“You don’t want your local newspaper to fail.”

Old News came about in 2009 after The Ann Arbor News announced that it would be shutting its doors after 174 years in the community.

Even after a broad understanding had been reached, that The Ann Arbor News wanted the archives digitized, and the Ann Arbor District Library wanted to digitize them, it still took 9 months to negotiate the particulars, Parker said.

Old News, in short, will make stories, photographs, negatives and clip files from The Ann Arbor News as well as a few non-defunct 19th century newspapers — The Ann Arbor Argus, the Argus-Democrat and the Ann Arbor Courier — available to the public through the AADL’s website. The bound volumes Old News will pull stories from date back to 1929. The library is looking for the community’s help in locating and digitizing earlier additions.

The “features” section of Old News spotlights historically important stories, such as John Norman Collins, the Co-Ed Killer, and stories that community members ask for, such as Ann Arbor’s flood of June, 1968.

Crowdsourcing is a big part of the project. Old News has a feature called a Photomic Describorator, which is a fun way of saying it allows readers to tag photos in the collection. The more the same tag is assigned by different people to the same photo, the stronger the tag will become. Also, any of the 92,000 people or institutions that the paper made clip files for are already searchable on the website. The library will take some direction from the public in terms of which items to digitize when. The higher the demand, the higher the priority.

Parker also announced that the Ann Arbor Chronicle, founded and owned by Mary Morgan and Dave Askins, would also be contributing its archives to the library.

After Old News was introduced, Frank Boles, director of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University since 1991, and a former staffer at the U-M Bentley Historical Library, gave a lecture on the newspaper business in Michigan from the early 1800s through the present, skewing toward the 19th century.

Boles noted that people often view newspapers as public institutions but explained that they are in fact businesses and have always operated as businesses do, at the behest and in the interests of their owners.

Eli Neiburger, Associate Director of IT and production at the library, said that the News’ owners would retain ownership of all physical materials related to Old News, though if they requested them back, the library wouldn’t be required to turn anything over that hadn’t been digitized. The library will hold the digital copyright.

The library already makes old editions of The Ann Arbor News, and the other papers, available via microfilm. But there are a limited number of machines available. Old News takes this access several steps further by making the archives searchable and available to anyone with an internet connection, not just the people with the time to get to the library.

Beyond the already-published newspapers, Neiburger said, Old News will also make available a treasure trove of previously-unpublished photographs. Then, as new, photographers typically take many more photos on their assignments than the paper has space for. So it can be said that Old News, in a sense, will allow us all to see Ann Arbor in a way it hasn’t been seen before.

The collection is being updated around the clock. During Friday night’s reception, some 54,000 articles had been uploaded. By press time, nearly 58,000 had, and the number is always growing.

If there is one glaring omission from Old News it is the photographs involving University of Michigan sports, especially basketball and football, which Neiburger said weren’t included in the arrangement. Also, because The Ann Arbor News didn’t own the rights to the wire stories and the advertisements it ran, Old News can’t use them either. Neiburger said that the library is especially interested in tracking down pre-1923 bound volumes because copyright rules would allow it to scan in the entire paper, not just the original content.

No money changed hands in the contract, Neiburger said, though the News’ owners did pay for the bound volumes to be transported.

In terms of staffing, the equivalent of two, full-time workers (four part-time workers) have been on the project for a year, Neiburger said, and their involvement won’t taper off now. Neiburger said that the AADL views launch events as the start, not the end. He said that if there were a pie chart of how much work hadn’t been completed and how much hadn’t, the work that has been done would appear as a thin sliver.

“This isn’t a 5, 10-year project, this is a 50-year project,” Neiburger said.

The joint venture will be in charge of handling all marketing, sales and distribution operations for the combined Brazilian DVD and Blu-ray output from the two studios, according to Variety. Jefferson Pugsley, ex-VP and MD of Paramount Home Entertainment Brazil, will head the venture.

The rationale for the partnership is based on the sheer territorial size of the South American nation, which poses significant logistics challenges for companies looking to establish a national goods distribution network.

The country’s booming economy continues to grow a middle class keener to purchase and own content, than just rent it, analysts observe.

The fact that Brazil will be hosting two of the next three global sporting events – the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics – can only accelerate the already sharp demand for LCD, plasma and LED TVs. This, in turn, should increase demand for high-quality video content.

The Adventures of Tin Tin will be one of the first titles distributed by the new Fox/Sony Pictures Brazilian joint venture.

The main problem until now: You can have different songs on different computers and devices, and they never seem to be where you want them.

With iCloud, a faraway bank of computer servers known as the cloud remembers what you’ve bought on iTunes and pushes them to you wirelessly on all your Apple devices. The promise is pretty sweet — especially with the basic service free.

In about a week of tests, using both high-speed Wi-Fi connections and regular 3G cellular networks, the system did just what Apple’s Internet services boss Eddy Cue said it would: “It just works.”

