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The Future of Photo Sharing with Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett and Zi8 Review

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:23:32 +0000

We caught up with Jeffrey Hayzlett at the 140 character conference held at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. The way of photo sharing today is "Allowing people to be able to connect in different ways" says Jeffrey. Being able to snap a picture these days has been easier then ever. Even folks that do not own a camera or video camera themselves, do own a phone which now is pretty standard to have a camera on them that do one or the other or even both. Being able to share those photos has become even easier with services like Tweetphoto, Twitpic, etc. instantly giving you the ability to share those photos online.

We also take a look at the Kodak Zi8 below and give you some product features and a few pro's and con's about the device.

For those of you who don't know Jeffrey Hayzlett here is a little background:

Prior to joining Kodak, he led a private business development and public relations firm specializing in the technology and visual communications industries. He also held senior management positions in strategic business development and marketing at several companies, including Cenveo, Webprint and Colorbus, Inc., and served in staff positions in the United States Senate and House of Representatives. (Read More about Jeffrey Here)

Checkout our interview with Jeffrey and find out where he believes photo sharing is going and what Billy Bush Tweets to Jeffrey Hayzlett:

A few Product features and other things I wanted to point out about using the Kodak Zi8 while we were at the 140conf:

Overall it is a solid device. The added external microphone jack is what does it for me. Being able to plug a microphone has always been a big issue for me with these pocket-sized handheld HD devices. Yes they are all very great but sound quality is a huge issue when you are trying to get an awesome interview and at least make it presentable. There are a lot of issues people are willing to put up with when watching a video but audio quality is not one of them. Low light is an issue for the Zi8. With plenty of light the Zi8 works fantastic and I can live with that since we usually carry a lighting kit with us. But those planning on shooting at night might not find this the best method to do so, unless you have some sort of lighting with you. You can buy the Zi8 for $179 Retail or get it right now through amazon for $159 here:

Kodak Zi8 Features:

5MP, 1/2.5-inch CMOS imaging sensor
6.3mm fixed focus lens (f/2.8), 35mm equivalents:61 mm (1080p), 46 mm (720p/60 fps, 720p, WVGA), 42 mm (still)
4x Digital Zoom
Full 1080p HD video capture
SD/SDHC support up to 32GB
External microphone jack
Built-in Image Stabilization
2.5-inch LCD screen
128MB internal memory
Normal and Macro focusing modes
H.264 (MOV) video with AAC LC audio
Built-in Microphone
Rechargeable Li-Ion Battery
5.3MP still image capture
USB 2.0 built in
Video Editing Software
1/4-inch standard tripod mount

In the Box:

KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera
KODAK Li-Ion Rechargeable Digital Camera Battery KLIC-7004
Adapter and cable for battery charging
HDMI and AV cables
Wrist strap
ARCSOFT MEDIA IMPRESSION Software for Kodak (PC only)

Regator: Finding Quality Blogs So You Don't Have To

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:24:24 +0000

Hand-picked blogs representing tremendous different areas of content. With over 3 million blogs articles from over 500 categories. Also, Finding quality blogs can be a bit tricky when there are about 60 million online blogs to look through. In comes Regator. Regator looks for and chooses the best blogs and organizes them for you and makes them really easy for you to locate. Now that they have recently launched an iPhone app (which is free) you have all the power of Regator in your hand. On top of that you are also going to be able to share your content through the app to Twitter, Facebook, and email.

When you first open the app your placed in the popular news section. Something I thought was cool is it was a mix of a little bit of everything, technology, celebrity, sports, etc. You can get specific and just see what area you are really interested in. I myself click on the technology section but like to have the "All Topics" selected when I first open it up. Never know when Miley Cyrus might get back on twitter!

We interviewed Kimberly Turner Editorial Director at Regator during BlogWorld Expo 2009:

You can also checkout their very well put together video on everything they have to offer:

The app is available for free on the iTunes store.

