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MONDAY
On a bit of a whirlwind tour out here in LA for four days hooking up with the new Izimi US team in Hollywood.

3.45 pm - At the end of an 11 hour flight, and after an hour(!) in the line at LAX passport control Paolo and Ricky (St. Hilaire) rolled up in a big black truck to pick me up. Threw the bags in the flat bed, jumped in the rear seat and then it was off to meet Amit (Nemanim) for a swift intro before going back to the hotel to drop bags and get into some fresh underwear.

6.00pm - Paolo and me arranged to meet down in the bar 45 minutes later with Abel Xavier. If you’re into soccer you’ll know who Abel is, but me being the soccer dunce needed an into. Abel is the ex Real Madrid defender who just signed for the LA Galaxy with David Beckham. So, a quick drink in the Skybar, then it was off to get a bite at Cafe Med with Paolo, Ricky, Abel, and Gabriella (from the The Price is Right show).

10.00pm - already half an hour late for our 9.30pm at Dragons Studio to meet up with the creators of the new comic book based movie series The Descendants. Picked up Kenny Coplan, the most connected guy in Hollywood, from some random filling station, then arrived at the studio at about 11pm.

11.00pm - Sat down in the most surreal meeting room: This studio is owned by a guy called Dragon who used to make all the props for Star Trek and a million other films. This room is full of swords, tricorders, axes, suits of armour, robots, masks, … just about everything. Even one of the original sky-bike-rider things from Star Wars and The Predator suit. A real alladins cave. Anyway, this comic book, The Descendants, created by Joey Andrade, is about a superhero called Charlie who is a descendant of Christ. Its sort of Matrix vs DaVinci Code vs Heros vs Alias. The lead guy in the series is the guy who played Darth Maul in Star Wars, englishman Ray Park, and so of course we also got to meet him and watch him rehearse a few fight scenes.

12:45am - Ahh, bed at last. Gotta be up at 7.30 to meet Ricky and the team for a catch up on all the cool stuff thats happening with izimi. Looking forward to a good nights sleep and a busy day tomorrow.

Facebook fans - you can now scribble any HTML code in your Facebook profile using the amazing HTML Box app.

That means you can add web images to your profile, CSS formatted text (with hyperlinks, forms, tables) and external Flash videos from YouTube, and izimi content from, yeah, you guessed it, izimi.

Original article is here

A recent article by eMarketer found that, even taking into account the power and ease of use of user-generated content tools like digital cameras and affordable audio/video production software, there are more content consumers than creators.

The report shows that In the US, the number of users of user-generated content will hit 101 million by 2011, up from the 2006 estimate of 69 million, while the “generators” lag at 91 million.

Includes video, audio, photo sharing, blogs, wikis, podcasts and online bulletin boards.

Globally, the estimated number of user-generated content users will hit 254 million by 2011, up from 128 million in 2006.

Includes video, audio, photo sharing, blogs, wikis, podcasts and online bulletin boards.

Not surprisingly, says the report, the number of people who create content  is expected to increase significantly as the user-generated content movement gathers steam, rising to 95 million in the US by 2011, up from 70 million in 2007.

Includes video, audio, photo sharing, blogs, wikis, podcasts and online bulletin boards.

And, globally, the number of user-generated content creators will reach 238 million in 2011, up from 137 million in 2007, according to eMarketer.

more info is here

The Wired magazine blog talks about Microsoft patenting a technique for preventing and reversing music piracy at the hardware level.

“Microsoft and Apple are thinking along the same lines when it comes to enabling users to copy music between their wireless devices.

Certain cellphones already allow you to do this via Bluetooth file transfer, but Microsoft’s patented idea would take the concept further, by allowing users to trade MP3s that may have come from file sharing networks to one another, expiring the song on the recipient’s device after three plays, unless the user pays Microsoft a fee in order to continue to listen to the track, with a percentage going to the person who provided the song. As the abstract puts it, “even [the] resale of pirated media content [can] benefit… the copyright holder.”"

Here’s an excerpt from the patent application:

“Systems and methods are described for an off-line economy for digital media. In one implementation, exemplary media devices of buyer and seller participate in the off-line economy by performing secure off-line transfers of digital media content between themselves. The media devices store proof of the off-line sales transactions, so that a percentage of the sale price can be applied to a copyright owner and a percentage of the sale price can be applied to the seller as an incentive. Even resale of pirated media content benefits the copyright holder. The off-line economy opens an effective and inexpensive distribution channel for copyright holders and allows buyers to obtain media content anywhere, at any time, from any participant in the off-line economy without connecting to the Internet. The off-line economy allows copyright holders and media sellers to optimize pricing by market probing.”

If you’ve been keeping an eye on world ecomonic growth trends forecast by economists like Geoffrey Sachs you’ll know that within a very short few years countries like China and South Korea will overtake the US in terms of economic growth and GDP. So it comes as no surpise that China is investing in broadband connectivity at an unprecedented rate (South Korea is already just about the most broadband connected country in the world with upwards of 90% coverage, and mostly the much faster fibre compared to the US’s mostly copper networks). It is now quite possible that China will pass the U.S. to become the largest broadband market in the world later this year.

here is an interesting set of stats and summary

I’ve seen a number of social networking / user generated content website builders over the last year or so, and have blogged about Vox, Ning, and most recently Rayzz (which is REALLY smart). But, here is the best I have seen so far: Plumi.

Its absolutely free, and its based on open source technology, which means if you want to build a YouTube clone all you need is a few fat servers, a designer, and a developer, plus the means to promote what you do, and your done.

