Television original meaning (from the Greek tele, meaning "far," and the Latin visio, meaning "sight") is a telecommunication system for broadcasting and receiving moving pictures and sound over long distances. In other words, it is a system, that would naturally endow those using it to show things and events that were happening somewhere else from where the audience would be. But, most of what we see today on TV is very rarely "reality" as it is happening somewhere else. Even newscasts and sports events now are strongly pre-packaged for television programming with lots of predetermined breaks and sequences that influence quite significantly the type of event you get to be looking at. As far as I am concerned, live television is all to be re-invented and the new real-time video broadcasting tools that allow just about anyone to switch on their personal broadcasting stations is a tremendous opportunity to leverage this huge entertainment, informational and learning opportunity. So, as the number of mobile video streaming services increases each month, the real battle is not so much for who has the best performance or video quality, or even the greatest number of videos or viewers, but for who can best create relevant context around such sometimes great, yet so diverse and unpredictable content. This is why, while John just got excited with QIK and its cool relationship with social media tool Twitter, I am instead sliding down my enthusiasm for the platform which has seen much improvement in its looks, reliability and feature-set, but has made too little progress on creating valuable context around the content its users create. Nonetheless QIK has created a site, Qiklife, entirely devoted to this very specific task, creating context around content, I feel it has not yet succeeded in giving the right exposure and context to the many quality clips submitted daily to its service. The mistake may be not peculiar to QIK, but representative of a trend that most other personal live video broadcasting services are experiencing. Just like for non-live video on YouTube and other major video sharing sites, it took and it is still taking some time for these services to develop cool and simple ways for quality content to emerge and to be associated with relevant related context. In fact, it is exciting to see how many new web-based services such as Splashcast, Magnify, Panjea and Videocrawler and many other ones, have been created to leverage the bottom-up, grassroots, spontaneous ability of people like you to create the valuable context and content aggregation without which, whatever gems you have get lost in an ocean of noise. So, if you are hungry to start experimenting with your own ability to broadcast live from wherever you are check out one of these tools:

• QIK
• Pocketcaster
• Flyxwagon
• Kyte
• Bambuser
• Seero
• Next2friends

If instead, you want to get a deeper feel for what this new media trend is all about, here\'s John Blossom\'s own view on the fascination and potential created by the synergy of live mobile video casting and the real-time social news spreading ability of social networking communities as Twitter. Check it out: Intro by Robin Good

A Quick Take on Qik: Mobile Social Media is Here. Kind Of.

by John Blossom In days past people would tune in to late-night talk shows on the television to catch up with banter from stars, politicians and comedians. These days the bleary-eyed can look forward to "tweets" - messages from Twitter members - inviting people to join them in a Qik session.

What is Qik And How You Can Use it

Qik enables people with video-enabled mobile phones to stream their video to the Web and to join in text chats with people who\'ve been notified of their instant events or leave comments. Your Qik videos are stored at Qik\'s site for later retrieval, building a library of online conversations and events. A nifty concept, but one that is, like the Twitter network on which people tell people about Qik happenings, a work in progress. When you first connect to a Qik it\'s kind of neat - you see people milling about, things happening, so you type in a chat message and then...nothing happens. In the few Qiks that I\'ve received so far, the signal drops within a few minutes at most and there doesn\'t seem to be any self-sustaining chats. Like in Twitter\'s early phases (and for that matter until the code jocks arrived there a few days ago) Qiks come and go with the tantalizing promise of something interesting that isn\'t delivering up to its potential just yet. I was especially intrigued by Robin Good \'s late-night visit to a jazz club in Rome - a lot more fun to be part of that than your typical conference mixer. Robin Good has made active use of Qik for several months, but the use of Twitter in combination with Qik adds a real-time messaging aspect to the service for people on the go that enables them to catch things as they\'re happening. Qik includes GPS-enabled location information as well, so a quick tweet can let you peek in on a scene and see if it\'s worth checking out and then check the location information to see where it is.

Business For Qik

It\'s not clear that there\'s much of a business model for Qik - probably destined for an exit in the next year would be my guesstimate - but in the meantime I think that it\'s bringing us one step closer to mobile video calls that will provide meaningful personal content to both personal and general audiences. As with Twitter, Qik seems to have its own personal protocols that need to be mastered - do that many people know how to get people to put on a good video show? - but short of that with the combo of Twitter and Qik I think that we\'ll be hearing a lot more about mobile video in the year ahead. I\'m waiting for a Qik driver that works with my phone (or for a new phone later this year) but I think that I\'ll give it a shot the next time that I am at a trade show. It would be a lot nicer to shoot Qik segments of vendors and then just line up links to them on my blog than to fuss with stringing together video segments into a cohesive video blog entry. Looking forward to your Qik tweets!

Originally written by John Blossom for Content Nation and first published on 24th June 2008 as "A Quick Take on Qik: Mobile Social Media is Here. Kind Of."
John Blossom\'s career spans more than twenty years of marketing, research, product management and development in advanced information and media venues, including major financial publishers and financial services companies, as well as earlier experience in broadcast media. Mr. Blossom founded Shore Communications Inc. in 1997, specializing in research and advisory services and strategic marketing consulting for publishers and consumers of content services.

Photocredits A Quick Take on Qik: Mobile Social Media is Here. Kind Of: Leah-Anne Thompson Business For Qik: Eray Haciosmanoglu ...

