Tools of the Trade – Blackberry Playbook

April 20th, 2011

It is being billed as the “the worlds first professional grade tablet”. Seven months after the initial announcement, RIM (Research in Motion) released the Blackberry Playbook this week.

The brief specs. The Playbook has a 1GB of RAM, a 1 Ghz dual core processor, front and rear HD cameras and built in Wi-Fi. The Blackberry tablet is smaller, only 7″ in and is designed to work best when used in landscape orientation

Two things stand out for Playbook. It is fully flash capable, meaning browsing the web isn’t limited in video playback. Playbook teamed up with Adobe to build in the most the most robust flash player available 10.1. The other notable: the video from the Playbook is very high quality – HD video plays out of the 1080p  screen, assisted by front facing stereo speakers.

But it is not just video that gets your attention, it is the quality of the images captured from the 5 megapixels rear facing, and 3 megapixel front facing cameras. A step above what Apple has installed in the popular iPad. RIM expects the Playbook to be adopted in the business world, the same as their enterprise handheld sets.

The Playbook is setup to display Powerpoint presentations either on screen or via a micro HDMI port. There is also a micro SD card slot for saving files to an external drive, but simply moving files from computer to device is cumbersome. Word, Sheet and Slideshow to Go comes loaded, so PPT, DOC and XLS files are viewable. You can also create DOC and XLS files on the tablet.

There are areas where the Playbook is lagging behind though. For now it only connects online via wifi. There is no 3G or 4G connection available. The Playbook can pair with most Bluetooth devices, including wireless mouse and keyboard.

What is really noticeable is the lack of apps available for device including email and contacts. This is where RIM is looking to marry current Blackberry users with a tablet experience. Current Blackberry Phone users can connect to the Playbook using the Blackberry Bridge app. Bridge activates your mail, contacts and memos on your Playbook, giving you the same access you have on your Blackberry phone. However, without a Blackberry phone the apps disappear from the Playbook.

RIM’s App World hosts about 3,000 apps at the moment, and are working on the ability to run Android based apps on the Playbook later this year.

The Playbook is popping up on major retailer shelves this week and prices start at $499, with $100 increases in price depending on the amount memory.

My recommendation – wait for the devices to be adopted by major carriers in the coming months, potentially  adding 3G and 4G access and fixing the absent email and contact software, a mainstay for portable devices.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tools of the Trade – Adobe for Rent

April 13th, 2011

There are several graphic softwares out there but none better known than Adobe’s Photoshop. It is the industry standard for creating digital art and graphics. Only problem, it is a little hard to swallow the $700 up front cost. Then there’s the other suite of Adobe products that just as robust like Premier editing software and After Effects. All three together could run you into the thousands.

Adobe’s Online Store is launching an online  that makes the cost a little more manageable. You can now rent the suite of Adobe products on a monthly basis for  as little as $49 or agree to a 12 month deal and rent for $35 monthly.

I effect you use what you need, when you need it. Here’s a breakdown of the software:

If you are working on a project and don’t need to own the software forever, this makes a lot of sense, or maybe you just want to kick the tires on a full blown version of Dreamweaver to build websites.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Flipped!

April 13th, 2011

This week’s announcement from Cisco that it wil no longer manufacturer the Flip portable video camera is not surprising. Launched in 2006 by Pure Digital, the Flip offered portable video recording that could be downloaded and shared on social networks. Cisco paid $590 million for the company in 2009 and rode the wave as long as it could. It seems the Flip is a victim of its own technological revolution. What was once innovative five years ago has now outlived its lifespan. The Flip is being “flipped” by the camera technologies now built in smartphones, and as the cameras improve, tablet devices.

Smartphones now boast HD and 8 megapixel cameras, with high quality audio, and the ability to edit and send from the same device. I admit, I haven’t pulled my Flip out of the techno drawer since 2009. Smartphones advance daily with new apps and more powerful operating systems, something the portable video devices just can’t keep up with. So who is next? Kodak makes the Z series portable cameras, my personal pick because of a separate audio input, Sony’s Bloggie or Toshiba’s Camileo S10. One thing is for sure as smartphones expand, older technologies will pass by the wayside.