Plumi is described as a free software video sharing platform. Plumi enables you to create a sophisticated video sharing and community site out-of-the-box. And it is just that. Check out the following feature list, and you’ll see it has some really advanced stuff (mobile uploads/download, torrent maker, …):

Future features are said to include:

“The companies are expected to announce this week an unprecedented arrangement in which the Viacom-owned channel will premiere the entire season of its new scripted comedy series “I Hate My 30s” exclusively on the upstart Internet TV service on July 16 - 10 days ahead of the series’ broadcast premiere.”

“Viacom is an investor in Joost, having joined the likes of CBS Corp., Sequoia Capital, the Li Ka-Shing Foundation and Index Ventures in a $45 million round of funding announced in May. Joost announced an overall content partnership with Viacom in February, getting programming from MTV, BET, Comedy Central and Paramount Pictures.”

source is here

I found this here

Its a very good summary of the various online photo and video archive/sharing websites, and has a neat summary table of features.

Photo-dedicated Online Storage

PhotoShelter – PhotoShelter is for professional photographers and press agencies. Sportsshooter.com and the National Association of Photoshop Professionals are among its clients. In addition to archiving photos, users can buy and sell images through the site. The site supports 400 file types including RAW files. Users can customize and integrate their PhotoShelter account to fit their existing online portfolio. There are packages available for individual photographers or multiple users.

Sharpcast Photos - Sharpcast’s motto says it all: “Sync, because uploading blows.” Sharpcast automatically backs up photos by syncing several devices: compatible cell phones, work and home computers. Sharpcast Photos also includes image editing tools such as auto colors and red-eye correction. Any edits made to an image are automatically updated across devices, according to the company website. Users can share their photos in real time with Sharpcast features such as Group Albums and Photo Chat Buddy List. Interestingly enough, more than half of users of the initial beta testing of Sharpcast were over the age of 50, according to Sharpcast representatives, indicating that it appeals to the traditionally less tech-savvy.

Photo and Video Storage

Phanfare – Phanfare is dedicated to archiving both photos and videos. Phanfare offers unlimited storage for photographers and has an emphasis on online-sharing. Users receive a personalized URL (eg. http://yourusername.phanfare.com) and can customize their online galleries. The site uses what it calls “background uploading,” an automated uploading system that synchronizes a users PC and their Phanfare account.

Phanfare albums can be integrated with existing photo-sharing sites such as Snapfish, Kodak EasyShare Gallery, and Shutterfly. The system displays images at 700 pixels wide, but stores full-size images on its server, which users can download.
Phanfare offers monthly, yearly, and lifetime membership plans. The company also offers an additional backup system. Phanfare will burn recovery DVDs of your photos for $25 per disk for those on the free and yearly plans. Lifetime members receive one free recovery DVD.

For Everything Digital

Box – Box offers storage for photos, videos, and documents. Users can upload files up to 1GB if they have a paid plan and 10MB per file if they use the free plan. Users can create shareable online galleries, a Box widget tool for linking photo collections to MySpace and blogs, and access their account using their mobile phone if they have a Business plan. The Business Plan also comes with 15GB of storage and 20 sub accounts, allowing multiple people to access the same account.

Carbonite – Carbonite is a Windows-based online storage system that provides unlimited storage of documents, photos, and audio files. With one click, users can back up an entire hard drive, excluding application and temporary files. Users also have the option to designate which files to back up. In addition, Carbonite notifies users if data hasn’t been backed up in the past 24 hours by displaying a lock icon on the PC toolbar. Carbonite expects to release Mac compatibility in August, according to the company website.

iBackup – This Windows and Mac-enabled online backup system stores photos, music, and documents of any file type, according to a company representative. Users can share their online photo collections using Media Gallery. iBackup also offers sub-accounts for multiple users.

iStorage – Offered in Home and Professional editions, iStorage is a basic backup solution for PC and Mac users. iStorage’s 15GB storage (Home edition) or 25GB (Professional edition) limit may suffice for some photographers, but may not be adequate for heavy shooters. Unlike some of its competitiors, iStorage does not offer a photo-sharing feature. iStorage also includes a feature aptly named “WhaleMail” that allows members to share large files through iStorage rather than through e-mail.

Mozy – Mozy offers 2GB of storage for free and unlimited storage for under $5 a month. Although Mozy is not photo-dedicated, it can handle different types of image files. Mozy advises that users backup only their essentials, and not use it as a replacement for an entire hard drive. Mozy supports Windows 2000 and higher and now includes a Mac OS X beta.

Xdrive – Xdrive offers 5GB of free storage. Xdrive supports multiple types of photo, video, music, and document files. Users can drop and drag their files onto the online server and share files, folders, or postings.

By Doug Caverly, here

I’ve put exactly one picture on MySpace; my Facebook profile contains a whopping five or so. Yet a new Hitwise report proves that this is not the norm, and that traffic from social networks gives an extreme boost to a lot of photo-sharing sites.

“Photobucket has been the #1 ranked Photography website based on UK visits since February, when it overtook Flickr,” reports Heather Hopkins, Hitwise UK’s vice president of research. “Photobucket has held that #1 ranking largely due to traffic from Bebo and MySpace, with 33% of the site’s traffic coming from Bebo last week and 22% from MySpace.”

She then continues, “By contrast, Google was the #1 source of visits to Flickr last week, accounting for 19% of the site’s visits, 5% came from Google Images, 4% from Blogger and only 2.4% from MySpace.”

There may be other factors at work - accusations of censorship could have hurt Flickr, for example - but Hopkins’s numbers are solid. Also, if you think Photobucket’s data looks odd, other (possibly less-well-known-in-America) photo-sharing sites are even more dependent on social networks.

“Last week, 83% of RockYou’s traffic came directly from a social network, with 42% coming from Bebo and 37% from Facebook,” according to Hitwise. “Similarly, 77% of Slide.com’s traffic came directly from a social network, with 43% coming from Facebook, 23% from Bebo and 8% from MySpace.”