An interesting dilema when pricing your content

High demand and downloads doesn't always translate or mean higher prices when selling your video or photos online. This isn't like the stock market where the hot IPO creates major demand and then price soars on the first day of trading. So what happened to the basic laws of supply and demand that we all slept through during Economics 101 and how it is used to determine price? Obviously a bidding war over the latest Britney Spear's outrageous photo or a video of the 9/11 attacks can increase the value based on the exclusivity or the sheer uniqueness of a shot. But does a high number of downloads or purchased licenses mean a higher value? Not always but it can change from case to case from what we have researched here at Cutcaster.

We found that, when looking at how to price your media, the value can decrease the more times people license or buy your content for use in advertising, filmmaking, publishing or graphic design. That makes sense. For example, an advertiser can't have the same images or photos that a competitor has used to promote a similar product. Exclusivity. Imagine if you saw a similar images in an advertisement for Crest toothpaste which was the same as one you saw for Colgate. For this industry and market, once used content has become somewhat worthless to others based on exclusivity. However, a documentary film maker can re-use images or footage that the advertiser used and the content shouldn't lose its value from one work to another. The first example with the advertiser is an interesting occurrence and one that goes against basic laws of supply and demand. So how do you determine and keep the value of your content, whether its footage, photos or any other digital content or maximize the life and value of the content?

Some helpful tricks:

1. Update your work- You can always go back and tweak your content. Re-work an old project.

2. Find new clients and offer it in new markets. The Internet has made it easier than ever to find new clients and new markets where your content is fresh and still has a high value. Try locating advertisers in Japan, China or India if you have relevant content

3. Find new uses in different fields. If your content has been used in an advertisement, maybe it can be used in a film or a corporate project for example.

4. Cut up or increase the amount of content you offer. For example, if you have a clip that is 2 minutes try breaking it up and selling off pieces of it to interested parties or vice a versa.

5. Use Cutcaster's dynamic algorithm (subliminal marketing ;-) )

6. Shoot different variations of the similar selling content. If shots of cars winding around cliffs by the ocean are selling, use different types of cars, different types of lighting, different seasons, different angles etc.

7. Bundle the content in volumes that you have prepared or in "lightboxes" you can sell. Lightboxes are designed to help you get organized and are used to batch images or footage that you like or are similar together.

There are a few other tricks that we have analyzed for our Cutcaster algorithm that will help with pricing and take out a lot of the guessing game and work for those who would rather shoot then worry about how to offer their content.

What are some other good factors to look which can adversely affect the price of a piece of content or increase it?

Getty's Consumer Site- Jam'd

Wake up from your Cutcaster food coma. Looks like Getty has finally launched their Consumer website. They are calling it Jam'd or JAMD, I couldn't tell just yet but not sure what that refers to.

The headline says, "Million of images, tons to talk about." Obviously there are not a lot of things to talk about as they build up membership. We can all relate with that. Beside the normal bugs that come up with a new website (the first time page doesn't upload and images didn't upload in Internet Explorer) I found it a bit of a snoozer and very hard to navigate. Definitely didn't have anything innovative on it. Was this the big news we were all waiting for? What did you think?

Content our Buyers want

If you have footage, photos, animations or motion graphics similar to the examples below and you own the rights to them, upload the content and help satisfy some of the needs we have come across when reaching out to potential buyers. These topics and niches have been requested by our growing list of buyers.

Footage and photos that we want (in alphabetical order):

Animations: 3D background animations, 3D/2D motion graphics, background for text in DVD projects and menu systems, web graphics, promotional images and characters, etc.

Action Shots: People eating, working, playing, driving; things in motion or transit

Commercials: Spec commercials, pre and post roll ads, 15-30 seconds in length. All subject matter is welcome and will be listed under short film.

Concept Stock: Deep Hidden Meanings (DHM), images that represent emotions

Corporate Footage: Office shots, conference room shots, presentation shots, people in their work environment, etc.

Documentary/Short Films: All issues and topics

Geographic: Video and images of people and places around the world past, present and future; reels of specific locations, domestic and international

Healthcare: Administrative footage, imagery of healthcare providers and staff attending to administrative tasks in hospital/office settings, images of prescriptions such as pills, medicine, etc.

Historical/Archival: Images and video that capture a moment in history, archive footage

Journalism: News worthy images or video content of relevant issues around the world; local, national and international

Photography: Portraits, still-life, abstract, aerial shots, architecture, motion photography, photo journalism, satellite photography, infrared, cityscapes, travel photography

Rare Artifacts: Footage in King Tuts tomb, an archiaelogical digs, findings, etc. The more rare, the more downloads.

Religious/Spiritual: Footage of rituals, festivals, representative imagery, sermons, etc.

Specialty/Niche Footage: For example, firefighting, extreme fighting, extreme weather reels, hard to find captivating footage

Sports: skateboarding, Squash, mountain biking, ping pong, beer pong, soccer, karate, billiards, Championship ceremonies and shots (i.e. the winning shot), etc. Remember you need your releases.

We are building a high definition library and seeking HD or HDV footage or photos for almost any subject. If you have this content our buyers are interested. Please upload it to the marketplace for review.

Do you need a particular image or video? Post your requirements in the Project Request Forum! Cutcaster offers royalty free images, stock photos, stock footage and stock photography for advertising, publishing or web design.

What is Stock Footage and Photography?

Stock footage and photography is a set of ready video and images where you purchase the rights to use the image rather than assigning your own cameramen or photographers to shoot.

The main benefits of digital stock footage and photography include getting to see the final piece of content before you license the rights to use them and they can be licensed immediately.

Additionally, the cost for stock footage and photography, specifically Royalty Free content are much lower compared to assignment or commissioned work. This saves you the cost of hiring the model(s), photographer, location, props, art direction and editing costs.

Writer's Strike Anthem

Because every strike needs a good rap.


Enjoy this for a Friday break and have a great Holiday weekend with your families and friends.

Written and Performed by : Writer Boi

Directed and edited by : David Schlussel

Shot by : Robert W. Swanson

Amazing Public Domain Images

One of the few photographs to show the Earth in its entirety, The Blue Marble was shot on December 7, 1972 from Apollo 17 as it left orbit on the way to the moon. Officially, the photograph is credited to the entire crew, but it was mostly likely to have been taken by Jack Schmitt using a 70mm Hasselblad. It was the last time that humans have been high enough to shoot the entire Earth in one frame and is one of the most widely distributed images in the world.
Image courtesy of Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center

Photopreneur has a great write up on some public domain images that are simple outstanding. Many times when you see these images it means that someone has paid to enable you to see that image as photopreneur points out, whether it is the publisher, the ad company or the buyer.

Photopreneur points out that, "when it comes to photography, some of the best things really are free. That’s because copyright only lasts as long as the owner’s lifetime plus around seventy years so many images have fallen into the public domain, and also because one of the biggest sources of images is the US government. And because the government serves the citizens, the citizens own the images."


This photograph of a jellyfish was shot by Henry Kaiser of the National Science Foundation under the Ross Sea ice in October 2005. It's a pretty amazing example of a free image.
Photography: Henry Kaiser




The Fairy of Eagle Nebula
Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI/AURA), ESA, NASA

Explanation: The dust sculptures of the Eagle Nebula are evaporating. As powerful starlight whittles away these cool cosmic mountains, the statuesque pillars that remain might be imagined as mythical beasts. Pictured above is one of several striking dust pillars of the Eagle Nebula that might be described as a gigantic alien fairy. This fairy, however, is ten light years tall and spews radiation much hotter than common fire. The greater Eagle Nebula, M16, is actually a giant evaporating shell of gas and dust inside of which is a growing cavity filled with a spectacular stellar nursery currently forming an open cluster of stars. The above image in scientifically re-assigned colors was released as part of the fifteenth anniversary celebration of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Fotolia Moves away from Micro-Stock, Incorporates Traditional Collections

Fotolia has debuted what it’s calling the “Infinite Collection.” This is a set of 15,000 agency-distributed photographs that would normally be found on expensive stock photography sites but are now being sold for as little as $20 on Fotolia. http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Will this force higher end stock photography sites to lower their prices? Is this a form of price discrimination because Fotolia won't list the collections they are getting the photos from? Are the photographers whose photos are being sold aware that they are being sold this way by ?

I'll be watching this development closely to see how well they can incorporate this offering into their business model and client base.

Interview with Lane Hartwell

Q&A with Lane Hartwell in "Going to the mat for photo copyrights":

Shankland: What do you think of watermarking to address the issue?

Hartwell: A great idea. Sites like Flickr need to employ an automatic watermarking system. The site I am moving my work to, Photoshelter, allows me to set that all up in advance and I never have to deal with it again. It´s applied to every photo.

