BrandBrains

• ‘Astoria Park’ is like post 9/11 Spike Lee
  “NEW YORK: Gifted young film makers Chrysovalantis Stamelos and Paras Chaudhari are winning rave reviews for their high-tension urban drama Astoria Park, set on a basket ball court in New York’s immigrant quarters after the September 11 terrorist attack
  (tags: film movies indiefilm paraschaudhari crescentstreetfilms astoriapark awards)

Bookmark to:
          

• The iPhone Just Changed The Wireless Industry
  (tags: cellphones iphone wireless verizonwireless verizon mobilephones portablemedia)
• Why Verizon Went Open & What It Means
  (tags: blog cdma mobile news verizon wireless verizonwireless iphone apple digitalmedia)
• Free Stock Photos at freerangestock.com - Totally Free Stock Photography and Textures!
  “All images are at least 2400 x 1600, and photos can be used for commercial or personal projects.”
  (tags: photos photography stockphotos stockphotography freerangestock image images free presentation tool tools website webdesign photo)

Bookmark to:
          

It should be here before Friday. I still don’t know what my first book will be. Any suggestions?

Technorati Tags: Amazon, AmazonKindle, Kindle, eBooks, eBook Reader, Digital Media, eCommerce, Downloads, EV-DO

Bookmark to:
          

• The Blogger’s Guide to SEO - by Aaron & Giovanna Wall
  (tags: blogger bloggers blogging blogs content google guide paper marketing seo blog tips howto)
• The Bouncing Ball Of Site Analytics
  “Never mind the actual numbers: a clear trend emerged. While our client’s traffic stayed stable, the competitor’s bounced up and down like a SuperBall. Intelligence received. Our client had a loyal following; the competition was offer-driven.”
  (tags: analytics metrics audiencemeasurement webmetrics ecommerce digitalmedia)
• Meizu M8 MiniOne to debut at CES in January?
  (tags: meizu meizum8 gadgets iphone electronics ces digitalmedia)
• Big Brands Developing Applications Rather Than Buying Advertising On Mobile
  “Vicks is offering SMS weather alerts to help people avoid head colds, AT&T sent spectators of the Ironman triathlon an SMS notifying them when contestants in the race passed a checkpoint, and the mobile social network The Yard set up to promote Sprite.”a
  (tags: applications ideas mobile news sms mobileapplications digitalmedia cellphones mobilephones wireless)
• RoundPic - rounded corners for avatars and images [web 2.0 style]
  “Online tool for making anti-aliased rounded corners (very Web 2.0!) for avatars and images”
  (tags: ajax apps design editing generator images web2.0 webdesign tool image tools photos)
• Journalists Cry Foul Over In-Text Ads
  “Journalists affiliated with papers and magazines using these ads argue they blur advertising and editorial lines. The format may encourage positive coverage — since algorithms don’t place ads on stories heavy with negative words …”
  (tags: textads advertising onlineadvertising digitalmedia journalism journalists vibrantmedia publishing onlinepublishing)
• Video Product Tours Yield 35% Increase in Online Sales Conversion
  “The Active Product Tours are detailed product presentations featuring audio, video and downloadable sales collateral related to a particular product. Shoppers choose to view them by selecting a “Take a Product Tour” button on the product page.”
  (tags: sellpoint coremetrics producttours products shopping onlineshopping ecommerce audio video streamingmedia streamingaudio streamingvideo digitalmedia)
• ZiffDavis: Gamers Influence General Product Purchases
  “The survey, which garnered response from a predominantly male audience, with an average age of 24, reflects interest particularly in the entertainment and technology realm, such as consumer electronics, music and movie purchases.”
  (tags: gamers influencers influence wordofmouthmarketing wordofmouth consumerelectronics music movies purchases commerce digitalmedia marketing)
• Lights! Camera! Sales!
  How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world
  (tags: youtube video streamingvideo streamingmedia smallbusiness marketing onlinemarketing digitalmedia)
• Extreme Makeover
  Entrepreneurs have shied away from rebranding their companies. But as competition rises and costs fall, that’s starting to change.
  (tags: branding brands marketing communications marketingcommunications marcomm smallbusiness branddevelopment entrepreneurship entrepreneurs)
• Social Network Insecurity
  “Yes, every pageview counts, but so does the experience of networks’ members.”
  (tags: facebook myspace socialnetworks socialnetworking email traffic pageviews uniquevisitors audience digitalmedia advertising onlineadvertising)
• Advertising Agencies are in a Commodity Business
  (tags: advertising advertisingagencies brands branding jonathancampbell media marketing)
• Report: Black Friday Online Shopping Up 10 Percent
  (tags: shopping ecommerce onlineshopping metrics statistics traffic consumer)

