Digital cameras have removed the need for film, meaning there really isn’t any additional cost associated with taking a bunch of photos.  The result is that people with digital cameras are pretty much taking pictures all the time and amassing huge photo libraries.  But what do you do with all those photos? 

Animoto is an easy-to-use slide show creation tool that gives people a compelling way to repackage all those photos they’ve been taking.  Animoto allows you to create a custom slide show (see sample above) in two very simple steps:

1. Upload the photos you want to use.  You can also simply get Animoto to pull photos you’ve already uploaded to sites like Flickr.
2. Upload accompanying music from your personal collection, or choose from the library of music Animoto maintains.

The resulting slideshows are really well done, as Animoto’s software automatically synchs the way the photos fade in and out to the rhythm of the music you upload.  I created a few tests and it took all of five minutes, with terrific results.

Animoto allows users to create short, 30 second slideshows for free but charges if you want to create longer videos.  For personal use, Animoto costs $3 per video or $30 for a full year of use.  Animoto also offers business accounts that run $249 a year and include value-added features such as DVD quality outputs and customized buttons.  It also has a pretty awesome iPhone application.

I’m really impressed with this service.  Give it a try.

The first Monday after the New Year brings many of us back to reality after a fleeting period of mental freedom (barring any drama with the in-laws, of course). This time of year many choose to reflect on the previous 52 weeks, and determine what kinds of lifestyle changes will make the next year (in our case, 2009) less lackluster. Instead of boring you with non-existent plans to visit the gym with increased frequency, or a false promise to cook at home more, I've decided to share my list of ways I would like — and have already begun — to change my internet habits.

Online Products Getting the Axe

• Flickr. With more and more of my friends making use of Facebook's photo albums, I have been using Flickr less and less. While I realize there's still a place for the artsy photostream, Flickr, once a mainstay of my daily online repertoire, is largely absent from my browser's address bar.
• Firefox. Nothing personal to Mozilla, and I still run it on my Ubuntu and FreeBSD boxes. But when it comes to my business-centered Windows machine, I have abandoned this once-touted browser champion for Google Chrome. Now out of beta, the UI is slick and it uses far less system resources than the now pudgy Firefox. Disclaimer: I am also a self-proclaimed Google fanboy.
• Technorati. I still view Technorati via RSS, as their headlines are worth a look. However, I used to use this service mainly as a blog search tool, and Google Blog search has simply surpassed it.
• Twitter. After Facebook implemented and revamped its status updates, Twitter doesn't quite have the same sheen it once had. In addition, most aggregate services implement with the Twitter platform if you really need to stay afloat on any crucial Tweets. Not to mention its non-impressive growth over the last few months.

Online Products I Use More, or Have Begun Using

Excluding the mainstays such as Gmail and Facebook, here are some products I've made some room for as we transition into 2009.

• Google Reader. While I did not begin using this recently, the revamp of its design and new features have really set this reader further away from the pack than I had imagined.
• FriendFeed. Upon launch, I was adamently opposed to FriendFeed. After some time to work out kinks and to catch on in popularity (and by nature, functionality), I have found some good news leads and websites through this service. I joined FriendFeed to show how pointless it was, and now it saves me time by aggregating all sorts of websites I'd rather not visit primarily.
• Hulu. I only really watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it's available on Hulu. As are all of the archived episodes of Arrested Development. I watch more Hulu than television by a long shot. Where else can I stream forgotten films of the 80's and 90's for free with (very) limited commercial interruption in 480p?
• Truphone. I make a few calls internationally every now and then, and while Skype is great, without a truly mobile Skype phone available in the United States this service is truly discount calling on the go.

I'm excited to see the innovation that will come with 2009, and hopefully this list will expand itself with better offerings as the year progresses. What kinds of digital changes do you plan to make in the New Year?

Last Thursday, we released the 2009 edition of our newspaper study.  There was some great commentary about the study around the blogosphere.  The general reaction was relief that newspaper website are getting better, but a sense that whatever they do probably won’t be enough.  Below are few of the more interesting points folks made.

ReadWriteWeb:

Mainstream news will never be the same again. You can now talk back to it, take part in it and interact with it along with countless other sources of information. Just as no software company can produce content or code as well as a world of users and developers collaborating can, so too can newspapers no longer keep us sufficiently informed all on their own. It’s nice to see they aren’t trying to anymore. These are changes for the better and show that while old media institutions are struggling to hold on to revenue in the face of the internet challenge, the fight is also doing them a lot of good at the same time.