Shankland: How much did you bill the Richter Scales?

Hartwell: They haven´t received the invoice yet. I can tell you that I used Fotoquote and calculated the invoice based on usage, the market where the photograph is to be used and various other factors, which are the typical parameters photographers use when pricing an image.

Sharmeen Obaid

Just received this letter from Sharmeen Obaid, who has been doing some unbelievable work around the world and is married to an Exeter and UPenn guy. Two schools close to my heart ;-)

Dear Friends

Many of you have expressed interest in the upcoming elections in
Pakistan....As i mentioned earlier i will be writing for PBS Frontline World
throughout the month...

My next Dispatch is up:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/blog/2007/12/pakistan_the_ot.html

Also if you haven't voted for the International Museum of Women's
Imagining Ourselves Project, please do so when you have a minute- There are
some fantastic stories out there:

http://imaginingourselves.imow.org/pb/Conversation.aspx?id=94&lang=1

All my best,
Sharmeen

Content Requirements

Due to some issues we are having with cropping photographs instead of re-sizing them during the thumbnail generation in our backend, we have instituted some content requirements. In the meantime we are working on coming up with a solution that will re-size and not crop images when they are displayed on the site.

The minimum file size should be 1600 x 1200 pixels if possible. Make sure you upload the largest file size that you have. For example, 300 dpi 5" x 7" is ideal. A lot of the graphic designers we have spoken to can’t use 640 x 480 images.

The only formats that Cutcaster can currently encode are: 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AVI, BMP, DV, Flash Video, Flash, GIF, JPEG, MP3, MPEG, MPEG-4, PNG, QuickTime, TIFF, WAV and Windows Media formats.

If you want your content to have a Cutcaster watermark to protect it, which we recommend, the following source formats can have a watermark overlaid to them:
BMP
JPG
PNG

The following source formats can be read by the Cutcaster thumbnail encoding server, and we can still license them to others however a watermark can not be applied:
TIFF
GIF

We do not support thumbnail generation or re-encoding to alternative sized images for the following source formats:
PSD
EPS
TXT
3GPP
3G2
MP4
MP3
MOV (H.264 Codec)
AAC

Video Watermarking Support
The following video source formats can have a watermark applied:
AVI
MPEG
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
MOV
WMV

Watermarking can be applied to the following output formats:
3GPP
3G2
AVI
MPEG
MPEG-2
MPEG-4
MOV
WMV
FLV

We are sorry but at this time, Cutcaster does not support watermarking or transcoding for the following source formats:
FLV
SWF
3GPP
3G2

We wil continually update this list as we build out our capabilities. Let us know if there is anything that we should focus all our attention on or move to the front of the line.
Thanks

Writers on strike moving to Web

The debate over how to pay writers and split the royalties when their work goes online has been a heated discussion we are sure. I'm sure it is difficult to come up with a fair and agreeable payout, when no one is really sure what the revenues could be or what the future holds for digital content on the web. No big studio or network wants to be locked into a percentage deal or terms, when they have no idea themselves how the content could be used and how much they can make off it. We covered the writer strike before and continue to follow the story today.

So what is a writer supposed to do during this downtime? Well, according to the Los Angeles Times, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out, writers are pursuing deals to develop shows for the web and looking for money to facilitate this creation of content. The development makes us think about what happened in the newspaper industry, when writers during the first dot-com era launched news sites like Salon.com and the like. It's probably not a far fetch that we will see a new wave of companies started in the same manner and an explosion of content created by these writers for video sites on the web.

So is there money out there for a writer to tap into so they can write shows and craft deals of their own. Jim Breyer, a partner at Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners and a director at Facebook, told the LA Times that it's "likely" the firm will put some of its cash into some "screenwriter/content-oriented companies" next year.

Stealing Images from Flickr "Quote of the Day"

"After debating this for the past few weeks, I’ve decided to make my entire flickr stream private. My images are being stolen and used in ways that I am not comfortable with on an almost weekly basis, sometimes several times in a week. I have blogged about it, talked about it here on my stream, and yet people still feel that my creative property is theirs to take and do with as they please."

--Photographer and interesting person, Lane Hartwell, posting on flickr on her decision to make her photos private due to theft. Her image of Valleywag's Owen Thomas appeared in The Richter Scale's video Here comes another bubble, which was just removed fron YouTube due to a "copyright claim by a third party."

Here is an update to the story.