Let’s take it a step further and look at other devices that might be on the endangered list with the advancement of portable devices- GPS’s, mp3 players, handheld gaming, handheld recorders, portable televisions, and even laptops. Cisco’s announcement is a perfect example of where we are today in portable disposable technology. Cisco realizes as portable grows it is not just about the device, but about the pipe needed to move the content around the world. Expanding the internet pipe to keep up with an explosive portable demand. Here are some interesting observations and forecasts from Cisco. They speak to where we are and where we are headed in portable technology:

• Global mobile data traffic grew 2.6-fold in 2010, nearly tripling for the third year in a row.
• Last year’s mobile data traffic was three times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000
• Mobile network connection speeds doubled in 2010
• Smartphones represent only 13 percent of total global handsets in use today, but they represent over 78 percent of total global handset traffic
• There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones, even though they do not have electricity at home.
• There will be nearly one mobile device per capita by 2015
• Mobile network connection speeds will increase 10-fold by 2015.
• Two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2015.

So we say goodbye to the Flip, adding it to our box of other discarded devices and look ahead to those devices that will replace them.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tools of the Trade – Camera +

April 6th, 2011

With so many pictures coming off of mobile phones for broadcast and online use, it is time to start thinking more about the quality of the images that we are producing.

After all nearly every smartphone worth its salt is shooting at least 720p HD video and still images that are captured by 5 & 8 Meg cameras.

If you are not one of the 2 million users that have downloaded this app yet, it is worth a look. Camera + from TapTapTap has created software that takes ordinary pictures and gives them that extra tweak that makes them look like they came from a full blown SLR camera.

Camera + comes with a six times digital zoom, image stablizer, crop, add borders, add flash, clarify and a whole lot more. In general it just makes your iPhone pictures better.  Even better TapTapTap has dropped the price to 99 cents.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Journalists on Facebook is a Hit

April 6th, 2011

With nearly every media company on the planet jumping into the social media arena, it is no surprise the new Journalists on Facebook is such a overnight success.

Facebook launched the new page yesterday, and 14 hours later is sporting about 4,500 “Likes” from the likes of Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos and Arianna Huffington.

Facebook is touting the new page as a way for journalists to share their social experience best practices.

“Today we’re launching a new “Journalists on Facebook” Page to serve as an ongoing resource for the growing number of reporters using Facebook to find sources, interact with readers, and advance stories. The Page will provide journalists with best practices for integrating the latest Facebook products with their work and connecting with the Facebook audience of more than 500 million people.”

There are also global meetups planned for journalists. The first later this month on April 27.

“We’re also starting a Facebook Journalism Meetup program.  We’ll be hosting events around the globe to have hands-on workshops on how to use Facebook as a reporting tool, and engage in an open dialogue with the journalism community.  Our first Meetup will be held on April 27th at our headquarters in Palo Alto, California”,  according to the company release.

You can sign up for a meetup on the Journalists for Facebook site, as well as receive notifications of others that are scheduled.

Let’s hope  that this new page will be used for best practices and sharing useful information, not just a site where the like minded gather in the shadows. Facebook has given journalists a great opportunity – let’s use it!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Tools of the Trade: Facebook Comments

March 30th, 2011

There is a new tool from Facebook that is gaining ground among web developers. It is the Facebook Comments Plugin for web pages. The plugin replaces the traditional comments boxes from you web users and replaces it with a Facebook style comments section.

It can be applied to each story on your site and the early reactions are pretty good. SB Nation is reporting they are seeing a 400% increase in referrals from Facebook to their sites. Sporting News President and Publisher Jeff Price,  told Business Week that online comments used to be “embarrassing at best”  and now admits the quality of the posts have improved, and increasing the number to 17,000 comments on their site in the first two weeks.

Here how Facebook explains it on their developer site.

Comments are easily shared with friends or with people who like your Page on Facebook. If a user leaves the “Post to Facebook” box checked when she posts a comment, a story appears on her friends’ News Feed indicating that she’s made a comment on your website, which will also link back to your site.

Friends and people who like the Page can then respond to the discussion by liking or replying to the comment directly in the News Feed on Facebook or in the Comments Box on your site. Threads stay synced across Facebook and on the Comments Box on your site regardless of where the comment was made.

As stations are looking for ways to drive the thousands of Facebook fans to their websites and ultimately to their on-air product, the new Comments Plug-In might just help manage the masses.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tools of the Trade – iPad 2 in the Field

March 23rd, 2011

The iPad 2 is taking no prisoners in the tablet wars. Customers are waiting 4 to 5 weeks for their pad to ship from the Apple online store, brick and mortar stores aren’t much better.

The demand speaks to the popularity of the new iPad. It is lighter, now carries front and rear cameras and runs on your choice of carriers.

