without the journalistic community crying foul. Instead, many have joined the bandwagon of opinion and agenda disguised at journalism. ...Society benefited with having a proxy to represent them, to ask the questions they can’t. ... Are people no longer interested in paying for news or are people not interested in paying for what they consider just another opinion? Is the lack of trust in journalism the true cause of journalism’s decline as much as their inability to adjust to different viewing patterns?

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Twitter 1 Everyplace Else Zero

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-04-12T10:19:57-07:00

Each morning, my inbox fills with about a dozen email newsletters from media news outlets. I learn about Oprah’s participation in her new channel “OWN,” and how the RTNDA is kicking off it’s annual meeting in Las Vegas. Then came a tweet via Mashable. Conan O’Brien will launch a show on TBS starting in November. This came from Mashable, “The Social Media Guide.” Why did they get the word out so fast? Before the usual outlets? Conan tweeted it, and that’s what Mashable follows. And Conan just saved 15% of his salary by not having to pay a PR firm.

Online and TV together. Yet another survey

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-04-07T08:29:04-07:00

Well, if you look at the overall numbers, yes. Tanya Yuki of comScore gave a presentation to the Advertising Research Foundation on March 24th. ...The “sweet spot” for on line advertising is actually 6 minutes. That’s how much the audience will tolerate before it tunes away. They obviously didn’t ask me! ...This next slide is my favorite. Online does not replace broadcast. Broadcast does not replace online. They are different mediums consumed for different purposes: And third, online is key for telling people you exist. Online drives traffic to TV. Online is an advertising medium. So, for those who continue to believe online will kill the TV star, it seems you may be wrong. And for those who believe online in a pedestrian approach you don’t have time for, well... I guess I’ll miss your show.

Internet and TV together

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-25T08:38:16-07:00

According to the Nielsen Three Screen Report which tracks usage of TV, internet and mobile, nearly 60% of users per month are on the intertubes at the same time they are watching TV. Remember when everyone thought the internet would kill TV? Well, it seems maybe we have just gotten better at multitasking. We also watch “TV” at work, thanks to the magic smaller flat screen we carry with us. 44% of all online video is watched while we should be neck-deep in some spreadsheet (Excel video plug-in idea!). Apparently, Steve Jobs, as well as the rest of us, watch “The Office” online when we’ve missed an episode. ... Thanks to TiVo, we’ve gotten used to TV our way. NBC now has NBC Direct with a branded player allowing you to download HD (well, 16x9) episodes. We also seem to like to be together during live events like the Superbowl. Facebook and Twitter let us do that without the need to have to get the stains out of the carpet after. ...Smartphones have allowed for a 57% increase in viewing video on a mobile device. Just imagine what that number would have been if AT&T had better 3G service in 2009. When do we start hearing that mobile is killing the desktop? It has already been mentioned that the web page is the wrong place for news. It’s too slow to produce...compared to a tweet or a Facebook status message. So, as you look at all of this, what single audience demand do you see in common: Convenience. (hint!

How to Motivate

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-22T11:18:57-07:00

Most assume people work for money, and just money. How many of us have had positions of good salary and still wanted out? ... People work for money because people want to eat. But the smart manager knows a motivated employee will deliver more for that same salary, and require less hands-on managing. ...Google allows 20% of employee time to be devoted to an employee’s personal project. Many of Google’s successful apps have come from this. Employees are a vast vessel of untapped knowledge. ... • Mastery: People want to get better at doing things. ... • Purpose: People want to be part of something larger then themselves. ...Remember, you worked hard to find the employees you have. You hired them for their experience and what they can bring. ... Create a way for people to contribute. ...They did very well with employee motivation for some time. ... But as the business faltered for other reasons, old-school managers were brought in and people were treated as expenses to be cut. Morale dropped significantly and “key employees” left just at the time they were needed most.