How to Get Paid for your Flickr Photos

Buyers are more and more going to Flickr and contacting photographers directly to negotiate sales and the licensing of photos on the site. It's happening. The lack of a great "consumer licensing vehicle" is a major issue in this photography and video licensing marketplace and that is what Cutcaster is trying to create. The combination of the traditional licensing world with a more Web 2.0 community and feel.

The problem with using Flickr to do this is that it's not designed to be a platform to legally license content so you lack the protections that a site like Cutcaster provides you. Plus there is no checks and balances to make sure the person who uploaded the photo is the actual owner and that falls back onto the buyer. Plus without watermarks you can have your photos easily ripped off.

I'm glad to see that people aren't just ripping images off Flickr and not crediting or paying the true owners. It's good to see that photo buyers are reaching out over Flickr to the creators to legally license and use their work.

If interested check out Photopreneur's write up on the same topic.

Comparison of Microstock Referral Programs

Everyone wants to make a little extra money while doing what they love. The questions always is, how do you find those ways? Referral programs are one way Microstock videographers and photographers can pad their overall earnings with not a lot of work and a great way for Microstock websites to get new members and content.

In one of Lee Torren's last blog entries he compares the different affiliate and referral programs found at the leading microstock sites and outlines which ones are the best value for trying to make extra money while submitting to these sites. We have said it on here before but Lee Torrens does a really great job over at Microstock Diaries and we have really learned a lot from our conversations with him and his very educational blog which maps his experience in the microstock world.

Here is a chart he created but for a complete rundown on all the info he aggregated check out the post on his site.

Website -> Deal for Buyers -> Deal for Contributors -> Statistics -> Enrollment

iStockPhoto , $10 once off, NO, NA, Accept agreement

Shutterstock, 20% up to $50, $0.03, Full, Automatic

Dreamstime, 10%, 10%, Some, Automatic

Fotolia, 15%, 10%, Full Automatic

BigStockPhoto, 35% 1st purchase, $5 once off, Some, Automatic

CanStockPhoto, 10% up to $50, $5 per 50 sales, Some, Automatic

123rf, 15% for 1 year, $0.03 for 6 months, Full, Automatic

StockXpert, 10%, NO, Full, Application & review

LuckyOliver, $5 once off, $1 once off, None, Automatic


It's a great read for anyone trying to earn more money from referring new members to these sites and also a good comparison of the different programs that are out there. It's definitely going to help us in choosing our affiliate program here at Cutcaster. Hey Lee, do you think it is necessary for a site to reward a referrer for both buyers and sellers they send to a site?

Credits- Photo downloaded from MorgueFile and is the copyright of Cohdra

Write up over at Kino-Eye

Thanks for the shout out from Kino-Eye, one of our favorite blog and not just because David Tamés wrote about us. He wrote a piece about Cutcaster and bid4vid. If you want to know why David chose the name Kino Eye click here.

User Generated Content coming to a phone near you

User-generated content will make up one-quarter of the world's entertainment within five years, according to Nokia's "A Glimpse of the Next Episode" report. And much of it will come from young mobile users.

"From our research we predict that up to a quarter of the entertainment being consumed in five years will be what we call 'circular,'" said Mark Selby, vice president at Nokia. "The content keeps circulating between friends, who may or may not be geographically close, and becomes part of the group's entertainment."

Efforts to facilitate and encourage mobile content delivery and creation are in the works. People who are producing this content will need to continue to find the distribution channels and monetization mechanisms out there that are best suited for the work they are creating and maximize their contents value. We will have to wait to see who comes out on top.

Guest Blogger - Drew Bennett

My name is Drew and I am the author of The BenSpark. I was invited to write a guest post on the Cutcaster blog. My topic is the low cost ways that you can create content to enhance your blog. Personally, I usually skip blog posts that do not include images. They bore me. But if your post also includes an image, my eyes are going to be drawn to the image and I may look at your written content as well because of that image.

For almost three years now, I have been working on a personal project where I take a Photo-A-Day and post it to my blog. I have used a number of cameras as well as software programs to accomplish this work. I have also used a number of photo hosting platforms to host those photos. And in the end, I have also widgetized my daily photo stream so that others can host my content on their blogs. Getting started with photos and video on your blog is very, very simple.

