Cool Mashup by Neistat Brothers

I was at a fun party last night and met two filmmakers, the Neistat Brothers, Van and Casey, who made an especially cool mashup of the Jurassic Park trailor. Stick around for the ending when they play the two trailors side by side. Anyway you guys can make the player bigger on your site. Thanks to Dana from Plumtv for sending it along and Ian and Grahm for bringing me to the party. Good times.

The Neistat Brothers have some cool art as well. Check it out.

Chris Williams

Our buddy, Chris Williams, just re-launched his website with a new look. Click on over and take a look when you get a chance. Click on the storyboard, graphic design and miscellaneous links on the left hand side to see his work. We really dig the updates he made and it looks awesome.

Happy Halloween

Hope everyone gets their sweet tooth and freak on tonight. Be safe and send us over some of your pictures from the evening.

Here I was last year for all my German friends. I'll throw up this year's outfit later tonight.

Brad Elterman

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ron Galella, Los Angeles Music Center 1976


Brad Elterman is a real "stock" pro. I had the pleasure of speaking with him this past weekend. I first saw Brad speak about his background and work at an Apple Store seminar in Soho he led with his partner Henry Flores on the "iconic" celebrity photo, where he argued that one day his photos and some like them will hang in the Metropolitan Museum as works of art that captured a moment of decadence and the publics obsession with celebrities. I agree with him on a lot of his points and he had some really fabulous photos that outlined and highlighted the golden era of celebrity photos he captured with his camera.

I spoke with him again Saturday on the phone as he was hard at work updating Buzz Foto's blog. We spoke a little about Cutcaster, a lot about the celeb photo industry he is in and how he syndicates his photos. It's amazing how technology has improved the efficiency of the business. He can now deploy his photographers, who will locate the target within a 12 block area they patrol, capture the shots, upload them to the Buzz Foto servers and simultaneously send out an email to match any potential buyers to the freshly shot images. How about that for ala carte and on demand. We've entered the ADD era of acquiring the shot you need, freshly shot and uploaded, in no more than 15 minutes. We also spoke at length about editorial vs commercial uses. It's a fascinating debate and one that got Brad very excited.

Brad also impressed me with the amount of knowledge he has for the stock market as well and picking bulge bracket banks. Not only is he a pro in the stock photo agency world having started 3 successful agencies, one which he sold to Getty, but he is also very in tune to the stock market as well ;-) It made me laugh to realize that we both shared a passion for the stock market and stock photos.

Here is a link to his blog that talks a little about his history and their myspace page.

The photo above is credited to Brad Elterman and is a great example of a picture telling a story instead of just shooting a red carpet event. Brad caught this iconic shot in the heat of the moment and it carries a ton of weight when you realize the story behind it. If you want to know the story, you have to ask him.

Splash News Gets a Boost

The Press Gazette reported today that Splash News, a British owned US celeb news agency, has bought the Kaplan archive, which includes 4,000 videos compiled by Gary and Rachelle Kaplan since 1994.

Splash proprietor Kevin Smith said: “Video is the great buzz word in our industry now, with publications waking up to the potential of moving footage on their websites." We have been hearing that same thing for the last few years here at Cutcaster and are happy others are seeing this as well.

“Splash generates between 20 and 60 video clips a day, but our library was sorely lacking depth. Kaplan fills that void.”

Digitising, keywording and uploading the videos to their site will take two months.

Rumor - Two Hedge Funds to invest in Facebook

Working in the stock trading world by day, you hear tons of rumors. We work on Cutcaster at night;-) "Company X is going to buy Company Y." "Company Z is going to report lighter than expected revenues." "The US captured Osama bin Laden with Posh Spice." "The Knicks traded for Kobe Byrant." ALL BS in almost 99% of the cases.

What some are hearing today is that on the heels of Microsoft's $240 million investment in Facebook, two other hedge funds in NYC are also possibly investing $250 million a piece at the same $15 billion dollar valuation. That would give Facebook a cool $750 to poach more talent from the likes of Google, keep their staff of 700 well fed and build up their European and global brand.

