It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.

Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.

Qumana's tools have been designed to make it easy ... really easy ... to add video clips and adverts to blog posts, as you see fit.

Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.

Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.

Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.

Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.

Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.

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Posted by wirearchy at 11:16 PM PDT

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Basically, if blogging grabs hold of you as a regular or semi-regular activity ... if you like creating and sharing information and conversation with other people about a topic or topics that interest you, then there's a reasonable chance that blogging will hook you.

I can't even remember how I used to blog .. using the Qumana editor has made it so very much easier for me. It changes you creative work habits, and makes it much much easier to create a blog post whenever the spirit takes hold.

In many ways it's like the ballpoint pen for the digital era. One click to open, start typing ... you want to insert a picture, one click, browse your pictures and opull one up into the post.

Want to blog a video clip ? Hang on just two seconds ...

Using Qumana has really streamlined my blogging, helping to make creating blog posts almost a daily occurrence.

If your blog gets a lot of traffic, or is highly focused post by post, you may want to advertise based on the individual post's content.

Go ahead .. just click on Insert Ad, type in a keyword, and bingo !

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Posted by wirearchy at 10:38 PM PDT

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The ongoing professionalization of amateurs ?

It seems like Next New Networks is raising the bar (or is it lowering the threshold) in terms of soliciting and promoting _user-generated content_.

Via the New York Times

Internet Start-Up to Take a Hybrid Media Approach
BRAD STONE
March 8, 2007

Several cable television veterans are putting their band back together and taking their act to the Internet.

Next New Networks, a New York-based Internet start-up run and backed by former executives of MTV and Nickelodeon, will announce plans today to begin a series of video-oriented Web sites ? what the company calls micro-networks ? on niche topics like do-it-yourself fashion, comic books, car racing and cartoons.

[Snip ...]

Next New Networks plans to blend elements of old and new media into a type of hybrid entertainment that is different from traditional television and user-generated sites like YouTube. Its various Web properties will revolve around professionally produced videos of three to eight minutes, which it plans to pitch to sponsors as safe and predictable places to advertise online.

Many of the programs will solicit contributions from their audiences, but the company will screen submissions before they approved as final product. The company plans to generate some programming itself while also identifying talented video contributors and bringing them into the Next New Networks fold.

It is starting with six Web sites, including Fast Lane Daily (fastlanedaily.com), which features a daily news program for auto enthusiasts, and ThreadBanger (threadbanger.com), which offers a five-minute weekly show with MTV-style anchors who discuss the homemade-clothing culture.

Mr. Seibert, the creative director, is bringing two existing video sites to the network: Channel Frederator (channelfrederator.com), a weekly program on animation, and VOD Cars (VODCars.com), a curated collection of video clips from the car culture.

The founders believe the Internet offers a programming opportunity similar to the early days of cable, which traditional media firms are not exploiting.

?The nature of big media companies is about incumbent brands and repurposing and refashioning their material for the Web,? said Mr. Scannell, the chief executive. ?We have no incumbent brands. We?re a white sheet for creative people.?

Mr. Miller, who left America Online last October under pressure from his bosses at Time Warner, cited the founders? cable experience as the reason he is backing the company.

?To me these guys are returning to their roots,? he said. ?They are unshackled from large media environment where it is much more about what your quarterly goals are, and can go back to developing new networks and ways of communicating with audiences.?

In part, Next New Networks is also challenging the idea that the chaotic terrain of sites like YouTube and MySpace can be a friendly place for advertisers.

?Video sharing is awesome, but advertisers are knitting their brow,? Mr. Scannell said. ?They want to know what they?re backing. There is a place for brands to deliver something that is consistent.?

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Posted by wirearchy at 12:10 PM PST

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That's only a partially serious question ... it all goes between our collective ears somehow. And I guess a fair bit goes to the Internet Archive somehow, as well as millions hard drives all over the world.

From 5 exabytes annually to 161 exabytes annually in 3 years. That's a substantial growth rate.

Via CNN.com

Study: Digital information ballooning
March 6, 2007

? Study: World generated 161 billion gigabytes of data in 2006
? Deleting e-mail helps free up storage space
? Storage space is not scarce and continues to get cheaper


BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A new study has estimated how much digital information is zipping around -- hint: it's a lot.

The report, assembled by the technology research firm IDC, sought to account for all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos, e-mail, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital content cascading through our world today. The researchers assumed that an average digital file gets replicated three times.

Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes -- 161 exabytes -- of digital information last year.

That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun. Or you might think of it as 3 million times the information in all the books ever written, according to IDC. You'd need more than 2 billion of the most capacious iPods on the market to get 161 exabytes.

The previous best estimate came from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, who totaled the globe's information production at 5 exabytes in 2003.

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Posted by wirearchy at 11:03 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 6 March 2007 11:14 PM PST

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I'm back .. after promising several times to write more regularly about Qumana's tools and blogging.

Apologies to all and sundry. I ended up having a quite severe case of salmonella (my doctor told me that is was one of the worst cases she had ever seen, and that people sometimes (tho' rarely) die from salmonella.

All I know is that it was very uncomfortable for much too long.

Anyway .. I am sure you don't want any more details ;-)

Qumana continues to find new users who like the simplicity and clarity of the interface. One of the Seattle newspapers called us when Microsoft released their blogging application and asked us if MS had copied our tool. We think so, by and large .. the interface is much too similar to avoid the speculation altogether.

