Streaming video comes to iPhone…

August 13, 2008 By

I just got a note that Qik just shipped into beta on the iPhone. I’ll be testing this out and will let you know what I think. One thing, the quality isn’t expected to be as good as what I get on my Nokia phones for two reasons:

1. The compression is being done in software on the iPhone, where on Nokia phones there’s hardware support for that.
2. The camera isn’t close to as good, particularly in low light.

But, that said, lots of people only have iPhones, and don’t have Nokia phones, so this will let a lot of people do streaming video from their cell phones that couldn’t do it before.

One thing: if you do this, it’ll probably really drain your batteries (my Nokias only last about 40 minutes when I do streaming video) so beware of that if you try to stream something long.

UPDATE: One big thing is you need to jailbreak your iPhone before you can load this app. That’s very unfortunate because most people will not jailbreak their phones.

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Getting things done over at FastCompanyTV

July 29, 2008 By

If you haven’t checked into FastCompanyTV lately, we’ve been posting up a storm of innovative people.

David Allen, best-selling author of Getting Things Done, tells us how to get more done.
Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, shows me how to use Mind Mapping software and tons of other tools to become more productive.
Philip J. Kuekes, computer architect on the quantum science research team at HP Labs shows me how they are finding new ways to make processors and memory a lot smaller and power efficient. Does he make you feel like you are a few brain cells down on him? I always get inspired and wish I studied more math and science in school when I meet guys like Philip.
Senator Tom Coburn tells me why he likes bloggers, among other things. This was part of our whirl-wind tour of Washington DC.
Microsoft Senior Vice President, Chris Capossela, tells me how they are going to keep all office workers from going to Zoho or Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Seriously, he laid out what Microsoft Office team is trying to do to bring collaborative features into the most-used of Office suites.
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein talks to me about a variety of issues, including child protection, which is what he’s most passionate about.
Congressman Tim Ryan talks to me about Twittering from the House of Representatives. Among other things. Heck, did you catch that a Democrat is now proposing that we build nuclear power plants and get people to buy electronic cars? We wouldn’t have had THAT conversation a decade ago.

Whew, and there’s more smart people to listen to over on FastCompanyTV too.

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The most hated man in America? (the cable guy)

July 8, 2008 By

Before I started the interview with Kyle McSlarrow, CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, I joked with him that he’s the most hated man in America, because everyone hates their cable company. He took that in stride and we dug in and talked about the state of broadband, how USA compares to Korea and other countries, and all sorts of issues like what cable is becoming and what his view of the technology industry is.

This is one of the Washington DC interviews we did.

We hear a lot of villification of this group in the media, so it’s nice to sit down and hear his point of view on a wide range of things. I love how he blamed me for using too much bandwidth at one point at about 17 minutes into the video.

Compare his responses on broadband and network neutrality to those from when I interviewed Representative Ed Markey or my interview with Representative Zoe Lofgren. You can see a rift, even if it’s a nuanced one.

Discussion of this video has already started on FriendFeed. How about you, what do you think of the interviews we got in Washington DC so far? (a few more are coming soon)

Personally I came away with a lot better impression of the cable industry after this interview. What about you?

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Is getting “more traffic” your real goal?

June 30, 2008 By

Who is winning the race to get more traffic?

This 14-year-old kid, Fred. He’s gotten MILLIONS of views! 45 million at last count.

This is what happens when you try to simply be entertaining.

If traffic is your goal, here’s the formula. Do something really stupid that’ll make people laugh.

Me? I’ll stick with having a few thousand people passionate about learning more from innovative technologists and other leaders.

Why not get into the traffic race? Because I’d rather be in the race for a smart, focused audience. That’s where the real action is.

It also says volumes about why YouTube is losing millions of dollars every month. They can’t monetize this kid, and THAT should tell you how much real value there is in having a big audience.

Back to business: anytime I get a company who asks me about my traffic I’ll show them this blog post first and ask the question about why they haven’t sponsored this kid’s show already, since he has already won the traffic game.

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Why YouTube is going long-form

June 18, 2008 By

It’s funny, I have always been a believer in long form video. Heck, today I put up a 30 minute video with the hottest mobile social network’s CEO (Bluepulse).

But why is YouTube going longform, which is what Silicon Alley Insider just reported?

Easy: it’s much tougher to monetize short videos of, say, kids doing skateboard tricks, than it is to put some ads into a long video like the ones I do at FastCompany.tv.

Advertisers also will pay a lot higher rates for those long-form ads.

Why?

Because someone who’ll watch a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED. They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video.

Here’s why: long videos are a filter. Only the most passionate and most interested people online will watch such a video. Those who aren’t interested wouldn’t even consider watching a long video.

Think about the video I just put up. I bet that out of the tens of thousands of people who read this post over the next day or so that only 5% will be interested in the topic of mobile social networks.

But, if you ARE interested enough in mobile social networks to spend 30 minutes to learn more, think about what that says and the liklihood that such a viewer will be responsive to advertisments, especially ones that are contextual. Imagine that another company building something for mobile users, like Brightkite, put an ad in that video. If you spent 30 minutes interested in mobile social networks, wouldn’t you spend 15 seconds hearing about a new mobile tool that’d add onto Bluepulse? You sure would (at least in aggregate).

But, what kind of audience would show up on a skateboarding video? How likely would they be interested in hearing about Brightkite? Not nearly as much.

So, as an advertiser, which one would you rather spend money on?

Longform wins and wins big.

Oh, and don’t even start thinking about the buying process. If you do, you’ll see why Gary Vaynerchuk is the most brilliant marketer out there right now for starting Wine Library TV. I’m going to do a whole post soon just on what Gary is getting that even Google and Facebook aren’t getting.

Oh #2. Mark Cuban basically just posted the same thing I did, but comes at it from a different angle.

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Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space

June 14, 2008 By

I just wrote a guest post over on TechCrunch where I cover why Kyte.tv is going to win in the cell phone video space.

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