To quote a friend who spoke about this, "Microsoft is LEASING Facebook for the next 4 years. Facebook is not worth $15B, Microsoft is leasing an advertising distribution system. The equity ownership is so small as to become almost immaterial.

Of course, Facebook will now attempt an IPO northwards of $15B, saying that Microsoft already set the valuation floor. Of course this assumes all the lawsuits regarding ownership are settled.

If the company does go public, what the myopic public should realize is that they are not buying the advertising deal, along with shares. Only Microsoft gets that. Don’t be fooled, Ballmer cut a better deal than the public will ever get. Microsoft is NOT valuing Facebook at $15B. No, no, no. Microsoft is valuing a potentially lucrative advertising distribution deal and a small percentage of Facebook at $240MM.

The public are sheep though, so I imagine Facebook will line-up the investment banking sheperds to take them out at $20B+. Baaaahhhhh.

Now why might hedge funds get involved? Because the bump-up in valuation will go from 15B to $20B on an IPO. Nice % increase for a holding period of likely only a few quarters.

But keep in mind, it’s the investing public (proxied through mutual fund managers, etc.) who will pay the price for all of this. Feels like 2000 all over again. Great move for Facebook, probably a smart move for Microsoft, and probably a smart move for the hedge funds. But remember, this is a game of musical chairs. And as usual it is often the naive public investor left standing."


A bit harsh of commentary towards public investors and the Web 2.0 potential bubble but some parts are true.

Regarding Rumors. Reminds me of an old quote. "Those that know, don't say, and those that say, don't know." So be careful with what you hear and choose to believe.

Openness Online

What is Openness online? It's the relatively new buzz word, which we have reported on before in this blog when we wrote about Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Myspace opening up the code to their platforms or at least thinking about doing it.

"Openness is upon us," Jerry Yang from Yahoo said in his first public speaking appearance since taking over as CEO four months ago. "There is an opportunity for Yahoo as a huge publisher to play the open game and do that as a strategy." What does he mean and what does that mean for you?

Well, Openness is communal management and open access to information and the materials needed to help with a project or creating extra value for a site's member. Facebook is a great example of a platform "opening" up and what resulted was an explosion of cool new apps. We characterize the structure of Openness as flat and fluid. Its a way for websites to allow their members a way to connect to the Web of Internet services that they use everyday that isn't on the website that they are on if that makes sense.

What is your view on the web becoming more open? How do you define Openness?

Cool follow up to the Openness online and what Verizon is doing.

Avoid Quality Loss when Resizing Images

We are going to be offering some tips to our readers on image and videos over the next few months that should help with everyones work and the quality of content on Cutcaster.

Photo resolution confused even us for a long time. It is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of digital image editing. Taking a closer look, image resolution only matters if you're going to print the image. For images that live onscreen, it's the pixel dimensions that matter as most of you know. Pixel widths and heights can be measured at any resolution. However, you have to be careful how you change it. If you open up the Image Size dialog in Photoshop and uncheck the Resample Image checkbox at the bottom left. This locks the pixel data, holding in place the quality. It can be confusing because the onscreen image won’t change a bit; but digging a bit deeper, the truth will only be revealed by the Image Size dialogue box.

Let us know if there are any other tips that can be helpful with resizing images.

Is anyone going to picturehouse tomorrow?

When: Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 11am - 7pm
Venue: The Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street, NY 10012
Details and directions: http://www.picturehouse.org/newyork

If you are hit me up at john@cutcaster.com and my cell is 2156882751. We can meet up for a chat and a beer. Looking forward to seeing some old faces and meeting some new ones.

Thoughts and Prayers go out to all those in California

We are thinking about our friends and Cutcaster community out in California who are suffering from these extrodinary fires. We are passing along our thoughts and prayers and be safe.

My sister's Wedding!

Sorry we have been a bit Missing in Action (MIA) the last week. My sister, Jane, got married this past weekend to Wyatt Gruber and we spent a wonderful weekend celebrating and welcoming Wyatt into our family. I couldn't have been happier or had more fun. We had our entire family over from Ireland and all our friends from every walk of life there which was a special treat. If I was slow with emailing or writing on the blog I'm sorry but I will be back to normal now. Hope everyone had a great weekend and Congrats to Jane and Wyatt.

A Quick Note on Joost...

I don't want to push the post below about our watermarking out of sight because we still want people to comment on what option they think looks better (color or no color), but I wanted to write a quick note on Joost. They are planning on building out a browser-based viewer for their p2p service. I think this is welcome news because it's hopefully going to help facilitate web-based video viewing between users and third-party sites (for example, being able to plug into YouTube to scroll through content without having to visit the site). This type of connectivity is coming, and we want Cutcaster to be in front of the line when the first web-based apps start doing this on a mass scale.

Which Watermark do you like better?

Watermarks are an important security feature for most sites that sell images or videos. The purpose of a watermark is to prevent the video or image from being illegally taken while allowing the buyer to see it well enough to decide if they want to purchase it. Finding the right balance, a watermark must be difficult to remove and not obscure the image too much. Here is the watermark that Cutcaster will be using on top of all preview flash videos and image thumbnails on the site. Its obviously going to be lightened up but will cover up all the essentials.

Lee Torrens writes,
"Determining which watermarks protect images well is simple. A watermark must:

1. Cover enough of the image to make it useless if the watermark is cropped out
2. Cover all parts of the image to protect photos where the subject is not in the center
3. Be substantial so that removal with photo editing software is difficult

Lee goes on to point out which websites out there protect your images the best.

We are really looking to give as much control to the user so he is able to place where the watermark will show up on the video or image. This will help them in protecting their image while still maintaining a ton of control. But we also don't want our watermark to distract too much and create a situation where buyers can't properly view the content.

Friday's Deep Thought

I thought this was very important quote for everyone at Cutcaster and the efforts of all our CC crew, who have done such an awesome job over the last year and believed in our collective efforts. It's deep so sit back, relax and lets not forget this ;-)

The quote is from a 1910 speech in Paris by Theodore Roosevelt.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

It's time for us to grab our chance and go to battle. We control our Cutcaster destiny and next week our Journey starts.

College Groups Fighting Copyright

The New York Times today reported that the Recording Industry Association of America has got a new thorn in their side and this time its popping up at college campus near you. A group called Students for Free Culture is advocating looser copyright law restrictions and free information exchange over the Internet on P2P networks. The group has chapters at more than 35 colleges across the country. The group was established at Swarthmore College in 2004.

"We will listen to free music, look at free art, watch free film and read free books," reads the manifesto from its Web site, freeculture.org. "We refuse to accept a future of digital feudalism."

While it's true that the Internet has caused us to reexamine the copyright laws that have been in place for decades and didn't take into account our digital world, it's still a very gray area and one that still has repercussions if you trample over copyright laws. These reprecussions are creating a stir and causing students to unite and fight what they think is an injustice. The Times reported that "Members of the Students for Free Culture talk about the group’s goals with something like the reverence that earlier generations displayed in talking about social or racial equality." Whether it is the same is debatable but we are sure that finding the right balance on this issue will be battled out in the courtrooms and classrooms over the coming decades.

Howard Rheingold

I had a very interesting conversation with one of the foremost experts on virtual community building, Howard Rheingold. Howard might be known to some of you who are familiar with the WELL, the first virtual community. Howard was one of the pioneering and founding members.

We spoke about the best ways to build a strong community and keep members engaged and coming back. If anyone has an interest in speaking about it they can email me.

Here is a link to Howards blog, Smartmobs.

Happy Anniversary!

How nice for Techcrunch to wish Google/YouTube a happy 1 year anniversary. The more interesting part of the article of course has to do with the breakdown and analysis of the current online video-sharing space. There's images of some of the bigger video players and they even include a comparison chart --- it's an interesting read for anyone involved with online video. I think the most important line in the whole article is the following though:

Since they are all about 80% the same, I’m not going to go through each of them one-by-one at length.

80% the same? Sounds like differentiation and specialization haven't quite taken effect in the space...and that just implies there's still tons of opportunity for newcomers (like us).