Brian Solis:

Newspapers are are experimenting with social tools to source and share information and also to create and cultivate an active community that connects the media property to various micro communities. Unfortunately, for many, experimentation through socialization doesn’t necessarily provide a newspaper bailout (#newspaperbailout) plan. Like in anything related to the Social Web, an outbound, community-focused champion or team of evangelists, in addition to a more social platform, is required to simply compete.

TechCrunch (check out this graph):

Newspapers are still lurching their way around the Web, a new study finds, but at least they are making some progress. The Bivings Group released a study today that quantifies the Website features of the top 100 newspapers in the U.S. Among the findings: Nearly every newspaper site has reporter-written blogs and some form of video; features that elicit content from readers are on the rise; podcasts and mandatory registrations are down; social networking features are pretty much non-existent.

My take: Just a few years ago many newspapers had formal policies in place against linking to external sites, had all their content locked up behind some sort of registration wall and literally none of them had the community features that blogs have included from the beginning. Newspapers now acknowledge that there is a world outside their walled gardens and are participating in it. That is an impressive change when you consider where they started from. However, it is hard not to think that the current model is really beyond saving and that more drastic measures are needed. To survive, they are going to need to actually get ahead of the curve (like the Las Vegas Sun) instead of simply adding blog-style features to their websites two year after they’ve become industry standards.

Every year, The Bivings Group conducts a study of the web features of America’s largest newspapers as a way to gauge how papers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source.  Given the challenging economic climate, we were particularly excited to complete this year’s version and to see how newspapers are expanding their web programs to deal with the crisis the industry is in.  Our research examined the websites of the top 100 newspapers in the United States, as determined by circulation (via the Audit Bureau of Circulations). We evaluated all of the websites on the presence of lack of various web features. You can access summary findings below:

• 2008 Findings Summary
• Comparison (2007 vs 2008)
• Comparison (2006 vs 2007 vs 2008)

Below are some key findings:

• Newspapers are experimenting with user generated content.  The study found that 58 percent of newspapers allowed for user generated photos, while 18 percent accepted video and 15 percent articles.  Overall, 58 percent of newspapers offered some form of user generated content in 2008 compared to 24 percent in 2007.
• Research shows that the number of newspaper websites allowing users to comment on articles has more than doubled in the last year.  Seventy five percent of newspapers now accept article comments in some form, compared to 33 percent in 2007.
• Ten percent of newspapers had social networking tools, such as user profiles and the ability to “friend” other users, built into their sites in 2008. This compares to five percent of sites that included this feature in 2007. It is surprising that this number isn’t higher.
• Seventy six percent of newspapers offered a Most Popular view of content in some form (Most Emailed, Most Blogged, Most Commented, etc.).  This compares to 51 percent in 2007 and 33 percent in 2006.
• Integration with external social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us has increased dramatically the last few years.  Ninety-two percent of newspapers now include this option compared to only seven percent in 2006.
• Every newspaper the study examined featured some sort of online advertising. Indeed, 100% of newspapers provided some form of contextual advertising, such as Google Adwords. Forty-three percent of newspaper websites used interstitial advertising.
• Of the new features examined in this year’s study, we found that 57 percent of newspapers offer PDF editions, 20 percent offer chatting options, 96 percent provide local weather information, 40 percent utilize SMS alerts and 70 percent offer community event calendars.
• The number of websites requiring registration to view most content (free or paid) has decreased from 2007.  Now only 11 percent of websites require registration to view full articles, compared to 29 percent in 2007 and 23 in 2006.
• All of the 100 newspapers in the study provide some type of RSS feed. In 2007 all but three newspapers offered RSS feeds.

Speaking generally, our study shows that newspapers are trying to improve their web programs and aggressively experimenting with a variety of new features. However, having actually reviewed all these newspaper websites it is hard not to be left with the impression that the sites are being improved incrementally on the margins. Newspapers are focused on improving what they already have, when reinvention may be what is necessary in order for the industry to come out of the current crisis on the other side.

• Full Study
• 2007 Study
• 2006 Study

Let us know what you think in the comments. (more…)

There are several websites that I frequent at least once a week for entertainment value (thank you, Zero Punctuation), but there are also several sites that I visit purely for information on a once-a-week-or-more basis.  Because I live in DC, one of those sites is definitely the official Metro page.

The website began in 1996, and according to the site, receives over 16 million page views a month.  Users can use the site to plan their public transportation trips, read up on emergency alerts, and find out about discount programs and payment plans.  Yet, as useful as it was, the site was in need of a major overhaul.  Thankfully, as of December 8, my lamentations were heard, and I'm happy to say that I am quite pleased with the result.  My favorite parts of the updated site, as well as some screenshots, are after the jump. (more…)

 Change.gov launched a Digg-inspired feature yesterday that allows users to submit questions to the Obama transition teams and vote questions submitted by other visitors up or down.  Open for Questions has enjoyed a good deal of activity so far (410,000 votes on over 5,000 questions) even though it is not at all clear what the transition team intends to do with the data it collects.  The feature is the latest in a series of experiments in “participatory government” launched by the transition team. 

