Last winter when I went to the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, I saw a technology that seemed impressive, but didn’t seem necessarily useful.

It was the Sling Box, and it basically lets you watch movies on your TiVo from anywhere in the world if you’re connected to the Internet. Back then I saw the technology I thought that it was executed very well and look pretty cool, but I couldn’t envision the practical use.

Sometimes you just have to let a technology sink in within your brain and give yourself time to envision a use for it. That’s kind of way it is for me with the Sling Box. More and more of my mobile computing is un-tethering myself or my office and for my home and I’m starting to see the uses of potentially having a connection to movies or news recordings on my TiVo.

In part this is probably due to the fact that I do a lot of work with news and media need to stay in touch with things. It definitely has something to do with the fact that I have a WiFi office on a fishing dock and also because I use an air card quite a bit these days as well.

Back in January I couldn’t envision watching TV for my computer very often. But now it seems like every time I turn around I think of a new use for such technology and it makes they consider or reconsider other technologies that I have rolled my eyes at in the past because I wasn’t quite wise enough to figure out a good use for it.

I haven’t purchased a Sling Box yet, so I’m not going to be putting it to the test probably before the summers out, but I have seen that the prices are coming down rapidly. If you take a look at the Sling Box on buy.com its featured in their weekly sale, you can see that the price is coming in under $200 now down from almost double that price not so long ago.

And consumer-electronics terms, that is a good sign that the product is popular with people and that they were buying enough of the product so that the overall cost of manufacturing can come down and the subsequent cost of sales of the product can come down as well.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see this product offered as part of a basic cable lineup package sometime next summer. Dish network already offers its as an accessory, but is not a standard item yet maybe someday and maybe then I’ll pick it up.

If I haven’t purchased at all ready.

This week I picked up a Verizon Wireless USB Air Card.  Its a little thing about the size of two ipod Nano’s stacked on top of each other and it has a retractable antenna for those occasions when an extra 2 inches matters.

I picked up the card on Saturday in preparation for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Super Bowl of consumer electronics and maybe tech in general.  Now, there are parts of the show that are covered with WiFi, but it never fails that something makes the WiFi go screwy when I need it the most, so I’m using this in part to get things done with NO excuses. 

My first impressions are positive overall, even though when I tried to connect at the airport after going through security, it took about 8 (plugins/tries) and about 5 minutes before XP would recognized/find new hardware.  Once that tedious Microsoft problem was out of the way, I was off to the  races and writing, working and enjoying the productivity.

The thing cost $0 after a $50 rebate and will cost $59.99 per month on my gynormous wireless plan, which will almost put me at a $300 per month wireless bill. 

Now it is almost twice as cheap to pay the early cancellation fee as it is to continue with Verizon!

In addition to being a wireless card, its also a memory card with a micro sd card built in.

After attending CES for several years, you would think that I would have a better handle on the planning side of this event.  I have exhibited and attended as a sales person and even attended as a journalist.  I have managed the setup and design of booths and contracts with the CEA, but every year I always seem to neglect my travel arrangements.

This year is no different and as I approach Christmas I still have a plan for where I’m going, when I’m going, or which hotels in Vegas or even to be on the top of my list this year.

I have no problems in setting up meetings and ensuring that I have a productive stay at CES, but I just can’t seem to bring out the inner travel agent in myself.  I typically book most of my stuff through Expedia, or these days and even sometimes go directly to the hotels themselves to book a room.

But I never feel like I got the best deal, and all of the other arrangements are much easier and a much more natural fit for my personality. 

We can do a lot of things on the Internet these days, but I suspect that some of us despite all of the ala carte do-it-yourself type of options that are out there, you might be better off in the hands of capable professionals that specialize in the aspects of life that we have severe weaknesses.  For me, that’s booking travel arrangements and phone menus. 

If you’re going to CES this year, please drop me a line and I’d love to come to meet up with you somewhere at the show.

Quest to Build an Entertainment Empire

I am on a quest to build an entertainment empire.  The world of entertainment cannot fulfill the demand for programming on TV.  Most every network rely significantly on reality TV and the quality of entertainment has dropped dramatically. 