Bookmark to:
          

• Take the time to Ponder
  “Today, take the time to ponder. Try just 10-minutes to start with. This is a time where you just get to sit – and think.”
  (tags: productivity gtd thinking strategy)
• ThirstyLight keeps watch on plants so you don’t have to
  “That’s handled by a “Drypoint Digital Circuit,” which checks moisture levels once per second and is able to discern between five different levels of dryness (relayed to you by blinking patterns of increasing urgency).”
  (tags: thirstylight plants gadgets flowers soil gardening houseplants)

Bookmark to:
          

• Caffeine Boost Your WIFI Video
  (tags: antenna diy geek hack hacks wifi wireless hardware)
• Lootist - Specialist-Guided Product Discovery
  “On Lootist, you can discover the best products by hobby or interest with guidance from real-life specialists.”
  (tags: blog gifts ideas marketing onlineshopping products retail reviews shopping recommendations)
• well…: Bookishness
  (tags: analysis ebook amazonkindle kindle amazon)
• Buffalo announces 320GB portable hard drive
  “You can never be too good looking or have too many gigabytes on your person, which is why Buffalo has just announced what it’s touting as the “world’s largest” portable external hard drive, a 320GB dynamo called the MiniStation Turbo USB HD-PS320U2.”
  (tags: storage harddrives hardware buffalo usb)
• News Corp May Be Looking To Buy LinkedIn
  Maybe a good match for the Fox Business Channel?
  (tags: linkedin acquisitions newscorp rupertmurdoch)
• Eye tracking rules
  (tags: adsense advertising behavior blog blogging branding content web marketing usability design webdesign eyetracking)
• Web site converts photos to vectors
  (tags: art design illustrator lifehacks office photo photos vectorgraphics)
• Yet even MORE evidence of upcoming iTunes rentals
  (tags: distribution film movie iphone online digitalmedia itunes apple rentals)
• Google Docs - vertical spacing
  (tags: extensions firefox google googledocs greasemonkey scripts writing docs)
• Convenience, Not Price, Drives Online Holiday Shopping
  “Online shopping’s primary appeal is its convenience — the ability to shop anytime during the day — according to 81 percent of nearly 1,000 respondents to the Nielsen Online Pre-Holiday Survey, which was fielded online, reports MarketingCharts.”
  (tags: onlineshopping ecommerce research nielsen)
• Sony Ericsson’s patent application for drag and drop NFC-style
  “The application features — at least in one scenario — the ability to slide a file off your device’s screen and have a neighboring device receive it as if you are simply handing a note across.”
  (tags: mobilephone patent sonyericsson wireless handsets cellphones nfc nearfieldcommunication digitalmedia)
• Chart Chooser
  (tags: analysis application architecture business design diagrams chart statistics templates presentation powerpoint visualization charts excel)
• Rise of Out-of-Home Video Sparks Metrics Push
  “PQ Media expects out-of-home-video spending to increase to $1.28 billion by the end of 2007 (up from $1.1 billion in 2006), with an additional $365 million for digital billboards and displays.”
  (tags: outofhome video audiencemeasurement metrics digitalmedia research pqmedia advertising)
• Plaxo Sees Exponential Growth as First to Use OpenSocial
  (tags: google internet opensource review socialnetworking socialnetworks plaxo opensocial digitalmedia)
• BuzzLogic’s New Ad Network Gets $2.5M
  “BuzzLogic’s new Targeted Ad Network isolates social media for providing marketers with the most influential places on the web. The deduction here is that these influential pockets of active, social media are ideal places in which to insert targeted ads
  (tags: ads analytics business news socialmedia tools advertising socialnetworking blogs socialnetworks audiencemeasurement)
• Limited And Tentative, MySpace To Test Ad-Supported Music Downloads
  “MySpace is slowly trying its hand at letting its users access free ad-supported music via Textango, a mobile billing and online music delivery service…”
  (tags: advertising ecommerce music myspace textango downloads digitalmedia spiralfrog)
• Visa Trials PayWave In Canada, Malaysia, Remote Payments In Brazil
  (tags: visa paywave nfc nearfieldcommunication commerce digitalmedia payments)
• LinkedIn Growing More Quickly than Facebook
  “These Nielsen statistics show 189% growth for LinkedIn versus 125% growth for Facebook. Nick also sites compete.com’s stats that show 400% growth for LinkedIn.”
  (tags: linkedin facebook digitalemedia socialnetworks socialnetworking audiencemeasurement metrics statistics stats)
• Rondee Launches “Evite” For Conference Calls
  “But while there’s no difference in the cost, Rondee’s Evite-like web interface makes it the simplest conference calling system I’ve seen. The service lets you schedule calls with several little features that make it easier to use.”
  (tags: business collaboration communication conference review technology rondee conferencecall calls)
• 5pm - project management on time
  (tags: collaboration management online productivity project projectmanagement projects web2.0)
• XstreamHD to deliver 1080p to your home
  “The service uses existing geosynchronous satellites to move content to an antenna at your home and then into a proprietary media server for distribution throughout the premises.”
  (tags: highdefinition digitalmedia video 1080p xstreamhd satellite)
• 10 practical tips to boost your LinkedIn profile
  (tags: linkedin tips tricks howto socialnetworks socialnetworking)
• AT&T Buys Online Pay-Per-Call Provider Ingenio
  “The company’s platform allows provisioning unique published phone numbers to track calls to businesses generated by those ads (contextual or otherwise), and advertisers’ fees are based on the volume of these leads.”
  (tags: at&t ingenio ppc advertising cpaadvertising digitalmedia acquisitions)