Lauren Styler, web reporter, at WKRG-TV in Mobile thought it might be a neat idea to put the iPad2 to the test in the field, a head to head competition with a traditional broadcast video camera. She shadowed her photographer, Gary Arnold, capturing nearly identical video and sound, then edited into an online package.

Her report is a great example of how off the shelf products that once were only considered consumer devices are drifting into professional use.

Lauren reported on WKRG.com, “it’s obvious which one was taken by a professional, with professional equipment. Like most Apple products, the iPad 2 is fast, sleek, and easy to use – but may not be ready for the big screen just yet. Maybe we should try shooting a story with the iPhone 4, since that machine comes with a 5 megapixel camera and the iPad 2’s camera is only .92 megapixels. Is this the future of broadcast news?”

Good question Lauren. Certainly as devices become faster, quality of video improves and the method to ship content (4G) becomes more readily available, it make sense to start experimenting now. As Lauren points out it may not be ready for the big screen, but it is certainly ready for online.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

State of the Media 2011

March 16th, 2011

It’s here! The annual State of the Media from Pew Research is online this week and it bears, as always, some interesting data.

• More people are citing the web (46%) as their source for news.
• Cable, network, newspaper and magazine use continues to decline
• Local News, in particular local TV, remains the dominant source for information
• Portable is seeing tremendous growth

The Pew study points to  local content as the growth area for media companies.

Local TV News: The one traditional media platform that possibly could claim some good news on audience was local TV. At network affiliates, viewership continued to decline in all the traditional time slots (i.e. 5-7AM, 5-7PM, 11-11:30PM), across all sweeps periods, this year an average of 1.5%. Fox affiliate newscasts lost viewers in both their basic timeslots – local morning newscasts lost 1% and prime-time news lost 4.9%. But stations of all types added audience at the new early timeslot of 4:30 a.m.; stations in 69 cities had news that early, up from 28 a year earlier. And 7 p.m. audiences, where some stations are adding news, are also growing.

The financial fallout from 2009 continues to plagued newsrooms. Nearly everyone is operating with smaller staffs and fewer resources. 2010 did show some growth for local TV as car manufactures and politicians field the airwaves with advertising. Auto ad spending increased 77% and political ads accounted $2.2 billion in additional revenue.

Other medias rebounded from 2009 too, just not as much as local TV. Newspapers took a 29% hit in 2009, and was able to stop some of the bleeding in 2010, but still finished with losses.

Source: SNL Kagan, eMarketer, Kantar Media, Radio Advertising Bureau, Publishers Information Bureau, National Newspaper Association, BIA/Kelsey

Growth is newsroom is taking place according to the study, but not in the form of hiring in traditional newsrooms. The increases in resources is in hyperlocal and niche online sites.

Online publications such as AOL’s Patch and Yahoo are growing. So is Bloomberg Government (at bgov.com), a new spate of products covering government aimed at audiences no longer served by the mainstream press. In a sense, resources are shifting both to the net, and particularly to destinations aimed at niche and elite audiences that will pay this content.

What are the local TV audiences up to in this world of multiple platforms and progressive change? Pew reports in morning, early evening and late news time slots stations eased the slide to 2%, from a 2009 rate of 6% decline.

The biggest problem traditional local TV newscasts face may be a decline in television viewing during those day parts. In most sweeps periods we analyzed, ratings dropped for all key time slots while share basically held steady. Share measures the percentage of TV sets in use that are tuned to a specific program. If those programs are maintaining their share of viewers, it means local newsrooms can blame at least some of their audience losses on turn off rather than tune out—in other words, more viewers are turning off their televisions altogether at traditional news times, rather than switching to watch other television programming.

That would begin to explain the growth of online and mobile use for news. Almost half (47%) of Americans using portable devices are using them to feed their news thirst each week. Mainly looking for real-time information like weather.

What do these mobile users look like:

• 35% of mobile local news consumers feel they can have a big impact on their community (vs. 27% of other adults)
• 65% feel it is easier today than five years ago to keep up with information about their community (vs. 47% of nonmobile connectors)
• 51% use six or more different sources or platforms monthly to get local news and information (vs. 21%)
• 75% use social network sites (vs. 42%)
• 15% use Twitter (vs. 4%)

As 2010 was the year of the smartphone, 2011 will be the year of tablet. You expect more adoption of the technology with mainstream online users who will be looking for real time information and a strong appetite for video. Apple and Google aren’t designing faster operating systems and dual core processors for texting. They know video is still a relatively untapped market online and with portable devices.

