As I was watching Adam Lambert sing at Nokia Theater last night, it was not surprising to see the sea of lights from all of the mobile phone display’s  from the back of the hall.  Everybody seemed to be videotaping the show.  Now with the latest phones with the 5M ~15M Pixel Camera’s, controlling what is being recorded in high-quality to share is just going to get more and more difficult.  An Artist like Adam that puts on an incredible show is so tempting to record and share with your friends from your new iPhone 4.0. So what do Content Companies do?

1) I did notice that the overall event was being shot in High-Definition Video… So release a DVD for sale?  How long before that gets uploaded and shared? Sell other merchandise instead and make all content FREE?

2) Prevent people from bringing their mobile phones into events?  It reminds me of the lost umbrella room at Tokyo station, all lined up in order of date and train for pick-up? Will clubs need to have honeycomb shelves holding 10′s of thousands of phones like a cloak room?

3) DRM? This never seemed to work.

4) Better policing by the likes of Google on highly-trafficked User-Generated sites like YouTube?  Well this did not work for Viacom….. both sides have valid points, but with all the ads wrapped around the content, these seems to be some justice is sharing that revenue with the content owners and publishers in some form.

Google has loads of technology, that if a company like Viacom can prove to Google that the content was their content, should they not be paid a share of the revenue that Google is generating from it?   I do understand the reasoning and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the rights of the end-users to share, but for a company that is making profits via other means such as advertising, etc… surrounding the content, there must be a better mechanism to create a win-win for the original rights holders depending how the rights are set-up.

…. or I guess it all goes such that the publishing industry is just going to have to live with FREE, and all money comes from live events?  All Artists now need to become an Adam Lambert, Metallica, U2 or Lady Gaga to draw a crowd and profit in Events.  So Sell Viacom stock and Buy AEG or the local T-Shirt Merchandising company that has just gone public ? Is this the answer?

**************************************

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on June 24, 2010 – 8:02am.

San Francisco - Google (NASD: GOOG) was handed a major legal victory on Wednesday, as a federal judge granted summary judgment to the company in the $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit filed against YouTube in 2007 by Viacom (NYSE: VIA). U.S. District Court Judge Louis L. Stanton agreed with Google’s argument that YouTube is a service provider as defined under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and is therefore entitled to “safe harbor” — such that it cannot be held liable for copyright infringements committed by its users.

Judge Stanton noted that, while Google may have been aware of copyrighted content uploaded to its site, it has no way of knowing whether the uploads were authorized.

The judge said that the “burden is on the owner to identify infringement,” and gave his seal of approval to the current system for dealing with the issue, whereby copyright owners must notify service providers like YouTube and request that works uploaded without their permission be taken down.

“The present case shows that the D.M.C.A. notification regime works efficiently: when Viacom over a period of months accumulated some 100,000 videos and then sent a mass take-down notice on February 2, 2007, by the next business day YouTube had removed virtually all of them,” Judge Stanton wrote.

Viacom intends to appeal the ruling.

“We believe that this ruling by the lower court is fundamentally flawed and contrary to the language of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the intent of Congress, and the views of the Supreme Court as expressed in its most recent decisions,” the company said in a statement.

“We intend to seek to have these issues before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as soon as possible. After years of delay, this decision gives us the opportunity to have the Appellate Court address these critical issues on an accelerated basis.”

“This is an important victory not just for us, but also for the billions of people around the world who use the web to communicate and share experiences with each other,” Google vide president and general counsel Kent Walker wrote on the company’s blog.

“We’re excited about this decision and look forward to renewing our focus on supporting the incredible variety of ideas and expression that billions of people post and watch on YouTube every day around the world.”

In a recent post by the Harvard Business Review with a statistic released by a global McKinsey survey, Management, R&D, and strategy account for the largest projected global talent shortfalls, which differ significantly from nation to nation. In China, for instance, 28% of respondents say their companies have the greatest difficulty recruiting management talent, compared with only 13% in India, where managers are much more concerned about finding R&D specialists.

I have been working quite closely with R&D teams in India and overall it has been very satisfying. It does however, take a lot of time with the negotiations back and forth, but if you find the right team, I highly recommend it.

Here are some more information from the Survey.

This post will include my overall coverage of the event.

