Nautanki

I'm movin' out

Hey everyone-

I want you to know that I'm going to phase out of this blog now.

The focus is now on enabling video content owners help themselves, rather than helping video content owners directly.

We're just not in a position to be doing that right now, although we're working closely with some folks who are about to do exactly that...helping short film-makers distribute and monetize their content on the web. I can't talk about details quite yet, but I'll be sure to keep you posted.

My new blog is over at: http://blog.marcellus.tv.
The RSS feed for it is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/marcellusweblog.

Hope to see you on the other side!

The iPhone Commercial

Golden silence

It's been a silent month or so for me.

And I'm going to be awfully quiet for another few weeks, actually, while we work on getting Marcellus live.

We might actually end up with a different blog that'll feed content into this one, but who knows...I'll keep you guys posted.

In the meantime, thank you for the music.

Bye Bye Bill

Just wanted to say "bye bye" to Bill Gates.

An undeniable force behind the evolution of personal computing, Bill Gates is now going to focus exclusively on his charitable foundation- a somewhat strange transition for a man who was considered a mean, unforgiving ruthless business machine by many.

At any rate, best wishes to Bill in his new expeditions, and if his past is anything to go by, he is about to make a big difference to humanity.

Go in peace, George Carlin

Here's to the man who provided inspirational cynicism, wit and guffaws to a lot of us for a very long time.






Go in peace, George.

Sooo...where are we?

Hello,

As I've mentioned before, we had a terrific beta period, with some awesome results.

We've also received a tremendous amount of feedback for WeareIndia.TV, a lot of which we will include when we get out of beta. The last month has been hectic, to say the least, in terms of all the capabilities we've been adding to the platform.

So here's the low-down:

- WeareIndia.TV will be back online on Nov. 14, 2008.

- New features include:

• Publishing management: content owners will be able to upload videos directly, view statistics, revenue reports, et al.)
  
• Community features : the WAI community will allow users to create their own profile pages, create their online portfolio, upload music/photo samples, submit screenplays, find talent, and a lot else)
• Channel WAI on Facebook: a 24/7 video channel on Facebook, bringing the most popular videos on WeareIndia.TV, to the Facebook platform, opening up a range of distribution possibilities.
  
• A new player: it's going to look beautiful, work flawlessly(just like our old one), and have a number of in-built features that will definitely interest you.
  

Thank you all for your support so far. It's turning out to be one helluva ride, so until we're ready to rock and roll next time around, do check back in with us on here, and we'll keep telling you stories of shoes and ships and sealing wax. ;)

-preetam

"Think Different"

Apple's "Think Different commercial".

Goes like this:
Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as the crazy ones, We see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
Are the ones who do.

(cross-post) How to pick up a VC

Courtesy Guy Kawasaki and Sun Microsystems:

Many entrepreneurs ask me what is the best way to open a pitch to potential investors. I'll answer that question at the end of this posting, but first let me tell you the ten worst opening lines that you can use:

1. You say: "I'm bright and ambitious." Investor thinks: "That's a relief because I usually invest in stupid and lazy people."
   
2. You say: "I'm a blue sky thinker." Investor thinks: "You have no business model, and you don't know how to ship."
   
3. You say: "I don't know much about your firm, but I thought I'd contact you anyway." Investor thinks: "You're a lazy idiot--why are you wasting my time?"
   
4. You say: "I love to think of new ways to solve problems." Investor thinks: "Is this a high-school science fair?"
   
5. You say: "I have lots of great ideas, but I have trouble figuring out which one to try. Let me tell you about a couple." Investor thinks: "I want to know which idea you're going to kill yourself trying to make successful, not which ideas have crossed your idle mind."
   
6. You say: "I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur." Investor thinks: "I've always wanted to be a professional golfer. So what if you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?"
   
7. You say: "I'm sure you are aware of the growing need for security. Web 2.0, Open Source, whatever." Investor thinks: "If you're sure I'm aware, why are you telling me you're sure I'm aware."
   
