Reid Baynes- Born 6/26/2007

Our good buddy and big Cutcaster supporter, Michael Baynes, became a dad this week. Bethanie, his wife, gave birth to a happy and healthy future surfer, Reid Theodore "Ocean" Baynes. In the "red corner" of New York Presbyterian Hospital, Reid Gorilla Hands and Feet" Baynes, weighed in a mighty 7lbs and 3oz, about the same amount as his dad can bench press (wink). Cutcaster and The Stork Fork are looking for big things out of both Mr. Baynes.

Pictures of Reid are posted at TheStorkFork.

Mother, child and daddy-day-care are resting and doing well.

Big Weekend for Steve Jobs

With the release of Apple iPhone and Pixar's Ratatouille, this is boiling up to be a massive weekend for Mr. Jobs. My sister, who overlooks the 5th Avenue Apple store from work and is steps away from the Soho location where she lives, said people were wrapped for a few city blocks around the buildings waiting to get inside to buy a maximum of 2 iPhones. The first person in line at the 5th Avenue store had been there since 5am on Monday

I can only imagine how Mr. Jobs deals with those two massive pies in the oven.

The countdown continues...

So as reviews of the iPhone start to pour in, I still firmly believe that this device is what mobile video has really been waiting for --- it will be the one thing to really get this digital ball rolling and every other phone/computer manuacturer is sure to follow. One major advantage of course is that the whole screen can we used to view content, which is only really possible using a touchscreen interface (and interfaces and usability are what Apple does well, if not best). This phone could, for example, interact with VeohTV and allow for seamless vewing of countless video feeds (one of which we hope to be Cutcaster). Imagine if you could browse through our inventory from your phone? You could be on-site at a video shoot and realize you need a clip on the fly to finish a scene, and BOOM, you download it on the fly and wrap up the shoot, saving thousands of dollars and hours of time.....realistic?

Interesting Reports

The NYT reports that Corbis receives more "than 85 percent of its revenue from licensing images at an average price of $250 each". I'm not sure how they will sustain that over time. I'd like to see how that is trending and how fast it is moving.



The WSJ said recently after the acquisition of Pump Audio that images "costing more than $500 each accounted for about 40%" of Getty Images´s total revenues from the previous year. It goes on to point out that demand is dropping as I type this. Well, it doesn't include me in the article.

Snapvillage- Corbis's new project

StockPhotoTalk reported today that SnapVillage launched its beta site today, empowered by Corbis but catering to user-generated photography. I'm not sure how sweeping the changes are for those participants in the microstock world but they are proclaiming big things in the press release. Some of the advantages are pricing that empowers photographers, access to premium markets and streamlined image submissions. How important are these issues to you? How would you rank what are most important to you?

The NYT ran an article on SnapVillage today quoting Gary Shenk, who said that "the company is not just acknowledging the growing importance of microstock sites, but also recognizing the threat to its higher-price images. "Cannibalization is going to happen in our industry", Mr. Shenk said. "We can either let it consume us or be part of it".

They still have to work out some bugs as they are in beta so I won't comment that much on the platform just the offering.

The best thing I see about the new offering is that photographers can now set their own price. That is a step in the right direction but how will they assure or at least avoid photographers who price their content too high or too low. Understanding the market and how the market is pricing content out there is a lot for people who spend a lot of their time doing their passion. Photography. Do people really want to keep changing their prices if they are not getting sales or moving up their prices if they are getting a slew of sales. How will SnapVillage capture those extra sales or extract that extra dollar out of every download for their customers?

I think it is a good start but don't think they have gone far enough. Cutcaster will build off the power it gives back to the creators to set the terms and pricing in addition to empowering the buyers to choose a lower price they can only afford or want to pay. Providing information that is easy to understand and visually see for people is the best way for them to capture value and educate themselves on the market trends. Allowing them to set the price is only one step in a much larger picture.

For those of you outside the US, this site will not be available to you for a while.

Anyone going to OMMA Video in NYC?

Just wanted to see who was going to the OMMA Video Conference. It's Thursday, June 28, 2007 at the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan. Any producers, brand marketers and agency professionals who want to discuss over a cold beer the different movements you are seeing in online video advertising, different genres of content production, syndication channels and delivery, let us know. We'll be around Soho area that night.