Things you need:

* Digital Camera
* Photo Editing Software
* Photo Hosting Platform

Digital Camera - First things first, you are going to need a digital camera. Digital cameras have dropped dramatically in price and as each new and improved version comes out the previous versions drop even lower in price. Here's a secret. Unless you are printing images in extremely large formats or going into professional photography you don't need the latest and greatest gear. You can pick up last year's model and it will be perfect for digital online content. So if you are shooting just for the web let's say that $100 would be a good price point. As far as what camera is the best I cannot speak to that. I can tell you about the gear that I have used in the past and what I use currently.

For years I had a Sanyo Xacti C4 camera, but it was much more than just a 4MP (mega pixel) camera. This was a camera and video camera in one and it recorded video straight to an SD card. This was something I bought 4 years ago when this wasn't the norm with cameras today and I paid through the nose. Now nearly every digital point and shoot camera has an option for shooting video included as well. So for around $100 you can get a decent camera that also doubles as a video camera. I have a point and shoot 7.1MP Canon SD800 and a 10MP Nikon D80 DSLR. I shoot with the intent of either selling my photos or having them be of high enough quality for print. However, most of the time I print only 4 X 6, the average size of the basic consumer and you certainly don't need 10MP to do that. The photo will look better the higher the MP but you don't need it, especially for web content. When I post to the web, I take those large images and format them to a much smaller size. Remember that with web images you are going for a fast load time so the images file size should be small.

When I take a photo, I edit it in Adobe Photoshop Elements and when I create a video, I use Adobe Premiere Elements. However, I am still using an old version of both programs. I haven't even upgraded to the latest and greatest. You don't need the latest and greatest to edit your images and send them to the web. A quick Amazon search of "inexpensive image editing software" and "inexpensive digital cameras" brought back many solutions for either the pro, enthusiast or easy user. There are many options. Set your budget and buy the most you can within that budget. Also look for packages where you get the camera and image editing software together.

Image Editing Software - You can buy the image editing software with all the bells and whistles like Photoshop CS3 or you can go the more moderate route and buy the consumer version of Photoshop called Photoshop Elements (version 6.0 is the latest, I'm on 4.0) or you can go the super simple easy route and download a free program like Picasa. Let's stick with the theme of adding digital content to the web in the most inexpensive way so let's talk about the basic things your image editing software needs.

Cropping - Cropping is the most important feature in my eyes. To me, "life is how you crop it". Suppose you took a fantastic picture of your dog but also in the picture you get some goof making faces. Rather than junking the image as being lost you can easily crop out that goofy character. Cropping is a way of selecting a portion of the image to become the main image. I have a good eye but I almost always crop my images in some way. Your image editing software should allow you to crop.

Remove Red Eye - You're going to get images where your subjects look possessed. You can fix that with a quick red eye removal. Your software should include that as an option.

Image sizing - I usually do my image sizing, when I crop. I use the size of 450px (pixels) x 350px (pixels) at 96 dpi (dots per inch) for my images on my blog. This way the images end up being quite small and I know exactly how large the image will look when displayed. So many people upload their images unedited and then get giant images blown out on their blogs. Having control over the image size is also crucial. You want to know exactly where that image will fall on your page. Make sure your images are not wider than the width of the content column. With Photoshop elements, I can set my cropping tool to crop an image to be 450px (pixels) x 350px (pixels) at 96 dpi (dots per inch). You can also avoid this by using a photo hosting site that takes your images and gives you multiple sizes to display on your blog.

Photo Hosting Platforms - Once you have taken and edited your images you are going to want to host them somewhere so that you can add them to your blog quickly and easily. Some blogging platforms allow you to upload your image directly to your blog and that is okay. I prefer to post my images to a photo hosting site and then copy and paste the image into my blog post. There are so many different hosting platforms and I am on a bunch of them. I usually upload my Photo-A-Day to Buzznet, Flickr and Zooomr.

Why all three? Well, for one thing it gets my content in front of many sets of eyes. Each time I post an image I can tag it or label it with keywords that people can search on. If I post an image of my cat I would tag that image with the keywords "cat", "pet", "tuxedo", "shorthair". That way when someone is looking for shorthaired tuxedo cats as pets they could easily find my uploaded photos of my two cats, Duncan and Oliver. I also add a link to my Photo-A-Day blog post on each of the descriptions on my uploaded images. This way I now have three links to my blog post (one on each platform). There are people who strictly use photo hosting platforms and are loyal to one or the other, by posting my images to multiple platforms I am able to put my content in front of many diverse audiences.

