MEDIA ROOM TECHNOLOGY
Journalists are deadline oriented and tend to do their jobs
better when information is available on a moment's notice.
Online media rooms eliminate friction that can result in
lost opportunities for  greater visibility. This Weblog is about the
technology that can be used to create outstanding media room
experiences. Many thanks to the folks at DVCO Technology for
educating me about the emergence of media rooms.
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May 02, 2005
Disneyland Resort Podcasts
Now that Mickey is podcasting, we gotta ad this to
the list of technologies for media rooms.
The "custom" iPodder demonstrates why branded newsreaders
and pod/vidcast applications are soon to follow. In this
example, there's nothing really customized about it - just an
embedded feed. But, it's certainly a technology and conceptual
idea that will quickly emerge in Media Rooms.
iPressRoom has
taken up the use use of podcasts in their Online Media Center
, although it's unclear if their product provides for the
development of podcasts as opposed to the management of them.
• Disneyland
Resort Podcasts
Take the magic of the Happiest Homecoming On Earth wherever
you go! The Disneyland® Resort is offering podcasts direct
from the 50th Anniversary Press Event. Michael W. Geoghegan
plays host for this sneak peek at the biggest celebration in
Disney history, including interviews, stories and other
exciting events direct from the Disneyland® Resort on May 3, 4
& 5, 2005.
•
iPressroom Adds Podcasting Functionality to Online Media
Center Service
Public Relations Software Provider Introduces Point and
Click Podcast and Live Bookmark Capabilities
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May 01, 2005
The Sony Librie
E-Ink and E-Paper will be here before you know
it...
The Sony Librie is not perfect, but in emerging (disruptive
markets) we all know this is okay.
"Aside from the thinnest touch-screen tablet PC I've ever
seen, the thing that blew me away was the Sony Librie, the
first commerically available electronic ink e-book reader." --
kottke.org
E-Paper and E-Ink will have a tremendous impact on the PR
community.
• Journalism is Alive
and Well
It's the ink manufacturers that should be worried.
•
Sony LIBRIe - The first ever E-Ink e-Book Reader
Philips, Sony and E-Ink have come together to announce the
Worlds first consumer application of an electronic paper
display module in the Sony LIBRIé e-Book reader.
• E-Ink
E Ink's Character and Segmented product platform is ideally
suited for custom low or medium segment-count electronic
product displays.
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April 11, 2005
TVEyes to Debut Podcast Search Engine
Bingo - another technology hurdle out of the way.
I had previously written about the nasty issue of
searchability in podcasts. TVEyes will likely have a
significant [favorable] impact on adoption in the PR and
marketing segments.
Micro Persuasion: TVEyes
to Debut Podcast Search Engine
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/04/tveyes_to_debut.html
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February 08, 2005
Micro-Sphere -- Rolling Up Blogs
There seems to be an emerging demand for smaller
information sets.
Google now has about 8% of the web under its indexing
umbrella - that's a lot of pages. Now we're looking for a
needle in a huge stack of needles. Enter the "Micro-Sphere" -
a collection of blogs about one thing.
This opens the door for millions of silos of domain
expertise. Bud Gibson pioneered this concept in learning last
year with the introduction of the University of Michigan 's
Learning Blogosphere. It's a micro-sphere of student blogs
aggregated into one searchable (and subscribable) experience.
Marcomblog is a similar undertaking - also driven at the
educational level. I applaud the use of blogs for this purpose
- nothing better than to see the real-world intersecting with
students (both parties will learn a bunch from these types of
exercises).
At a technical level, there are two challenges on the
horizon.
If I'm right, there will be an explosion of micro-sphere's.
The good news is that finding information in a micro-sphere
will be easier and likely more successful. The bad news - we
still need to find the right micro-spheres. There's help on
the way - clustering.
Aggregating blogs, regardless of the products used to
create them, is a technical requirement. We cannot assume that
authors participating in a blog-based micro-sphere will use
the products or UI chosen by the micro-sphere developer. This
sounds simple at the outset, but there are lots of little
devils in this detail - most of which were overcome in the
Learning Blogosphere demonstration. Imagine aggregating 100
different blogs whose RSS configurations each vary and whose
character encodings may differ slightly. Imagine if the
micro-sphere had to be secure.
ThinkTank23
Clustering Search Engine
http://www.thinktank23.com/
Learning Blogosphere
Universiity of Michigan Business School
http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/blog/47373
Marcomblog
MarcomBlog is a collaborative effort between eight terrific
public relations and marketing professionals and students in
Auburn University 's Department of Communication and
Journalism.
http://www.marcomblog.com
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January 27, 2005
Blogging with Backups
Little energy is expended on the subject of backup; perhaps
less is considered when it comes to your blogging platform.
This post nails the pitch for considering the importance of
a blog backup strategy.
"Finally, and most importantly: backup. Backup. Backup. If
the day ever comes when you want or need to make a switch,
your content needs to be portable. If you take your writing
even half-seriously, make sure it exists in some other form
than a database on a remote server; hell, save copies of the
generated pages if you have to. If your tool of choice has no
backup facilities, question whether it ought to be your tool
of choice at all ..." -- The Absent Student
I'm biased, but consider the MyST platform - it provides a
feed known as MyST-ML which provides 100% of a Blog's content
in a cannonical XML format. Here's the MyST-ML feed for this
blog. Using MyST-ML, any Blogsite user can get a complete copy
of their content at any time. Furthermore, they can automate
the harvesting of the content in many ways.