CopyCats- Google and Myspace to follow Facebooks Platform

The Facebook Platform has a few more copycats this week as Google and Myspace announced the will open up their borders to third party software developers. We first reported on Facebooks Platform back in May and again when it was reported that Yahoo was going to follow suit and "open" up. Imitation, truly, is the highest form of flattery but if you are Facebook, watch out for the competition this should create.

According to separate reports from TechCrunch, Google has plans to take the "open" concept to the next level by allowing developers to create programs across its many Web properties and services, while MySpace is gearing up to launch its own developer platform sometime next week. I can feel the white light of competition heating up for the best developers to build apps for your platform.

Facebook has been giving an unprecedented amount of access to developers and its opened up all new types of businesses and applications that the users of these networks can take advantage of and the creators can hopefully monetize. It seems like everyday that we are invited to try a new Facebook app or asked if we are going to build an app for Cutcaster on Facebook. It's in the works ;-)

The payoff is a two way street. Not only do developers get down and dirty with deep access to Facebook’s forty million or so users, Facebook also becomes a rich platform for third party applications and its users can leverage all the apps for a better experience.

Google is planning a similar move. Set tentatively for November 5, the Web giant will allow developers to create programs for its iGoogle home page and Orkut, its social network. I'm sure Gmail and Google Maps will be include in the future expansion.

For Myspace to enter this space seems in contrast to their past posturing. Myspace has long battled third party widgets by either shutting them down, threatening legal action or acquiring them see Photobucket. While I’m skeptical about MySpace’s ability to launch a good developer platform like Facebooks, I think it’s a long over due and a smart move on their part. Going forward, it seems that Myspace developers will be able to include Flash applets, iFrame elements and Javascript snippets in their applications, and access most of the core MySpace resources (profile information, friend list, activity history, etc.) according to the TechCrunch report. What is most striking about this, is that developers will be able to serve their own advertising within the applications and retain 100% of the revenue, which is again the same as Facebook.

This platform competition should be great for members of these communities and the developers, but it also means that developers will need to write and keep separate code for each platform they choose to build on. A great business idea/start up will be the business that streamlines that process for people. First to do that the best, should have a winner or the first to find a way to monetize all these apps could be drinking lemonade in the shade in a few years.

Another Amazing Wall Animation from Blu

You're my boy, Blu. This is unreal work and takes things to a whole new level.

Thanks to Marc from Wooster Collective for sharing this with me.

600,000 and counting!

This is a great video of the Myers family of Sacramento. They have a collection of 600,000 slides of photos which means they were born with a camera in their hands and it never left their side. Check out the organization and the time it must have taken to amass that collection. Bravo for providing some great moments in time and sharing them with us.

Radiohead's "pay what you want" model

Seems like the music industry keeps taking it on the chin when it comes to monetizing their artist's work while at the same time trying to grasp what the emerging business model will be for music distribution online. Just this week, Radiohead released their new album for a "pay what you want" online purchasing price, which amounts to basically a donation. A fan could pay $1, $5, $20 or download the new songs for nothing if they chose. This "pay what you want" approach is very unique and something we have started to see sprouting up on the internet in other fields but this is the first time I have seen this within the Record Industry.

Radiohead has "always be known for being technology proponents, both in their creative aesthetic and band business," according to HM Wollman of Reccenter, a music sharing community, in a recent email exchange I had with him. To those that know the industry and the band, it doesn't seem like it is something out of character for Radiohead to push the boundaries of promotion and monetizing their content.

Will this model become one that is widely adopted by the recording industry? Probably not ;-) Are the consumers now finally in the ultimate drivers seat and have the labels valuation been completely reduced by the prospects of other musical acts doing this depending on the outcome? Maybe, but with the Radiohead case study, they surely will have some results they can follow and imitate if Radiohead is successful.

It is widely believed that releasing albums is becoming the least profitable part of the record industry, at least for the artists themselves who can sometimes find themselves in debt after the deal. Many artists aren't lucky enough to own their publishing rights and some artists make very little revenue from their albums. Most rely on touring and merchandise sales. 40 years ago, the labels brought more to the table for an artist by providing manufacturing and distribution services. But do musical acts need that as much today when all you need is a Mac and ProTools and you can distribute online for free or build your own ecommerce platform. Is it possible for someone like Reccenter replace a label?