Tablet use doubled last year to 7% of the population, expect that number to at least double again in 2011. With 84% of American owning a mobile phone, it only makes sense that the device will extend their ability to keep in touch with their communities and local news.

The study projects that video will continue to emerge as viable online ad revenue, growing another projected 39% in 2011 and 54% in 2012. Still, video is just a small slice of the pie behind search revenue, the overwhelming money maker. Nearly every online category saw growth in 2010, and there are no signs of slowing in the next four years.

While the future looks bright for online, little of the search revenue is ending up in local pockets. The report says local still stands to benefit from the growing online use by consumers.

Local is potentially a very important market for news. Roughly 40% of all online ad spending is now local, and that is up from 34% only a year earlier. Moreover, in the local ad market, display ads (the kind that news relies on), is a bigger piece of the pie. Indeed, local display makes up a greater portion of online ad spending than search (44.2% versus 38% for search), according to Borrell Associates.¹²

And targeted ads are going to become even more important locally. By 2015, Borrell projects targeted display ads will grow to over $11 billion, while untargeted ads will fall to $2.5 billion.¹³

Needless to say we are in the midst of a transition by news viewers and users, adoption of new technologies, and the emergence of new business models. Exciting opportunities lie ahead.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tools of the Trade – Xoom vs. iPad 2

March 9th, 2011

The much anticipated Motorola (Verizon) Xoom has hit store shelves, and
I can tell you there is lots of interest. According to techs at one of
the largest Verizon stores here in Tampa, the Xoom are getting more
attention, at the moment, than iPhones and iPads. The techies are attracted by the dual
core processor and Android 3.0 (Honeycomb OS), which is impressive.
Drive by shoppers a tell me they are attracted by the screen size and
design, but mostly the front and rear facing cameras.

Why? Because Skype and other video conferencing apps like Apple’s
Facetime and Google’s Video Chat, are developing into a whole new form
of personal communication. Both of these devices are equipped with
front and rear facing cameras, and 3G/WiFi connectivity to trasnmit the
video signals.

The Xoom will not sit in the spotlight alone for very long. The
Xoom and the just announced iPad 2 will begin battling it out this
Friday, when the iPad 2 hits store shelves. The two are lot alike and
at the same time very different. Mainly the Andriod v. Apple operating
systems, open source vs. not so open source. The Xoom does have an HDMI
output, while the Apple uses an adaptor. Apple gets the nod with its HD
rear camera, and overall lower cost.

Here is a side by side comparison of the two new portable technologies.

Tablets are the new personal computing and communication tool. Look for
them to begin replacing laptops, especially for business road warriors.
With bluetooth keyboards and headsets, portable just took on a whole
new meaning. It just makes sense.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Tools of the Trade – An iPhone Gut Check

March 1st, 2011

The dust has pretty much settled on Verizon’s launch of the iPhone 4 last month. While most Verizon users are kicking the tires on this new offering, old school iPhoners are waiting for the iPhone sometime this summer.

New smartphones are rolling out nearly every month, the Motorola Bionic and HTC Atrix are next on deck for reveal. You will hear a lot about these two new Droids.

While users are experimenting with new technologies, I thought I would check in with a recent Verizon  iPhone adopter and see if the device is what it is cracked up to be.

Alex Marcelewski is a Senior Product Manager, for Media General Digital Media. Alex and his group gauges where the “rubber meets the road” nearly everyday.

“My impression of the Verizon iPhone 4?  The audio quality is great, better than other Verizon Phones.  The 3G network in terms of apps, web surfing, and email has been real fast, no hiccups yet.  The ability to toggle between WiFi and 3G is a plus. The Face Time video chat that is built into the phone is of a good quality, limited while on WiFi but I can see real benefit with it in the future. The Skype App is also good with quality, haven’t tried the group Video Chat session yet on it.”

Mobile Skype and Facetime have the greatest potential for newsrooms. The ability to move live two-way video quickly and a decent playback quality is finaly coming to fruition.

Alex adds, “The real test will be in the coming weeks when I travel to Philly, Miami, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, and Birmingham to test out the Verizon Networks in those areas. In my opinion it was well worth the cost of the device and I really like the $30 unlimited data plan. I am also a long time Verizon subscriber, so not having to change networks and simple change to billing via the website made it easy.”

The gnashing of teeth over the potential that an iPhone may overload the Verizon network hasn’t happened. Of course, the Verizon iPhone resides on the 3G network, and 4G LTE is the next frontier. It is going to get interesting in the next 6 months. Stay tuned.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »