Santa comes to town
We shot a promo for the OKC Philharmonic this afternoon. Santa, Mrs. Claus and two elves paraded in front of the green screen. With a trombone and flute. Of course. The ad should appear on NewsOK sometime soon, during the holidays.
Twitter down again, but where’s the whale?
Haven’t seen this one before…
YouTube is growing up
CNet has a good look at how and why YouTube is changing its approach towards advertising, and towards user-submitted content.
In the past week YouTube has announced it will auction off search terms as part of an ad program, called Sponsored Videos, designed to enable anyone to expand the viewership of their videos. YouTube also said last week it obtained rights to post full-length movies produced by a large film studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. What this means is that YouTube has given up on the idea that user-generated content can be a successful standalone business. It’s about time.
YouTube and AOL are both deciding that people eating crickets is not the path to gold. The novelty of the absurd has its place, but it’s not what you should hang your video views and ultimately bank accounts on.
The truth is the ability of user-generated content to generate lots of cash has been in doubt for a long time. Most of the video-sharing companies that challenged YouTube two years ago have been restructured or switched business models. The most recent evidence came Saturday when TechCrunch reported that AOL will shutter the company’s lightly trafficked video-sharing service, AOL Video Uploads.
American Airlines has mobile boarding passes
Here’s something cool. I would certainly use it – mobile boarding passes. American, which I’ve had no shortage of bad luck with, is rolling out its Mobile Boarding Passes program, according to mobilecrunch.
American Airlines has hopped on board with the launch of their Mobile Boarding Passes program. If you’re flying out of Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX), or Orange County (SNA), you’re given the option to send a digital boarding pass to your cell phone via e-mail. The boarding pass contains a QR-code-ish bar code – security will scan this, and you’re on your way.
Judging by the comments on the mobilecrunch site, other airlines – Alaska, Lufthansa – already have something similar in place.
New Google iPhone app?
Two quick iPhone updates:
CNet is reporting Google’s iPhone app is getting a new voice. Yours.
Google on Friday is expected to release version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new version works much like the old one, letting users query Google outside of the mobile Safari Web browser, as well as search through contacts and narrow down results by their current location. The big change is the addition of search-by-voice, which lets you skip the keyboard entirely.
There’s also the rumor about a new software upgrade for the iPhone next week.
Red EPIC raises the bar
The new Canon EOS 5D Mark II is flat out amazing. This video from Vincent Laforet is sick for all the right reasons.
But this announcement today from Red, well, it’s straight outta crazytown.