ImageMovers Digital and Disney

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-17T08:50:35-07:00

"Given today's economic realities, we need to find alternative ways to bring creative content to audiences and IMD no longer fits into our business model," said Alan Bergman, president of Walt Disney Studios. The official word is Disney made the call to shut the doors in January after post-production of “Mars Needs Moms” is completed. However word I am getting is Robert Zemeckis just wasn’t feeling “creative.” Disney made attempts to keep him happy, all of which apparently failed. Meanwhile, production is also continuing for a “Yellow Submarine” remake at the Novato facility. Zemeckis started ImageMovers in 1997 with his partners Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey, producing “What Lies Beneath, with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer, “Cast Away” and “The Polar Express with Tom Hanks, and “Beowulf”, with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich, Robin Wright Penn and Angelina Jolie. In 2007, Zemeckis sold the company to Disney and the name was changed to ImageMovers Digital. The Disney statement says that it hopes to develop a long term deal with Zemeckis and partners to complete development of a Roger Rabbit sequel and “The Nutcracker.” So it seems the clock gets turned back to an “ImageMovers” without Disney as an owner. And maybe a suddenly more “creative” producer-director? It has not been a happy time at Disney. It stopped work on ''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea,'' ''Wedding Banned'' and ''Wild Hogs 2.” Disney is also looking for a buyer for Miramax Films which it bought in 1993. ... Rumors also float around about the sale of ABC. ImageMovers will dispose of 450 employees giving nearby LucasFilms a cheap-hire bonanza with local media and city officials trashing Disney.

New York Times Webcast Ideas

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-05T09:18:19-08:00

You have so much technology now, you can bring in reporting from so many locations. ...In my experiences, I’ve noticed that a 25-year-old with a camera the size of a fist can get access where a guy with a camera on his shoulder followed by another guy with a big fuzzy mic on the end of a pole just can’t. You and I both know that the ability to point a camera and type a blog does not a “journalist” make. ...I’m sure you are smart enough to already be thinking of a second, more in-depth “premium” show and even topic-specific channels. There will be money to be made there if you do step one correctly. ...Skype brings you the ability to talk, one on one, with people in the most far off places. What I did for a similar project is to produce a one-pager with simple Skype download and setup instructions and tips on how to set up your location (example: no bright windows behind you). ... For a local Comcast operation, I suggested that area reporters be issued a laptop with a preconfigured Skype setup and an external USB camera. This reporter would travel to any local newsmakers house and setup the interview that would be fed live to the studio for interview by the host. ...No so much to have a multi-level conversation with guests, but for the audience to interact with each other, and for you to gauge the audience reactions. You can and should use audience input, but the “lets take questions from the chat room” segments will make you look lazy. ...Unlike old technology, you are not emanating from a big box in the room that just happens to be there. Your audience is seeking you out because of what you are, because of who you are. ... Don’t do Journalism to support new media tools. ...While I wonder what took this industry so long to catch on, I am glad someone finally did.

Idea is just step one

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-04T09:25:04-08:00

One of the great things about a company I once worked for was most of the people were new to the job they were doing. ... The bad thing was, well...many people were given vast responsibility and authority with little knowledge of how to get the job done. The challenging part for those with experience was to not discourage the newbie with reality. Instead, the experienced individuals were charged with being “the adult”, unofficially, with making sure the project succeeds, then stand back after and watch the newbie enjoy the accolades. ... But for me, the best part was the handful of the experienced “adults”, and how this small group would make it happen time after time after time. ...Being a company with limited resources, we were not about to assemble a set, plop down a host and have them talk. ... Twitter was the up and coming cool technology so the idea came down to add near-real-time tweets to the pool feed of the debate. ...With a new senior engineering management from the web-side of content creation, the direction chosen was Flash as a broadcast graphics maker. The beauty of this was we had the genius in-house mind (one of the “adults) who could build custom apps to pull text, avatars and location information from the twitter stream, send it to a moderation platform to keep things civil, and then out the back of a Mac where we’d key it all in the production switcher. We could also manipulate the the display of the tweets on-air in real time so that it just looked cool. ...In the weeks going into this show, there were endless meeting about concept...font colors...where people would sit in the control room. ... She would be the Executive Producer of a national broadcast yet she lacked the experience to know when it was time to decide, or sometimes what to decide. ...As if silently communicating telepathically, the “adults” ended a meeting a few days before air saying, “ok, this is what I am going to deliver for you...” ... A simple “I can do this, but I need to start working on this today if you want this for the show.” ...They trained a new Executive Producer who went off to enjoy the glow of success, then went on to the next project and did it all over again.