The future of music, as pointed out before, is all about sharing. If you are still thinking to make music by selling your own CDs or if you have some hope that record labels may recover some of their lost ground and prestige... think again. Photo credit: Viktor Gymria "In the immediate future of music we need to get our heads around the fact that the less control we impose on the users of content the better." The new goal for the independent music producer and small recording label alike is to engage more specific audiences, to provide them with great quality music, and use that music as a communication channel, a marketing and distribution arm to get really into their hearts and minds. If your music can flow like free water, money and revenue can be generated by monetizing premium products, merchandise, concert tickets, and a lot more. "Attention is indeed the new distribution. And real money will be paid for real attention." The new realization should be that we are no longer trying to monetize plastic copies of sound files but the entire range of assets and events that can be created around an artist or a music band. If you can wrap your head around this new concept, then you may be as much interested in checking out how in such scenario innovative music licensing approaches could provide a much larger revenue stream for all musicians while becoming almost "transparent" to the final music fan. Gerd Leonhard, Master New Media special envoy into the future music world explains why and how this is all goign to work. Here the details: Intro by Robin Good

The End of Control: Music Like Water, and the Flat Rate

by Gerd Leonhard

From Controlling Distribution To Deserving Attention

The music industry makes a great case study as far as relentless obsession with control is concerned: Despite a long, hard struggle to retain (or even increase!) control over what people do with music, the music industry has in the most spectacular fashion irretrievably lost control over the distribution of its product. The only thing left for the music industry to do is to admit it, as is now happening with EMI's new Terrafirma'ed management team ( they have a long way to go but what a relief to have someone wake up and actually do what needs to be done!) . Not that the impending loss of distribution control wasn't obvious more than ten years ago, which is why the steadfast refusal of the music industry's "leaders" to acknowledge and act on the fact that the user is now the one in control of distribution is utterly astounding. Many music executives still think they are entitled to run their content-is-king-doms as they see fit (imposing copy protection and other restrictions) while the consumers should remain relegated to the good old take-it-or-leave-it role. Thus, the end of control over distribution is hitting major label music executives particularly hard, and the longer they wait to accept this basic fact of control-loss, the less likely they are to survive this shift to a new ecosystem, much less prosper in the Music 2.0 world. Long-term denial does have its side effects.

Access Replaces Ownership

The reality is that it has never been easier to share songs and get free music via P2P filesharing (still a popular pastime but contrary to popular myths, far from being the most popular way of sharing music), Bluetooth, USB-stick swapping, hard-drive trading, instant messaging, Skype, Gmail, social networks, MP3, blogs, stream-ripping, and hundreds of music widgets that offer the world's music catalogs on demand, for free. Even in free sharing environments, access now replaces ownership, and a vast cornucopia of music-sharing tools has recently opened, making Napster look like a soda straw. Let's face it: Music sharing is alive, well, and growing exponentially. Just wait until we have millions of iPhones and millions of Wi-Fi-enabled iPods, with Apple's new iPhone SDK luring thousands of enterprising young developers into creating the coolest new music-sharing applications, which those pesky digital natives will gobble up at the speed of sound! Add another two billion second-generation, interconnected Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Motorola mobile communication computers (a.k.a. cell phones), and you have a mobile sharing nirvana. Still dreaming of controlling distribution? Still not interested in putting a metering device into this digital musiclike-water stream? Anyone who still argues that music distribution is not totally out of control must either be a highly paid and reality-numb lawyer for the RIAA or drinking some really serious DRMlaced Kool-Aid.

Embrace The End Of Control

If it wants to stay alive, there is now only one option for the music industry: Embrace the end of distribution control, and move forward to share access-based revenues that are already generated by all those "pirates" that have free access to music, regardless of lack of permission. The very use of the term "pirate" is, of course, indicative of the music industry's dilemma: Its (mis)leaders still can't fathom that the People Formerly Known as Consumers (PFKACs) have finally had enough and actually dared to search and find their own sources of music, outside of the controlled domains of major music labels. The industry's response: criminalize its own customers, equating them with those hard-core piracy operations that produce billions of counterfeit CDs and DVDs in some Mongolian pressing plant. Talk about warping public perception! In any case, history has already shown a pretty good path out of this dilemma, in the shape of the blanket licenses that public performance societies such as SACEM or BMI and ASCAP (which were formed precisely for this reason) have been providing for over 100 years now - France's SACEM launched in 1851. Rather than asking each and every user (or each service provider) to get individual permissions for each individual musical work, the industry - often aided by some not-so-gentle government pressure - instituted a negotiated, default, and standardized license that is available to everyone who cares to be licensed. Even though they can be improved upon, these existing public performance blanket licenses, granted by copyright collectives, are generally easy to get as well as economically realistic, and they can cover just about every usage scenario. At least, they used to, until the advent of the Internet. This sometimes clumsy but legally straightforward system, administered via national performing rights organizations such as ASCAP, BUMA, and SACEM, has allowed listeners to enjoy the benefits of public performances in clubs, restaurants, concert venues, and radio for quite some time now. Collective blanket licenses, although often contested and sometimes renegotiated by the involved parties, provide all-inclusive access for the users and to a very large degree solve the problem at hand: enabling every user -and the companies that serve them - to be legal while filling up a nice pool of money on a recurring basis. A win-win-win, really, until now.