"If you are a brand with a fan base, the world is your oyster. I was not shocked by the move," says Wollman, who has worked with bands like My Chemical Romance and Muse. "It's a win-win for them hands down. The economics of what they would have sold compared to the visibility and extra tickets they can now count on for such a stunt, evens things out in my opinion. Plus, they will make some loot once the special box set is released and eventually the cd on its on, so it becomes a wash."

Are there different price points for different people and can you maximize your revenues by creating the right product and price points for each segment? This question transcends businesses and opens opportunities where no one thought there was a market. We will have to wait and see if fans come in and buy the box set with all the premium features come this December.

By having a built in fan-base, its obvious that Radiohead is more likely to pull this off. Thom Yorke, the lead singer, isn't going broke anytime soon from this stunt. But whether a "pay what you want" model will live on longer than Mr. Yorke's business stunt is yet to be seen. Congrats to Radiohead for taking this step and leading us into some interesting times for monetizing your content online.

Flexiscale- Challenger to Amazons EC2/S3

Just as I got done posting about Amazons web services I came across Flexiscale and how the UK based-on-demand computing service aimed at startups will start to compete with Amazons similar services. TechCrunch is reporting on the company today. We've talked about Nirvanix before in this blog, who is also going to challenge Amazon in this space.

Everyone will be watching this space closely.

Amazon Web Services Conference in NY

I went to the Amazon Conference last week that we spoke about late last month. I was impressed with what Amazon is doing. Amazon outlined their intentions to create a Web operating system. The competition is heating up. It is such a huge opportunity, project and even idea that there are only a few companies — Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Yahoo — that can tackle it. This time around, it is unlikely that any one of them is going to own it outright. But from the observations of a stock trader and employee of a start up, it was a fascinating case study to hear how companies like Cruxy, Mogulus and Phanfare are using the Amazon services.

Some of the highlights of the conference were:

1. Web scale computing. This allows customers to rely on the Amazon infrastructure and scale up or scale down based on system demands. Start-ups should not be held back by resources now. I'd like to learn more about EC2.

2. Pay for what you use. They kept reiterating that there are no upfront costs, no fixed costs, no scary contracts, no investment. You only pay for the resources that you use which is a nice proposition for everyone from a start-up to a larger organization.

3. The founders could focus on the idea and business without being distracted by scaling up data centers, buying expensive hardware, and maintaining servers. All of which costs a lot of time, effort, stress and money.

All in all I was again impressed with the offering. While some of the guest wanted support lines to be able to call if there was a problem, no SLA or assurances the business was a priority at Amazon, I think it will start to take off more and more. Keep an eye out for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft as well in the web operating space.

Submitted Images- To sell or to reject.

Rejected images. They are a part of the Microstock business and every contributor has had one or two images rejected for reasons they just couldn't understand. It's something that seasoned submitters get used to and track the results of their submissions so they learn from their rejections. What can one do who is just starting out to get better at contributing to microstock sites to increase his acceptance rates?

There are a number of excuses and reasons for why an image could be rejected. Some of the examples below will highlight some of the few things you can do to fix the issues and get it accepted on the next try.

"Noise" can take place in every media file type.

Here are some types of image noise from Wikipedia,

" * In salt and pepper noise (also known as random noise or independent noise), pixels in the image are vastly different in color from their surrounding pixels. The defining characteristic is that the color of a noisy pixel bears no relation to the color of surrounding pixels. Generally this type of noise will only affect a small number of image pixels. When viewed, the image contains dark and white dots, hence the term salt and pepper noise. Typical sources include flecks of dust on the lens or inside the camera, or with digital cameras, faulty CCD elements.
* In Gaussian noise (dependent noise), an amount of noise is added to every part of the picture. Each pixel in the image will be changed from its original value by a (usually) small amount. Taking a plot of the amount of distortion of a pixel against the frequency with which it occurs produces a Gaussian distribution of noise."