Pew report not a surprise

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-03-02T08:32:33-08:00

Keep in mind the research was sponsored by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. ... ** Still, while this report shows the internet rising as a source for news and information, it’s a bit like saying color made TV more fun to watch. ... ▪ 73% get their news from a network such as CNN, Fox and MSNBC. ...As they are getting dressed in the morning, the TV is on (oddly, a mostly audio experience for the user). ...The most popular news item for the news-via-internet user is the weather at 26%. ... Television weather is too often presented by a talk-show-host-wannabe who has seriously overpacked his presentation so that each map and data point is viewable for a mere couple of seconds. And most viewers, at that point, just need to know one thing. ...I did find some results interesting. 75% of the internet audience get their news from friends via email or social networking. This, by definition, is filtered news, forwarded by people pushing the story because it’s funny or simply due to some outrage. The one percentage that will grow is how many people get their news via a “real-time” device such as Twitter. ... So Twitter is more buzz then believable, but I think you will see that change. ...Conservatives feel that traditional news doesn’t talk to them, so give them a channel that talks right at them, and take it to the bank. ...Like I said, people do what is easiest, and the internet requires access. ...The geo-aware device with real time information will be the news source of America. ...**The link for the Radio Television News Directors Association is here.

ABC News Reboots

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-02-24T09:41:17-08:00

With its last major downsizing 10 years ago, ABC News announced, via email, a major reformatting. News Division President David Westin wrote: “All of us are good reporters. We can see that our entire society is in the middle of a revolution — a revolution in the ways that people get their news and information. We can have great success in the new world, but only if we embrace what is new, rather than being overwhelmed by it.” He went on to say “When we are finished, many job descriptions will be different, different skill sets may be required, and, yes, we will likely have substantially fewer people on staff at ABC News.” Of the six categories listed for change, number 1 is: In newsgathering, we intend to dramatically expand our use of digital journalists. We have proven that this model works at various locations around the world. ...This not long after this December Mashable.com article about content trends for 2010. Much more emphasis on new technologies which bring about a great increase in speed of reporting and a reduced cost as more people can easily contribute. But one rather interesting comment from BuzzMachine shows up in the article; the medium most feared by traditional news distribution...the webpage...may well be on it’s way out. Replaced by live streams such as Twitter and mobile devices. Seems a website is just not fast enough anymore. ...

Achievement, a definition

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-02-23T09:09:43-08:00

...a quote from Wayne Hale, former NASA Flight Director.

Broadcast Employment

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-02-23T08:46:20-08:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article today describing a new jobs bill. A $15-billion dollar measure designed to give companies an incentive to hire. A major incentive being that companies hiring an unemployed worker are freed up from paying their Social Security tax for the year 2010. If the employee stays for more then a year, the company is give a $1000 tax credit. That all sounds just great for companies...who will now sit on all hiring until it’s a done deal. With the Health Care fiasco, Congress is looking for some way to showing the American public they are competent, so chances are good some form of jobs measure will get passes. But, this being the 21st Century US Congress, it will come after the usual foot dragging and unnecessary amendments, the Republican’s saying the Democrats are excluding them, half the Democrats disagreeing with the other half of the Democrats. ... Meanwhile, companies will sit back and wait for the party to come to them. In the long term, job hiring incentives are a great idea. But this will not be a quick fix. And an even longer delay for the broadcast and entertainment industry.

OpenNASA, My ideas

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-02-11T10:39:36-08:00

NASA needs to do a much better job at telling people what they get out of NASA. I follow NASA extensively and I can't explain to people what we are getting out of the ISS. ...Compare the Spirit/Opportunity press conferences to a shuttle press conference. The shuttle events, I feel like I am bothering these people. ... I am taking them away from their precious science/engineering and I am too stupid to understand them anyway. ... Do you remember the line of Hi5's being given out at the post-landing conference? ...Each Center needs to explain to their local area what THAT Center is doing for them. ... NASA Centers should not be like going to a Navy base where you need a friend and a pass to get through the door. ...Outreach skills need to move beyond the Press Release and the Facebook post that is nothing more then a short press release. NASA "has" Twitter and FB, but doesn't "use" it well. NASA TV needs to be watchable, with a regular schedule so people know when what interests them is on. ...NASA is perceived as a luxury, and people will not support that for long. ... As we go international, what purpose is NASA for the average American? ...