A New Blanket License For The Use Of Music On The Net

It is becoming more obvious by the minute: What we need is a new blanket license for the use of music on digital networks, voluntarily agreed upon and provided by the creators and their representatives, and a fair way to split it up: Music Like Water. And I believe that this new license is very likely to be the music industry's only realistic option to create a new basis for re-monetizing music in the age of uncontrolled distribution. But take note: The flat rate is just the beginning of a new music ecosystem in which many new revenue streams will become available. The end of control of distribution is here now, just like the end of control of public performance (a.k.a. broadcasting) arrived 100 years ago, forcing the music industry to adjust. The fact is that a blanket-license scenario works just fine for the use of music on cable TV and for radio (and yes, eventually for Internet radio as well). And a flat fee-based model for basic water, power, and wireless services works well, too: Pretty much everyone can become a legalized user, and those who don't (for whatever reason) can easily be absorbed without breaking the system. Depending whether we're discussing unique, tangible atoms or losslessly reproduced bits and bytes, a flat fee either ensures my basic connection (as with water) or includes unlimited use (as with TV). And this is indeed a fundamental difference we should note: Water is not freely reproduced; unlike copies of music files, a liter of water used in one location can no longer be used somewhere else. The reproduction cost of digital music is, however, essentially zero, and we must therefore not provide just flat-rate access but also flat-rate consumption - unlike water where the access is flat-rated but the use is not. Bits and bytes require licensed ubiquity. With many flat rates, the payments are woven into other service offerings and therefore become less obtrusive, morphing into an accepted and even expected mode of getting what you want without having to make a new decision every single time (such as iTunes still requires). No excessive granularity can be employed (e.g., counting how many hours of TV you watch, or how many people are actually sitting in front of the tube), few restrictions on usage are imposed (e.g., there are no extra charges if you get more than the usual number of emails on your BlackBerry), and no substantial harm is done if some determined users really do circumvent the system (such as freeloading on cable TV).

Attention Is The New Distribution

In the immediate future of music we need to get our heads around the fact that the less control we impose on the users of content the better. In music, our goal will always have be to attract and retain large and engaged audiences - to enthrall the highest possible number of interested people, and by extension to have everyone share their music discoveries with others, thereby driving exposure through the roof. Again, since all audio files are now freely available anyway, the more we control, limit, or otherwise inhibit the sharing process, the less attention we will get to take advantage of: Attention is indeed the new distribution. And real money will be paid for real attention. (See Chapter 1) Based on the realization that it is no longer just the copies of sound files (or pieces of plastic) that we want to monetize, but the entire range of assets that the artist's brand represents, we simply can no longer ignore the powerful solution that the flat rate for music represents. Granted, a sharp-minded reader may retort that we are now simply moving from controlling distribution to controlling attention. That isn't entirely wrong but it's probably wishful thinking. While the large music and media companies were indeed able to control distribution with iron fists that clung to their exclusive copyright ownership, attention must be earned, kept, and maintained - again and again. And only the most daring wordsmith would still call that "control". Instead, I believe the users are now controlling whether a media provider still qualifies to get their attention, every time they click. They're dealing in trust, in other words. That's tough luck for large companies that look for large margins at low costs, and I think they are not very likely to engage in music ventures, going forward, for that very reason.

Music That Feels Free - But Generates Real Revenues

So, the key question remains (and I will investigate this more extensively in the upcoming chapters): How will content creators actually monetize this attention and turn it into real dollars, euros, kroners, rupees, or yen? Let's start by giving everyone "feels like free" access to music (and later, other media). Access that in itself already generates real money, be it through subscriptions, advertising, bundling, sponsorship, product tie-ins, or by simply generating traffic in the context of another service or product (see Gmail or Google Adwords). Radio now generates billions of dollars in ad revenues based on music licensed via the now-compulsory music license. In fact, radio churns out more cash than the recorded music industry itself! In 2006 Kagan Research projected that U.S. radio revenues would grow to as much as $25 billion in 2011. Bizarrely, though, by the time the rights holders got around to actually licensing radio (in the U.S.), they were no longer able to argue that the use of the recording should be paid for (just like the use of the composition). And so, in the U.S., the overall flow of money from radio remains less than it would have been if a license had been made available much earlier. Take note, lawmakers. I have written extensively on the flat rate for music in the past (see Music Like Water) and have created several presentations on this, as well. The flat-rate-licensed usage of music on digital networks, be it for streaming or downloading, would quickly generate billions of dollars of revenue that could efficiently be distributed to the creators. These creators are now ill-served by the way their representatives refuse such licenses and deny the use of music more often than allowing it. The music industry must move toward allowing the use of music on a blanket basis rather than asking for individual admission deals. In other words: Give up control of those entry gates. And that is where the trouble lies.

Originally written by Gerd Leonhard for MediaFuturist and first published on 24th January 2008 as "The End of Control: Music Like Water, and the Flat Rate"
Gerd Leonhard is a media futurist as well as an author and writer, a media and Internet entrepreneur, a strategic advisor, and a keynote speaker & presenter. If you want to get a good feel for what he does, you can check out Gerd\'s blog MediaFuturist, or watch some videos from the new Media Conversations Future Talks series (to select an episode just click on the book icon / guide button, and go from there). You can also visit his Youtube channel, or subscribe to his video feed.

Photocredits From Controlling To Deserving Attention: Marc Dietrich Access Replaces Ownership: Mipan Embrace The End Of Control: Pryzmat A New Blanket License For The Use Of Music On The Net: Dzmitry Stankevich Attention Is The New Distribution: Mitar Gavric Music That Feels Free - But Generates Real Revenues: Kuzma ...

