Forever “Powering Through My Afternoon”

Ok, not really. But it’s a fitting headline for my personal take on Twitter.

At SxSW Twitter was all the rage and panelist after panelist raved about this new Internet darling. Being in an open-minded state for the conference I decided to give it a shot. As you can see, I didn’t get far with it. Just four posts into it, in fact. I fear that for all time I will be forever “Powering through my afternoon”, because I’ll probably never update my Twitter status again.

Since SxSW there’s been a ton of talk amongst my peers, in the press,  and the blogosphere as a whole about this emerging phenomenon. Some say it’s the greatest invention since Tivo, other’s don’t get it. I’m placing my flag firmly in the “Don’t Get It” camp. I understand the cool factor of creating “micro-blog” entries from a phone, IM or a website… I just don’t find the need to update the world on happenings in my life. In fact, short of a few close members of my personal life I don’t want just anyone knowing what I’m up to at any given moment. It’s none of their business as far I’m concerned. And honestly, I can’t imagine anyone I know that would really care enough to regularly check my Twitter site to see what I’m doing.

For the photogeeks out there… HDR

As some may know I did a ton of photography in high school (yes, I did in fact letter on the Yearbook Team), even a bit in college and I love to fiddle with photography when I can find the time. So, about a month ago I came across an emerging digital photography technique called High Dynamic Range, or HDR photography, that peaked my interest.  Although the science behind the technique is significant it boils down to a method in which you can use either multiple exposures or a RAW image from the proper camera to create photos that have previously been impossible. This is done by taking at least 3 different exposures of the same subject, at -2, 0, and +2 stops (this can either come from autoexposure braketing or generated from a single RAW file) and then using an application that combines the range of all the photographs into a single image that produces amazing detail in highlights and shadows.

 Here’s the short series of steps that I took to create my first HDR photgraph (I followed the tutorial found @ http://www.vanilladays.com/hdr-guide/ ):

1. I used my Nikon D70 to take some RAW format images at a birthday party this weekend.
2. In Photoshop (CS3 Beta) I loaded the RAW image and created 3 .tif files: one at -2 exposure, one at the original exposure and a third at +2 exposure. Here’s the normal exposure / original image:
   

   

3. I downloaded Photomatix Pro from Photomatix.com
4. In Photomatix I opened all 3 exposure photos
5. Then I used HDR->Generate, selected the 3 open photos and it created the HDR image for me.
6. From here Photomatix gives you a bunch of options to control color saturation, luminosity, etc. but for the purposes of this demonstration I left those settings to default.
7. Finally I saved the image as an 8-bit .tif and used Photoshop to create the final image in JPEG format:
   

   

   So, a few notes on my adventure:

•  In comparing the 2 photos I’m very happy with the result. The HDR process generated a much more vibrant photograph with exceptional detail. The photographs I took didn’t have dramatic swings in exposure that you see in some of the more shocking HDR examples, but I do think it made this photograph better. I’m betting that doing some skillful Photoshop work could have produced a photo near this quality in color saturation, brightness and tone, but this version was piss-easy to create and I’m willing to believe it’s better, simply because I can call it an HDR image.
• From what I’ve read and seen online the process works much better if you use the Autoexposure Bracketing (AEB) to take 3 distinct images rather than using the RAW format. However, it should be noted that should you want to create an HDR image of anything that moves (like people, animals or anything else that isn’t an architectural or lanscape shot) RAW is really your only option. You can’t use AEB on moving objects and get the benefit of HDR assembly.
• Photomatix costs $99 for the licensed version that won’t add those clever watermarks you see on my photograph.
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 does have an HDR merge utility, which I tried, but it’s really clever and it knew that all 3 of my images came from a single RAW file and told me to bugger off because of this. Looks like I’ll have to revisit that option with some good AEB shots.

In all I like this new HDR thing. Given the time investment and file size of RAW photos I probablywon’t HDR another kid’s birthday party, but I am motivated to go out and get some good landscape / architectural photgraphs that could really leverage HDR and see what the process produces. For further research and some amazing HDR photgraphs, goto: http://tutorialblog.org/hdr-tutorials-roundup .

Marketing, schmarketing. Focus on customer service first.

