coBRANDiT

OK, this is one of our more interesting projects...Put Lynyrd Skynyrd and 4000 fans on a Carnival Cruise in the Carribean...that's the Simpleman Cruise. This vid is footage from 2008, visit simplemancruise.com for more details (and if ya like Skynyrd, sign up for 2009). We were on the boat for 4 days interviewing passengers and band members, releasing daily video over the shipboard A/V system, and gathering material for a 12 part web series to be released through fan forums, etc.

From Beet.tv: Sarah Meyers [of] daily show Pop17, a joint production with Rocketboom... Like superstar blogger Robert Scoble who has both an edited and a live show at fastcompany.tv, Sarah two as well. Robert uses QIK. Sarah uses Flixwagon. Both use the Nokia N95. Beyond the live audience for these video casts, the clips are saved and archived by both services. Earlier this month, YouTube announced an API to allow streams from QIK and Flixwagon to upload directly to YouTube. Robert reported this first on QIK earlier this month. Flixwagon announced the news on it's blog a few days later. It is the archival use of these video that is the promise of this new technology. In addition to live uploading, Sarah explains later in this interview how the 3GP files on the Nokia can be downloaded into a editing system. This is the key: access to the live video clips after the fact for editing into more polished pieces. Shozu (coupled with blip.tv) would be pretty good for this (in a near-live kinda way) if they dropped their 10mb upload limit.

Continuing to figure out Qik.com, a platform for live streaming video video from your phone. We're trying to integrate it with mogulus.com, which is not as easy as they pretend. Video shot on N95.

Watch above for a demonstration of video buffering probs with my new N95 8gb. This blows. Maybe the Easter Beagle can help?

I've got a Nokia N95 8gb on loan to play with while I wait for mine to come in (thanks to Brett at StreetAttack). It's UI is not great...buttons feel cheesy...and I can't get it to download video over MMS (yet). But I can upload videos of my sleeping puppy! Here's a test through Blip.TV:

The GM Heritage Center has archived over 1000 vintage, custom, and show cars dating back to the turn of the last century. The Heritage Center is not open to the public, we get a rare tour of 200 of from Manager Greg Wallace. His current favorite? The '62 Bel Air 409, as in "She's real fine my 409."

A little extra detail on the Cadillac story, as told by Greg Wallace of GM's Heritage Center...including my personal fave car on display, the 1957 Eldorado Brougham.

A rare peek inside GM's Heritage Center with Manager Greg Wallace as our tour guide. In this piece Greg provides an overview of the Heritage Center's mission, and tells us about the unique Corvette in the lobby...it was designed by the women on Harley Earl's staff, whom he referred to as the "damsels of design."

GM invited us to shoot some video at the North American International Auto Show, held this week in Detroit. They gave us access to various GM pooh-bahs and introduced us to other invited bloggers, it's all a part of their GMnext 2008 program which celebrates the 100th year anniversary of GM. Announcements were made regarding new introductions and concept cars (of course), but the big news was E85 ethanol and GM's investment in Coskata, a company that seems to have found a way to make E85 out of a renewable resource: trash. Click play to view our vids, enjoy!

Rick Wagoner announced an important venture with Coskata, a biofuel company that seems to have figured out how to make E85 ethanol out of trash, among other things. Here's the take from treehugger and USA today, above find video commentary we gathered at the Detroit autoshow on E85 and the announcement. Commenters include Scott Atherton, President and CEO, American LeMans Series, Kjell ac Bergström, President & CEO of Saab Automobile AB Powertrain, and blogger Clayton Cornell of gas2.org.

GM's social media coordinator Adam Denison and bloggers invited to Detroit discuss GMnext's social media thinking and the much-anticipated Chevy Volt...a very cool looking plug-in hybrid due out in 2010. Featured bloggers include: Clayton Cornell of gas2.org, Matt Kelley of Next Gear, Matt Keegan The Auto Writer, and Joel Williams of Lifegoggles.com.

A tour of the Hummer HX concept, provided by design team member Robert Jablonski. This thing looks pretty darn sweet, but the coolest feature is the tactile rubberized digi-print flooring material. Nice! Or perhaps it's the flip-out holder for your iPod, which can capture trail video thru a mirror mounted camera.

More detail on the Hummer HX concept, this time with David Rojas, Lead Designer on the project and Brian Dooley of HummerGuy.net. Plus a few words from Sean Holman of Four Wheeler Magazine. And look at the celebs gathering 'round!

My introduction to Saab was when I was a kid riding in my Dad's brand new 1978 99EMS, so it was fun to hear how Saab's tradition of innovation continues. Saab brought the 9-4X Biopower concept and the Turbo X to the Detroit show, and Kjell Bergström, President & CEO of Saab Automobile AB Powertrain gave us some details on why E85 is a great fuel when matched up with a turbo. Also heard from Saab USA GM and Ryan Enge, the enthusiast behind Saabhistory.com

Tom Wallace, Corvette Vehicle Line Executive, General Motors, is also known as Mr. Corvette. Here's the peek he gave us of this American supercar.

GM's Cadillac and Saturn divisions are on the rebound with new designs and new energy. John Howell, Director of Global Products, Cadillac Division and Jill Lajdziak, General Manager, Saturn Division make their pitches.

David Tames of Kino-Eye was coBRANDiT's intrepid cameraman at the Detroit show. Here David shares his thoughts on GM's social media moves, and reflects on GM's centennial.

A vid from Jeremiah: interview with Marcia Kadanoff of OpenMarketing.com in which she talks about the distributed web and widgets. It's not about page views on your site...it's about getting your content to where your audience is. Right on! Jeremiah has another interesting vid (below): interview with Rodney Rumford of FaceReviews.com, which builds Facebook apps. Rodney addresses some of the pitfalls of app building, #1 being the need to continually measure and upgrade the app: stocking it with new content and tweaking the functionality to mesh with the always-evolving nature of web platforms.

OUR ONE MINUTE DEMO REEL will give you a taste of what we're about. Click the play button to view.

Jeff Bell of Microsoft was in charge of the Halo 3 launch and in his WOMMA Summit 3 keynote provided a detailed overview of the program--very impressive. In this interview he touches on the elements of the launch, the relationship between online and offline activities, and taking risks in marketing.

Richard Tait of Cranium was a very inspiring keynote speaker at WOMMA's Summit 3. Here he talks about what it takes to breakthrough in an industry and develop new distribution channels.

Dave Balter of BzzAgent on PQ Media's forecast for WOM marketing, what it means for the industry, and how his business is developing international contacts in the advertising and media space. Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3, Las Vegas, NV.

Jamie Tedford of Brand Networks on the size (and measurement) of the WOM industry--does Facebbook count?--and Brand Network's move into application development (for Facebook and OpenSocial). Taped at WOMMA's Summit 3 in Las Vegas, NV. Background: PQ media's projection for the WOM industry. We're at 1.35B now, going to 3.7B by 2011.

Communispace launched their new site today, and we're proud to play a part: we're providing the video. For the moment it's a single intro piece (as seen above), but over the next few months we'll be adding to the collection. Stay tuned.

Charlene Li discusses the concepts from her forthcoming book Groundswell (co-authored with fellow Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff). Groundswell refers to the "spontaneous movement of people connecting, using online tools, taking charge of their own experience, and getting what they need – information, support, ideas, products, and bargaining power – from each other"...as opposed to marketers and other traditional sources of authority. The book revolves around the POST framework: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology. Where do companies go wrong? Who is using social technology wisely? And how will she and Josh put the groundswell to work in the marketing of the new book? Find out more at forrester.com/groundswell.

More in-depth on the forthcoming book Groundswell. Forrester researcher Josh Bernoff (co-author with Charlene Li) talks about who should own social media in an organization, describes the five key strategy objectives of the groundswell: listening, talking, energizing, supporting and embracing, and talks about a couple of Groundswell Award winners.

"Reach consumers where they are." That's the promise of syndicated video from Brightcove. Problem is, syndicated video requires advertisers to give up control over the context in which their ads are shown. Jeremy thinks third party measurement services need to step up and start gathering more data about where syndicated content plays...but in this vid he discusses ad formats, ad content, and how online networks are way ahead of advertisers when it comes to innovation.

Ze discusses media as social capital, and why it's not important that everyone who connects with your video actually watch it fully. Ze lists all the ways he's monetized his content...he's also a social media consultant, and sits on the Advisory Board of Bazaarvoice, a company that provides consumer rating & review technology to retail websites. In this capacity he focuses on getting consumers "from 0 to 1", pushing them to take simple, minimal participatory actions. Ze thinks the old media/new media formulation is not super important, and seems to be pretty excited about some projects he has in development...and the possibility of a springtime writers/actors guild strike out in Hollywood.

"Be it. Don't Buy it." That's Richard Edelman's current mantra, and it refers to the idea that companies need to BE a good reality, rather than PURCHASING the appearance of a good reality. In his keynote session he spoke of the need to continuously learn, to push staff to "ski the hill hard", and acknowledged failures in the past (ahem Wal-Mart)...