Using Qumana makes the process of blogging much easier, and much more closely connected to your personal train of thought (at least I find that). Qumana makes it easy to switch back and forth between sites where you are gathering some content, or copying links, and then coming back to the editing window to create the links or add some more text, drop in a photo or a video clip, and with one click and a word add an advertisement and/or a Technorati tag to your post.

Lycos and Qumana also offers bloggers the one-click Q-Ads tool, an incredibly easy-to-use tool that lets users publish keyword-driven advertising to almost all blog platforms .. making it a very easy process to inject advertising into blog posts.

We think that the Support sections on the main Qumana web site are comprehensive and useful, but if you have any questions whatsoever, please feel free to ask in the comments section or email me at jon @ qumana.com.

In addition, many of the previously published blog posts on thjis blog provide users with tips and tricks that help in the process of making your blogging easier.

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Posted by wirearchy at 7:02 PM PST

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A new service that has been developing under the radar.

It's the brainchild of Steven Berlin Johnson, author of Emergence, Mind Wide Open, The Ghost Map, Everything Bad Is Good For You

and ...

John Geraci, a well-know builder of virtual communities

A high-profile investor and lots of high-profile angels and advisers .. in the first camp Union Square (Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham) ... and in the second

We've still got a great list of angels involved as well. Marc Andreessen just wrote in out of the blue to say that he really liked the site, and to ask if he could help out with the financing. Esther Dyson, John Borthwick, George Crowley, and Richard Smith -- it's a fantastic list of people to have behind you. (Along with our other founding investors, John Seely Brown, Mark Bailey, and Andy Karsch.)

Outside.In

Neighbors are registered users of outside.in. Each neighbor has a profile page that shows a bio, photo, neighborhood, website, plus all the stories, comments, and places they?ve contributed to outside.in. (Right now it?s a little tricky to find a specific neighbor, much less communicate with them ? but we?re working on it!)

Stories and Comments are the content you add to outside.in about your area. When you add them to the site, they appear on the home page of the area you specified for everyone to see, as well as on your neighbor pages.

Stories are content that comes from other sites, like blogs or newspaper websites, that you submit to the site via the submit a story link in the right column of the page. Add stories to outside.in that relate to your neighborhood and that you find interesting and want to share with your neighbors.

Comments are content that you write yourself, directly to the outside.in website. You add comments to Places, which are any location or venue in your area. Add a comment to any Place you want, either to point out something you like, or just to talk about something interesting in your neighborhood.

Places can be everything from restaurants to playgrounds to schools ? or even more subjective categories (most dangerous intersection, best spot for winter sledding.) Any story or comment can be attached to a Place. The cool thing about these Place pages is that the become an archive of everything that?s been said online about a given place ? comments from outside.in Neighbors, blog posts, newspaper reviews, discussion threads.

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Posted by wirearchy at 2:09 PM PST

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Two weeks after promising to post more frequently, and only one post.

Well, you know what they say about excuses, but ... first I stalled because I could not find the password to enable my Qumana to connect with this Tripod program, and I have grown so accustomed to Qumana's ease-of-use and great design for the blogging workflow that I couldn't make myself use the alternative Tripod interface. It has a good and comprehensive set of capabilities, but the user interface was just a bit complex for me.

Second, I have been stricken with an awful stomach flu or virus, now on it's fifth day. I keep thinking it's coming to an end, and then it flares up again.

Anyway, at least I am posting again. I found the password, hooked it up in about 15 seconds, it automatically refreshed the Qumana's Corner blog posts, and here I am.

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Posted by wirearchy at 2:51 PM PST

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For Windows users, here's a new and improved version of the Qumana offline blog editor.

The gradual introduction of the new improved Blogger platform coincided with our ongoing search for the best way to make Qumana work effectively.

But .. we are pleased to announce that the most recent version of Qumana for Windows ... available for download here ... now works with the new Blogger platform.

We have more stuff coming along soon, and don't forget to try out the versatile Q-Ads tool, a browser extension for adding advertising content to a range of blog platforms

We're still looking for someone with the appropriate Java 1.5 experience to help us adapt the Mac version of Qumana. If any of you out there know of anyone with great Java and Mac OS skills, please point them (or yourself) our way.

Tags: Blogger, Qumana, better blogging, blog editing

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Posted by wirearchy at 2:03 PM PST

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It's becoming increasingly popular to use a video clip as an integral part of a blog post, and usually to help "anchor" a post's focus and meaning.

Its also becoming clear that advertising can be shaped to fit the ambient or direct subject area of a blog post, and that paradoxically using keywords to choose and place ads gives you more control over the advertising strategy for your blog.

Qumana's tools have been designed to make it easy ... really easy ... to add video clips and adverts to blog posts, as you see fit.

Here's Joe Q. Public, talking about getting paid to blog about a product or a service using PayPerPost.

Re: the video clip ... I surfed over to YouTube, ran a quick search, found this and viewed it. Then, it took me one click to save the embed code, one click to open the Insert HTML function, and one click to say OK ... then finally one more click to publish the blog post.

Content in circulation in various social networks where people are sharing ... video clips, songs, recipes, recommendations ... is what advertisers are after. They are seeking better ways to reach increasingly harder-to-reach niche markets.

Put the tools into the hands of the people who are making and growing the networks, and who are "using" other people's content and mashing it together with their own.

Offer Qumana and Q-Ads to your audiences ... use them to reach into and "shake hands" with your readers, advertising-wise.

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Posted by wirearchy at 11:45 AM PST

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