8. You say: "If you sign an NDA, I'll tell you my idea." Investor thinks: "You are clueless. How can you not know that venture capitalists don't sign NDAs?"
   
9. You say: "The last time I contacted you, I..." Investor thinks: "I'm going to fire my secretary for putting this clown on my calendar again."
   
10. You say: "My goal is to build a world-class company." Investor thinks: "How about you ship and sell the first copy before we talk about world-class anything?"
    

Now you know what not to say. Here's what you should say:

"This is what my company does..."

It's that simple. What you're trying to do is get potential investors to fantasize about how your product or service will make a boatload of money. They can't fantasize if they don't know what you do. And they don't want to be your friend, mother, or psychiatrist until they understand what you do, so cut the crap and explain what you do.

2.0

I could write a long post about this.

But brevity doesn't top my short list of talents.
So please go take a look at Umair Haque's post: "Obama and the Rise of Asymmetrical Competition"

Thank you.

Blah blah blah

No, seriously...blahoo, blahsoft, blahoogle..it's all happening.

For shits and giggles...

Find out how much your blog is worth. (Look to the right).

Disclaimers:
1) No f-ing idea what the algorithm/logic is, so please don't ask.
2) No, this blog isn't for sale(not unless you do a 10x or something on the asking rate)
3) Asking rate > look to the right.

Enjoy. Grab it for your own blog, yeah?

YouTube announces video annotations

Reported first on NewTeeVee, and more details about it here.
I'm not 200% convinced of the way they've gone about implementing it, but it's a start.

If you are a theorist interest in learning more about such deep, dark plots by GooTube, go ahead and download Marc Davis and Ryan Shaw's paper titled "Towards Emergent Representations for Video"

Enjoy. Annotate.

Tata Comm goes live with CDN (powered by BitGravity)

ContentSutra just reported this.

I think this is hot, hot news. India is demanding more online video, and that is a VERY good thing for India and for online video.

Stay tuned for more on this.

Is it all just a little bit of history repeating?

Does anyone remember the time streaming media was really hot a decade ago? Pretty much around the dot-com bust?

There were some interesting things going on back then(EyeWonder, DestinyMedia doing player-less streaming), Microsoft's Web TV (ahem..), and streaming media was touted being the next hot spot to be in.
Of course, that didn't happen.
Infrastructure(hosting and delivery) was expensive, the market wasn't well defined, and coupled with the dot-com situation, the streaming media proposition became unattractive.

YouTube changed that. Fast forward four years from the bust, and it seemed like the whole world wanted to publish video on the Internet. In 2007, the bandwidth consumed by YouTube alone equalled the total amount of bandwidth consumed on the Internet in 2000. Apples and oranges..maybe, but significant, nonetheless.

Then the "democracy" thing happened: MyTube, YourTube, OurTube, HerTube, HisTube, WeTube, ThisTube, ThatTube, TheTube, ATube, TheirTube....everybody wanted to participate in online video. It was a large enough opportunity, and a number of worthy video sharing websites cropped up.
"Internet TV" was everywhere. White-labels got into the action, with Brightcove, Move Networks, Maven, and FeedRoom(to name a few) starting to serve content studios and corporate publishers looking to go online with their video. Internet TV needed to get turned on, and content publishers needed to turn on their Internet TV channels.

And they did. A few twists and turns aside, a noticeable percentage of media publishers are now serving their content on the Internet, in the dream of enhancing brand value, generating a new source of revenue, and most importantly- reach more people.

I daresay they have realized their dreams. Brands are even being created now because of Internet video(a la LonelyGirl15), new revenue streams are opening up(more so for niche sites like GlamMedia), and 79 million users watched videos on YouTube in Jan 2008 alone.

----

Good news all around, right?

Wrong.