Some photo hosting platforms are free and some are for pay, if you can afford a pro account on a hosting platform like Flickr buy it, if you want all the best functions without having to pay for them then try hosts that have unlimited uploads like Zooomr. And if you decide to go the Picasa route with free image editing software you can also upload your images directly from Picasa to your blog.

The Internet is a full on multimedia experience. When you blog, think about providing that experience to your readers. Don't just give them flat text, engage your audience with images, video and sound. Oh yeah, I haven't even gotten into videos and how they can enhance your blogs... Maybe next time around...

Drew writes five blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also takes at least one photo every single day and posts it to his BenSpark Blog. You can visit him at The BenSpark, BenSpark 2: Electric Boogaloo, Flatwater Tech or The Wired Kayaker and Read To Me, Dad

Philippe Lemarchand - Zabriskie Prod

I met with Philippe Lemarchand this past weekend on his week-long trip to the Big Apple. Philippe is a photojournalist and film maker, who is currently living in Paris and building up his film production company Zabriskie Prod with partner Cyrille de La Motte Rouge.

Their company is really on the forefront of using/creating video for institutions, individuals or companies looking to beef up their websites' content, appeal and image in general. They really do part consulting, part flash development and part video creation and delivery based on what they find during their discovery consulting phase so they are trying to be a full, one stop shop for those looking to get a video presence online.

An interesting side bit...The company mirrors the founders philosophy of playing an active role in society and pushing higher environmental standards and social values. Take a look at his site and expect big things from this dynamic "green" duo.

How Cutcaster will protect the producer who submits to our Marketplace?

Cutcaster is uncompromising when it comes to providing submitters with secure, trustworthy uploading, promoting and distribution services for their media files. Protecting our submitters content is one of the highest priorities we have at Cutcaster while maintaining a secure marketplace that has the trust of all participants. Most submitters of content, who are looking to sell/license it to others, are fearful that their footage or images will end up being used without their permission or being paid for it. A lot of people fear that their content will end up on YouTube or on someones compact disc that they are selling on eBay. We want to STRESS AND ENSURE our submitters that we have one of the highest levels of backend security. What are some ways to protect your submitters of content?

1. We will watermark your content and display your content in a lower resolution.

2. We will work tirelessly to identify any footage or image theft and make our users aware of it at once.

3. If you want to embed a file into your content to track it and see how it is used we can help you do that.

4. We will throw out unscrupulous buyers who use a piece of content in ways that aren’t allowed under the content license agreement or attempt to steal your work.

5. We will post up offenders of our rules in our Wall of Shame area so people and our competitors know who to look out for. We don't mind working with our competitors as long as it helps everyone in the market.

6. We will work with our buyers to understand and let submitters know as best we can how your content is being used.

7. We will monitor our server logs so we can fish out suspicious behavior when people are searching for your content.

8. We will monitor all our content for trademark, copyright and clearance issues.

9. We are working on providing some feedback options like what they have in eBay.

10. your suggestions

How else can we help submitters of content to our site protect their work while at the same time making it available in the Cutcaster marketplace?

SciVee

Here is an interesting content source with what we believe has great potential called Scivee.tv (in beta) that hits the academic-scientific community. Upload your research content for publication.

SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC). Please see our Partners page to learn more about them. SciVee allows scientists to communicate their work as a multimedia presentation incorporated with the content of their published article. Other scientists can freely view uploaded presentations and engage in virtual discussions with the author and other viewers. SciVee also facilitates the creation of communities around specific articles and keywords. Use this medium to meet peers and future collaborators that share your particular research interests.

Video Production and ownership of rights

What rights do production house retain over the content they produce? Do they ever share ownership or have it outright? What are other ways video production houses could put the fruits of their labor to work? It seems that a lot of them don't own the rights to license footage they shoot but can only use them for promotional work on their sites. What rights would you like to retain if you were these companies and how much leverage do you have in negotiating the contracts for the rights? Can these houses sell or license any of their footage? Would they be interested in a service like the one that Cutcaster will provide to license their clips/footage to others in film making or advertising?

I've noticed that many of them produce commercials, documentaries, feature length films, TV episodes, corporate videos, stock footage etc. etc. What are the different ways these companies could sell their content to add extra revenue to the companies bottom line? Is it worth the hassle for the to upload their clips to stock sites? How can these companies work with a company like Cutcaster to carve a new marketplace out in the future?