The end of the cable box...?

First, I also want to wish Lt. John Pitts the best of luck with his mission...I don't actually know him, but a friend of Griffin's is a friend of mine.

In other news, I just signed up for Veoh's beta launch of their new streaming TV freeware that's supposed to be a better alternative to Joost. It's basically going to allow you to search web video like it was a cable box and they say it might revolutionize the way people interact with streaming Internet video.

This is something we're definitely interested in here at Cutcaster, because if we can somehow get our video previews linked in, we could have our customers view our inventory like scrolling through your cable menu. Thoughts?

1st LT John Pitts of Alpha Troop, Platoon 3

Every once in a while, we like to step back from our work and take a hard look at the realities of the world around us. The war in Iraq has touched us all. Some in more ways then other and we at Cutcaster are getting our first real taste of a friend, who is being deployed. I'm sending along good vibes, white light and karma to a great guy John Pitts, who is heading off to Baghdad as a part of the "surge." John will lead his platoon of 40 men throughout the deployment and the length is said to be 1 year. His mission is confidential.

You're in my prayers, buddy and can't wait to have a beer when you get back.

Semel out at Yahoo!

Personally, I felt like this was a long time coming but surprised with who took over. Yahoo seemed to be late to the party too many times under the Semel regime and was losing ground to Google, who always seemed to beat them to the punch either in technology innovation or aquisitions.

Jerry Yang, who started Yahoo 12 years ago as a Stanford student, will take over the reigns. I think Yang will prove to be a filler until they find a bigger named CEO to lead the company. It's one thing to be intimate with the company but another thing to be a part of a executive management team.

I thought Susan Decker would have been a better pick. She was a lift quicker to make decisions like shutting down Yahoo Photos after the Flickr acquisition and migrating the Yahoo users over to the better service. She was elevated to el presidente.

This will def be worth watching in the future and Yang is going to need all the luck he can get.

Licensing...

So we've added a link on the right to our coming-soon page's Content Agreement. We really want to start up a discussion on the types of royalty-free and extended rights people are looking to purchase for digital media, and will try to incorporate these suggestions into the general agreement if possible. If you're a content creator or purchaser and you have a problem with how another site structures their agreement, we'd love to hear about it. Or if there's something that's just missing from another site that you really want added, we want to know about it. In either case, post a comment or drop us an email.

Online editing?

Does any semi-pro or good amateur really use online video editing as part of their day-to-day experience with digital media. Let us know because we want to learn what type of functionality one would want alongside an online media marketplace. According to this post, Cuts.com was just purchased after only 4 months since launch -- and of course Jumpcut.com was also taken out, so we can only assume someone up in corporate thinks this space is really a growth area.

A New Royalty Free License

Cutcaster is attempting to create a new type of Royalty Free license and way people get more security, assurances and rights then what currently is allowed under your typical RF contract. The CC license will address the way that people can use the rights granted in the agreement and how they can request extended rights from the seller for other uses. CC knows that this can be written in less confusing language and still provide security for both parties. We want to work with our community to customize a new contract that accepts the realities of the new media licensing landscape and addresses issues for example such as usage, indemnity, archiving and access. These issues shouldn’t be something that scare or confuses people but open a frank discussion about the ways the licensing contracts can be made clearer to avoid the old issues. To often there are multiple opinions on what these RF clauses mean. Where can parts of your standard RF contract be changed? Where do you want to see changes? What changes are fair?

Please see the RF license at CC here. This will evolve only with your help.

Youtube will begin testing Copyright Screening Technology

In a move long overdue, YouTube will begin to test it's new technology to identify copyrighted video that is uploaded to the site. According to Reuters, the technology scan is a "video fingerprinting tool" that will look for attributes in the video clips that it will be able to determine if the clip is copyrighted. I'm still not sure how well this will work or how they are going to get the "fingerprints" of the content beforehand on record.