Bookmark to:
          

People have been panning the Kindle, yet most of them don’t own one - or for that matter, haven’t even touched one yet.

Well, Wilson Rothman over at Gizmodo has lived with the Kindle for the past four days - in bed, on a plane and yes, on the porcelain throne. His verdict, so far? Thumbs up.

“Having lived with the Kindle, I can say that it serves most of my immediate reading needs. As a guy who enjoys amassing a vast library of books and displaying them in bookcases, I am a little frightened of the future, but inevitability is the name of the game, and fear of change isn’t a good enough excuse. Will I continue to buy books or will I jump into Amazon book buying mode? That remains to be seen, but you, o early adopter, should not share my fears. The Kindle is a quality invention, and I can see why the first batch sold out so fast.”

My Kindle is supposed to arrive on November 28th. We’ll see if I feel the same as Wilson after a few days. I may not, but at least I’ll be able to make an informed decision unlike most “reviewers” of the past few days.

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Kindle, eBooks, Gizmodo, Wilson Rothman, Reviews, Gadgets, Technology, Sprint, EV-DO, Wireless, Cellular, Wireless Broadband, Downloads, Digital Media

Bookmark to:
          

So, a Genius at my local Apple Store recommended that the optimal external drive size for Time Machine should be 2 - 3x the size of my primary drive. My MacBook has a 160 GB drive of which I typically use about 70 to 100 GB, depending on how often I get to move my ODM source files.

