To remind you, my Spark Minutes have turned into true one minute updates that play all throughout the day, all week, on Green 960 Online and Radio in San Francisco. But starting this week those updates will also be playing on Talk 910 KNEW in San Francisco giving The Spark Minute a total effective audience of about 500,000. Welcome all you new listeners. Here are the links and notes from all my updates throughout the week.
Make your videos more searchable
If you want people to discover your video you’re going to have to add some WORDS to the description. Better known as metadata, these words are the ways people find your video when they do a text-based search. Before you post a video, think about who you want discovering the video and how they would go about searching it. If it’s topical, make sure you include topical search words. You may also want to include a few common misspellings as well. Also, if the video site you posted to allows you to change your thumbnail, change it to a descriptive and enticing picture. The thumbnail is a critical factor determining whether your video will be played or not.
For more experienced video producers, a tool like the latest Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 has a new feature, Speech Search which will auto transcribe your talking head video and put that information in the metadata, meaning any words actually said in your video will now be searchable. The transcription is far from perfect, but it’s good enough to create meta data so people can discover your video.
Produce your own TV station
There are tons of tools out there that will let you stream live video, but Mogulus is a free solution that puts the power of a TV studio’s live switching in your browser. For more on that and other tools read the section entitled “Avoid editing with live switching” in my article on Technologizer entitled, “How to Produce Great Web Video in a Whole Lot Less Time.”
Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect
These are the two “pseudo” data portability programs from Facebook and Google, respectively. Both companies are taking a cue from the success of YouTube and realizing the Web isn’t all about bringing traffic to your domain, but rather bringing your brand and your experience to the rest of the Web. Unfortunately, during the testing phase both Google and Facebook have been butting heads. Facebook blocked Google because its connectivity violated Facebook’s terms of service, redistributing Facebook user information to developers without users’ knowledge. More on PC World.
The shrinking of MacWorld 2009
Is the landmark San Francisco tech event imploding or is it a sign of the times? Adobe will have no booth presence at MacWorld, but it says it will do some education events. Those Adobe presentations are often the highlights, that’s after whatever colossal announcement Jobs makes. Belkin, Seagate, and Creative Labs have all pulled the plug and registrations have dropped 20%. Will there just be an empty space on the floor, or a bigger blogger pit blogging about why there are far less companies on the show floor?
Netflix on Tivo HD Series 3
I happily set up my TiVo Series 3 HD box today to connect with my Netflix account. I’m a huge fan of Netflix and have been a subscriber for years. Having immediate access to their streaming videos (currently about 12,000) will be great and now I can completely dump that useless cable box that I’m spending an extra $10 a month, just to get their crappy “on demand” videos. If you don’t have a new Tivo, you can stream your Netflix with a Roku box ($100) or with an XBOX 360. To access the films, log into your account on your PC and put them in your queue. When you go to your television and select “on demand” those instant access films will appear on your menu.