BuzzVoice: Listen To Your Favorite News And Blogs

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:14:56 +0000

It's always great to catch-up with start-ups we have interviewed in the past. Seeing their progress and how much they have changed in one year is pretty amazing. So it was a pleasure to catch-up with BuzzVoice (formally Pimp My News) and to see where they have taken their product. The name isn't the only thing to change from BuzzVoice. BuzzVoice now gives you more options and more sources to choose from. You can now choose from over 1,400+ new sites and weblogs, see a story's original text, as well as any video or images that go along with it.

One of my personal favorite features of the app is the daily podcast. It mashes together your 10 top favorite news feeds into a 10min newscast. You can expand that by going "Pro" and get a 30min version with a monthly $4 subscription fee (Take it for free 7 day Trial Run). Another feature that they added is "BuzzRadio". What BuzzRadio does is allows you to select a topic station of your liking and listen to the most recent top stories from their network of sources. It is like a Pandora for web news.

As of right now BuzzVoice is offering their iPhone/iPod touch service for half price at $2. You can get BuzzVoice through the iTunes app store here:

Checkout our interview with John Atkinson from BlogWorld Expo 09:

Tweetphoto: One Of The Fastest Growing Twitter Photo Sharing Sites On The Web

enrique@techzulu.com (Enrique Gutierrez) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:58:35 +0000

The booth for San Diego based Tweetphoto was a happening spot at the 140 Characters Conference. Joined by 140conf speaker and Tweetphoto Co-founder, Rodney Rumford (@rumford) and CEO, Dan Caulfield; the Tweetphoto team was front and center, next to the Kodak booth, to spread the word about their engaging Twitter-centric photo sharing service. They even had a few moments to chat it up with TechZulu’s Amanda Coolong:

Tweetphoto is an extensible photo sharing platform, that allows you to send photos via mobile or email to Twitter and Facebook. The service is free to use and focuses on creating the best possible user-experience among the applications developed around the Twitter Application Programming Interface (API).

Tweetphoto is aiming to change the way people socially share, discover and interact with photos across multiple social networks in a way that feels natural and engaging. They’ve recently been added to TweetDeck, a vastly popular AIR application for Twitter, as well as UberTwitter, a twitter Blackberry app. They also have a Tweetphoto app available on iTunes for the iPhone.

checkout their phenomenal growth:

Envolve: Enabling Meaningful Conversation All Over The Web

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:41:35 +0000

Envolve is a very early stage start-up company based out of San Francisco with a goal to enable meaningful conversation all over the web in real-time. They do this by providing websites with a Facebook style chat system that is enabled with a small line of javascript embedded into the web-page. This gives a website a small widget on the bottom right hand corner of the page that you can enable and disable. The widget provides you with the ability to interact with other people that are currently on a website and also interact with the administrators by using a flagging system. The flagging system works like this: all new users are marked in black, registered in green, and administrators in red.

Here at TechZulu we've seen a few companies like this popping up all over. Before we covered a TC50 company by the name of Stribe (click here to read story) and meebo has there own version known as the meebo bar. Each claims to be better then the other because you can't have multiple bars on your web-page. Well you could but that would just look silly.

Like I stated before they are in very early stage mode and I hope to see great things to come out of envolve. you can give it a test drive here or you can sign-up to become one of their beta testers at their website.

We interviewed James Tamplin Co-Founder of Envolve at BlogWorld Expo 09. Listen to the story of how they began and where they plan on taking Envolve in the future:

MedApps: Making Healthcare Simple

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:04:55 +0000

There are tons of healthcare products being developed for your mobile devices but MedApps feels that they are being developed for people that don't need them. What they have created is a dedicated device that requires no interaction on the patients' part making it totally automatic. Which I agree with, how man 70 or 80 year olds do you see walking around with an iPhone, HTC Touch Pro, Blackberry etc. That's why the jitterbug was invented right? My grandmother does not even own a mobile phone but she has the internet. Simple and to the point is MedApps strategy.