Songs you purchased on a Windows version of iTunes showed up on an iPhone 4 in about 15 seconds using AT&T’s cellular network. When songs appeared as incomplete downloads, I could still start playing them as the downloading continued.

Free book samples popped in just as fast as songs, but TV shows required both Wi-Fi access and manually tapping the cloud button beside each episode. Plus, the TV show service had a glitch.

Movies won’t work in the cloud system at all — at least not yet, thanks to Hollywood’s convoluted system of rights for premium pay TV partners such as HBO.

If you don’t have the new iPhone, the 4S, you’ll need to install the latest mobile operating system, iOS 5, a free update that will require hooking up the device to a computer. You need an iPad, an iPhone 3GS or 4 or an iPod Touch released in September 2009 or later. You’ll also have to update the computer’s iTunes software to 10.5, which is also free. Mobile systems before iOS 5 will still allow you to see your purchases and download them wirelessly; it just won’t happen automatically.

Still, iCloud is not a complete wireless solution.

You’ve likely acquired music somewhere other than iTunes, either online at places such as Amazon.com — especially when Amazon has discounts — or from CDs you bought or borrowed.

To cover that likelihood, Apple Inc. has iTunes Match, a $25-a-year service that aims to match every song on your computer against the 20 million it has in the cloud. It will upload what it can’t match from your computer. Then you’ll have access to the entire collection wirelessly on demand — at least when you have a Wi-Fi or cellular connection. The service, which works only with music, will be available in the U.S. at the end of October.

ITunes Match makes sense for a few reasons. For one thing, most songs on people’s iPhones, iPods and iPads didn’t come from iTunes. Second, lots of people have more songs on their computer than they can fit on their iPhones or iPads. And iTunes Match offers storage for up to 25,000 songs, which I’ve calculated is about the same as 100 gigabytes of memory. That’s a lot more than the 5 GB that iCloud gives you for free.  iTunes Match will also upgrade some of your iffy, low-res song files to iTunes quality if there’s a match.

You can get away with paying for iTunes Match just once, but you may have to pay instead for cloud storage, which can wind up costing you more. Apple charges $20 a year for 10 GB, $40 for 20 GB and $100 for 50 GB of storage space.

Whether iTunes Match will prove as easy to use as iCloud is unclear.

Specifically several shots of the big-budget tentpole were done with the iPhone 4, in fact some them actually made it into the recent teaser trailer.

“The beauty of photography or cinema is that you make every choice based on the content at hand. On The Avengers, I did a couple of shots on the iPhone and they are in the movie. In fact, they are in the trailer! I understand that sometimes there is no choice and you have to go for the cheapest option, but if you are limited for choice, you can still make poignant decisions that will effect the look of the film” McGarvey told IFTN.

Sadly the cinematographer didn’t says which shots were specifically crafted using the smart phone, but the quality of the footage in the trailer itself never demonstrated any visible shift in quality.

It’s easy to blame e-commerce and Amazon.com’s deep discounting for the continuing slow death of physical media. But they’re quickly becoming the only place to buy the stuff.

This past spring I scoured the few last stores that still sold CDs for the new album from Robbie Robertson, How to Become Clairvoyant, to no avail. I then received an offer from Amazon to download the entire album digitally for $3.99, and of course, I took them up on it even though I was prepared to pay at retail $15 or so for a CD.

Four months after the album was released, Robertson makes available is a $300 limited-edition collectors’ set, 2500 of them signed by the musician himself. The set includes the CD, a bonus disc with 10 addi-tional tracks, three 180-gram vinyl LPs (containing the 22 tracks on the two CDs), and a DVD containing three multi-track files from the album.

Also included is a deluxe art book containing more than 50 pages of art, photos and notes from the album, eight tarot cards exclusively designed for this package, a set of five lithographs – each set individually numbered (three exclusive images by Richard Prince, one by Anton Corbijn and a 2011 Robbie Robertson Commemorative Canadian government stamp) and a ‘premium digital download’ of How to Become Clairvoyant. I’ll pass, but I guess an uber-fan with money to spare might buy this package online. Good luck finding it at retail.

Herein lies the paradox. The overhead of massive storefronts and deep CD and DVD catalogues, while fun to kill a few hours browsing, apparently is too steep these days for chains to offer the ‘long tail’ of choices.

But it is possible for a packaged media retail environment to succeed, as evidenced by Amoeba Records, which since 1990 has called itself ‘The World’s Largest Independent Record Store’, encompassing three stores that also offer plenty of hard-to-find DVDs and even pre-recorded VHS videocassettes in Hollywood, San Francisco and Berkeley, California, each stocking more than 100,000 items.