"I want to improve my AdSense performance, but I don\'t know how to get started!" The Google Australian AdSense team has just put together an 11-minute introductory tutorial for anyone who is approaching AdSense optimization for the first time. The video provides some very basic concepts and suggest simple strategic approaches to general AdSense optimization that, as far as I can tell, are all right on the mark. These are again, all basic concepts of AdSense optimization and they are definitely targeted at those exposing themselves for the first time to this type of work. What you should expect to find in it, are fundamental references for optimising AdSense performance - from analysing your page type, to choosing the right ad sizes and colors, and to how you should best monitor and track your results. Also included, some general advice and tips on how to increase eCPM, without adversely affecting your community\'s experience on your web site pages. This introductory video guide covers the following topics: 1. Analysing your webpage 2. Creating custom channels 3. Determining best ad design and placement 4. Maximizing ad units on a page 5. Tracking and measuring your results Here the video and full text transcript:

Google AdSense Steps to Success

The Australian Google AdSense Team introduces the basic of AdSense video optimization

Full English Text Transcription Welcome to a step-by-step guide to making the most out of AdSense. My name is Mel Ann and I am an account manager on the AdSense team in Sidney Australia. Together with my colleague Tim we\'ll be running through a guide to successful AdSense optimization. One of the great things that Mel Ann and I we love about our job , is helping publishers maximize their Adsense performance via the optimization program. The two aims of the program are: 1) Increase your AdSense revenue and 2) Improve your community\'s experience on your web site. The optimization guide that follows is all about these two goals.

The Five Steps To Optimizing AdSense On Your Web Pages

Mel Ann: Let\'s go through the steps for optimizing your web pages. These five steps will take you through a complete optimization. And they are a good starting point for you to improve your AdSense performance. As optimization specialists,Tim and I go through these steps when looking at all our publishers accounts.

• Firstly we analyze the content of a web page and determine how your users view the content.
• By using custom channels we also find out which ad units are performing or underperforming, by looking at the channel data available.
• Then we determine the optimum ad formats and placements of your ads such as color, position and size.
• We also make sure that you are getting the most out of having multiple ad units on a page.
• And by checking and measuring the results from when you implement it you will be able to say whether your optimization have made a difference to your AdSense performance.

1) Analyze Your Web Pages

People read pages in different ways and their interaction with ads will depend on a few factors. Ask yourself these questions: a) What type of content do you have on your pages? Some will interact with an article page differently than from a forum. And differently again with a video site. b) Where is their attention likely to be focused? If you have your most interesting content at the top of the page the best ad placement will be next to that content. You should place ads where your users are most likely to look and not hide them away at the corner of your page. c) Ask yourself how you can integrate ads into this area without getting into your users way. You want to protect your community experience with your web page and not clutter it with ads.

The AdSense Heatmap

This heatmap highlights the areas on a web page where ads perform well. Ads are ideally placed above the fold and close to your primary content. You should place ads where your users are most likely to look and not hide them away. At the end of the day, your knowledge about how your community interacts with your page will guide you on how to best apply these optimization techniques. When analyzing your pages it\'s also important to think about how advertisers will like to appear on your site. A great way to potentially increase your earnings is by making your site more appealing to advertisers. Earnings, or effective CPM (eCPM) can be increased by advertisers targeting your site in a placement targeting campaign. In a placement targeting campaign an advertiser bids more than all the ads in an ad unit to take up that entire unit with their ad. This is most often an image ad. But it could be video, Flash, or a text ad.

Is Your Site Advertiser Friendly?

The top three ways to ensure that your site is advertiser friendly are: 1) To opt-in to showing text as well as image ads 2) To have well designed and presented content 3) To use large ad units such as the 300x250 medium rectangle.

2) Set Up Custom Channels

Custom channels allow you to categorize or group different ad units across your site for reporting purposes. They give you a better insight into how individual ad units are performing, and so that you can make decisions about placement, color and style and maximize your user engagement with the ads. You can manage your custom channels in the "Channels" section, under the AdSense Setup tab. So after analyzing your pages and determining the way you would like to place your ads make sure you also create a channel for individual ad unit placements. You will be able to compare performance between ad units. For example by creating a custom channel to track all fo your leaderboard ad units as well as your medium rectangle ad units you will be able to say which ad sizes perform better, in terms of clickthrough rate or revenue. Tracking individual ad unit metrics ensures that you have the best information possible for maximiming your AdSense performance.

3) Optimize Your Ad Units Design and Performance

Advertisers love to use these formats in placement targetig campaigns as they are common industry standards. The three most popular are: a) The medium rectangle (300x250)
b) Wide skyscraper (160x600)
c) Leaderboard (720x90) If you opted in to show image ads, you will be able to see also rich medi ads, including Flash and video. I encourage you to at least put in one of these formats in a consistent manner across your site as they have proven not only to be the most desirable to advertisers but also to be the best performing in terms of clickthrough rate and effective CPM.

Appropriate Use of Colors

Colors play an important part in keeping your ads looking professional and a relevant part of your site. As text ads show approximately 70 to 80% of the time it is essential that they complement your site. There are several ways you can do this: Simple things like blending in the background of the ads with the color of your site and removing borders have proven in the past to have a significant impact upon clickthrough rate. Just be careful of not blending the ads too much so that they look like your site content. You can also try to highlight the links in the URL with shades that complement your site colors. Remember that tricking your audience to click on ads does not work in the long run and Google penalizes publishers whose users are not interacting properly with ads on page.

So let\'s summarize the key learnings from looking at ad design and placement.

• We have found that doing an analysis of how your users view information and enjoy the content on your site is absolutely essential to how you choose where to place your ads.
• It\'s important not to hide your Google ads. As users will actually find them useful if they can see them.
• Integrate your ads with your content and place them where they are visible. You will find that your actual clickthrough rate will actually improve.
• Choose colors for your ads so that they are easily distinguishable from content but still look like they belong to your site.

We see so many instances where ads look like a copy and paste job. To take advantage of the flexibility that AdSense offers, consider customizing your color palette. We offer now rounded corners for your ads.