Bain and Company

Danny@Skarka.com — 2009-11-10T22:15:05-08:00

As we pull out of this nose-dive economy, Engineering Managers are going use Return On Investment as a way of getting their capital budgets past CFO’s and CEO’s. “Buying this new box is cheaper then keeping the old box”. CFO’s love hearing that. So what is going to drive that Engineering Manager to a specific box? Well, my first question would be “what has the manufacturer done this past year, while I chilled on my heels, to push the technology? To give me more bang?” The Smart Company The smart company has used this downturn getting ready for the upturn, knowing that when the gates to the dollars opens again, Engineering Managers are going to be looking for something different. During all this economic mess, the Digital Transition happened. ... Technology has had a year to advance, and that’s a long time, especially with digital gear. How much ya wanna bet the “smart company” is probably small, and unheard of two years ago. ...How much ya wanna bet the “smart company” is probably small, and unheard of two years ago. Or atleast, not a market leader. ...

Must See NASA-TV

Danny@Skarka.com — 2009-12-08T22:09:07-08:00

NASA-TV doesn’t have much of a viewing audience outside of when a shuttle is flying, and most of it’s viewership seems web based. ... One of the saving graces for NASA Edge is it’s also a podcast, available on iTunes, the NASA site and the usual pod channels. ...One of the producing challenges of a show of this type is how to interview dry, scared, acronym-speaking overachievers and not make it a college poly-sci lecture with all of it’s tryptophanian features. Ok, to be fair, not every rocket scientist at NASA is dry, but as I type this, I am 7 minutes into an NASA-TV show interview about space food. ...Chris plays the straight role, while not coming across as a know-it-all, and Blair Allen does a really nice job being the likable buffoon. You get the idea that he’s not really stupid, he just misses some things along the way. ... While goofing around in an Aries simulator, you still get good info on what it’s like inside the thing. Chris’ interviews have good questions and it truly comes off as a conversation and not a list of questions he was told to get through in a minute-30. The rest of the on-air team of Franklin Fitzgerald and the recently added Jaqueline Mirielle Cortez mix in pretty well, especially Franklin, although I think four hosts is pushing it. ... My gut tells me Jaqueline was added to have a woman on the show and they haven’t quite figured out what to do with her yet. ...Good sounding lav mics, quality field audio (not easy to do), nice camera matching, edits in all the right places, lack of cheesy cutaways designed to make it look “cool” and the biggest sin of many NASA-TV shows...insipid soundtracks and sound effects. ... The projector light was half across his body, but they let all that bad lighting and blown out video stay in the shot. ... The NASA Edge logo is a bit....well....and I have grown tired of the “inside outside look at all things...” line. ...I would think there are a few interns tossed in, but I can imagine most of this show is done by a very small team. ...They say NASA makes things look easy, few really know how hard the job is.

Today starts a new....

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-02-08T17:05:58-08:00

Today starts a new site format. Simpler to move around. More pleasing to look at. Please tell me what you think! I’ve added tag links, a category cloud, and while other sites are starting to remove reader comments, I am adding them. Use it to tell me what you think. About the blog post or the new site layout. Welcome to the new www.skarka.com. Version....oh who knows.....

Internet Everywhere!

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-01-13T16:44:10-08:00

On Monday, I was listening to a discussion on NPR about “Internet Everywhere”. Specifically, the conversation was about internet access, wi-fi, in cars. One expert, Nicholas Ashford, Professor of Technology and Policy at MIT, was quite concerned. ... The irony that I was listening to this on a car radio was not lost. The people in this conversation were thinking “problem” not “possibilities”. ...Instead of thinking about it as “internet everywhere” how about “data everywhere”. With real time data to your car, think about the “possibilities”. ... Maybe even the ability to find your car if it’s stolen or when you daughter is out late....too late. ...No mouse, make keyboard non-functional during motion like my Prius (btw, if you don’t know the work around for that lockout, let me know). But don’t freak out at the concept of porting a great idea to another format and only look at the inherent problems. ...The real issue will be bandwidth since cell phone service is the logical choice for the transmission device. With that being the case, I was expecting someone from AT&T to call into the show. ... We haven’t figured out how to deal with iPhones yet!” ...

Missed Opportunities

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-01-19T16:34:21-08:00

The station issues this little buggies to reporters in the “cheaper, but more of them” idea of news gathering. ... I will, however, use it to point out a lack of forward thinking. This car is a roving billboard advertisement that the station is paying for regardless. I know that the sides of the car have the stations call letters and the channel number. ...The tag line “The Bay Area’s News Station”: this shows a limit right off the top. Why are they the news station of just the Bay Area? ... Most stations already pay for it, they just don’t utilize it well. What I recommend for this station, and stations like them, is to stop limiting their reach, their output and their potential audience. ... It doesn’t have to be much but it would demonstrate to the audience that you are a news operation, not a TV operation. ... In fact, if it’s a weather news day, Skippy should be doing the updating...hourly. ... And for the “nobody makes money off the internet” managers, two things: You are most likely paying for this already and just wasting the money. ...As far as being “The Bay Area’s News Station”, how about “The News Source”. ...Since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly...as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. ...v=250&username=skarka">

Positive outlook?