( Starting at 1pm PST)

The Big Apple goes internet crazy next week with over 150 events scheduled and on the other coast Apple launches its iPhone 4.0 at WWDC.   This is an exciting week if you have Apple in your name… ADObjects, Inc will be covering Internet Week.

INTERNET TAKES OVER NEW YORK CITY:  MORE THAN 150

EVENTS SLATED FOR INTERNET WEEK NEW YORK, JUNE 7-14, 2010

Third Annual Festival Celebrates

NYC’s Leadership in Digital Culture and Commerce

www.internetweekny.com

New York, NY (June 2, 2010) – The third annual Internet Week New York will host over 150 events between June 7-14 at the festival’s first-ever headquarters at Chelsea’s Metropolitan Pavilion and at dozens of locations throughout the City.

A complete schedule, released by organizers today, reflects both the rise of New York City as a new tech capital and the festival’s emergence as a top annual gathering for Internet leaders. The diverse slate of programming for Internet Week New York, presented by Yahoo!, includes everything from panels, conferences, and educational events to art installations, live performances and parties.

Serving as a hub for festival-goers, the first-ever Internet Week New York headquarters will showcase technology demos, art exhibits, panel discussions, product launches, lounge spaces, and a host of other activities.  The headquarters is hosted by presenting sponsor Yahoo! and official sponsors HP, Pepsico, Microsoft Expression Studio, IAC, Southwest Airlines and Aquent.

The headquarters will also host premiere conference events, including the Yahoo! Provoke Summit with a keynote by Ze Frank and IAB’s Innovation Days with AoL’s Tim Armstrong. Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, Josh & Chuck of HowStuffWorks, and other Internet personalities will also present live shows and conversations throughout the week.

Internet Week New York headquarters passes are available for purchase ($10 for Monday through Thursday access) at http://www.internetweekny.com/attend/expo-pass.

Beyond the headquarters, organizations such Time Warner, IAC, The Onion, mediabistro, and Guest of a Guest, will present events at venues across the city, including The Times Center, NYU, CUNY, Galapagos Arts Space, the Jane Hotel Ballroom and The Knitting Factory.

The diverse roster of events includes NY Tech Meetup, the week’s largest public event where over 800 people will see demos from New York’s hottest start-ups, The Webutante Ball, a “prom” for New York’s tech media scene, an exhibition of Facebook portraits at the Art Director’s Club, conferences for food and pet bloggers, geek speed dating, live dance music created by a Nintendo Game Boy, and a crash course in mastering Twitter.  The week will culminate with The 14^th Annual Webby Awards, a star-studded gala honoring the Internet’s best and brightest at Cipriani Wall Street on June 14^th.

“There is a great sense of excitement, optimism, and energy in the New York community right now and that’s reflected in the line-up for this year’s Internet Week New York,” said David-Michel Davies, chairman, Internet Week New York. “The festival is an amazing opportunity to meet the innovators behind NYC’s industry resurgence, share ideas, and find out where the Internet might be taking us next.”

“Yahoo! is proud to be the presenting sponsor of Internet Week New York,” said Mollie Spilman, SVP, Global B2B Marketing at Yahoo!. “There is a tremendous amount of positive momentum in the industry and this week of events is an important showcase of all the progress, innovation and creativity taking place in the market.”

Highlights of the festival include:

Special Events and Parties

• Blip.tv Five Year Anniversary Party – A celebration of NYC-based startup blip.tv’s fifth anniversary. (June 8, IWNY Headquarters)

• IAC’s dumbdumb Launch Celebration — IAC and CollegeHumor celebrate the launch of DumbDumb, the new digital-driven production company co-created by Will Arnett and Jason Bateman in partnership with Ben Silverman’s Electus. (June 10, IAC Headquarters)

• The Webby Awards – Concluding Internet Week New York, the star-studded awards gala hosted by B.J. Novak of The Office will feature winners like Roger Ebert, Amy Poehler, OK Go, and Lisa Kudrow delivering the Webbys’ famous five-word speeches. (June 14, Cipriani Wall Street, Invite Only)

• The Webutante Ball – A celebration of the New York tech scene, including the crowning of the Webutante King and Queen. (June 8, Marquee)

• Third Annual Internet Week NY Opening Reception– The week kicks off with cocktails in the first-ever festival headquarters at Metropolitan Pavilion. (June 7, IWNY HQ)