4) Maximize Revenue From Multiple Units

Now we will move on to how to maximize revenue from the existing ad units on a page. Of course the AdSense team is very wary to suggest you to plaster your pages with ads, so to maximize the yeld from multiple units, we recommend finding ut which unit is performing best on your page. You can do this by setting up custom channels to determine which ad format is outperfoming the rest in terms of having the highest clickthrough rate and eCPM. The first ad unit on a page always shows the highest paying ads. The ones that won the ad auction. These ads pay you the most per click. The first unit on the page is defined as the first instance of HTML code on your page. Place that ad unit first in your HTML so that it will receive the highest paying ads. This will maximize the yield that you can receive from multiple ad units on a page. So for example if you have a leaderboard at the top of your page but a mdeium rectangle that is placed half-way down outperfoms it, then the higher paying ads are better being placed in that medium rectangle where your users click more. If you are comfortable with HTML and JavaScript you probably can figure out a way to place the medium rectangle first in your HTML. However a good result can also be gained by removing the leaderboard from the top and placing it somewhere else on a page so that the medium rectangle appears first in your pages source code.

5) Track and Measure Your Results

Let\'s go over the best ways of tracking and measuring your optimization results. As I have mentioned previously, using AdSense channels is a great way to track AdSense performance at the individual ad unit level. This next section will detail how to use methods best. I am sure everyone is familiar with the "Reports" tab in your AdSense account. To generate a report on your custom channels click on the Advanced Reports subtab. Select the "channel data" radio button and the channels that you would like to compare. You also have the option of showing your results by date, channel, or both. Below you\'ll see your results. In this example (see video) we have grouped results by date. This gives results for each day for all the custom channels you have selected. Even more useful is grouping your results by channels. This allows you to compare different ad units based on placement, color or format. Success in using this feature depends on whether you have set up custom channels to track these ads in the first place. In this example we are comparing the performance of your 160x600 skyscraper against the 300x250 medium rectangle. If we were to run these reports over a monthly time frame and see that the 300x250 medium rectangle is performing better, we may try first ad unit optimization, as discussed by Tim. Generating "placement targeting reports" is done within the same panel. Simply select the "Show Data by" option and change it to individual ad units. This allows you to see which ad units are receiving placement targeted ads and whether your optimization has effectively improved your eCPM.

Resources for AdSense Optimization

Let\'s look through some of the great resources available for AdSense optimization. In the AdSense Help Center you\'ll find the answers to our most common questions as well as more techniques to help you improve your AdSense performance. Try searching for "optimizing AdSense" in the Help Center and walk through the easy to implement solutions for getting the most out of AdSense. Google AdSense Help Forum is a place for you to learn and share the optimization techniques with other AdSense publishers. You can browser previous threads and comments or post a new conversation on how to approach your Adsense optimization on your site. If you have any questions about AdSense or if you would like more detail on AdSense optimization in general please feel free to contact the AdSense team by emailing adsense-support@google.com or go to the Help Center guide

Video by the Australian Google AdSense Team - "Five steps to optimising your AdSense performance" - YouTube link - Formatting, illustrations and full English text transcription by Robin Good. ...

If you want to create a slick, highly visual, interactive magazine to publish and distribute online, Calameo, has recently launched a web-based service that allows one-click conversion of all most popular document formats into highly customizable and very attractive full-screen flip-page magazines. So, whether you have a PDF file a .doc report or an OpenOffice presentation you can easily create high-impact interactive visual magazines that can be distributed via email, social news sites and via an embeddable snippet of code allowing any Calameo based magazine to be republished on any web site or blog. Here more details:

Overview

Calaméo is a web-based service which creates glossy, highly visual versions of most any document you submit in order to provide a richer and more comfortable reading experience. Online publications created with Calameo can be downloaded, shared / embedded on other sites, and sent as a link to be viewed to any number of recipients and independently of the operating system, or browser type being used. In other words, Calameo is a tool capable of producing slick-looking interactive documents with little effort and no tech know-how required on the part of the publisher. These interactive documents are particularly interesting as they offer multiple navigation and browsing options, a good search functionality, easy zooming and scrolling through the document and a simple and intuitive user interface. Personalization also plays an important roleinside Calameo, allowing you, the publisher, to easily characterize your publication through a wide choice of personalization options (background image, music, interactive links, etc.). Calameo-generated documents can be published and shared publicly or can be kept under secure access for your restricted team of colleagues. Calaméo allows you to share your publications with the people of your choice, in complete safety. Calameo also allows you to organize multiple types of documents you want to publish into separate "subscriptions" allowing the actual creation of different publication channels. Social features are well integrated into this online publishing tool allowing for readers to comment and start discussions on any document you have configured for open social interaction.

Key Features

Document Conversion - Files Type Supported

Calameo can easily convert most type of documents and files with no additional help. Files can be as large as 100MB each, and here are the specific document formats supported.

Player Features - Navigation Controls

Once a document has been converted into Calameo, it is displayed within a custom Flash player. To navigate the newly created document a navigation toolbar is available on the top left area of the Calameo player. Key navigation options from left to right include: a) Publication Switch back to main publication mode from any other of the available viewing modes. b) Subscriptions Allow readers to discover and access your other content channels, magazines or publications. c) Thumbnail view of all pages View the whole publication as a series of thumbnails. d) Full screen view Launch the viewer in full screen mode. e) Bookmarking Bookmark specific pages or sections for later review. f) Zoom-In Zoom-Out Easily zoom in and out of the document for maximum readability. g) Audio volume Control or mute audio volume for multimedia publications which contain audio as well.