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-01-22T16:17:00-08:00

Dean wrote an interesting article on Trender Research, voicing a positive outlook for media, among other things. I agree for the most part, but I think he may be missing some key obstacles. He points out that the micro-media producers have no set infrastructure to protect, no “sacred cows.” ...Most of the material that micro-media producers are putting out is, well...junk. The new media channels; YouTube, Vimeo and alike, are, as a colleague used to say “a firehouse of crap”. ... Sorry, but no, not everyone can produce a good video and it’s an insulting thought to those that can. The early site of Current.tv, as it was called then, had great online tutorials on how to frame a shot, how to do better audio, lighting. ... I tried to find it using the Way Back Machine, but it seems that data is missing. To me, a business to be in is basic video lessons just to make things watchable. ...Dean makes is that the big media companies have the most to lose. ... As such, those big media companies will hang on to status quo as long as they can As a result, the mass distribution channels, the channels needed to make a venture profitable, will continue to be blocked. As profit-failing channels go away, they are not being replaced by new-idea-micro media producers, but by the same owners that ran the failed channel in the first place. ...I am optimistic about the outlook as well, but I think there will continue to be obstacles that slow down the progress. It’s big business, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. ...v=250&username=skarka">

Fox News #1

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-01-26T16:03:12-08:00

The week of January 18 to 25, Fox News was the number one cable channel in primetime. ... The number one channel on cable with 3,213,000 viewers. Much of that surely is attributed to the fact that it was a big news week with the earthquake in Haiti. Still, this makes me wonder about the apparent hypocrisy of the American TV viewer and the difficulty news managers have in dealing with it. ...Fox itself claims to be a commentary channel for most of their daypartsThey have a agenda and they are straight up front about it, despite their tag line. Whether you agree with their side of stories is not the point here. CNN and MSNBC also have a bias, but CNN’s is not as flagrant, and I don’t think as intentional. MSNBC is moving publicly towards a liberal bias, but still, not as much as Fox is conservative....although they are trying! ...Do you want to know the facts of a situation? Or are you more interested in a group of people who you can agree with? ... It was once the watchdog, letting us know about Watergate, Iran-Contra, Teapot Dome. Are we a country that no longer wants the truth but would just rather feel we are right? ...CNN covered the Haiti earthquake story more then all other cable news channels....combined. ...

Three Years Ago

Danny@Skarka.com — 2010-01-25T12:50:26-08:00

Three years ago this week, I was tasked with making a Presenter, located in a small, cold, green screen studio in London, look like they were standing in a big, bright, warm living room in LA. Using a single camera and mic in London, the signal would be sent to San Francisco where the chromakeying and other EFX would be done. ...The London stage was so small, you didn’t need a ladder to adjust the grid lights. ... One of the two floor lights blocked the door coming in. ... The “living room” in LA was a dynamic environment with wall-to-wall windows of the Los Angeles mountains. Designed after the “Chemosphere” house in LA, it was built “film-style” with lighting to give the appearance of different hours hours of the day and night; and a full crew to make it look sweet. I was required to match the look with four lights and a staff member who was borrowed, and who would be hired after I left. The camera in London was locked down and it’s height could not be adjusted without the help of some friends. This was an important aspect since the camera in London had to use the same perspective as the scene in LA; and the scene in LA was ever changing. ...Without the ability to train the UK “stage-crew-of-one,” the lighting was accomplished by putting together a playbook which indicated where the two studio floor lights, nicknamed “George” and “Tony,” would be placed. This to duplicate the look of the LA background; where the shadows were, the sunlight angle and so on. ... I was fortunate in that, like the rest of the UK team, our borrowed part-time crew member was quick, easy to work with, and had a sense of humor...or humour. ...We did get one complaint from a very senior exec who said one of our shots looked fake. ...This time, to help the UK team with their new studio and to fire up their new control room. ...v=250&username=skarka">