Using software like Boinx’s istopmotion, you can have your own animation studio.

Handmade and live animation is all the rage. Get some for your own channel.

Seven Billion Channels seem too distant? Check out this.

As my good friend Brian Newman has been pointing out recently on his blog, advertising is in big trouble. Interuptive advertising in particular. The hard numbers are coming in. Read his post before watching the video below.

One of the best takes on this tectonic plate-shift is by Seth Godin . The “TV Industrial Complex’s Un-doing” is the theme. The banks and the auto-makers can’t be having all the fun…

Start at the 2:50 mark for the meat:

I was sitting in my auto yesterday waiting for my oldest boy to finish play rehersal.

A few high schoolers were out on the open campus smoking their cigarettes.

My stream of conciousness from that point forward went something like this:

Shame, these guys are starting a habit dozens of my associates are trying to quit, after years of trying. Smoking has been such a legacy habit, I mean look at the smoke lighter built into my car. Smoking is hard-wired into this car. There is an ash tray, and lighters in each armrest. Why did they build three lighters into the basic design of this car (toyota), can’t the back seat passengers ask for a light from the front seat?  Why not one lighter in front and just three ash trays? I haven’t used that lighter for anything but a cell phone charger. Funny how technology changes. Using cigarette lighters as chargers for various and sundry electronics is probably why they are still built into cars. Fewer of us smoke, and smoking is discouraged on airplanes, restaurants, and theaters, but here in the car it not only serves a private toke,  but all these gizmos need charging too, so leave the design as it was. I guess I charge my iPod too. Above the cigarette lighter is a cassette player and above it is the CD. I have used them less that the cigarette lighter. Why? Because I listen to podcasts and music on the iPod when I drive. When I don’t listen to the iPod, I have the radio on. Radio is the oldest technology in this car! Save maybe the tires.

So there I sat, finding myself amongst three hard-wired-into-my-car legacy media systems; tape, CD, and Radio.

I wonder what other uses the cassette player and the CD might have beyond their legacy uses? I haven’t used either one in two years, at least.

Just use the cigarette lighter to keep my iTunes on tap. Funny…

When you are deciding about whether to buy the 1080p or the 720p flat screen TV for your home theater, pause a moment to remember Philo T. Farnsworth.

As a young electrician, he imagined lines, or rows, of electrons forming an image while plowing potato fields in Idaho in the 1920’s. Driving back and forth amongst the potatoes, the young inventor imagined  the rows being tightly presented, so Seurat-like images could be transmitted to screens.

This led to the invention of the first purely electronic television and the issues of screen resolution. We are just now fullfilling Philo prophecy that one day, scanlines can be so tightly assembled they’d look like, “pictures hanging on the wall”.

Them is some “High Def” taters.

This talk by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of HTML, URL’s and by default, the internet as we know it, is a must see. Here is the Philo T. of our day. He didn’t invent the internet, but he increased it’s resolution beyond anything the ARPANET offered.

It will take sometime, precisely 16:51, but will bring you up to speed on what may be in store for our Billion Channeled world.

(Notice how little Berners-Lee looks like Al Gore…)

What do you get when you mix financial and visual literacy?

See Here:

You are a mom. You consider yourself high-tech, or at least getting that way fast. You have children who are digital natives. You are an immigrant in their world.

Which technologies are you most likely to use in their digital world?

Email? Probably a given. Facebook? A lot more this year than last. These get you to other moms and their kids.

How about Instant Messaging or Texting?

Do you have a blog? Can you explain what RSS means? Do you browse the web on your mobile device? Do you video or audio podcast?

Which of the afore mentioned channels do you use if you are a mom in your 20’s? 30’s? 40’s?

RazorFish’s latest publication gives crisp data to these and many other questions. The landscape is changing as high-tech moms increasingly reduce the gap between their channels and the channels of their children. One sample chart is worth a look: (can’t see the small numbers?… click on the chart to go to the report)

Don’t have a blog, a podcast, or any digital channel of any kind to showcase your expertise to the world?

Get with it. Today, even Rats have a digital tribe.

http://www.herorat.org/

Thanks Paula.

I would argue for mini-depression-proofness in Social Media because we in the Tech world have been through a depression recently. Between March 2000 and let’s say Summer 2002, 30% unemployment and vanishing tech sector companies were the norm. Unlike real estate and financial industries, Tech has a very near-term memory of devastation. Many, like me, still have scars from those days. We are already the drepession era grandparents of Web 1.0, and we have taken precautions. We start on a shoestring budget, we pay as we go, we keep the lavishness in check until the check clears.

Before the Great Depression, over 250 car manufactuers existed in the U.S. alone. After the depression, the only automobile companies left were assembly-line-based manufacturers. Economies of scale demanded a car be made cheaply enough for a struggling depression era family to afford one.

The Social Media explosion of the past 3 years has produced a pre-depression level variety of shall we say “mobile” services, as pictured above.

Striking a pessimistic pose, let us say this current economic crisis ends up being a “mini-depression” as Bill Gross recently opined here.

What will the Social Media, or digital landscape look like after a real shake out? Will the boutique shops make it, unlike their depression era automobile counterparts? When the tide goes out, how many are swimming naked, as Buffett would say?

As long as a few services like WordPress, Typepad, Youtube, Google, and Yahoo survive, the rest of us Tucker-like companies will too. We don’t have an industrial revolution in progress as in the 1930’s. We have an information-based digital revolution in place. And we do not need assembly line efficiencies to survive. We need useful networks, useful digital literacies, and useful content to survive. It is still a Blue Ocean for many. Can you be connective, useful, relevant, engaging, and digital in your niche?  (accidental acronym C.U.R.E.D)

If yes, you’ll survive. If no, see this.

One could argue the plethora of Social Media companies grew out of the need to network with each other for support through the 2000-2003 Tech era’s difficult financial times, and the need to not be reliant on one source of funding, and the need to be independent of single location-based work forces or local economies. This is why many will survive the current devastating downturn, at least the ones started by Web. 1.0 grandparents. (anyone over 30)

Actually, it is time to step things up a bit. Great environment in which innovate.

Just a thought.