This morning’s first session was about leveraging customer service as one of the more effective forms of marketing. Of most interest in the session was Tony Hsieh, the founder and CEO of zappos.com and his take on their marketing strategy. The short of it is that their strategy from day one has been to take money a normal company would spend on marketing and invest those resources in exceptional customer service. The strategy is that by focusing on creating an amazing customer experience they create their own evangelists who market for them. If you’re familiar with Zappos and their story, it’s clearly working. They boast incredible growth and over 65% repeat customers. For a 3rd party take check this article from CNN . A few notes from the session on the inner-workings of Zappos:

• No measurement of call times
• No sales-based performance goals for CSRs
• They run the warehouse 24/7 (at significant expense) to ensure the fastest delivery possible
• They inventory all items and drop-ship nothing. They made this decision a while back to stop drop-ship business that cost them 25% of their overall revenue. The decision was made to ensure that Zappos could deliver on their promise of exceptional customer service
• They have a 4-week customer service and culture training for everyone in Las Vegas
• Everyone gets a culture book
• Interviews and performance reviews are 50% based on core values and culture fit

Lonelygirl15 Case Study

This session was a behind-the-scenes look at lonelygirl15.com story. If you’re not familiar, lonelygirl15 is an online video series following the life of Bree, a fictional teenage girl in the format of a personal video blog. When the site first came about the community wasn’t aware that the girl was fictitious and she developed quite a following. These guys got a ton of press last year when it was discovered that she was an actress and the series was a scripted, serial drama. For the full history of the series, check out this article by Wired. The session was with Miles Beckett, Mesh Finders, & Greg Goodfried the guys behind the series.

Quick facts/observations from the session:

• They average 300,000 views per episode
• Some episodes have topped 600,000 views
• They produce 5, 2-minute episodes a week
• The series has transformed in format from a videoblog format to a more produced, serial, soap-opera
• in its new format each scene is shot by a character and edited by that character
• The site has a community of about 30,000 regular contributors
• An element of the concept is that the fan base interacts with and effects the series via email, blogging and uploading videos of their own
  • An example of this is that in the series they may create a puzzle that the character must solve to progress in the storyline. Then the fanbase solves the puzzle and emails the character to help out
• No surprise, but the business model behind the series is advertising, and more specifically, brand integration (product placement)
• They’re using the concept to get themselves into the industry. They’re writing, directing and producing a seperate movie, creating a lonelygirl15 movie
• The entire site runs off wordpress.
• They posted a video live during the session. Before they could click back to the site to see the new video they had 6 comments. People literally live on the site waiting for new videos. There’s no schedule that they release to and people sit on the site all day/night waiting for a new vid.

In a word: fascinating. These guys created a truly innovative concept that leverages the best of the Internet and they’ve built an impressive community around what they’ve built.

The future of TV?

The premise of this panel is a a group of industry experts pulled together to discuss the disruptive effect of web-video, the future of content creation, and where television as we know it is headed. Notes/observations from the session:

• the web is the land of niche content, clearly niches are the land of web-based video
• the gap in today’s web-video world is a lack of cohesive, visionary content creators
• corporations are driving some content generation for their own properties (entertainment brands)

The takeaway from this session for me was that much of television as we know it isn’t changing anytime soon. The influx of semi-professional / web based content developers are typically developing content only for the web. This video has lower production value and 99% of viewers view this content on a computer. Hollywood will continue to excel at high production value, creative content for the masses that we all enjoy watching on our huge, high-definition televisions.

First session – 3D lands of adventure

The first session of the day (@ the crack of 10am) was a panel discussing various virtual worlds (SecondLife as an example) from a number of different angles. If you’re not familiar, SecondLife is a virtual world where you create a new (improved?) version of you, wander around this 3D land, meet people and have adventures. There are very few rules and the platform’s open architecture allows the world’s inhabitants to create just about anything they choose, should they have the aptitude to figure it out. Since its inception in ‘03 there have been a couple of notable developments:

• SecondLife has developed its own economy, with an actual, market-driven exchange rate against the dollar
• people have started making a good living creating virtual items and selling them online. Everything from clothes to real estate to guns can be purchased in SecondLife and savvy virtual citizens are cashing in to the tune of 6-figures a year selling what amounts to 1s and 0s somewhere on the Internet
• A number of “real-world” corporations such as Starwood Hotels, Toyota & IBM have been investing in creating a SecondLife footprint

The last bulletpoint is what interested me in this session. If corporate america is jumping on the bandwagon, I’d like to know why.

SxSW – First Day / First Post / New Blog

So, it took me heading off to a conference to get me off my ass and starting to blog. I’m at South By Southwest (hereforeafter referred to as SxSW) and I’m attending all sorts of interesting sessions concerning the Internet, Interactive, and Technology. I figured rather than hand-write some notes that’ll never again see the light of day, I’ll keep track of my learnings, thoughts and experiences in this blog for others to leverage.