Family Learning Center

Posts Tagged ‘Content Creation’

Why Google Releases New Apps: They’re Desperate for Content

It seems like in the past few months Google has relentlessly released new applications, some of which perhaps could have used some more baking in the oven before they were unleashed on the general public. To some it’s becoming a tiresome exercise simply to try to keep up with everything that Google is doing week in and week out. But there is a method to the madness, and it has a lot more to do with Google's bottom line than you may think.

We all know that the way the search engine giant makes money is through advertising – over $23 billion in 2009 – but what may surprise you is that its advertising-based revenue comes almost exclusively from sites that are owned by Google.

Sponsor

Guest author Daniel Cawrey is a freelance writer and tech enthusiast, among other things. You can check out his latest musings in blog form at thechromesource, where he writes about Chrome browser, Chrome OS and just plain Google in general.

Take a look at this graph from the Silicon Valley Insider that depicts the location of advertising and the dollars associated with it:

Ever increasingly, Google is relying on itself to make money through its own real estate – places where it can position the ads that advertisers purchase. This is a concern for publishers that rely on Google for revenue through Adsense because there has to be a point at which this is no longer a profitable exercise for the company.

If it reaches that point, Google will essentially be subsidizing publishers. And it may not have a choice but to keep doing so. Because without fresh content creation, what is there for users to search for on the Internet that is of value? The main tenet of the search business is to provide quality results, and while that may be the case now, if publisher’s Adsense revenues were affected, one can wonder what kind of effect that would have on content.

So although Google may have made some mistakes with applications like Buzz, along with the half-hearted emergence and now slow death of features like Gears, expect them to continue to increasing space for content to grow, even if that means one of several strategies:

Become an ISP

An experimental program has been announced whereby Google will provide gigabit service via fiber directly to homes in select markets. Interested municipalities and community organizations are encouraged to submit a proposal for this right. At the World Mobile Congress, CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the goal of this program being purely experimental, which means showing infrastructure operators such as cable companies that this is possible, rather than Google becoming a full fledged ISP. But once the fiber has been rolled out, it doesn't roll back in, does it? How long does the "experiment" last?

Trounce the Competition in the Browser Wars

Google's Chrome browser is getting a lucky break over the next few weeks. That's because Windows users in Europe who use Internet Explorer will be getting an update to their machines notifying them about browser choices that they have. This is in response to the European Union's ruling that Microsoft's practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows restricts competition. While the update offers many browser choices, the result will be a boost to market share for Chrome. It has steadily grown in popularity and already has roughly 5% of the market since emerging in 2008.

Offer Computing Architecture to Device Manufacturers Completely Free

We've seen this already with Android, and it appears that the no-cost operating system has basically saved Motorola from a fall to obscurity with its release of the Droid. Expect to see more of these developments as 2010 unfolds with Chrome OS attempting to break into not only the netbook market, but also tablets and smartbooks, which fill the gap between a high end mobile phone and a netbook.

So when you hear these new announcements of applications and services that Google rolls out, think of content. Think of how they can better deliver information to users. They want it to be as easy and as seamless as possible. While sometimes these initiatives don't always work out, they aren't going to stop trying.

Discuss

Read the whole story…

Make Your Own Online Magazine From Your Flickr/Facebook Photos With YouTellYou

We love site-building and story-telling applications, and social webizens love sharing their content – particularly multimedia content – in new and compelling ways.

YouTellYou is a fun and simple tool that allows users to grab, annotate, tag and share their pictures in an online magazine-type format. Users can pull in photos from Smugmug, Facebook, Flickr or one’s own computer, then go to town in a frenzy of sequences, captions and true pictorial story-weaving.

Sponsor

In about 10 minutes, we created this story about SxSW 2009. We were able to get access to all the needed Flickr photos through a simple interface. Pics were then organized into layouts of one or two photos per section with optional captions for most layouts.

When we published, we were pleased to see links with each photo to enlarge it or to find the original URL for each pic. The finished product also has a thorough commenting system and the option to share zines via email and Twitter.

Our wishlist for this app would be a drag-and-drop interface for pulling photos into the magazine, Facebook Connect for easier account creation, some kind of theming for finished zines, the ability to add photos from other users and the ability to reblog or share the content we created in more ways. Finally, the site navigation and overall design needs improvement; however, for a free app with no advertising, we can’t complain too much.

We’re torn on whether we personally would use the app again – for most on the RWW team, it’d be worth the effort to just build a webpage from scratch. But for end users, this kind of tool is indicative of a trend for amateur content creation and sharing in more polished ways than a simple Flickr slideshow or Facebook set.

What do you think – would you use YouTellYou to tell a story with your photos? Let us know what you think of the app in the comments.

Discuss

Read the whole story…

Augmented reality startup Tonchidot raises $4 million, will use virtual goods for revenue

Finally, a decent fundraising round size for an augmented reality startup.

Tonchidot, the Japanese startup behind the augmented reality browser Sekai Camera, raised $4 million from DCM and existing investor ITOCHU Technology Ventures. Augmented reality is a young field that allows you superimpose data and graphics over the real world in a camera viewfinder.