Consumers meanwhile have developed more sophisticated tastes and demand better entertainment.  So I’m working to grow and entertainment empire that can fulfill that demand with hundreds of thousands of writers and actors and comedians and musicians.

2 Point 4 Children Case Study

I’d like to give you an example of a great British televeision program that was taken off the air after running for about eight years.  The show was called 2Point4 children and it aired from about 1991 until 1999.

I know of the show because a good friend of mine married one of the actresses from the show.  Her name now is Kim Dodge and she goes by the nickname K T Dodge and even has a blog of the same name. 

K T Dodge is Kim Benson from 2Point4 Children

On the show, 2Point4 Children she was known as Kim Benson and worked as a British Comedy actress for many years playing on Grange Hill in the late 70’s and working on many more shows since.

Today, many TV shows end before their time, due to the fact that the writers often times extinguish their effort on working the same material.  I believe that with an army of many more writers from all around the world, shows could enjoy a much longer life span and characters such as Kim Benson’s Christine could even be expanded out more to get people interested in the different angles and twists that character development could take when a cadre of writers really puts their best foot forward.

Kim Benson as Christine – A Character that Could have Been Developed More

Kim Benson appeared as Christine starting in season 2 and running through the end of 2Point4 Children, but those appearances like many other actors and actresses on the show could have been grown out even more, developing a number of twists and plot opportunities that a typical linear television program has been limited to in the past.

That linear thinking surrounding television programs is rapidly going to come to an end as more people demand more television programing of high quality.  Developing television character universes following characters like Kim Benson’s Christine and others from 2Point4 Children will enable multiple groups of writers to work on the same universe of related shows, co-mingling ideas and plot opportunities and greatly expanding the potential of a television franchise.

Example of 2 Point 4 Children Excerpt (doesn’t included Kim Benson’s Character)

Every year I tend to go to recycle where I tend to travel to trade shows more often. I usually end up getting burned out on it by the end of the cycle and take several months off of the trade shows. Next week I’m going to attempt the podcast and new media Expo in Ontario California. Shortly after that the EcomExpo kicks off in a completely virtual tradeshow setting, which is one of my favorites. Then I’ll be heading to Blog World and PostieCon in Las Vegas.

That will probably be the craziest tradeshow of the year I suspect as bloggers turn out from all over the world on Las Vegas. Many bloggers have been making a lot of money online over the last 12 months and turning all those bloggers lose in Las Vegas with spare cash in their pockets is sure to make for an interesting trade show.

After that the next tradeshow that will come up for me is CES in January. This is the equivalent of a trip to Mecca for consumer electronics geeks. The only thing as once you’ve seen God, you’ve seen God. This particular show does go a weary from time to time especially during seasons when there are no significant innovations being displayed. Right now there is very little buzz about the next greatest big consumer electronics gadget and I suspect that CES may be a bit of a dud this year.

In addition to visiting the trade shows this year, I’m also going to be traveling from college to college working on recruiting thousands of new students to join into Softduit’s Pro blogger internship. So while I’m in Las Vegas in attending the trade shows their November and January, and probably had down the road and visit some of the local colleges. And I’m sure I’ll probably wince at the latest Las Vegas Real Estate developments in the billions of dollars being spent to turn a sandbox into a playground.

No one has figured out this conundrum yet, but everyone is chasing after the new holy grail of Internet 2.0 Advertising, the contextually placed video advertisement.

What is it?

Basically, a computer program that would be able to view a video online, and Figure out what that video is about and then place a relevant advertisement in, below, before, after or in the middle of that video automatically.

No one has figured it out, not even those supposed genious types at Google.  They just don’t make PhD’s the way they used to  . . .

I received an invitation to join a new advertising program for publishers and advertisers via email this week from Tumri called AdPods.  The new service offers a unique twist on the concept of offering up one of those little boxes with rotating product ads.

Instead of offering a box that only provides ads to products from one site like chiquita or Amazon or a dozen others, AdPod offers ads from multiple retailers from Amazon to Target to Best Buy and more.