The Naked Founder

You gotta love Chris MacAskill, co founder of SmugMug and his famous almost-naked motorcycle ride. He was "double dog dared" to do it by his employees. For those of you that don't know, that is one step above "double toucan dare you" which Toucan Sam made popular in the late 80s for Fruit Loops, the cereal.

DRM Free...

This was from an interesting Gizmodo article linked through Surf Lizard...apparently, Amazon "plans to give away one billion MP3s with an upcoming Pepsi/Super Bowl giveaway." According to the article, this move comes on the heels of Wal-Mart pressuring a major label to start selling their whole collection in the mp3 format so that Wal-Mart could then add the tracks to their online store. Regardless, the title of the article was "DRM Deathwatch" and what interests me is that audio was sure to be the medium to go DRM-free first (ahead of video), and we're finally starting to see major retailers supporting that trend. So will video follow the same trajectory? The unraveling of DRM is certainly starting and it would seem that certain music and video sites would potentially need to reevaluate their business models in light of this.

Thanks for the laughs, Jane!

Enjoy and have a good laugh. My sister just made a total elf of the rest of my family. Check it out by clicking the link here.

I got the ladies body, while my mom, to my right, got a man's body followed by my little sister, Mary, and my dad bringing up the rear.

Updates on Cutcaster Site Development

We have been improving our site daily and getting a bunch of feedback from early users. We are building a testing environment and have streamlined a lot of our development so things should move more smoothly and faster now. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up as to what we are looking at improving next and fixing in the meantime. These features will be updated in the testing environment and moved to the site in the next revision in a few days. I'm not sure if we will have all of them ready to go but here are a few we are working on.

1. Registration process- We will get rid of the invite access so people can move around after they sign up and don't need to wait for us to up their clearance. That was a pain.

2. Upload page, upload 2 page- We are working on integrating the metadata we collect into our mySQL database better, ghosting out fields that you don't need to see on the upload 2 page which can be confusing i.e. audio fields still showing when uploading a video file, and determining which the required fields are so we can properly release and offer your content. I'm really excited to get this working.

3. The Media details page- It will now only show what is relevant to file and what the buyers needs to make an informed purchase.

4. Clipfolders functionality- Build out the clipfolder capacity so buyers can organize footage and photos.

5. Improve our review process so we can review and release your files faster to the marketplace.

6. Get the studio commenting up and working so people can leave comments on your pages.

7. Setting up Content Requirements- Right now images are not displaying correctly because if the file dimensions are too small, under 1400 x 1000, the image is being cropped. We are working on a solution for this as well as adding a watermark to images.

8. Bulk Upload which supports IPTC metadata collection- If you are a photographer you probably know what this means. But the bulk upload will make it easier to upload content to the site in a time efficient manner.

Let us know if there is anything you want worked on over the next month and we will take a look at it. Thanks to the tech team for working on these important sections.

BrightQube Series A- Rumor

I'm hearing BrightQube is close to finalizing their Series A round, which is in the neighborhood of 1-2 million. Not confirmed yet on the amount but this is on the heels of their Angel round, which wasn't closed that long ago. I'll see what other details I can find but looking forward to big things from Lee C. and BrightQube.

What price is fair for your photos or videos?

Do you ever wonder if you could be making more on your content? Or where there are more buyers for your content? Are you even able to reach these people. Does it ever bother you that you could be overpaying or searching too long for the content you are buying?

One of Cutcaster's mission is to find the correct price for your content and explain to you better how the entire digital content marketplace works. We call it a "Bloomberg for Digital Media." A place where all information on the market can be accessed and level the playing field between perception and reality. To start, Cutcaster wants to tell you who the buyers and sellers are, what they are creating or looking for and what they are willing to sell it for or pay for the right to use it. This should be available to anyone in the marketplace. Not just the people with big budgets and consultants to tell them what to do. We want to create a complete transaction history to help people understand this marketplace that is changing many of the old characteristics of media.

If you want to learn more sign up at Cutcaster and we can help you price or pay the right price for your media.