Internet video is a shaky area to be in. Because the business of Internet video is unsteady. In the most simplistic of analogies, the site with the largest volume of video content on the Internet, and the highest number of eyeballs on the Internet, is unable to turn profitable.
Into its fifth year now, and charging upwards of $100K/day for an ad on its homepage, YouTube exemplifies everything that is wrong with online video: there is no business model.

The business of Internet video is not quite the same as the business of the Internet. Delivering a quality Internet video service is a lot more intensive than delivering a good web service (a la Twitter, Disqus...)
The challenges are a-plenty:
- technological barriers (transcoding, content management)
- user experience issues (keeping users engaged, encouraging social distribution)
- infrastructure (storage, content delivery)
- monetization (ads? PPV? premium? fremium? subscriptions?)
- rights management(protection, regulation, revenue distribution, visibility)

These are all critical issues that come back to haunt content owners, one way or another. The sharpest ones of the lot end up building some of these components, sourcing the others from vendors, and piecing it all together in building up their online video platforms. Others do a half-ass job, building up a business strategy around their technical limitations. Yet others push too hard on a few aspects of their platform, in order to compensate for the deficiencies.
And of course, some are still waiting to get on the Internet video bandwagon.

Is it any wonder that online video is now being classified as a not-so-opportune market, yet again? No one's created a highly profitable online video venture yet. Not YouTube in the online publishing world, not Brightcove in the enabling world(granted, they arrived only two years ago..), and certainly not Revver in the social distribution world(Revver's as dead as.....dead).

So...? Is it all just a little bit of history repeating?

I am the producer, the transaction, and the customer....

Seems like that's the mantra at Microsoft Corp. now with the announcement that they will pay users to use Live Search.

This has "yuck" written all over it.

At its best, it's an experiment in futility.
At its worst, it's a self-inflicted public embarrassment.

I wonder who authorized this...

The Bootstrappers' Guide to Strapping Up

Okay, if you're anything like us(small company, self-funded from concept to execution to first customer), then you will probably find these little tidbits useful. We found(and still find) them to work great, and they really help us simplify our life....perhaps you'll find them useful.

1) Managing your projects/tasks and collaborating effectively: We try to use free software as much as possible, but 37 Signal's BaseCamp is very worth the $24/month. They also have a free version that gets you up and running quite easy, but when things get serious $24/month is peanuts.

2) CRM system: try SugarCRM. It's an open source CRM system, and is a free download from their website. Just copy the package over to your server and run the install script. Then on, it's a powerful customer relationship management tool. Try it to believe it.

3) Web site analytics: We've trying many stats programs, but the one we love most(it's easy to set up, reliable, with excellent visibility) is Google Analytics. Do yourself a favor and get it set up.

4) Site e-mail: We like separating out our E-Mail from our web services...can't have them running on the same server. So, instead of paying for a separate e-mail hosting service, we went with Google Apps. for Enterprises. We've had it for a year now, we can sync up with our e-mail clients, access e-mail on the web and on our mobile/Blackberry devices. Like everything Google, it's simplicity personified, and once you have it, there's no turning back. (note: we run the free account and we're doing just fine...).

5) PHP: I really don't know why people bother with .NET anymore. Anything .NET/MS SQL can do, PHP/MySQL can do much better. And a lot cheaper. And doesn't matter what they tell you, LAMP(Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) is one of the most secure and stable environments you could ever pull off.
The alternative is Windows-IIS-ASP-MS SQL......for a company that can't even get a client OS working right, I'm not sure the server OS is too reliable. ;)

6) Speaking of MySQL, here's the best database admin. software you could ever get into place: phpMyAdmin.

7) You need to do those conference calls, without using the 3-way calling service on your phone. We just started using FreeConference.com and are kicking ourselves for not doing this before.

8) Oh...if you run blogs and other services that have RSS feeds going, then you definitely need to be on FeedBurner. Manage all your feeds from one location, and a LOT more.

That's my list so far- I'll add on if I can think of more. Until then, good luck!

I rest my case...