Open for Questions is powered by Google Moderator, and while Digg is the most obvious point of reference, there are clearly some key differences.  Open for Questions has very limited functionality, which makes me think the transition team is up to something very different from creating a Digg-style system.  Here is some key functionality that has been left out:

• You can’t comment on the questions at all.  All you can do is submit questions and vote.
• The site doesn’t include permalinks for specific questions.  This will make it more difficult for advocacy groups and other interested parties to promote specific questions, as you can’t easily forward questions to others with a plea for a vote.  (Note: you can get around this by linking to the profile of a specific user who is charged with submitting the questions you wanted promoted).
• The transition team appears to be have turned off functionality in Google Moderator that organizes questions by topics, meaning your ability to find questions is limited to a search.
• There is no Digg-style queue for discovering new content.  Instead, new questions are fed to you at random to vote on one at a time.
• There is an area that lists the leading questions, but it isn’t the key point of the site as it is on Digg.  The user interface emphasizes the submission of new questions and voting on questions at random, as opposed to glorifying the leading questions.
• There are no user profiles.  The only information you can enter about yourself is your name and location.  The result is that people will use the site in anonymity.  This is in stark contrast to Digg that allows you to create a robust profile, and which is dominated by a relatively small group of users.

The net result of all this is that Open for Questions reminds me more of crowdsourcing efforts like Google Image Labeler and Mechanical Turk than of Digg.  By leaving out all that functionality, the tool drowns out all the noise and nonsense and tries to focus exclusively on discovering the best questions.  What we have here is very focused participatory democracy. 

Anyone who has played with these sorts of voting systems knows that they have serious flaws and understands the choices the transition team has made.  The two biggest problems with voting systems are the ability of  bands of committed advocates to wield disproportionate influence and the tendency of the majority to bury important but unpleasant content.  

From my review, so far it doesn’t look like any groups are taking the voting over the way Ron Paul supporters did on Digg (and many other venues) or Rebuild the Party.  I’m frankly surprised the Paul folks haven’t shown up yet.  However, the majority is actively burying content ton topics they don’t want to discuss.  A number of questions about the Rod Blagojevich scandal that were submitted to the site have not only been voted down, but flagged as inappropriate, meaning they are no longer available on the site and can only be found through back channel searches.  Not surprising. 

Despite the flaws, I really like what the transition team has done and I think the approach they have taken is as good as any for this type of thing.  What do you think?

Patrick Ruffini has a good post up on Next Right about the Obama campaign’s online engagement strategy (use of email, social networks, etc. to get volunteers to support the campaign).  In the article, he points to a quote from Chip Saltsman, who is running for the Chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, about the value of different levels of engagement:

I also believe in building online Republican communities – not lists. Instead of focusing on amassing email lists of the marginally interested, we must make a concerted effort to transform our websites into hubs worthy of the fervent political dedication of our online supporters.

This is a nice sound bite, but I think Patrick is right on when he says “you need both communities and lists.”

Patrick’s post got me thinking of the value to a campaign of the people it recruits through its various web programs.  Looking at things on an extremely general level, the Obama online campaign had three main engagement components: MyBarack (its internal social network), its email list and its presence on external social network (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).  If I had to rank the value of the people recruited through these various venues, it would look like this:

(1) MyBarack.  These are people whose email you have and who also have taken the time to create an account on a social action network totally devoted to the candidate.  They use your tool set to self organize on behalf of the campaign.  These are your best online volunteers.

(2) Email List.  It seems fashionable for people to bash email lists, and I frankly don’t get it.  A big list of people who have voluntarily signed up to receive communication from you is an extremely valuable commodity. Email lists are the fuel for website traffic, donations and volunteerism.  We got all those emails last cycle because they work.

(3) External Social Networks.  To me, the value of having a presence on external social networks is that you have the opportunity to reach people who probably aren’t going to be visiting your campaign website regularly.  However, the level of engagement of these folks in your campaign is generally going to be pretty tenuous.  Can you name the groups you are in in Facebook?  Can you name all the pages you are fans of?  I sure can’t.  It is something you do and then forget about.  There is value for sure, but ultimately I would rather have someone’s email address than their support on Facebook.  Email provides campaign with a simple and elegant way to activate folks when they need them.  External social networks?  Not so much.

What do you think?

