In a previous post, I wrote about some driving trends in the Arabic speaking media world and I wrote about a cloud-based publishing platform. This post moves closer to the end-user by focusing on new e-reader technologies as well as online retail.

Last month at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, I met Anish Chandran, the operations leader for the WINK (“without ink”) e-reader and associated publishing ecosystem. Anish and the WINK team were demonstrating the WINK e-reader, the WINKstore iPad app, and other digital publishing solutions. While WINK’s applications launched in the Indian market, the team was exhibiting in the e-zone as part of a larger effort at wider distribution in the Middle East and North Africa.

Bangalore, India based EC Media International launched WINK in 2009 to deliver “a cost effective electronic book reader plus digital content in English and all Indian languages.” Since launch, the WINK digital media ecosystem has expanded beyond the e-reader to include both iPad and Android apps and the WINKstore.  The WINKstore is an electronic book site, which currently counts over 350,000 titles in English and the 15 official Indian languages. The latest WINK initiative is MagsOnWINK, a digital magazine publishing platform and client-side application for e-readers and tablets. MagsOnWINK will integrate over 150 Indian newspapers and magazines by the middle of this year.  The MagsOnWINK application is one of several free downloads from the WINKstore. MagsOnWink also distributes via Apple’s App Store. Read more…

One of the stories in today’s business papers is especially poignant to Flip the Media. Just over two years after it acquired pocket-size Flip video camera from manufacturer Pure Digital Technologies, Cisco Systems is shutting down a number of its consumer businesses.  Sadly, one of the casualties is the little camera that was the inspiration for the Flip the Media name.

Begun as a blog for students to share lessons learned in a Winter 2008 MCDM video class, FTM continued on after the class ended and evolved into the news journal you are reading now. Living on Internet time, Flip the Media has gone through several iterations in the past three years and will continue to change just as the digital world around us changes.

Is there a lesson to be learned from the fate of the Flip camera? What does the end of something that showed quality video could be made with something that fit in the palm of your hand tell us? Drawing grandiose conclusions from Cisco’s action might be premature. Yet, for those of us who don’t sit in boardrooms or study corporate balance sheets, the speed (two years!) with which the company went from spending $600 million to buy the technology to dropping it like hot potato is startling.

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This post is the first in a regular series of profiles on digital media careers.

Content Strategist is a new position for many organizations and an attractive career option for copywriters, editors, content managers, journalists, freelance writers, and other digital media professionals with a passion for content—and an appreciation of a paycheck that matches their talents.

Digital agencies have long had content strategists on staff, but a variety of organizations are seeing the need to add someone to their team to be in charge of “the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content,” as Kristina Halvorson defines the job in Content Strategy for the Web, the book that popularized the term.

Because few people have been employed as content strategists, employers are open to considering job seekers looking to break into the field.

“All of the people in content strategy that I know have fallen into it through different routes,” says Vanessa Casavant, Content Strategist for Electronic Media at AdoptUSKids. “I came into it through journalism. I realized that it wasn’t the best career outlet for me and the outlook of having a job in journalism wasn’t that good. But I really enjoy the part of telling stories and finding the story within the story.” Read more…

The psychsters over at Psychster Inc. have done something that media creators have been clamoring for ever since the collapse of the first internet bubble a decade ago.  They released a study looking at how engaged web users become with video content.  One of the continual challenges for web producers is how to effectively evaluate the cost benefit ratio of developing and distributing rich multimedia content online.  Consumers have more video choices now than they have ever had before, but video producers, directors, editors and writers are being squeezed by the emegence of “content farms” that produce very low cost (and sometimes low quality) video content for web sites.

There is a growing debate among media pundits and economists alike about the inflated valuations of tech companies like Groupon and Facebook.  These voices have raised the specter of a new and potentially bigger tech bubble developing.  Facebook, Google’s YouTube and other Web 2.0 giants have all pioneered business models based on user generated content—not professionally produced content.  Psychster’s recently posted study looks at the effectiveness of online video content in relation to production values.  In short, the study asks the question:  do web users engage with professionally produced video content more than they do with cheaper content?  Why is this important?  Lets back up a little and look at how video on the web has evolved over the last decade. Read more…

By Rachel Crick

Is it possible to find a word or a short phrase that describes what we do as storytellers, without using the word storytelling? A recent discussion yielded the word narrative as a possible substitute, though there were concerns that “narrative” might come across as too academic. Those involved in the conversation who come from cultures outside of the United States expressed how difficult it is to find a word that accurately translates the meaning of the phrase “storytelling” in their native tongue.

Photo by Rachel Crick

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MCDM Faculty iconoclast Ken Rufo has been up to some interesting things lately.  Always on the hunt for enlightening challenges to assumptions regarding technology and digital communications, Rufo agreed to answer some questions about a new initiative he has undertaken with the help of some MCDM students.

The initiative has the provocative (if sightly opaque) title of “The Collective for Digital Pataphysics.”

Check out this video from the Collective for Digital Pataphysics about their “Trust Protocol” project:

FTM: What is pataphysics?  What specifically is “digital pataphysics?”

Ken Rufo: Pataphysics, which is often written ‘pataphysics, is a term coined by the French absurdist Alfred Jarry to describe a science of imaginary solutions.  It’s obviously a play on “metaphysics,” which it was supposed to supplement.  Pataphysics is a kind of absurdist, experimental way of thinking about the abstract as if it was concrete, or thinking about the exceptions that might otherwise prove a rule.  It’s comic, but never merely sarcastic or mocking.  The idea of digital pataphysics is really just my attempt to apply the same experimental, theatrical sensibility to ways of learning about digital and social media.

FTM: Who is Alfred Jarry?

Ken Rufo: Jarry was a Frenchman writing at the close of the 19th Century.  He’s probably most known for his play Ubu Roi and the book Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll.

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This is the third and final blog post of a three part series about my experiences as a presenter with fellow MCDM student Katherine Turner during the 2011 American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. See the second post Monday, February 28th, 2011, “Easy Like Sunday Morning.”

Crowdsourcing

I had kept word that I was attending the conference from my parents. I also had to block my sisters from my Facebook updates about the trip to Puerto Rico. I had known for months. My plan was to surprise my mother at the mall, grocery store, or where ever she might be.

Everyone’s reaction to my plan – that’s a bad idea. Even the taxi driver on the way to Condado from Fajardo turned back while driving and looked at me square in the eyes and said, “Mijo, la vas a matar.” He was not the only local who concurred that I was going to give my mother a heart attack. So, I called my mother that afternoon. “Guess where I am?” A few seconds of silence goes by followed by “Get the **** out of here! How can that be?” Said a very stunned Señora, or as she will very happily point out to you, Señorita.

Whenever Katherine and I talked about presenting at an oceanography conference it always seemed strange. People would reply, “I thought you were into video or photography.”

Yes, we are into video. No, we aren’t oceanographers. “So, why are you presenting at an oceanography conference?”

My mother grew more confused and perplexed when I explained the reasons why I was in San Juan presenting at an International Oceanography Conference.

Carlos Miguel Sanchez & Julia Rodriguez (Dad and Mom)

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This is the second blog post of a three part series about my experiences as a presenter with fellow MCDM student Katherine Turner during the 2011 American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  See the first post from Saturday, Feb. 26, 2011 “Hurry Up and Wait.”

Episode II, A New Hope

After waiting in line for nearly 40 minutes and salivating for a traditional  bocadillo I had to settle for avena or oatmeal. I was not able to upload the video for the conference to YouTube or Vimeo as the uploading time kept getting longer and longer. The panaderia was a ghost town as the morning rush had come and gone. Things were looking bleak.

Finally, I was able to send the video via a drop box service to the film festival producer — and the crisis was averted!

The day of the film festival we made our way back from Culebra to the mainland via an hour and a half ferry ride at the break of dawn. The whole point of coming to Puerto Rico early was to have plenty of time to fine-tune our ASLO Conference presentations.

Oh, hindsight. Why you are always two days late and a dollar short?

Sunday morning from Fajardo to El Condado was just 35 minutes and the same route in the afternoon is an hour and a half. Since check-in time was not until later in the afternoon we had to take refuge at the only familiar place we knew our kind was always welcomed. A place that inspires and nurture the human spirit – one person, one coffee cup and one neighborhood at a time. That’s right – Starbucks.

The line at the Starbucks in El Condado seemed to be one self-generating infinite loop. The irony of the situation was not lost on us. We come all the way to Puerto Rico and were now seeking settling in comfortably at a Starbucks. (In case you are wondering the only difference on the menu is Café Con Leche is listed under local favorites.) Here the tourists outnumber the locals 3 to 1.

The baristas were somewhat bilingual but not to fear I speke the Spanish.  Thirty minutes later it’s my turn and I blank on how to say quad espresso. We edge our way to a table, plug in our laptops to one of four electrical outlets in the store and boot up to get online. But …

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