Sound Bytes
A column about the future of the music industry by Jonathan CunninghamU2 Partners with Dropbox and Spotify Remains Free in the U.S.
Sound Bytes: Sir Mix-A-Lot Talks Social Media and SOPAThe Analog-ist
A column at the intersection of social and traditional media by Betsy Hauenstein & Cheryl Lowry
Looking for Candidates With Design Skills
Is Paper the Future of Screen?
Does the Hive Mind Work Offline?
Introducing: The Analog-istGhost in the Wire
A regular look into the deeper issues surrounding digital media by Ken RufoThe Education Crisis
On Wikipedia Knowledge
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Is Facebook a “Fad?”
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Photo-May-20-12-15-52-PM-234x150.jpgPublished May 21, 2012 at 9:58 am Facebook’s brief 13% spike in share price on Friday morning after its public trading debut on NASDAQ instantly elevated the social network’s market capitalization to $117.7 – ...
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Balancing the “Push” of Ads with the “Pull” of Social
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/img_facebook_oldSpice_540x360-250x150.jpgPublished May 14, 2012 at 1:40 pm Back in January, Proctor and Gamble kicked off the New Year with a shocking announcement for marketers. With a flat market share and under pressure from investors, the administrat ...
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Kick(starting) the Tires of a New Content Model: Part 3
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/kickstarter-badge-backer-250x150.pngPublished May 11, 2012 at 10:54 am Well, my Kickstarter project is over. As I predicted in Part 2, I didn’t reach my funding goal, and the 30 days the campaign ran ended without a savior sugar momma coming forward ...
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Facebook IPO Woes
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/facebook_logo-250x150.pngPublished May 2, 2012 at 9:43 am The countdown to Facebook’s highly anticipated IPO has begun. On April 23rd, Facebook filed its latest amendment to its registration with SEC. According to the filing, Facebook ...
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The Analog-ist: Martians and Media
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/kindlepad1-250x150.jpgPublished April 27, 2012 at 9:32 am I have fond memories of old Sesame Street skits in which a pair of Martians try to understand Earth technology, sometimes consulting a manual for reference. Here’s my favorit ...
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Hacking Edu: You Too Can Attend MIT
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MG_65011-250x150.jpgPublished April 26, 2012 at 9:59 am Thinking back to the first Hacking Edu event two weeks ago, one question I was left with was, Is higher education, in its current form, facing the threat of irrelevance? I t ...
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Hacking Edu Finale Tonight at Jet City Improv: How deep is the crisis facing Higher Ed?
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/flip-5-250x150.jpgPublished April 25, 2012 at 12:33 pm This month’s Four Peaks Hacking Edu series draws to a close tonight – or more aptly – moves onto a new series of initiatives. Despite the month’s hyperbolic “crisis” pr ...
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Gawker’s Deep Throat at Fox Gags
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/gawker_logo-250x150.jpgPublished April 24, 2012 at 4:28 pm Well it took less than 4 days for Gawker’s heralded Fox Mole, Joe Muto, to be found out, suspended, dismissed and slapped with a cease and desist order by Fox News. On April 10 G ...
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Hacking EDU: Discussing Education Reform During Husky Fest
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/April-19-4-person-panel_6761-250x150.jpgPublished April 23, 2012 at 8:00 am During a rainy kick-off to Husky Fest this past Thursday, the MCDM team was center stage for the entire day and strongly committed to discussing ways to transform education as we k ...
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Pat Summitt Leaves Her Mark on Basketball and Online
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Pat-Summitt1-250x150.jpgPublished April 19, 2012 at 12:18 pm Yesterday was a big news day–full of many big stories – the NHL playoffs, the passing of Dick Clark (America Bandstand), and the ongoing Secret Service scandal. But the bigge ...
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Coveted Pulitzers Awarded to Online Publications For the First Time
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/politico-250x150.jpgPublished April 16, 2012 at 3:07 pm Politico and the Huffington Post are the first online only publications to receive the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for journalism. The 2012 awards were announced today in New York ...
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Instagram Alternatives if Facebook Ruins It for You
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/camera-plus-icon2-185x150.pngPublished April 16, 2012 at 12:07 pm “The photos you take on Instagram are owned by you,” stressed co-founder Kevin Systrom during a SXSW panel on mobile photography last month, “they’re always going to ...
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Hacking the Table with Michael Hebb and Chase Jarvis
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MG_67851-250x150.jpgPublished April 13, 2012 at 9:06 am April 12th found the Hacking Edu team sitting at the table with several education influencers (UPDATE: check out who they are). Hosted by One Pot’s Michael Hebb at Chase Jarv ...
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I’ll Give You $1 Billion For a Good Mobile Experience
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/instagram-250x150.pngPublished April 13, 2012 at 8:18 am When I first saw the numbers I was astounded. That Facebook would pay $1 billion for Instagram, a company with 13 employees that has only been around for 2 or so years and has $0 ...
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Ghost in the Wire: The Education Crisis
http://flipthemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/MG_64261-250x150.jpgPublished April 12, 2012 at 9:55 am All this talk of Hacking Education and the crisis in Higher Ed reminded me of this old Kaplan University commercial, entitled “Your Time.” The logic of the commercial is pretty ...
Viral Video of the Week–Drama, anyone?
Well played, TNT Belgium…
In three days, they racked up more than 11 million views. Yeah, I’d call that viral.
The video premise: for the launch of their new HD channel in Belgium, TNT placed a big button that said “push to add drama” in a quiet square. People press the button, drama (and, presumably, hilarity) ensues.
What I find most remarkable about this video is the fact that it isn’t really that good. For what it is, I suppose it’s okay, but it is so heavily processed (editing is choppy, music is overdone, etc.) that I’m left wondering just how much more than the “drama” part was actually staged. I would much rather have seen longer clips of the scene unfolding and the response of the non-participants. What they’ve done here makes me think that there weren’t really any non participants…
I’d love to know what you think–entirely staged, or a I just being too picky in the “publish, then filter” era?
Not that it matters, really, with these numbers. Well played, indeed.
Hacking the Table with Michael Hebb and Chase Jarvis
April 12th found the Hacking Edu team sitting at the table with several education influencers (UPDATE: check out who they are). Hosted by One Pot’s Michael Hebb at Chase Jarvis’s studios in South Lake Union, the evening’s conversation wandered around the many challenges facing EDU. At times heated, at other times congenial, all involved left the experience invigorated and inspired to keep the conversation going. The event was recorded and will have a life online once we can figure out the how’s, where’s and why’s. Until then, here are some images marking the very special evening:
I’ll Give You $1 Billion For a Good Mobile Experience
When I first saw the numbers I was astounded. That Facebook would pay $1 billion for Instagram, a company with 13 employees that has only been around for 2 or so years and has $0 revenue seems, well, crazy. Then some of the other numbers start to roll in. Most important among them is that Instagram has 30 million users. It’s this number that justified the purchase for Facebook along with the fact that Instagram is essentially a competing social network – and a rapidly growing one at that. I won’t go any further than that on the analysis of the business transaction. What’s interesting, however, is that Instagram is a mobile application – and only a mobile application.
The bright minds at Instagram realized that what people are doing with their phones besides texting and talking is taking (and sharing) pictures. The folks at Facebook surely realize this as well. All you need to do is look at the content that is being shared on their service, pictures. And lots of them. Sure, the social media giant has a mobile application that allows you to share pictures, too, but they hadn’t yet thought through the entire experience. This is where you’ll find most failed attempts to capitalize on mobile.
Ghost in the Wire: The Education Crisis
All this talk of Hacking Education and the crisis in Higher Ed reminded me of this old Kaplan University commercial, entitled “Your Time.”
The logic of the commercial is pretty clear, played out through narration and visual imagery that shows the modern student, who can’t be struck in their classroom prisons. They want to learn in the subway, and on rooftops, while feeding their kids – you know, places where they can really concentrate. This is supposed to be much better than that dinosaur of a higher education system that remains mired in “old traditions” and “old ideas,” a characterization that makes it sound like the Universities of the world are still putting a heel of bread out for the Fae to ensure good fortune.
The commercial does help us in some ways to situate the “crisis” in education to which we are responding this April. But crisis can be a difficult and loaded term, with its etymological roots in the notion of judgment and separation. In that spirit, we want to be careful that the crisis we’re talking about – and in a few instances, celebrating – is the same “crisis” to which we’re responding.
Texts from Hillary and the 2012 Presidential Race
Is it possible that Hillary Clinton will be named the vice-presidential nominee on President Barack Obama’s ticket for the 2012 election? A certain Tumblr site and Clinton’s response raises the questions of her potential role on the Democratic ticket.
Texts from Hillary is a Tumblr that has gone viral over the past week. Yesterday, Clinton herself made a submission to the site and even met with the co-founders, Adam Smith and Stacy Lambe. This morning they posted that they wouldn’t be adding any new content, saying that the concept “has gone as far as it can go.”
I think Texts from Hillary reflects a renewed popularity that she hasn’t enjoyed since the 2008 race–and one with a younger Tumblr-happy demographic that flocked to the Obama campaign at that time. Clinton’s relevancy is rising. I’ve already noticed an uptick in Tweets and Facebook posts about her and the site in my own social media feeds.
The Secretary of State job was seen seen by some as a “bone” that was given to Hillary after her failed campaign against Obama, but the Tumblr does more than raise the profile and poke fun at the glamor of the position. It also speaks to the power of the post and the choices that Clinton has made as Secretary of State — such as her historic speech on International Human Rights Day in Geneva – that resonate with the younger generation. I think this sets her up well as a potential Vice Candidate for President Barack Obama.
While the creation of the Tumblr itself may not have been part of the strategy for Clinton, the move to submit to the site and meet with the creators at the State Department seems a calculated one by the Clinton team.
So sup Hillz? W@ gives? U want in?
This post was produced in partnership with UW Election Eye 2012.
Adding Value to Paid Porn with Quentin Boyer
After sharing my time at SXSW and my proposal for the “iTunes of porn,” I received an email from Quentin Boyer, the ill-fated host of the Democratization of Porn session I had originally sought out. He apologized for not being able to lead the session, but as a concession, Boyer shared a newer offering from his Pink Visual Studios: the PVLocker.
The PVLocker is almost exactly what we had proposed back on that fateful Sunday morning in Austin. Not wanting to miss out on another opportunity to learn, I set up an interview with Quentin and the following weekend we spent nearly an hour discussing porn, piracy and Pink Visual.
The Analog-ist: Is Paper the Future of the Screen?
Although great for social networking and consuming entertainment, tablet computers have largely failed to provide tools that simulate the immersive and responsive experience of drawing tools and paper. In a recent FtM post, I followed paper’s unsuccessful journey to the tablet screen. The lack of creative tools for tablets was a problem Microsoft set out to solve in 2009 with the Courier device, a hinged, digital notebook that worked with a stylus. The project was cancelled before launch by top Microsoft executives who determined it a threat to Windows 8.
The Courier was a revolutionary concept for creative workers— watch the Courier prototype video if you haven’t yet. Although I love the iPad, it can’t do that.
Or can it?
Two new iPad apps, Taposé and Paper by FiftyThree, are directly inspired by the Courier team’s concept of “Free Create,” which CNET’s Jay Greene describes as “the notion of eliminating the processes and protocols that productivity software often imposes on workers.” Continue reading
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