Growing pains of on-demand media

No one loses or wins in the battle of Netflix & Amazon on-demand streaming videos, says Betsy Shiffman from Wired Magazine. But judging by the reader comments, the Losers R US: the generation X/Y users.

We’re still so early in this on-demand content game that the technology is very poor and the usability is far from ideal. Sure, we’re doing it to spare our kids from this painful transition. Thanks to the persistent curiosity of our guinea-pig mind we are patiently trying out anything you throw at us in a shiny box (virtual or real) until you — content providers — get it right. Even with the economy failing, game sales are up 52% and overall electronics sales continue to show growth. You can thank us by lowering your prices and making better tech toys — that is better usability, energy efficient and visually pleasant with less cables.

Do we really need to teach digital skills?

Every where I turn there seems to be a foundation, organization or center developing curriculum to teach kids how to develop their digital skills. I confess I’m very skeptical of whether we really need this, though I’m recognize that there are tremendous divides among the different social, economical and mental abilities among young people and perhaps this is the main reason why we need to develops new educational standards that include digital skills. Not everyone can pick up a computer and figure out how to blog…

Four Elements Rant

This week we had to do a video using the Four elements. I had some issues with the Flip camera so I ended up using my iMac iSight camera. Music is licensed under cc. I only used one video transition at the end.

Footnotes

As part of multimedia produciton class, I’m producing short videos every week using low-end consumer technology. This video uses B&W filter, color correction in final cut and a bed-side lamp to create the shadow. All music is licensed under CC.

Media Transformation

We (my MCDM classmates) been having a discussion in flipthtemedia.com on what we understand of the concept of media, and what is ‘flip’ the media. Although the discussion quickly turned to the practical application of the blog scope and it’s organization, there were a few reactions from my classmates worthy of note, in particular John Liston really hit it in his comment:

“That being said I see “flip the media” as a new way of thinking. I cringe at using the cliché of “democratizing the media” but it seems as if that is the whole idea. The ability of the common person to share the news without the gatekeeper seems to be at the very heart of what we are doing. I don’t think we should be hung up on certain technology but rather the phenomenon that each and every person has access to news from everywhere and is able to contribute to the conversation. Technology is just a tool, the idea that is becoming affordable to all is the revolution.

Law & Order II: Mobile Marketing SPAM

Recently I’ve heard more and more complaints of mobile spam, including NY Times David Pogue’s complaint about Verizon’s spam, and it got me thinking how ineffective CAN SPAM law has been –it is ILLEGAL to spam mobile devices without explicit customer consent (OPT-IN). I have not seen much evidence of decline in email Spam since the law was enacted. My experience tells me that only companies that were big or famous enough to attract a lawsuit and risk paying the CAN SPAM hefty fines (and the negative brand impact) made an effort to comply with the CAN SPAM law for email. So the only somewhat effective measure of SPAM control are ISPs/email filters. Hence, the FTC and FCC are pressuring mobile industry leaders to come up with some filter controls that put back the control on the consumer, specially because we PAY for the ‘unwanted commercial messages’ (aka SMS SPAM).

Simplicity

NY Times David Pogue’s review of the Flip continues to attract a lot of reaction. See the follow up post ‘Why There Aren’t more Flips“. Funny how this little thing can create some much reaction. It’s premise is SIMPLICITY (even though sometimes it fails to deliver on that). This principle simplicity seems to the key to success when it come to technology and it’s most iconic example: the iPod.