Becoming Brian O'Kelley

I met up with Brian O'Kelley, another good Irishman, earlier tonight at Starbucks in Soho and chatted with him about his life as an entrepreneurs and his experience raising investment. I met Brian only a few weeks before at one of the Tech and Media brunches and was impressed by his knowledge of how to start a business and then how to exit a business;-) Brian had a ton of great advice tonight but something that I walked away from the meeting with was "Launch, Launch, Launch" which is what my boy Blue, I mean Paul Graham says in number 8 here. Even though Brian is a Princeton grad, we promise as Penn grads, to not hold it against him ;-) We still aren't even sure Princeton grads think of Penn as their rival but maybe just in basketball and total number of students from New Jersey;-)

Having only just returned from his travels around the globe (see picture above of Brian loving life in Sydney) for business mixed with a bit of nightlife pleasure, Brian is gearing up for his next big venture called AppNexus, which is changing the way people build web-scale software (but it's a stealth for now). Watch out Amazon and you other wannabes. Keep an eye out for his new company after it launches post January 1st. We are expecting bigger things after his successful run at Right Media where he was the CTO and helped to sell the company to Yahoo last year. Here's an article about the Right Media - Yahoo merger.

Top Trends in Search in 2007

It’s that time of year again for the major search engines to release their top search queries of the year. Here is a look at Yahoos' results. If you click on the image above a larger version of it will appear. Google will release their results later this month.

UPDATE:
Here are Googles top search terms which were released on the Today Show. Thank god for no more Britney.
1. iphone
2. webkinz
3. tmz
4. transformers
5. youtube
6. club penguin
7. myspace
8. heroes
9. facebook
10. anna nicole smith

RED ONE Camera

At the Open Social Brunch this Sunday I met Emery Wells, who is shooting film using the RED ONE and writing about his experience over on his blog Project Red. What is Project Red you ask? Project Red is gathering artists and craftsmen from around the world to participate in an open source media project shot with the RED ONE in the name of art, science, and education. We’ll be chronicling our production, documenting our workflow, and uploading our source plates and project files to share with the world!

Emery Wells is co-founder of Project Red and a freelance producer/director in NYC. I spent a good amount of time yesterday talking to him about his background in Visual FX and workflow consulting he is doing. He is one of the first people to receive a RED camera and is committed to introducing the new RED workflow into the hearts and minds of clients across the globe.

Emery, let's see some of that content you are shooting up on Cutcaster ;-)

Open Social Sunday

This past weekend was officially the first Open Social Sunday held by Hilary Rowland at Bobo, the en Vogue eatery over in the West Village. After ironing out a few issues with the restaurant, which seemed surprisingly stubborn and not that accommodating to simple requests, which I attribute to them just opening for brunch two weeks ago, members of the New York media and tech community sat down for a few spicy bloody marys, some croque monsieur's and some business card swapping. It's really intersting to hear all the paths that people take and how creative they get with their jobs. I'm always impressed.

The brunch hosts a wide variety of people. Everyone from an acupuncturist (sat next to me, the person most afraid of needles probably there and had me squirming the whole time talking about it), a freelance music blogger/great photographer, a film consultant/entrepreneur, an art rep for a very cool pop/expressionist artist, a venture capital guy from IACI, the SocialDiva (got it right this time ;-)), the New Faces CEO, a dealmaker from the UK Trade and Investment Department, the founder of an mobile based email question service and an editor from Conde Nast with a digital media background.

Once again the gathering was a very enjoyable event and I met a bunch of very interesting people. Two thumbs up again for Hilary.

Up in Smoke-Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick out

In one of the stranger stories around the online video space today, Jakob Lodwick, one of the Vimeo founders, was fired yesterday from IACInteractive, the parent company of his video sharing community website.

This is how he put it over on his blog yesterday:

As of an hour ago, I am no longer affiliated with IAC/InterActiveCorp/Connected Ventures/Vimeo.

Goodbye to everyone at CV.

And now, I will turn off my cell phone for the evening and catch up with everyone later!


Seems a bit abrupt. Even Jakob's girlfriend, Julia, was shocked that he had left Vimeo or at least played it up. Julia wrote on her blog that she couldn't believe she found out about Jakob leaving his job from his blog. Just a few days before she described Vimeo as "Jakob's baby" on her blog. Sounds like he might need Brittany's lawyers if he wants to get that baby back ;-)

I don't know the details of his departure but it's been a really weird story so far and pictures of Jakob with a bong in hand probably don't make the IACI guys feel bad about the departure. Here is some press he got at TechCrunch which shows him holding his bong on his goodbye post over at his blog which he has since removed.

Jakob was a partner of Connected Ventures, whose members Josh, Zach and Ricky started three successful companies CollegeHumor, Busted Tees and Vimeo, all of which are now owned by IACI who bought CV last year. Co-founder Zach also recently left company.

A bit weird but to each their own. I am sure Jakob will do very well regardless and best of luck.