"An email offering a free Starbucks iced coffee beverage was distributed by Starbucks partners (employees) with instructions to forward it to their group of friends and family. Unfortunately, it has been redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks control. Regretfully this email offer will no longer be valid at any Starbucks location effective immediately."
Hi. We screwed up. Now we're screwing you. Have a nice day.
Robert Heinlein was one of the pioneers of science fiction, leaving behind a long legacy of outstanding writing, including Variable Star, completed posthumously by another author, Spider Robinson.
Anyone else remember PC gaming before Doom? Doom broke two major rules: The first 3 levels were available for free, and you oculd modify the environment to your liking, changing it from Mars of the future to WWII Germany, for example.
Ok, what do you do that people want and are willing to pay for, and how do you give them just a taste for free that will make them come back for more, again and again, and pay you for the priviledge?
Welcome to The Addict Society. Now go make some money.
I remember when Epson came out with their first photo printer with an amazing resolution of *gasp* 720x720 dpi. Wow. Okay, so it took a minute or two to crank out a full page, had a sheet feeder designed by Rube Goldberg himself and cost a gagillion or two. It was *cool*!!!
"This video sharing business fascinates me because right now it is a shell game built on a shell game. The video sharing sites are for the most part losing money -- throwing, HURLING it away in huge wheelbarrows full, rather like the hyperinflation that plagued Germany right after World War I. And these video sharing sites are buying services from content distribution networks (CDNs), many of which are also losing money, especially if you consider the possibility that some sharing companies will undoubtedly go broke with their hosting bills unpaid. The opportunity, then, is for you and me to start a business that further leverages this financially risky double play. One such example is comedian/impressionist Frank Caliendo, who sells direct his own very funny DVDs using a simple web site stocked with video hosted for free on YouTube and others. This guy has to be making a killing and it costs him almost nothing. Who needs a studio or network deal with a system like that?"
Ok, so what do you do that could be a) videotaped and b) sold as content?
Ok, besides pr0n. Perverts.
I digress...
The premise of Squidoo is simple : Everyone's an expert at something. But if everyone's an expert, and experts can be videotaped and their lectures sold, why not put it on YouTube?
This story from Playlist argues that the iPod's days as the portable music player of choice are numbered, and given the limited pocket space available, the rise of the MP3 phone will soon occur.
Yep.
Look at what happened to Palm Pilots/Pocket PC's. Now it's Treos and WindowsMobile-powered phones. And how long will we see separate point and shoot digital cameras? Sure, there will always be a market for the digital equivalent to the Olympus XA for the semi-pro shooter (Geez, I loved mine.), but for the average consumer, their camera and music player of choice will soon be their phone.
Steve Rubel (who if you're not reading and are in the Web2.0 game, you should be), sums up the problem facing those who want to make money blogging quite succinctly: "Startups advertising on startups spells trouble."
To borrow from Jack Nicholson in The Witches Of Eastwick,
"Windows: A disease, or did Microsoft do it to us on PURPOSE! Because if it's a disease, maybe we can do something about it, develop a vaccine, find a cure..."
I'd argue for suicide. The ones who are killing it off are the ones taking the pictures. Pointing fingers to the bloggers who ask the questions the journalists themselves should be asking is to no avail. Don't shoot the messenger, instead, listen to his message.
A Modest Proposal:
Bandwidth is cheap. Storage is cheap. So why no put all the shots that a photo editor sees online, and let us, the reader, decide if his choice was valid, and see if there is an undue amount of editorial trickery and manipulation.
Ok, Rueters, Photobucket is waiting. The next move is up to you.
And threw my color wheel in the trash. The ability to upload, download and preview color schemes is just *amazing*. Love it, and heartily recommend it for all designers.
When I was in school, I had to share darkrooom space with photo students infected with what we photojournalists would call "AFA Syndrome", for "Ansel Freakin' Adams" (or something like that...), the idea that the only artist-photographers were the ones who sweated drops of blood into the fixer and agonized over the composition of every shot like world peace hung in the balance.
Don's new DVD got me thinking about how shooters can find new revenue streams in today's cutthroat market, and I think his idea of a instructional DVD is a darn good one.
Our client's budgets are usually inflexible. Complaining that they're turning to cheap stock sites instead of hiring us is to no avail, because if there isn't the money in the budget for a thousand dollar location shoot, there's little that can be done about it. The problem from the client's perspective is that cheap stock sites they turn to have a lack of quality photos. So on the one hand, there are a lot of photographers out there that are contributing to those sites but with photos that stink. On the other hand, there a bunch of professional photographers other there who take good pictures, but can't compete with the prices the amatuers on istockphoto are charging.
Commercial photography has existed for years with only one revenue stream, the selling and licensing of the photographer's images to the client. It can't survive much longer doing business like that, as the prices the market is willing to pay for images are dropping ever-lower. But the very thing that makes the images from a good pro shooter valuable to clients is what allows for other revenue streams: The knowledge and experience the photographer uses to take his photos.
Why can't that knowledge be licensed and sold? And that's just what Don's DVD is, a licensed product selling his knowledge about lighting. This is the way commercial shooters can find new income in a world of cheap stock photos: Sell not just what you make, but what you know.
Oh boy. As if cheap stock images via CD-ROM weren't a wakeup call to photographers that their jobs were in danger, now we have SpyMedia's "Spy Bounties".
"A Spy Bounty is a request for specific photo(s) or information made by a member of the Spy Media community to other members in exchange for a cash payment or, in some cases, just a sincere "thank you". It's the ideal way to find people looking for the photos and information you can get or to connect with people that can get the photos and information you want."
Explain to me again: Why are professional photographers needed?
Best comment on the preview of OS 10.5 today at Apple's Developer Conference from the geeks at Slashdot: "looks like Vista is gonna be delayed another 4 months now."
Shame on Reuters. Using Photoshop in this way, to shape and augment reporting, is the worst kind of shoddy photojournalism imaginable. They deserve all the derision they're about to get, and more.
I like the "replace lost downloaded tracks" option, as it's both convenient for me and a new revenue stream for Apple. Good thinkin', there. And the social networking elements are going to be VERY popular on colleges, I can tell.
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