Basically, they consolidate lots of different offers into one box.  For a publisher or blogger that is good as it utilizes your web real estate much more efficiently and effectively.

Everything else about the program seems to be pretty much standard as these types of programs go.

I came across an excellent resource providing information on 100 different online resources and tools for freelancers.

I wanted to internalize the information in a way that I could rapidly work with in multiple settings in the future if I ever needed to find the right tool for the job. So of course I mindmapped out the tools listed, plus I added in the tools suggested in the comments and I added a bunch of my own.

Now I have a great starting point for the future whenever I need to build up the list or find something I need quickly. I linked back to the original article from my MindMap Central topic and I created sub maps for each of the categories identified. This kept each category of items viewable at a single glance.

I’ve provided snapshots of these maps below. For more details about each of the tools I suggest a quick visit over to the site yourself as it really does have a great deal of information.

In the meantime, I did this experiment in part to internalize the info as I mentioned, but also in part to find a more rapid way of mindmapping this type of information from primary sources on the web. I hope to find more efficient ways to achieve this goal in the future.

The LinkyLoveArmy.com is launching a beta program this week.  Today, they released several insights into their Internet marketing 2.0 of strategies.  They are forming an army of bloggers to leverage the numbers of bloggers and blog campaigns in the direction and shape reminiscent of a wedge formation.

You lazy this type of structure they hope to penetrate advertising campaigns and in particular keyword searches that generates large amounts of traffic such that the bloggers can directly market to business-to-business and business-to-customer groups.

Up until this point in time, those Internet marketing 2.0 firms have offered up a bit of a free-for-all where advertisers come to purchase reviews with contextual links inside of his and bloggers respond acting as individuals in the marketplace offering up individual benefits.  The LinkyLoveArmy hopes to organize those bloggers with a much more focused strategic objective and at the same time harness a new revenue model for bloggers yielding a higher return on effort.

Here is a short video that they are offering on their website today:

In an age where content is king and fresh content is quean, TV networks appear to be learning a lesson from internet business models.

In the online world many content producers writers and publishers often times rework the same concept topic or article over and over and over again with a fresh spin, writing and re-writing a topic several times. Writers will then appear on TV shows as talking heads to spin up their spin articles.

It’s very common for a writer to write an article for newspaper and then have that same article editorialized in the magazine and later spun into a book. Then to push the book they make the rounds on the talk show and news circuit.

Now TV is taking this concept of spinning the same idea over and over again into something called the “Newpeat” (New + Repeat ergo what’s old is new). The NewPeat is not a TV show that is re-run. Instead it’s a TV show that is remixed slightly to become new content again.

NBC is kicking this off with shows that would have been reruns of the hit show the office. They are taking half hour episodes of the office and re-editing them. Then they put in footage that’s never been aired to come up with a new storyline. NBC will then broadcast these NewPeats to audiences that saw the originals and are looking for someone fresh content.

The challenge that networks are facing are three fold.

1. Many of the TV shows on air today do not fare well as reruns. They have audience drop off rates of 40%. Compare that to Seinfeld several years ago that experience drop-off rates of 10%.

The new Pete has the potential to keep that audience present as they offer a new twist on show.

The concept is not entirely new to TV. Over the years many ‘best of’ shows remixed rerun highlights as flashbacks for character and a number of other things. The difference here is that they’re editing in previously unseen footage that was shot for these shows.

Challenge for Artists and Screen Actors Guild

The concept of a new Pete is likely to create some difficulties or challenges possibly even some legal challenges as actors and producers in the networks fight over just compensation for a individual shows. Typically the stars of a television show will for each show, as opposed to being paid for the hours spent filming an episode. So what happens when a one episodes worth of filming gets turned into two or three or four episodes? Do the actors get paid for the original episodes or do they get paid a the episode rate for the remixed show or some other formula?

2. The second dynamic involved in the situation is the Internet. Many television shows are showing up online in minutes after they are originally broadcast. People no longer have to wait for reruns to rerun

3. People have hundreds of other unique viewing options on any given night.