Blogtools are not football teams
Any emotional attachment you have to your blog should be to
its content, not the software you use to publish it.
http://itkitchen.info/2005/01/08/blogtools-are-not-football-teams/
Example MyST-ML Backup Feed
A MyST-ML feed for the blog Media Room Technology
object/47194
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January 05, 2005
Kodak Wireless EasyShare One Digital Camera
This will change how PR professionals gather and share
content.
This is really cool. Imagine snapin' 4 mega-pixel shots of
your CEO turning the first shovel of dirt on your new building
and dispatching them to journalist in 30 seconds.
We know that the velocity of business content is
increasing, but to we recognize how fast?
There are so many ways this type of technology will
influence how we manage information as journalists or for
journalists.
"Plus Kodak sealed a deal with T-Mobile to make sure you
can upload your pix from any T-Mobile Hotspot (aka
Starbucks)." -- Engadget
Yep - Kodak saw me coming. ;-)
Kodak @ CES - Easyshare One Wireless Camera
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000783026206/
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November 28, 2004
Onfolio: A Research Tool for PR
This is a new product worth watching. As soon as they add
RSS support, Onfolio 2.0 could become a powerful model for PR
research.
There are two sides to the public relations process -
public relations professionals that are constantly watching
for opportunities to get press, and journalists that
constantly watching for things to write about. Both
professions require continuous awareness of content that
changes and a place to unify that knowledge to be effective
and productive.
Onfolio (specifically their upcoming 2.0 release) provides
an interesting convergence of features to enable link
tracking, Web page capture, an information taxonomy, Outlook
integration, shared collections, and most important - support
for RSS consumption and production. None of these capabilities
are unique or innovative, but the UI and the alchemy of
fetures makes it innovative none-the-less.
If you're a journalist or a publicist, this is worth a
download - you'll get hooked.
Onfolio
http://onfolio.com
Onfolio Beta
http://sebastian.typepad.com/half_baked/2004/11/onfolio_20_beta.html
Onfolio organizes Web research
http://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/web/2004/0322web1.html
NetSnippets
http://www.netsnippets.com/index.htm
Microsoft OneNote
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX010858031033.aspx
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July 25, 2004
Making It Easy For Journalists To Find Stuff
Microsoft Office Research Service provides an opportunity
for companies to integrate their message with journalist's
desktops.
Sometimes we look high and low for that tool or technology
that presents a better opportunity for doing our jobs better.
Most of the time, these are excursions into the unknown and
rarely do we find products that cause us to change our basic
processes. Sometimes, the search for better ways of doing
things leads us back to familiar surroundings; perhaps
familiar tools that have changed to support new ideas, but in
a familiar way.
Imagine you're a journalist about to write an article
concerning Intel's new low-power Pentium M processors. You
might begin by copying the text of press release into
Microsoft Word. Imagine now that the text of the press release
suddenly comes alive with smart tag links on terms that are
relevant to your task. As you mouse over the terms f interest
you discover that your knowledge system instinctively knows
more about Pentium M processors and has called out specific
resources that you can access. There's some recent information
in eWeek, and Intel has some additional content.
Smart tags make this possible and this behavior is in reach
today because of general adoption of XML architecture in
Microsoft Office.
Imagine now that you would like more information about a
term in the press release (Ultra Low Voltage), but it is not
tagged with a smart tag link. Using a simple lookup process
you can find additional items related to this term through
Office Research Services. In this example, I select my
personal km environment as the source of content to search and
the results reference and SBS Technologies PCI board (they
manufacture products with Intel chips).
Magic? Perhaps, but more importantly, a productive way to
do research using an information system based on things that
you care about. Of greatest importance, this model leverages
tools that journalists already possess.
These examples are rudimentary; just the tip of the
iceberg. In future articles I'll cover this concept in greater
detail. In the meantime, if this resonates with your ideas
about using technology to expand your media room presence,
give me a shout.
Connecting Through Microsoft Office Research Services
People with questions find people with answers using
MySmartChannels Office Research Services.
http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/18011
What can you do with a SmartSpace??
Like many of the products and technologies we build, they
are very abstract and suitable for many purposes. Here are a
few ideas for SmartSpace?
http://myst-technology.com/mysmartchannels/public/item/26131
Intel
http://intel.com
Microsoft
http://microsoft.com
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July 20, 2004
Networks: The New Science Of News
For centuries, news flows were pretty much the same.
Advanced networks based on social architectures and non-linear
communications technologies have changed news forever.
There's no denying it; Web logs have changed the way
information is captured and how it moves about. But is it
really this simplified model for content management that has
caused such dramatic change in the field of news gathering and
distribution? Or is it the nature of networks, both social and
technical, that has altered the landscape?
It's probably a little bit of Web logs, a touch of RSS, and
a big helping of network sciences that has altered the
news-flow process.
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