I think for larger copyright holders this will be a good move for both them and YouTube. YouTube will give the holder the option to remove the clip or leave it up on the site and join a revenue sharing deal with YT. I'm not sure if this will be done for all users of YouTube or just for their bigger clients i.e. CBS, NBC. In addition, it looks like YouTube abandoned plans to do a deal with Audible Magic to provide this technology. In the end, I think that some of YouTube's traffic could be affected by this. There are a number of sites out there that still take a relaxed approach to copyrighted content being uploaded to its site.

Cutcaster is working on a logical way to detect whether content that is uploaded to the site is copyrighted and thus not able to be licensed. This is a big problem when trying to create an open marketplace where the participants feel that they are secure and can use the content they legally purchased without the fear that it will come back later to bite them in the butt. I'll be very excited to hear what people think of our solution when they see it after the launch. If you have any questions beforehand, please email me.

Black iMac...

As a quick side note, with the start of Apple's WWDC conference, I thought someone might comment on the rumors that they're going to release a black iMac. Check out this link to see what it might look like. This looks about 10x more bad-@ss than the white one. If you're a lifelong PC user like me (until recently), this might be the reason to switch.

Investors Wanted

I'll give 5 bucks to the person who tells me which one is Bill Gates?

What sites do you like?

What are some of the sites that you have gone to recently and liked a lot? There are so many new sites popping up each day. What sites do you go to everyday? What is it about the site that you like?

Just FInishing off a really long day of work

Hope everyone had a great week and has good plans for the weekend. I am absolutely beat from a long and productive week. It's supposed to be great weather here in NYC and I'm looking forward to a nice start to the day tomorrow at brunch with my sister, Jane, tomorrow.

If you want to waste some time and have a little fun, click here.

Good night and enjoy.

Need Content to help test site.

I have a favor to ask. We are testing our very basic content uploader for a variety of files that we anticipate will be uploaded when we go live in a few months. This is a huge favor and won’t take that much time. I promise. Can you take some of the videos, film cuts, photos or audio files that you have and upload them to the site. Getting a variety of file types and formats would be awesome if you can. I PROMISE you that we wont use these for anything other then testing the uploader and will erase them once we are done.

The uploader is found at here and is very easy to use as you can see.

Thanks in advance and let me know if you have any questions.

Shutterstock to sell Celebrity photos

About the Image had a good post on Shutterstock and their movement into the paparrazzi game. You can see the article here.

Do people who want to take pictures like these really need to get press passes from Shutterstock and what will this do for its user base? It will be interesting to see how this plays out. How hard is it to get the passes if you promise to give a percentage of your profits from the sales of the photos or video to the events themselves. So Shutterstock gets paid, pays a the producer and then pays the event. If this is true, what do you think would be a fair breakdown?

How to Promote your Videos on the Net?

It's really tough to get views and publicize your work on the Internet with the plethora of videos out there vying for peoples' attention. Trying to get your video to go viral or even seen can be a seriously daunting task. Attracting that an audience will increase your views and in your case on Cutcaster your sales and publicity.

Kevin Nalts had a really good write-up on techniques you can do to get traction with your audience and get your name out there.

My conclusion is that he posts a lot of interesting points. I really agree that the best tactic to get a following is to post a quality video response to a videographer who has a large following, promote your videos on a lot of different networks to get views and create a lot of good and targeted material. In addition to Kevin, I think that ads on the videos at this point are a bit of a turn-off for people. Also Kevin has to do a better job on describing these techniques or giving more in depth tips ie. Get Honored. How does one best achieve the goal of getting honored, Kevin?

And remember it take a bit of patience and a lot of hard work.

Back to Business...

So my partner lost his suitcase after returning from a trip to Germany...luckily, he carries his laptop on his person, so Cutcaster is still alive. In other news, at least twice a week we witness YouTube/Google's latest attempt to provide their users with real commercial content. They still are not addressing their creative producer community in any meaningful way (which is good for us b/c that's our business model), instead opting to appeal to the mass consumer of online video. I also thought this note about Apple at the end of the article was interesting:

"Apple announced last week that a free software update will allow users of its Apple TV device to watch YouTube content on their television sets. That update is expected later this month."


Apple's doing the same thing, which makes sense give the ubiquity of the iPod, etc. But the funny thing is that many creators are big are obviously big Apple customers as well. One day somebody will get it.