Delivery and Distribution

With Calameo all of your documents can be easily shared either as fully viewable embedded documents, or via a small mini-Calameo player. At the moment of publication you can also immediately invite selected contacts as well as post your doc to some of the most popular social news sites. Publications created with Calameo can be easily distributed, shared, republished, subscribed to in multiple ways. Converted documents can in fact be set for open download by readers, as well as for open republication via the Calameo mini-embeddable player you see above this paragraph. An RSS feed is also available. Social news and bookmarking facilities also allow anyone to easily repost any Calameo publication to some of the most popular social news sites such Facebook, Digg or Reddit.

Community Features

Calameo sports the standard set of social and community features allowing you to invite as many people as you want to watch, comment and discuss around your publications directly from within the Calameo interface.

Search

The Calameo search facility module doesn\'t get a prize for its UI, but it does deliver solid results, that are visually navigable and immediately accessible. It appears to be also very fast.

Customization

Calameo offers a nice set of interesting customization features for your own publications. These range from integrating your own image or logo in the player, to the addition of background music and more.

Multimedia Editing

One of the coolest features of Calameo allows you to edit your uploaded document and add to it links to other web sites, links to specific pages inside the document, MP3 sounds, video clips in FLV format and animation s in SWF file format.

Licensing

All documents published with Calameo must be files for which you do have full publishing and distribution rights. You cannot just take any electronic version of a magazine and re-publish it through this service. If you do, you may run into some serious penal issues. If you are the originator of your own documents to be published via Calameo you have also the nice option of being able to select the type of Creative Commons licence that you want to use for each publication.

Other Cool Features

A number of other valuable features is available when you create a new publication and includes options to share the document and to make it easy for others to access it. Advanced conversion options allow you to set whether original fonts should be integrated in the final converted publication doc (this will make it larger in size and therefore slower to load) or if Calameo will try to approximate itself the closest available font to the layout specs. Quality of compressed images can also be converted from these conversion options.

Plans & Pricing

The basic service, which is fully free, has lots to offer without asking anything in return. The PRO version, which costs €149/year (apx. $190 ) provides you with greater ability to customize your publication, tools to manage directly your mailing list, traffic and viewing stats, no ads. The PRO version has also added access to the Calameo API, allowing your programmers to tap right into the Calameo engine and data output elements.

In Summary

Pros - Key Strengths

Support for a wide variety of popular file formats Web-based - works with all browsers and operating systems Free - all of the basic core functionalities are available for free Slick, interactive document player Cool navigation and browsing tools Customization options Editable - links, videos and animations can be added to your original document Embeddable on other sites Downloadable - original document can be made available for download if desired Privacy - any document can be set to be published as fully "public" or as "private" Community features Social news sites support RSS support

Cons - To Improve

Help and documentation - very sparse and thin - badly organized - difficult to navigate AdSense ads - AdSense ads are present on almost every public page of this service site. While I understand the basic needs for bringing in any possible extra revenue during these early phases I find the presence of ads distracting and discrediting for the site prestige and credibility. They should not be there. The "action" buttons used to edit or save information inside Calameo all use strange and non-standard terms for functions. Distracting and confusing. Somewhat confusing navigation inside Calameo web-based account. Not intuitive path to find mini-player and sharing functionalities.

Editor\'s Comments

Here is an innovative online publishing tool which raises the bar for quality of results (final page layouts) as well as for speed and ease of use. Targeted at those wanting to distribute their contents online in a more prestigious, slick and interactive format, Europe-based Calameo has created a useful service, which similarly to Scribd or Docstoc allows you to easily publish and distribute any document online. Calameo key strengths are the wide support for a variety of popular document formats, a cool and highly usable distribution interface, alongside some nifty customization features, RSS support, publication embedding, as well as full downloading (if allowed) of original documents. Although still in beta, Calameo looks like a promising service for online publishers, especially for those who want to extract higher value from the distribution medium Calameo puts at their disposal. From the viewpoint of professional online publishers, the opportunity is in creating premium options that serve directly the needs of those wanting to use this platform as a way to market and sell their know-how, services or physical products. In this light, potential integration of ecommerce payments, squeeze page features, list building and similar marketing tools could further characterize Calameo from its competitors, while addressing aggressively one of the most rapidly moving segments on the net. I believe that there is ample market opportunities for online publishing tools like this one, as long as they are courageous and shrewd enough to address very specific needs and applications. Doing something cool that tries to satisfy many different needs and audience types is generally bound to have much harder chances of survival.

Learn More

About Calameo Calameo Help (very cumbersome to navigate and rather sparse in contents) Press Release - April 21st 2008

Originally written by Robin Good for Master New Media and first published on Tuesday June 24th 2008 as "Create An Online Interactive Magazine From Any Document With Calameo" ...

Online collaborations tools keep offering new and improved features to work, share and present with other people at a distance. I am picking up this time not only the latest but also a few of those cool tools that while launched a while ago, may not have yet reached your radar screen. Photo credit: Ilin Sergey In this issue: Create your own video conferencing room, instant message and share files with your friends. Discover new tools also to whiteboard and edit text in real-time with other people. All of the above and more in this week collaboration tools Picnic Here\'s my online collaboration tools selection for this week:

1. Spreed: Web-based tool allows you to set up video conferences and share Power-Point presentations
2. PersonalGrid: Free 2GB of storage space where you can upload and share files
3. Barablu: Mobile VoIP client lets you make free calls to PCs to multiple networks
4. Mindquarry: Open-Source software offers file sharing, wiki, task management and chat to collaborate with your team
5. DabbleBoard: Invite as many people as you want to whiteboard online
6. Writewith: Collaborative writing tool allows you to edit documents with other people
7. Evermotion Communicator: Free multi-protocol instant messenger for Windows
8. Trillian Astra: Multi-protocol instant messenger allows you to connect to multiple IM services either with client and web-based version