Industry Conferences and Panels

• Future of Media: 2010 – Arianna Huffington and Dan Abrams are among the panelists debating how the Internet and other digital media are transforming the traditional media landscape. (June 8, New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute)

• GCA Savvian Digital Media Summit — Leading companies and private equity firms in the industry will converge to engage in thought-provoking dialogue. (June 8, Westin Times Square)

• HP@IWNY Kick-Off Event– HP helps commence Internet Week New York festivities with a news conference followed by a conversation, moderated by Mashable and featuring some of the Web’s most innovative minds, about how companies are harnessing the power of the Internet. (June 7, IWNY HQ)

• IAB Innovation Days @ Internet Week - AoL CEO Tim Armstrong and Lloyd Braun of BermanBraun are among the speakers at a two-day conference exploring branded content and the future of TV and online video. (June 8 & 9, IWNY HQ)

• Mashable Media Summit 2010 –A one-day conference focusing on the impact of social media on the news industry, big brands and advertisers, featuring presentations by College Humor’s Ricky Van Veen and The Onion’s Baratunde Thurston. (June 8, The Times Center)

• Twtrcon – Focused entirely on the business use of Twitter, this one-day conference features remarks by Martha Stewart and foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley. (June 15, New York Hilton)

• Yahoo! Provoke Summit – Ze Frank keynotes this event featuring creatives and developers exploring how new innovations and technology are evolving the digital media environment. (June 7, IWNY HQ)

Social Media

• The Art of Social Media- The Art Directors Club and The Social Media Society host an exhibition of Facebook Portraits by Matt Held, including cocktails and live music. (June 8, The Art Directors Club)

• Mastering Twitter Seminar – Experts offer tips on how to jumpstart your social media presence and reveal new ways individuals and organizations are capitalizing on Twitter. (June 8, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism)

• #Promise – The #Promise will explore how social & mobile media are empowering corporate citizenship to create social & environmental change. (June 10, IWNY HQ).

• TechMunch – A one-day conference for food bloggers. (June 10, Roger Smith Hotel)

• Social Media Roundtable on Pets– Kristyn Pomranz of I Can Haz Cheezburger and Jason Scott, the owner of Sockington  (a cat with over 1.5 million Twitter followers) discuss the intersection of pets and social media. (June 9, The Center)

Start Ups & Technology

• Microsoft Expressions Studio 4 Launch- Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft and author of the book, “Sketching User Experiences,” unveils Microsoft Expressions Studio 4, design tools for the Web, the desktop, mobile devices, and Silverlight. (June 7, IWNY HQ)

• NY Tech Meetup – NY Tech Meetup will be the largest event open to the public during Internet Week New York. 860 technologists will converge to see demos from some of the area’s hottest, most interesting startups. (June 8, NYU Skirball Center)

• Startup Weekend- Local developers, marketers, designers, and aspiring entrepreneurs gather to launch new business ventures in just one weekend. (June 11 – 13, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University)

• VC and Angel Financing Bootcamp- Entrepreneurs seeking advice on venture capital and angel financing hear from leaders in the field about how to best position their company for a successful liquidity event. (June 9, NYU Stern School of Business)

Arts and Leisure

• Area Mondays– The Onion and The A.V. Club kick-off of a monthly music series with Josh and Chuck from HowStuffWorks and live performances from Anamanaguchi and Home Video. (June 7, The Knitting Factory)

• Gaming & The Arts – The Arts, Culture and Technology Meetup and NY Gaming Meetup explore the intersection of art and games. A performance by musician Luke Silas, who uses a pair of Game Boys to create dance music, caps the night. (June 8, Galapagos Art Space)

• Kickball for Silicon Alley- A kickball tournament for New York City-based startups. (June 11, Chelsea Park)

• Nerd Nite NYC– Nerds convene for presentations on such geeky topics as how to turn Nintendo’s portable video game console into an all-purpose gadget and the history and future of downloading music. The night kicks off with a speed dating for geeks. (June 11, Galapagos Art Space)

• Pop Everything– Bloggers like The Fug Girls, JustJared, and The Superficial go head-to-head in pop culture trivia at this party hosted by BUZZMEDIA and Ustream. (June 9, Pop Burger Midtown)

• Social Climbing – New York City Web companies and start-ups compete in an indoor climbing competition. (June 9, Brooklyn Boulders)

The full schedule of Internet Week New York 2010 events can be found at http://www.internetweekny.com.