My MacBook is my primary machine and I take it home with me every day (and just about every place else I go). If I were to get a 500 GB or 1 TB drive, should I keep it at the office or at work? How often does Time Machine take snapshots of my machine and at what time of day? Continually?

Here’s another scenario: What if I were to get a portable 250 GB drive and carry it with me? It’s not the 2 - 3x capacity recommended by said Genius, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about where and when to use my drive.

Any ideas for me?

UPDATE: RTFM. Duh.

Every hour, every day, an incremental backup of your Mac is made automatically as long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac. Time Machine saves the Time Machine iconhourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month. Only files created and then deleted before the next hourly backup will not be included in the long term. Put another way: You’re well covered.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Mac OS X, Time Machine, Backups, MacBook, Technology, IT, Information Technology

Bookmark to:
          

• Verizon Boosts FiOS Speeds
  “The symmetrical connections have up and down speeds of up to 20 megabits per second. The symmetrical services were first launched on Oct. 23 in the New York Tri-State Region. Today, Verizon launched the service in the remaining 13 states.”
  (tags: fios news tech broadband verizon verizonfios)
• Small Package: Oculon Hikari Pro920 Pocket Projector Debuts for $299
  (tags: lcdprojector hardware gadgets video presentations)
• Digital Downloads: Vudu Goes HD, Thumbs Nose at Blu-ray and HD DVD
  “This is a sign that Vudu—and Universal—are looking past the current format war toward the increasingly inevitable download-only distribution.”
  (tags: iptv hd highdefinition vudu television video downloadablemedia downloads digitalmedia premiumcontent blu-ray hd-dvd)
• Revver Gains Contributors During the WGA Strike, CPMs hit $35
  “Revver, the video sharing/advertising network, has gained contributors from traditional television during the WGA strike and are now charging advertisers as much as $35 per thousand views of certain videos.”
  (tags: revver video advertising wgastrike television tv digitalmedia streamingmedia streamingvideo)
• Want Some Analytics with that Facebook App?
  “The App Hound enables users to label apps on a tracking platform, then informs them of specific traffic changes.”
  (tags: apphound facebook metrics analytics digitalmedia socialnetworking socialnetworks facebookapi)
• Digg’s Long-Term Effect on Traffic
  “Ben Cook created a blog with a single post and submitted it to Digg. The post reached Digg’s front page, a deluge of visitors ensued, but what’s next? High search engine rankings and a continuous trickle of visitors…”
  (tags: digg traffic bencook socialnetworks digitalmedia culture)
• The Google Set-Top Box (Think Android For TV)
  (tags: android applications cable cabletv future google iptv research trends platform television tv digitalmedia)
• Research firm says planned internet capacity upgrades will fall 60% short by 2010
  (tags: broadband bandwidth internet digitalmedia downloads)

Bookmark to:
          

I have a new workflow for producing On Digital Media (and keeping up with my feeds, in general): Google Reader on my mobile phone.

Here’s the deal: each week we comb blogs and news sites for relevant stories for a new episode. When we find an interesting story, we then tag it in del.icio.us (for:ondigitalmedia - Feel free to tag stories for the show). On the night that we record an episode, we create a story list based on the contents of the del.icio.us feed.

For me, the challenge has been to find the time to catch up on all my reading. So now, I use Google Reader Mobile while I’m on the train.

Here’s the addition to the workflow: If I find something interesting and relevant as I’m reading on my phone, I’ll “star” it. When I return to my desktop, I’ll then tag it for del.icio.us and remove the star from the item until the “Starred Items” list is empty.

This simple addition has enabled me to achieve the equivalent of “Inbox Zero” in my feed list - something I never thought possible to accomplish on a regular basis.

Thanks to Mr. Hatch for the tip.

Technorati Tags: Productivity, Podcasting, On Digital Media, GTD, Workflow, Steve Hatch, Google Reader, Mobile Phones, Mobile Content, Cell Phones

Bookmark to: