July 16, 2007

Trying Out Some Video Advertising

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

Today I came across a TechCrunch article about a company called Prerollr. They have a really simple way to put advertising on top of video content that is posted on a third party site. I thought it was a really interesting concept around monetizing videos. We’ll have to see how the company evolves. A quick look at their blog shows that they are a very new company. I love being part of new companies and watching them evolve. However, the real key with Prerollr will be how well they can sign up advertisers and therefore monetize blogs. Targeting the ads to the videos will be a challenge and signing up enough advertisers to make it worth a websites time to use Prerollr will be a major challenge they will have to overcome. Should be an interesting ride.

Here’s an example of a YouTube video with the Prerollr ad. By the way, this video is of the dance Benji Schwimmer choreographed for Pasha and Sara on So You Think You Can Dance.

I am a little concerned that it doesn’t say how much the pay will be and whether it will be an impression model or a click through model. Although the terms of use seem to indicate impression. I assume some of these details are because the site is so new. Hopefully they’ll get this information out soon. Also, they really need to have a stats page on their admin panel so we can watch our impressions and know how our sites are doing. Maybe they aren’t ready for that kind of traffic. You know we are stats junkies.

Now if Prerollr only had an affiliate program. Either way, I’ll at least give them a little bit of link love.

Post a comment (0)

July 3, 2007

Flosi the Mob Buster

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

I went on a mission for my church and Italy and while there I had a mission President who use to be a mob buster. He had the best stories of tracking members of the mob, getting carried into houses in couches and all sorts of great stories.

Well, I haven’t seen my President in probably 8 years. Imagine my surprise when I see him on an ABC News video. Pretty amazing what a small world it is. I guess he wasn’t exaggerating when he talked about what he did for the FBI.

Here’s looking to you Flosi the Mob Buster!!

Post a comment (0)

December 7, 2006

Swimming Girl Video By A Jewish Dating Site

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

I can’t believe that a Jewish Dating site would put out a video like this. I guess I shouldn’t be that amazed, but I guess I would have just expected a more conservative approach to the audience their trying to market to. The video’s pretty funny. I’m mostly surprised that they didn’t post this video on YouTube or some other sharing site where it would become hugely popular.

Post a comment (0)

November 23, 2006

The Work and the Glory: A House Divided Interviews

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

I’m very excited for the third video of The Work and the Glory: A House Divided opening today. Unfortunately, I’m outside of Utah and so I won’t be able to see it for a few months. However, I’ve found a number of interviews with Joshua Steed about the latest The Work and the Glory video. The thing I’m looking forward to most is that supposedly in this movie they actually have a little closure to the storyline.

Enjoy The Work and the Glory and I’d love to hear anyone’s review of the movie after they’ve seen it.

Fox 13 – Eric Johnson Interview

ABC 4 – Eric Johnson Interview

ABC 4 – Michael Bowen Interview

ABC 4 – L.A. Premiere

Post a comment (1)

November 14, 2006

Tomorrow I Will be #1 on WordPress.com

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

I’ve had a goal to make it to #1 on WordPress.com. That’s a pretty lofty goal considering I’m competing against the infamous Scoble. I’m not worried. I have a plan. I probably won’t stay there too long, but I just want to knock him off for a little while anyway. I made it to #3 on WordPress.com last week and so this week I’m planning on making it to the top. Plus, I’m not even planning on getting Dugg or Reddit to really boost traffic. Although, that would be really nice if that happened too.

Anyway, I’ll post a screenshot of me being #1 on WordPress.com later. Oh yeah, and of course you can help me by checking out my So You Think You Can Dance blog on WordPress.com. There are plenty of sweet videos to watch if you love dancing.

Update: You can watch me go to the top on the Top Blogs on WordPress. My blog is called So You Think You Can Dance. I’m at #10 now!!

Update 2: I’ve made it to #2 WordPress Blog. Now I only have Scoble left. Yesterday I got 7536 pageviews. If that gives you some perspective on the traffic that Scoble generates to his blog.

Post a comment (3)

September 27, 2006

Scoble’s New Vlog Show

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

Scoble (from Windows Blogging fame) has started what he’s calling the Scoble show. It’s essentially a video blog where he interviews people from the tech industry.

If you haven’t read his blog it’s a pretty good one. He just has access to things that I don’t. One day maybe I’ll be as cool as him. Nah. Probably not. Most of the parties and things he goes to I don’t want to go to. However, I think he is pretty innovative in what he’s been able to accomplish in blogging. He also is on WordPress.com. I beat him in the Top 5 once, but then they tore my site down for TOS violation. However, almost a month later they decided to put it back up. Don’t ask me what happened, but I’m glad it’s back. Too bad my 8000 views a day is now 5.

Back to the Scoble Show…

Here’s a list of people he’s looking at interviewing for his vblog(or video blog or whatever you want to call his videos):

Michael Wiley, Director, Emerging Technology at General Motors (conversation with him on Hobson and Holtz report)
Janice Fraser, CEO of Adaptive Path
Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager, Google
Kelly Goto, principal, gotomedia inc. (great designer)
Tom Conrad, VP of Engineering, Pandora
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist
Gene Kavner, director of Amazon.com Associates
Travis Kalanick, founder of red/swoosh (hear him on the Chris Pirillo show)
Mike Sitrin, VP of Grouper (company bio site)
John Tokash, director software development at Homestead
Tara Hunt, online mischief marketer (she’s a geek, let’s be honest)
Dick Hardt, CEO of SXIP
Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly & Associates
Jeff Clavier, Managing Partner, SoftTech
Nick Bradbury, NewsGator architect
Jonathan Rosenberg, Vice President, Product Management, Google
Dave Girouard, General Manager, Enterprise
Michael Tanne, CEO of Wink
Christopher Sacca, Principal, Google
Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine
Royal Farros, entrepreneur on the loose (started Message Cast)
Jason Calacanis, VP at AOL
Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield, Flickr co-founders
David Allen, productivity expert
Bill Evjen, Technical Director at Reuters
Virgina Postrel, author, the Future and Its Enemies (wikipedia entry)
Ben and Mena Trott, co-founders, Six Apart
Matt Mullenweg, founder, Automattic
Kevin Wen, Chinese blogger
Wade Roush, senior editor, MIT Technology Review
Greg Reinacker, CEO of NewsGator
Christopher Payne, Vice President of MSN
Christine Herron, director of investments, at Omidar Network
Daniel Rohrer, manager, DirectX Graphics, at NVidia
Bob Giampietro, VP strategic alliances at Target Corporation (innovator at Target)
Web Augustine, co-founder of Xelerate Venture Partners (went to high school with Bill Gates)
Bill McCoy, director of platform product management at Adobe
John Moe, host of KUOW’s tech show in Seattle
Some guy I’ve heard of named Dave Winer
Mark Uhrmacher, CTO of FreeBandProject.com
Walter Mossberg, columnist at the Wall Street Journal
Tariq Krim, founder of Netvibes
Richard Anderson, professor, University of Washington computer science and engineering school
Debbie Landa, CEO of IBD network (they just put on the Momentum conference today that I missed).
Steve Olechowski, co-founder of FeedBurner
William Martin-Gill, manager of corporate strategy at eBay
Larry Magid, BlogSafety.com
Steven Levy of Newsweek
Vinton G. Cerf, chief Internet evangelist, Google (wikipedia entry)
Chris Anderson, editor in chief, Wired
Jackie Huba, creating customer evangelists co-founder
Eric Rice, Second Life slumlord
David Young, founder, Joyent
Ted Cohen, Senior Vice President, EMI Music (Newsweek article)
Donald Graham, chairman of the board, Washington Post Company (wikipedia entry)
Kurt Garbe, Vice President, Platforms, Adobe
John Kao, author, jamming.com (I heard him speak at Google’s Zeitgeist conference and he played a killer piano)
Ralph Koster, Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment
Vassil Mladjov, founder of BlogTronix
Cory Ondrejka, VP of product development, Linden Labs
Ian Forrester, Software Engineer/New Media, BBC
Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president, digital operations, The New York Times Company
Tim Bourquin, founder, Podcast and Portable Media Expo
Rebecca MacKinnon, research fellow, Global Voices Online
Jonathan Carson, CEO Buzz Metrics
Netanel Jacobsson, SVP, Maxthon
Alan Cooper, founder of Cooper.com

Not a bad list to start with. Should be interesting to see what he does with his show and how many people will actually watch.

Post a comment (0)

August 24, 2006

USB Powered Grill – What Will They Think of Next?

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

A USB Powered Grill pretty much speaks for itself:

Post a comment (0)

Disney’s New Movie Cars and the Disney Brand

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

During a recent trip to see my family in Utah I went to a drive in movie with my father and sisters. It was a lot of fun to have the old drive in feel. It’s even better since I have the back of the van and a bunch of blankets and pillows to make it soft.

We ended up watching Cars, Disney’s latest animated film. I really enjoyed the show. It’s incredible what they can do with the animation these days. It’s almost lifelike. I love it.

After seeing the movie I was amazed to find out how much branding Disney has done to make more money off of their movies. Sure, they’ve always had Disneyland where they integrated the movies into the experience and sold merchandise. As I researched more I found out how well Disney has created its brand.

Let’s just take Disney Posters as an example. You can get just about any character on a Disney Poster that you’d like. A really nice website where you can purchase Disney Posters had some even more interesting history on Disney Posters:

History

The Disney Poster has been a mainstay of their merchandising since the beginning. Just like any movie studio, Disney has used posters as a means to market their films since the beginning; in fact, some of the most sought after Disney posters are the earliest vintage prints from titles like Snow White and shorts like Steamboat Willie. Disney Posters are a very popular choice for collectors, as they strike an appealing balance of availability, price, and display value.

Formats

Disney has made official Walt Disney posters and prints in a large number of formats over the years. This ranges from small actual-size cell prints to large theater posters for meant for cinema marketing display. Most Disney Posters aimed at consumers are 24″x 36″, perfect for framing and display in your home or office.

There are a number of different types of Disney Posters and Prints to consider as well. These include theatrical release posters, which typically feature large art and the title of the movie, as well as scene prints, which are usually cels from the original animation reproduced either in their original size on celluloid or blown up on paper to make a poster suitable for display. Beyond this there are more economical Disney Posters including prints meant for children, which usually feature a single character or perhaps a montage of images from the movie in question.

Why Us?

At Artopia we do everything it takes to bring you the best selection of Walt Disney posters and prints that we can. We search high and low for hard to find Disney Posters of all sizes, from original marquis posters to cel reproductions. It is our goal to bring you the best quality and selection at the best prices you can find anywhere on the Internet.

Where Can I find Walt Disney Posters and Prints?

We maintain a large inventory of Disney posters ranging from vintage prints to current releases. Whether you are looking for a gift or something to add to your own collection, you will be able to find a unique Disney poster to suit your needs. Whether you are looking for a vintage Dumbo marquis poster or just a montage print poster for your kids, you will be able to find it here.

All that history in just some posters. I think I better find one of these Disney Posters that I can use to surprise my wife. She’d love to have one in our new baby’s room. It will be interesting to see if I can keep her to just buying a couple posters for the new baby.

Disney items are one of the best things that I could possibly get for a child. I love what Dinsney has done over time with their products. Disney’s animated movies and associated products are high quality and family oriented. I’m amazed at the different animations out there that people show their kids. Why would you ever want something in your house that relates to those animations? You don’t have to worry about that with Disney. I think Disney would be happy about many of the things that he started. I just wish that it carried over to their other movies that aren’t animations. It often does, but not always.

Post a comment (0)

August 7, 2006

WOW – Swing Dancing Rocks!!

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

If you can watch the following video and not fall in love with swing dancing then you might need to see a doctor. WOW!!!!

Benji Schwimmer and Heidi Groskreutz dancing Showcase Division 2005 US Open Swing Dance Championships

Post a comment (0)

August 5, 2006

Now That I’m Getting Paid to Blog – What Will I Do With the Money?

Written by:
Filed under: Permalink
add to del.icio.us

Here’s a little video that I created since I started getting paid to blog from a site called PayPerPost. I think it’s pretty cool that people are able to make money blogging while businesses are able to advertise on blogs. Plus, I get paid more blogging than my sister-in-law gets paid babysitting a kid 8 hours a day.

Enjoy the puke green and the incredibly impressive animations:

Post a comment (4)