If you have noise reduction software programs like Grain Surgery, Neat Image, GREYCstoration, Noise Ninja and pnmnlfilt (nonlinear filter) found in the open source Netpbm tools, you can remove some of the noise on a digital image. These tools are simple to use and can make the difference between a photo being accepted or rejected by many microstock sites out there.

At lower quality settings, "Compression artifacting" or hazing can be introduced by the camera and/or by your image editing software. Also, re-sizing, re-saving and re-sampling can all lower the quality of a JPEG image. A compression artifact (or artefact) is the result of an aggressive data compression scheme applied to an image, audio, or video so you have to always be careful when re-saving JPEGs as the image quality will become worsen with each re-save. One would obviously want to start with the cleanest and highest quality image to start. Always double check your camera settings to make sure it is on the highest quality settings.

“Composition or snapshot” Simply put, this is the setup of your image and the visual composition. Unfortunately this can be attributed to personal preference, but if you’re getting rejections for these reasons there are some basic rules that may help. Wikipedia covers them in the Rule of thirds here.

"The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography and other visual arts such as painting. The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. Proponents of this technique claim that aligning a photograph with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering the feature would."

To utilize this, "When photographing or filming people, it is common to line the body up with a vertical line, and having the person's eyes in line with a horizontal one. If filming a moving subject, the same pattern is often times followed, with the majority of the extra room being in front of the person (the way they are moving)."

By making sure your images are free of as much noise, haze and artefact, you will significantly improve your acceptance rates when submitting images and footage to microstock sites. These are just a few reasons for rejection but there are more. My advice is to keep trying and mastering your craft. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard so keep it up.

For a great list on what it takes to be a microstock contributor read Lee Torrens writeup on the topic. As Lee puts it, "Rejection is part of microstock" and you need a thick skin.

Adobe Releases New Media Player

If you haven't seen it yet check out the newly released Adobe's media player.

Getty Images pushes further into Digital Licensing with Music Tracks

Pump Audio relaunched today as the newly re-branded, Soundtrack, following Getty's $42 million purchase of the music licensing business last June. Getty will now take Pump Audio’s catalog of music from 20,000 independent artists and allow users to license music for the Web, TV, and/or radio.

As many of you know, Getty has been on a tear buying up companies to spur new growth, see Scoopt, iStockphoto and now Pump Audio. This acquisition is one of the first we have seen that is really outside of the traditional photography licensing business, which they still dominate. Does anyone know another one? I like the acquisition of a music company but there are a whole new set of rules, when dealing with licensing music online. Getty should be well equipped to handle this change.

Anyone who has tried to license music in the past knows that one of the biggest headaches to music licensing was the search costs. You had to listen to tons of CDs, track down the music label, and hammer out a deal. That could take a ton of time and money.

Reducing this cost and creating an easy to understand licensing agreement will be key. Pump Audio and Getty are hoping that since it is now easier to find and license these tracks off the web in their marketplace, legal music licensing could expand greatly. With the explosion of more and more serious Web video shows, vlogs and podcasts getting produced, they are going to need some good, thumping beats in the background, which have been legally licensed, to keep people watching ;-)

How it will work:

After you search and find a song, you are able to listen to a stream online. If it is right for your needs, you can license the track for a variety of purposes. For example if you are using a track in a Web video, it may cost $25 plus five percent of any associated ad revenues. Not bad. Or if you were using it for a cable TV show, it could cost you $450. (A license for a regional TV ad runs as high as $2,100). When you compare this to licensing tracks from a major-label artist, it can be wayyyyy more expensive.



So what is the deal for an artist? A submitter of music to Pump Audio doesn't have to pay any submission fees, they receive 50% of the royalty payments (includes performance royalties), the deal is non-exclusive so you can sell on multiple platforms and lastly you always retain complete ownership of the songs. The only thing I think that can be improved upon from a artist/submitters point of view is the minimum one-year commitment. I don't think however that it will deter too many aspiring musicians from signing up and using this distribution and licensing service and helping out Getty's bottom line.

Joost launches!

It's about time, but as this post on Techcrunch casually points out, its first public beta is being released to their over 1 million registered beta users. Yes, they have an ARMY of beta users and have barely launched a product...not a bad way to get started.