1. Spreed Spreed is a web-based tool that allows you set up video conferences. Spreed integrates whiteboard, chat, video conferencing, screen sharing, file transfer and Power-Point presentation sharing. It can be used on PC and Mac and it is free to use up to three participants. http://spreed.com/



2. PersonalGrid PersonalGrid is a file hosting service that gives you up to 2GB of storage space, and where you can upload and share files. You can create folders, and select the people you want to share a file with, or simply get a public URL for anyone to access and download that particular file. The service is free to use, registration is needed. http://personalgrid.com/



3. Barablu Barablu is a VoIP application that works on any PocketPC, or on any PC running Windows or Mac. It allows you to have free voice calls with anyone on MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Skype, and Barablu networks, while you\'ll have to pay a small fee for any mobile or landline calls. The software is free to download and use. http://www.barablu.com/



4. Mindquarry Mindquarry is an open-source software that combines file sharing, wiki, task management and communication software into a powerful team infrastructure that allows teams to collaborate more effectively. You can share documents, ideas, thoughts and definitions and edit them with people at the same time while its file manager stores snapshots of documents edited by your team and makes them searchable. In the future it ill also have a chat area. http://www.mindquarry.com/



5. DabbleBoard DabbleBoard is a free tool that you can use to whiteboard online. You can create a new whiteboard at anytime and, after a simple log-in, you can invite as many people as you want to join you and start drawing with you. When you are done, you can download you creation on your machine in PNG format. Free to use. http://www.dabbleboard.com/



6. Writewith Writewith is a collaborative writing tool for editing documents together. You can upload a document to the site (.doc, .txt, .rtf, Open Office) and invite other people to see, edit and chat in real-time. If they don\'t have an account, they can edit the document by email without their needing to create an account. The service is completely free and also comes with a message board, and task assignment facility. http://writewith.com/



7. Evermotion Communicator Evermotion Communicator is a free multi-protocol instant messenger that works with Yahoo, ICQ, AIM, MSN, Skype, Tlen, Google Talk and and also local LAN networks. It supports multilingual interface, file and image transfer (with basic image editing), and group chats. It work on Windows platforms only, and it is free to download and use. http://ec.evermotion.org/



8. Trillian Astra Trillian Astra is a multi-protocol instant messenger that can connect to multiple IM services, such as AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, Skype and Google Talk networks. Plus, if you\'re not at home or haven\'t installed the client on your machine, you are able to communicate with other people anywhere your are with the web-based version of Trillian Astra, available on your personal home page. Beta. http://www.trillianastra.com/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on June 23rd 2008 as "Online Collaboration Technologies - New Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic Jun23" ...

Visual communication tools keep holding our interest and attention as they increase your ability to communicate, train and market in more effective ways. Among our selected visual weapons another web-based image editors to apply effects and edit your pictures, new image search engines that make it easy for you to find all kinds of images, as well as a free multimedia player to embed and distribute your image slideshows. Photo credit: FotoFlash Here my full list of useful visual communication tools I have selected for you this week:

1. Phantasmagoria: Java-based image editor lets you modify pictures on any machine
2. Picitup: Image search engine lets you apply filters to your researches
3. Tag Galaxy: Flick search engine lets you combine multiple keywords through a 3D interface
4. Splashr: Arrange all of your Flickr pictures, or someone else\'s, into embeddable players
5. Picreflect: Add simple reflections to your images online
6. GIFUP: Upload images from your computer, Flickr or web-site, and create animations with them
7. Retriever: Draw with your mouse, or upload a picture to start a Flickr research that matches what you drew
8. Web 2.0 Free Logo Generator: Create customizable Web2.0 logos online, with no photo editing software

Visual Communication Tools

1. Phantasmagoria Phantasmagoria is a free Java-based image editor, that runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. It supports a wide range of image formats, and it lets you easily edit and improve your images with a lot of effects. You can create graphics, including textures and highy stylized text and, when you are done, you can export directly pictures to Flickr. Free to download and use. http://www.develderby.com/phantasmagoria/



2. Picitup Picitup is an online image search engine that allows you search for pictures applying filters. Just inserting a keyword and clicking search will bring you to a result page, where you can decide to filter images: you can select faces, landscapes products, or even colors and, when you have found the right picture, you can click on it and you will be brought to its page so that you can download it. Free to use. http://www.picitup.com/



3. Tag Galaxy Tag Galaxy is a Flickr search engine that displays results as planets and galaxies. After you insert a term to begin the research, multiple planets will gather, suggesting other possible keywords related to the starting one so that your research can become wider. At the center of the galaxy, you can click the planet, and it will begin showing pictures that you can click on and download from their Flickr page. Free. http://taggalaxy.de/



4. Splashr Splashr is a new tool that anyone can use to show Flickr photos on embeddable players. All you have to do is to enter a Flickr username, email, photo-set id, or simply tags, decide how many photos will be showed on the board, select the style, and click a button. You can then preview the player, share it via email, or embed it on your web-site so that everyone can see it. Free to use, no registration needed. http://splashr.com/



5. Picreflect Picreflect is a simple web-based tool to add reflections to your pictures. After you load a picture from your PC or URL, you can change reflection height and transparency settings, resize or rotate the picture, change the background color and even flip it. Then, you can click generate and save your picture locally on your machine. Free to use, no registration needed. http://picreflect.com/



6. GIFUP GIFUP is an online GIF animation and avatar generator. Simply upload images from your computer, or get them from Flickr or any web-site, and GIFUP will automatically create an animation with the images you provided. When you\'re satisfied, you can then save it to your computer, or share it with your friends. Free to use. http://www.gifup.com/