What I’d like to see is some sort of old media-meets-new media hybrid that really brings something to the table, or more accurately tablet. For example, my favourite book of 2009 was goth-rocker Nick Cave’s novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, whose enhanced edition was tailor-made for all Apple iOS devices. An app was optimised for the iPhone and iPad. It includes the full ebook, the unabridged audiobook synchronised to the text, read by the author with an original soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and 11 videos of Cave reading from the novel. That’s what I call multimedia, or now ‘transmedia’ – trying to keep up the new lingo.

According to Wikipedia, ‘transmedia storytelling’ is a technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats, recognised for its use by mass media to develop media franchises. It was the type of thing that CD-ROM started doing in the 1990s, and DVD-ROM never really delivered en masse, unfortunately, as more rich content was posted on the Internet. It probably would be the type of intel-ligent product that looters would decide not to steal.

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]]> http://digrevolution.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/san-francisco-cd-and-dvd-printing/feed/ 0 digrevolution http://digrevolution.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/video-web-syndication/ http://digrevolution.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/video-web-syndication/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:23:06 +0000 digrevolution http://digrevolution.wordpress.com/?p=79 ]]> Don’t miss audience share by only posting on YouTube. Digital Revolution will upload your videos to up to 200 viral and user generated sharing sites including YouTube.

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Materials for the iPad, which went on sale Apr. 3, include a touchscreen display that costs $95 and a $26.80 processor designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung Electronics, according to El Segundo (Calif.)-based iSuppli.

Apple announced the iPad, which users can hold in their hands for reading and watching videos, on Jan. 27. ISuppli’s analysis means that the components of the lowest-priced iPad, which includes 16 GB of memory, constitute 52% of its $499 retail price, on par with other Apple products including the iPhone 3GS.

A midpriced 32 GB version of the iPad that sells for $599 contains $289.10 worth of materials. A high-end 64 GB version, which retails for $699, contains components that cost $348.10, according to iSuppli.

Much of the iPad’s component costs went toward making the device appealing to use, says iSuppli principal analyst Andrew Rassweiler, who supervised the “teardown” analysis of the product. More than 40% of the iPad’s costs are devoted to powering its touchscreen display and other components of the computer’s user interface—”what you see with your eyes and what you feel with your fingers,” he says. The distinctive aluminum casing on the back of the device contributed about $10.50 to the cost of materials.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison declined to comment on iSuppli’s findings.

More Silicon Chips Than Expected

Research firms conduct so-called teardown analysis of consumer electronics to determine component prices and vendors, and to estimate profit margins. The estimates don’t include costs for intangible items such as software development, advertising, patent licensing, or shipping. In February, iSuppli had estimated that the least expensive iPad would carry a $219.35 cost of materials.

Once it took one apart, iSuppli found more silicon chips than it had expected powering interactions with the iPad’s 9.7-inch screen. Apple uses three chips to control the iPad’s touchscreen, for example. “Because of the sheer scale of this device, we’re seeing more here than we expected to,” says Rassweiler.

Over time, Apple may have leeway to combine many of the iPad’s electronic components, or integrate them into the display, Rassweiler says. “We’ll see a lot less silicon required to make them work,” he says.

The most expensive component in the iPad is its touch-sensitive, custom-manufactured screen. South Korea-based LG Display (LPL), Samsung, and Japan’s Epson supply the liquid-crystal display (LCD), according to iSuppli. Taiwan-based Wintek makes the glass overlay that detects the touch of a user’s fingertips. The screen’s special design makes it about twice as expensive as the screens used in comparably sized netbook computers, according to Rassweiler.

LG spokesman John Taylor did not return a call seeking comment. Wintek spokesman James Chen could not immediately be reached for comment. An Epson spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. Chris Goodhart, a spokeswoman for Samsung, declined to comment.

Flash Memory Chips

Flash memory chips were also a significant portion of the iPad’s costs. The chips, obtained from various suppliers including Samsung, account for $29.50 in costs on the 16 GB model, $59 on the 32 GB model, and $118 on the 64 GB model, according to Rassweiler.

Apple designed the main chip in the iPad, known as the A4. South Korean chipmaker Samsung Electronics built the chip for Apple and also supplied a memory chip attached to it for a combined cost of $26.80, a difference of $9.80 over the prior estimate of $17. “We believe that this chip was designed by P.A. Semi,” Rassweiler says, referring to the chip design company Apple acquired in 2008 for $278 million.

Other chips in the iPad also proved more costly and more numerous than iSuppli had originally estimated. Broadcom (BRCM) supplied an $8.05 chip that handles Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless data connections, and two additional chips used to control the touchscreen, which cost a combined $3.70. Texas Instruments (TXN) supplied a $1.80 chip used to help control the iPad’s touchscreen. Ciruss Logic (CRUS) supplied an audio chip that costs $1.20.

Broadcom spokesman Bill Blanning did not return messages seeking comment. Kimberly Morgan, a spokeswoman for Texas Instruments, declined to comment. Bill Schnell, a spokesman for Cirrus Logic, also declined to comment