There are two things that are interesting about this round — Tonchidot becomes the second of several augmented reality startups to raise a venture-backed round this year. It’s a decent size for a first round, and four times what Dutch competitor Layar raised this fall. Although a number of startups have launched products this year on the iPhone and Android-based phones, few venture capital firms had gotten their feet wet in the space. That seems to be changing now.

The second thing to note is that Tonchidot sounds like it will take a very different route to monetization than all of its competitors. It will use its augmented reality browser for more game play. Other competitors like Layar and Wikitude will take the advertising route, letting businesses pay for augmented reality tags or ads or sponsor layers in the browser that point to nearby places like fast-food locations or coffee shops.

Like many other mobile technologies, augmented reality will probably evolve very differently in Japan. Users can tag locations with data and comments in the browser that other people can pick up later if they use Sekai Camera in the same place. Ken Inoue, Tonchidot’s CFO, suggests that there might be special virtual goods that users pay to leave in different places.

“We think augmented reality provides a really interesting user interface, and a place to combine social interaction, marketing and content creation,” said Osuke Honda, a principal at DCM. Specifically, Honda says Tonchidot’s technology could be used to stage game play in the real world. For example, you could have robots battle each other through your phone on a real physical location like a playing field. Or it could be used in cosplay, a type of performance art popular in China and Japan where people wear elaborate costumes.

Read the whole story…

Week in Tech: Large Hadron Collider working, Ubuntu matures

Version 5 of the popular Mac virtualization package, Parallels Desktop, has hit the streets, and Ars puts it through its paces. Gaming performance, Windows 7, content creation, Linux—it’s all here, plus the inevitable comparisons to the most recent VMware Fusion release.

After a series of complications and setbacks, the Large Hadron Collider sees its first particle-particle collisions after a weekend of furious activity. While these weren’t at any significant energy, the milestone marks an important step in getting the mammoth machine up and running and filling in the last space on the particle bingo card.

Read the whole story…

MyMusicCircle: A Reputation-Based Marketplace for Musical Talent & Gigs

Like Guru.com or 99designs, MyMusicCircle is a niche marketplace for an industry notorious for being saturated with broke amateurs.

Finding good talent and, on the flip side of the music industry coin, finding paying gigs can both be excruciatingly difficult tasks wherein both parties in a project rely on word-of-mouth referrals or Craigslist classifieds to find one another and collaborate; in general, we feel that the more online tools music industry pros have to get their various jobs done cheaper, faster, and simpler, the better off we’ll all be. The site was pitched to us as “the new way the music industry does business.” And with enough user adoption and content creation, MyMusicCircle could actually prove to be a great resource for finding talent and gigs online.

Sponsor

Although the site’s features run deep and wide, the premise is simple: Create a profile (focused on finding either talent or paying gigs), and search for what you need. Projects and opportunities cover the entire breadth of the music industry, from promotion to road crew to performers to print shops to venues to arrangers to legal counsel to graphic designers and beyond.

Users can add projects or artists to watchlists or favorites lists, bid on projects, contact other users, conduct searches, and create multimedia portfolios with videos, documents, images, and audio. The site also includes an escrow-based internal payment system for gigs; and SMS alerts are available for projects, connection requests, and other events. According to site reps, new features will be rolled out on a continual basis.

Of course, we put the site to the test and created an artist profile and portfolio. The process was incredibly simple, even if the interface wasn’t the prettiest or most elegant we’ve seen. Especially for multimedia and video content, the uploading process and proprietary media player could use some design/UX TLC.

We spoke this afternoon with MyMusicCircle’s VP of Marketing, Johnathan Naranjo, and their CIO, Henry Bueno.

One of our first concerns was how the startup would deal with encouraging user adoption without a critical mass of content – in this case, paying gigs to attract work-hungry artists. “We’re not going to be scraping gigs from other sites,” said Bueno, “but we will be contacting the individuals that post those gigs. If someone posts a gig to Craigslist, our team will contact that person and invite him to post on MyMusicCircle.”

The features that separate MyMusicCircle from other cattle-call classifieds for musicians all concern verification and measurement of reputation. Bueno told us, “Everyone has to do their homework. That’s why we give thorough tools for portfolios, public feedback, and communication tools for users asking questions.

“The features we have now are the internal feedback system for professionals and clients. It creates a sort of synergy in the site as new professionals emerge onto the scene to help them create a reputation, much in the way that eBay sellers have a reputation for providing good service or creating good products. This also affects their search rankings for MyMusicCircle search.”

And allowing artists to create full profiles featuring their multimedia content is also a great way for potential clients to pre-screen talent, as well.

Other coming-soon features include Virtual Studio, visual conference tool for professionals and clients to communicate. Also on the horizon is a shopping cart feature that will allow beatmakers to sell beats, artists to sell tracks, attorneys to sell billable hours, composers to sell sheet music, manufacturers to sell packages for T shirts or CDs, etc., directly from their individual profiles. Bueno also revealed that his team is working on help manuals and tutorials for users of all experience levels.

The site has been in beta for about a month. Users can send feedback through the feedback tab on the right side of any MyMusicCircle page. Although all accounts now are free, MyMusicCircle has planned a 3-tiered freemium business model for future launches.

“We’re musicians ourselves,” said Bueno. “We created this online system because it’s needed; there’s no central nervous system where people can do business in the music industry. We’re trying to empower musicians who are ready to work and provide great services.”

Discuss

Read the whole story…