This was waiting to happen- you could see it all over.

Riff is on a warpath...

.. because these guys just stole the name he was going to give his first-born.

At any rate, check out RiffLet.com
It's a great service that we've been talking about for many, many years here at Marcellus.

Congratulations to the RiffLet team...wish you luck in your venture(assuming Riff doesn't sue you first).

Open Letter to Steve Ballmer

Just jacked this from Riff's blog.....an open letter to Ballmer.

--

Dear Steve,

I am sure I caught you at a bad time… you must be on the phone with Carl, while you are texting Bill with "WTF dude?!?! Why are you selling?" But when you can please pay close attention to what I say, because I say it with love (I was the one that bought the only copy of Bad Boy Ballmer sold) and respect (I am the guy that sent you the uRock email). I believe that you've got it all wrong. You are fighting a battle that you don't need to fight, and you are losing a war that you need to win. You've been playing a lot of golf with the President? Oh wait, the President is not golfing any more… for respect! Hmmm, maybe I need to send him a letter too. But let's focus on you and MSFT for now:

I loved it when you took over from Bill. Always thought of you as the consumer guy… always believed that you will understand the edge a lot better than Bill did. Bill was the core strategy guy, so much so that MSFT's internal org structure was hub n spokes… and we all know he was super successful doing it his way. So when Billy said he was leaving MSFT to change the world (irony: Bill Gates is doing philanthropy like he did technology… from the core… Bill the edge needs you!!)handing over the company to his best bud – I got all excited.

And MSFT did undergo a transformation under you. Splitting the company up into 7 semi autonomous divisions was a bright idea! Microsoft.com got a make-over and started offering longer trials, with a focus on problem solving and customer service. Change was coming… but no it was Vista that came. Now don't get me wrong… it is a pretty okay OS… umm well correction it is a pretty OS. I used it for a while and then upgraded to XP. And boy you guys did a good job with XP!

I know you already know that the client-server model is becoming increasingly redundant, and with that MSFT is becoming irrelevant. Google is breathing down your neck and you sure must be feeling like throwing something right about now. But relax. You and MSFT do try and solve problems… but the way you them is wrong. And that is what makes the difference between profitability and sustainability. Here are a few suggestions:

• Open Windows up. No, no. Put that chair down and hear me out. I heard about you calling Linux communism (that comment must not have resonated quite the way you wanted in China). But that is the future dude… open platforms that networks will morph to best suit their needs and pump the value at the edge to the core. It is a different world now. It requires a different approach.
  

  
  

• Move from semi-autonomous divisions to independent divisions. Make your 7 divisions completely independent of each other. The cancer that is growing in the desktop systems should not spread to the Xbox… I love the Xbox. Do it before you get "sovietized."
  

  
  

• Get Umair Haque on the MSFT Board. He can be a little sensitive at times… but I am sure you understand.
  

  
  

• Promote the product strategist for Sharepoint. I think Sharepoint rocks!
  

  
  

• Buy Facebook before you buy Yahoo. And open Facebook up. If Mark is open to it, have him talk to the dude responsible for Sharepoint. You will find that they have a lot in common… and will learn from each other.
  

  
  

• If you do end up owning Yahoo, don't assimilate them. Learn, adopt, change and become more like them. Yahoo does a lot of things right… and human resources is one of them.
  

  
  

• Drop the People Ready campaign… people are ready. Knowledge workers are not a new phenomenon; they existed when Bill was drafting the first copy of Business at the Speed of Thought. How does People Enabled sound? =)
  

  
  

• Silverlight is hotm but it is a little dense for people like me. You better start talking about the problem it solves, rather than the value it creates.
  

  
  

• .NET – how about .NOT?!?! Please abandon.
  

  
  

Ok that is all for now. I should publish this before Vista conks out on me… j/k. Oh by the way – I love Office 2007!

Riff

PS: My Xbox 360 has the red ring of death? Who do I call?