7. Retriever Retriever is an interesting site where you can draw a picture and start a research that matches what you are drawing on your sketch pad. After you decide dimension and color of your brush, and you can start drawing anything you want and in a matter of seconds it will show search result from Flickr that match what you drew. You can also upload an image, or provide its URL, and Retriever will look for pictures that are similar to the one you uploaded. Free. http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/



8. Web 2.0 Free Logo Generator Web 2.0 Free Logo Generator is a web-based service that lets you create Web 2.0 logos, without knowing anything about photo editing. You can personalize the text, font, background color, size, reflection, image format and resolution. When you are done, you can right click the logo and save it locally on your PC, or you can send it via email to other people. Free to use, no registration needed http://www.simwebsol.com/ImageTool/

Originally written by Nico Canali De Rossi for Master New Media and first published on June 21st 2008 as "Visual Communication And Video Publishing - Selected Tools And Web Services - Sharewood Picnic Jun21 08" ...

Social media strategies for the web, scanning information, learning via dialogue and participation, how micropublishers manage their information and publishing workflow are just some of the interesting topics that are included in this juicy weekly digest. Photo credit: Vasyl Yakobchuk But there is more: social network usage, learning 2.0, overcoming bias and socializing when teaching and learning. George Siemens, Master New Media educational technologies and learning expert contributor, takes you into another great scanning journey to see, discover and understand how media and new technologies are rapidly changing the way we think, work and collaborate. Here the details:

Connecting with the Facebook Generation: Social Media Strategies for Web 2.0

An interesting and lengthy presentation on how universities/colleges can connect with learners who are active in social technologies - Connecting with the Facebook Generation: Social Media Strategies for Web 2.0

Is Scanning Important?

Tony Karrer and Michele Martin have been throwing out lots of ideas on their new Work Literacy site ("Work Literacy is a network of individuals, companies and organizations who are interested in learning, defining, mentoring, teaching and consulting on the frameworks, skills, methods and tools of modern knowledge work."). A recent post - (Is scanning important: "Scanning is very important to me and occupies a fair amount of my time. I consider it essential to staying on the forefront. When I begin to work with a new client, I often set up various scanning activities for me to be in a continuous learning mode around their world."

Transforming the Way To Learn through Dialogue and Participation

Transforming the way to learn through dialogue and participation: "Overtime, I think universities have become more removed from society and gradually have been involved in a production of knowledge, which tends to objectify reality...I think teachers have to, almost, relearn the pedagogical approaches. Even if we think about dialogue as a conversation, we should not escape from the fact that there are many power relationships that influence the relationship between teachers and students. If teachers engage with students in conversation, unless both sides are aware of the expectations, and of the power relations experienced, it can be very difficult for that conversation to be based really on an equitable basis." Issues of power and control are central to many changes in society and education. Wikipedia? It\'s about trust/authority/power. Classrooms? Power/control/authority are the defining elements. And yet, we are now at a point where no one person has the ability to see a field in its entirety. We are all seeing small fragments at best. Theoretically at least, more contributors=more diverse ways of seeing the field. The downside, of course, is that we get completely overwhelmed because we have not yet adjusted our tools and our methods for handling abundance.

OLDaily Production

In this age of personal production, it is interesting to see how different people manage their information and content. We often talk about how anyone can be a publisher - blogger, podcaster, webcaster, or whatever. But how do people manage their resources? How does a micropublisher find, filter, and share resources? One of the most prolific bloggers in the edtech domain - Stephen Downes - has put together a short presentation on how he manages OLDaily. I would like to see how other micropublishers and bloggers gather and make sense of materials they publish (such as Robin Good, Brian Lamb, D'Arcy Norman, Alec Couros, Dave Snowden, Jay Cross, Will Richardson, etc.). Bring on the sensemaking screencast series. Hey, can we have that as a meme?

Social Network Users vs. Age

A short study on social network users by age. Depending on the tool in question, significant drops occur at about 18 years for MySpace and Facebook users and 35ish for LinkedIn and Flickr users. I wonder how those trends will hold up as people age...i.e. do Facebook users continue to Facebook as they get older? Do they switch to other platforms? Or do they stop all together?

Solid Thinking: A Challengable Position on Learning 2.0 and the Incumbent

Mark Nichols tackles a broad theme on change within education (and offers a short critique on connectivism...which is revisited in the discussion portion of the post): Solid thinking: A challengable position on learning 2.0 and the incumbent. In particular, Mark suggests we don`t need as broad a change model as some have suggested and that educational reform is best handled by including web 2.0 concepts and tools under the broad umbrella of social constructivism and some degree of centralized control and hierarchy.

Overcoming Bias...and the Hadron Collider

Overcoming Bias is an interesting blog exploring a mix of philosophy, futurism, and obscure concepts/ ideas (or is that an oxymoron when used in the same sentence as "philosophy"?). Recently, they posted on one of lawsuits around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). LHC is a particle accelerator that a few individuals fear will cause the universe to unravel. Which would then in turn make global warming a largely moot concept. Interesting discussion follows in the Overcoming Bias post on probability theory (and when we are willing to gamble with "being wrong") as well as information validity.

Socializing Teaching and Learning

I\'ve posted slides from my presentation today to the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education. Topic: Socializing Teaching and Learning. I posted audio on my U of M blog (yes, I know, I can sync the slides on Slideshare).



Originally written by George Siemens and published as weekly email digest on eLearning Resources and News. First published on June 21st 2008. To learn more about George Siemens and to access extensive information and resources on elearning check out www.elearnspace.org. Explore also George Siemens connectivism site for resources on the changing nature of learning and check out his new book "Knowing Knowledge". ...