The festival is organized by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences (IADAS), in cooperation with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

Internet Week New York Sponsors include: Yahoo!, Pepsico, HP, Microsoft Expression Studio, IAC, Corbis Images, Aquent, Southwest Airlines, .CO, Rackspace Hosting, AoL, and Motorola.

ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL ACADEMY OF DIGITAL ARTS & SCIENCES

The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences was founded in 1998 to help drive the creative, technical, and professional progress of the Internet and evolving forms of interactive media. An international organization, The Academy selects the Nominees and Winners for The Webby Awards, the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. The Academy is an intellectually diverse organization that includes members such as musicians Beck and David Bowie, Internet inventor Vint Cerf, political columnist Arianna Huffington, “The Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, R/GA Founder and Chairman Robert Greenberg. More information at www.iadas.net.

ABOUT THE MAYOR’S OFFICE OF FILM, THEATRE AND BROADCASTING

The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting is the one-stop shop for all production needs in New York City, providing free permits, free public locations and free police assistance. The agency markets NYC as a prime location, provides premiere customer service to production companies and facilitates production throughout the five boroughs. Whether production companies are shooting a feature film, a commercial, a television show, or digital content, the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting serves as an invaluable resource to the New York City entertainment production industry.

Maybe this will be outdated thinking after WWDC next week where Apple unveils iPhone 4.0 and the opportunity for iPhone Native Apps, but for some reason I do not so….

As Smartphone penetration continues to grow and grow, developers are going nuts with all the different platforms.  Google has thrown more and more fuel in the fire by creating a platform of fragmentation with all the different Android Versions.

Was this on purpose? Well after the Google I/O conference it really feels like that is the plan….. Create as much confusion as possible so that everybody reverts back to the Web and HTML5

Now look at Apple.  Fighting like hell with Adobe over Flash. Making it even more difficult for developers to decide which way to go?  Should I build a application in Flash and not see the distribution or should I go with the iPhone App.  Well Google threw another wrench in the game by saying that they are fully supportive of Flash and let this platform thrive on Android;  “We are Open, Apple isn’t” .

So where does leave developers as the full HTML5 integration is still not on all devices browsers yet, but it is pretty clear that if you build a great version of a mobile site instead of an app in HTML5 you get all the benefits of the web and also a great user experience.   Look at what Google has done with Gmail ( one of their Flagship applications besides Search).

There are many tools for web developers to create mobile sites.  It is clear in my mind the ones that bring a consistent web experience to mobile that incorporate application development tools and enablers to replace making a separate application is where the market it going. Many of the mobile site builder companies lost focus by trying to become everything  ( incorporating ad servers, creating separate content management systems) but what a great mobile site builder company needs to do is to just create tools for developers that gives then the best integration of HTML5 and mobile specific enablers and applications ( such as maps, etc….).

What I find interesting is that Adobe is driving HTML5 more then anybody else, and with the lastest release of Dreamweaver CS5. Designers can simultaneously create one-website with multiple views.  What ever happened to the Openscreen Project? Just make it HTML5!

I have been watching the trends of Twitter Applications, Browsers and Platforms over the last couple of months and this type of segmentation and convergence had emerged.

First of all, what has excited me and what I have been waiting for over the last year has been an application that handles automatic translation.

Given the fact that I speak both Japanese and English and have business in both Asia and here in North America, I have wanted to build a consistent cross-border  following on twitter.  I found that with the existing Twitter platform, the only way to do this is with two-accounts.  With my existing account, when I tweet in Japanese, I loose followers.  When I tweet in English, I have a hard time growing Japanese followers.

I mentioned this concept to the Digital Garage folks last February when I was in Japan, but they all laughed.  About a year ago during a Breakfast in Vancouver, Jeff Pulver ( Founder of 140conf.com, serial entrepreneur and VOIP visionary)  and I had a lot of fun with this by cutting segments from Google translate into twitter to go back and forth between English and Twitter.  Even when Jeff started to Tweet in Hebrew, he saw how this took conversations to the next level and really touched individuals on the other end.  I can not stop thinking of the smile on his face when he said ” This is amazing”. So this is really the state of now when we see the auto-translation of different languages for different countries or multi-lingual translations.