Many social networking sites have come and gone, though it's easy to forget about most of them with monsters like Youtube and Facebook acting like they are the only kids in the classroom.  Social networking online began with a site called Six Degrees which basically invented the social-circle networking guidelines that are used by so many sites today.  It was named after the popular six degrees of separation theory (which I believe was invented by Kevin Bacon…).  More experimental than anything else, the company that made the site grew to a little over 100 employees and was eventually bought for quite a large sum of money.

Since then, many have tried to replicate and improve upon the success of that social networking site.  Some have gone on to make their inventors Man of the Year, but others have fallen into the gutter of floppery.  Taking a look at some of them can provide some insight into what is needed for a successful social networking site.  (Details after the jump…) (more…)

In looking over our data for this year's Newspaper Report due out later on this month it’s easy to see American newspaper studies are in dire straights. With subscription rates falling and more people getting their news online newspapers have had to revamp their old business model. No American newspaper seems to be taking a more proactive attitude towards the threat of the web then The New York Times. Just yesterday The New York Times launched the Beta version of what they are calling The New York Times Extra. This view allows users to browse related articles and blogs from outside news sources (see below). While it may not sound like much  this represents a huge change for a site that just a year ago charged users $50 a year to access parts of their site. New York Times extra comes on the heels of a Facebook push by the Times, an ad campaign that came under some criticism in the blogosphere. While the Internet may still give newspaper industries pause, it’s good to see some embracing the options for content, access, and ads that the Internet has to offer.

<Cross post from our ImpactWatch blog>

I am a big fan of the tech news aggregator Techmeme as well as its politically focused sister site Memeorandum (not so much the gossip focused WeSmirch).   Both sites use complex algorithms to discover and group new content in real time.  I read both sites on a daily basis as a way of getting a sort of Cliffs Notes summary of what is going on in the tech and political blogosphere on a given day. 

Anyone who reads these sites frequently is all to aware of the limits of the site’s automation algorithm.  Content that is only tenuously related is often grouped together.  The lead story on a given topic is sometimes the least important story on the topic.  The point of the news that is being broken is often missed.  The example below, which shows a story about Anna Nicole Smith being hospitalized as the lead story instead of one about her being dead, shows the just one of the kind of problems automation can bring. 

Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera explained the gist of the problem in a blog post yesterday:

Any competent developer who tries to automate the selection of news headlines will inevitably discover that this approach always comes up a bit short. Automation does indeed bring a lot to the table — humans can’t possibly discover and organize news as fast as computers can. But too often the lack of real intelligence leads to really unintelligent results.

In an effort to provide better results, Rivera has hired a human editor to augment the his site algorithm.  About the decision, he writes:

Early on, when our system was less technically refined, the clearest path toward improvement involved simply iterating algorithmic development. Later, as the automation reached a certain degree of maturity, we recognized that direct editing could now improve news results by leaps and bounds. Though our roadmap contains a number of novel future algorithmic enhancements, introducing editing now appears to be a no-brainer.

Through our ImpactWatch media monitoring platform, we’ve done a lot of work on automation versus human review.  Indeed, in many ways the challenges we face on are more difficult than Techmeme since ImpactWatch does sentiment analysis as well as categorization.  After a great deal of trial and error on ImpactWatch, we’ve come to the same conclusion as Rivera: the best way to analyze and organize news is through a combination of human editing and automation.  Automation can get you part of the way, but ultimately if you really care about the quality of the analysis some sort of human editing is necessary.

To learn more about ImpactWatch, please sign up for our demo.

Utilizing Digg can be one of the best ways to generate large amounts of traffic to your site or blog, however, before you start getting your hands dirty remember, regardless what social media application you use, the biggest thing you can bring to the table is value.

This applies to Digg.

Social news sites, like Digg, are a long-term investment not a quick solution. Building a following on any social media application can take some time and requires dedication and a little patience.

That being said, one of the greatest strengths of social news sites like Digg is their longevity and the opportunity available for a lot of exposure.

When you Digg something, it stays on Digg, unless it gets buried (see the value thing I was talking about). You never know who may come across your submission and decide to Digg it. They may share that article with their friends, who in turn my start Digging it.

You can see the potential for long-term growth.

If you are new to Digg, here are some tips to get you started.

1. Network and make friends – Friend Digg users who post links that match your interests.
2. Friend Digg users who submit links that match your own interests.
3. Make yourself stand out by choosing a strong avatar.
4. Don’t regurgitate other people’s content – doing this can put you in danger of being banned.
5. Use a good title and description with your submissions– grab the reader’s attention.
6. Be sure to leave a comment on the articles you Digg.
7. Just as you share your submissions with friends, be sure to Digg links they share with you.
8. Don’t spam your keywords – Digg members will see right through this and bury your links.
9. Try Digging upcoming stories or articles with only a few digs – other Diggers will appreciate this and it helps get you noticed.
10. Subscribe to Digg’s RSS Feed – this will help you keep tabs on what the Digg community is interested in.