When I saw the announcement in April by Hootsuite I felt like they were really listening to the customer; as there must had been lots others like me with the same predicament.  In my mind this is a big move by the Hootsuite folks in their attempt  at this and even though we have not yet seen this capability on Facebook,  MARK MY WORDS….. This is going to be one of the most important features for them with their 500M users in the coming months.  If they do not buy Hootsuite, then they will do this timeselves by the end of the year.

Given the fact I would like to Tweet in both English and Japanese simultaneously,  I really thought this would be a feature that Twitter would release to the market.  Given that Google is so strong in language tools, and Google has a terrific product ( Google Translate), I was pretty sure we would see this from our friends at Google first. Even thought this would get quickly integrated into Google Buzz so that it scaled.   English language schools  have grown from the cottage industry base to a core part of  Japanese society.  With the growth of iPhone and Android devices cross-border,  I am sure this type of feature is going to be more and more important.

What we have seen is that our friends in Vancouver ( Hootsuite) have really looked to market differentiation with these translation tools.  It only makes sense as Vancouver is one of those multilingual communities, and even here in Canada most people have adopted the two-language way ( English, French).

This is what the Hootsuite folks have to say:

Need more ways to socialize? Seeking zen-like efficiency? Start by updating HootSuite for iPhone to clear your mind and make your social media experience more enjoyable. This update adds full localization in four languages to go along with the recently-released translation tools. Both are designed to help marketers, socializers, and internationalists understand the vibe about their brand, industry, and interests from all over the globe. Additionally, the release includes a kit full of new tools to help you stay on top of multiple social streams — and share the best parts with remarkable efficiency.  All the features are available in both the Lite (no-cost) and Full ($2.99 USD) versions of HootSuite for iPhone.

This may be a risky strategy for Hootsuite as unless they can get clients on both sides of the pond ( meaning that in order to really use the multilingual features, but send and received need a Hootsuite client) Twitter will just copy and improve on this. When Twitter does release its interfaces to support multilingual capabilities, where will this leave Hootsuite?

Secondly, when it comes to integration we are seeing many companies bring in all the different feeds into there Applications. Fring just announced with much success their Video-Call capability for mobile, Seesmic continues to be “Switzerland” with all of the different Feed integrations.  I have just been waiting for them to make the product opensource or open API’s… as we have started to see more of with Tweetdeck and the Buzz API.

So where does this leave us?  As Twitter sits in the middle of it all, it makes me wonder if Twitter has just become a proprietary TCP/IP-like bit pipe?   They made the move to build there user experiences by buying the Application company Atebits most recently, but they are in a  good position being in the middle.

The wildcard in this evolution in my mind is now the Browser.   So lastly, I must say that the convergence that starts to get interesting is now what Plug-ins and what enablers we start to see in the browser as it also has become a standalone application in its own right. Opera released its application for the iPhone and in weeks we have seen Millions of downloads.  They have developed a widget framework that has been adapted by several of the carriers now to promote services, application and advertising revenue from the Widgets.  JIL ( Joint Innovation Lab – Softbank, Verizon, China Mobile and Vodafone) have actively been starting to promote the cross border opportunities with widgets through there entire network of devices as a core driver for developers, but the fact still remains that over 50% of developers are now focued on iPhone Applications.

Opera has positioned themselves very nicely in this Application game and it is going to be interesting what the next big moves are?  Will Opera be aquired as part of the JV of JIL? Will Facebook buy Opera? or will we see the integration of Twitter and all these applications into Opera?  or will we see Opera buy Hootsuite?

The fact remains that in the Application space there is a lot of convergence going on.  What we have not heard much of these days for advanced integrated apps is Google.  They did have their flagship Google I/O conference several weeks back and it is exciting to see that they are really driving HTML5.  As HTML5 expands this gets very interesting from the standpoint of Application convergence.  Where will this all go with HTML5 ( See my next post)

Click here

I do not know what to say.  Today was another day of sadness…. over 1.5months have passed and there is no great plan to stop this disaster. The Gulf as we know it has now changed forever in my lifetime.   I do not see all of us engaged to go down and help clean this up? We all sit and just ignor this?

My Feeling.

1) Put all executives of BP in Jail.

2) Bring in the military or any means to get this thing stopped.

3) Bring the community to bear to clean this up!

I am prepared to head down to the coast to help clean this up…. it is amazing that it is so low profile in our minds.