Remember Digg is a community. Bring value to the Digg community by sharing interesting news and you’ll begin to see your submissions start popping up on the front page.

What suggestions would you add to this list?

This afternoon I attended the Conservative Bloggers Briefing during which The Heritage Foundation's President Ed Feulner discussed the current state of conservatism. 

I expected to hear that Feulner is optimistic, but I was pleasantly surprised to listen to him extol the importance of new and social media.  He spoke about how often he hears congressmen and women mention that they were thrilled to receive a flood of e-mails urging them to vote one way or another on a piece of legislation and ignore the potential to use those e-mail addresses to promote action and improve constituent relationships.  Obama's use of e-mail and text messaging was an example of he would like to see more conservatives harness grassroot action.

However, Feulner seems to do more than merely talk the talk when it comes to social media.  He did attend a luncheon for bloggers and new media strategists that was broadcast on The Heritage Foundation's BlogTalkRadio channel today.  He has a Facebook profile as well.  Further, at the end after speaking with someone, he yelled across the room to Rob Bluey, who runs the Bloggers Briefings for Heritage, something to the effect of: "Rob, can I Twitter, too?"  

It is interesting to see the attitude change among conservatives towards social media; it was a lot different a year and a half ago when I moved to the DC area a year and half ago.  Of course, this is helpful for the conservatives to answer the left's strong use of the Internet, but using social media also boosts transparency in politics.  That's why I'm excited to see more politicos — of all ideological positions — embrace social media.

Dan Farber of CNet has a good blog post up on what he calls the “lifestreaming” of Barack Obama.  He writes:

Barack Obama will be the most shadowed president in history, and it won’t be just the Secret Service and press corps surrounding him.  Citizens and paparazzi armed with camera phones and a variety of other multimedia devices will chronicle every movement he makes in public and post it online.

In the article, Farber points to Politico 44, a micro-site by the Politico about the Presidential transition.  The site contains a feature that tracks Obama’s activities day-by-day and minute-by-minute.  Mind you they aren’t just highlighting the big stuff, they are literally tracking Obama’s every movement in real time.   Here are some sample entries to whet your appetite:

10:07 am on November 22: “Obama worked out at the gym for 78 minutes and was back home by 11:30 EST.”

9:38 am on November 21: “Obama arrives back home to change clothes.”

6:35 pm on November 20: “The motorcade leaves the transition office and heads to Regents Park apartments, where Obama reportedly has his haircut at the apartment of his friend,  Mike Signator.”

7:11 pm on November 19: “Obama is inside the Lookinglass Theatre in downtown Chicago.”

The feature reminds me of Gawker Stalker, a controversial feature on Gawker.com that allows users to submit celebrity information on encounters with celebrities.  I don’t really have any big point here, other than that the unprecedented interest in Obama himself combined with the rapid sharing of information brought on by the Internet will make Obama probably the most scrutinized and tracked person in the history of time.

The level of transparency this will bring is exciting, but it is hard not to worry that things are going to be taken way too far.

Papa Johns Pizza is currently running one of the cleverest Facebook promotions I’ve seen.  Between now and December 1, if you sign up to be a fan of of Papa Johns on Facebook you will receive a coupon for a free medium pizza (fineprint: you must first purchase a pizza online, which insinuates this is really a buy one get one free type of things).

The promotion appears to be working, as Papa Johns has gone from 10,000 fans to 168,509 fans in a matter of days.

Not bad, particularly when you consider the coupon isn’t any different from the ones the pizza chain mails out and offers on their website every day.

As if being named "[the] youngest self-made billionaire" by Forbes wasn't enough, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and creator of Facebook, was recently named one of GQ's coveted Men of the Year for 2008.  It just goes to show that being a hacker and a dropout can still lead to an awesome fiscal future.

Some of the members of this list are obvious (Barrack Obama, Michael Phelps, Ted Kennedy, etc.) but others a little more obscure (apparently Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is more popular than I thought…).  Still, it's interesting to note that Zuckerberg is the only member of the list that is noted for achievement in technology, and looking back at past winners, he seems to be the one most social media-savvy as well.  He almost seems a little out of place among all the actors, athletes, and politicians, even though his moniker of "Boy Genius" suits him well.

Read the entire list of winners here and see if you agree with me.  Does he deserve to be on this list?