MedApps is trying to bring the technology to those who need them and provide up to date data to the care givers of patients. We interviewed Walter Balfour of MedApps during CTIA who gives us a preview of the healthPAL:

Where's Waldo Panel: Finding Social Influencer's & Decreasing Your Costs Live This Thursday

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:50:18 +0000

We will be live streaming this Thursday 7-9pm PST (click here to watch live) from BlankSpaces. ZexSports and PacSun are putting an amazing panel together to discuss the value of key social influencer's, where they are on your social network, and how targeting these potential brand evangelists will have a positive influence on your social media network and ROI. This Panel has gotten extreme and sold out! The venue has been upgraded to BlankSpaces to accommodate and even give a few people a chance to attend if you were not able to before (click here to sign-up). And if you still can't make it we got you covered with the live stream :)

Here is the line-up:

Moderated By:

Denise Garciano
community.pacsun.com

Denise Garciano has led PacSun in discovering who is talking about their brand online, who their customers are, and how to genuinely reach out and engage with friends and fans. As their Social Media Manager, she has developed and established a Community for PacSun, and continues to put forth initiatives and strategies that provide a better experience both online and in stores.

Confirmed Panelists Include:

Jonathan Rosen
luckyny.com

Jon, i.e. The International Man of Advertising, developed his success at award-winning traditional agencies such at Leagas/London, Fallon/NY, Wieden/Amsterdam and Publicis MOJO/Sydney on global brands such as: Nike, Adidas, Diesel, Powerade, Gor-tex and Coke. He began directing & Lucky Viral Branded Content was born. Lucky is a hybrid – half agency/half production company that writes, directs and produces viral films and branded content.

Cameron Olthius
5ones.com

Cameron Olthuis is an Internet Marketer and Entrepreneur that owns several Internet Companies. His specialty combines social media with search engine marketing to build large media audiences on the web. He tries to work as little as possible and in his free time enjoys surfing, skiing, and adventure travel.

Scott Tilton
loopd.com

Scott grew up racing motocross, BMX and mountain bikes. In 2001, he co-founded SponsorHouse.com, the leading online sponsorship site for action sports. In 2007, he expanded the concept , becoming CEO and launching Loop’d Network, which now has a global audience of 500,000 action sports athletes and enthusiasts and a successful social media and eCommerce model embraced by 400 brands.

Emily Goligoski
Federatedmedia.net

Emily Goligoski is a Strategic Programs Manager with online publishing company Federated Media’s and writes about arts, culture and design innovation . After studying journalism at Northwestern University, she was as an interactive producer for the advertising agency Venables Bell & Partners and worked as a digital strategist for Ogilvy PR.

Jonathan Nafarrete
JonathanNafarrete.com

Jonathan Nafarrete is an emerging photographer and social media consultant. He specializes in fashion, reportage, and portrait photography. When he is not staring at Twitter or out shooting, he loves just being out on the road. He forms part of the Fiesta Movement, an innovative social media initiative in which 100 young trendsetters test drive and live with a European-spec Ford Fiesta for six months, traveling as agents and relating their experiences through social networks.

Greg Cargill
bigMETHOD.com

Prior to starting bigMETHOD in 2008, his professional career focused on developing awareness for celebrities, brands, and products through the internet & strategic partnerships. Beginning as an intern in Interscope Records New Media Department in 2000, Greg spent 8 years at the center of the new music industry - working up through the new media departments of IGA and Virgin/Immortal to become the New Media Director Suretone Records & finally Custard Records. His time spent was part of a living education in online consumer engagement and served as the foundation for Greg's contribution in the creation of bigMETHOD.

Get All Your Mobile Application Needs With GetJar

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:13:46 +0000

No matter what phone you may own GetJar has the applications you are looking for. GetJar is a huge multi-platform mobile application store with the ability to automatically detect what type of phone you are using and provide you with the specific applications that fit your phone. Making downloads a hell of a lot easier for those outside the iPhone realm and no longer needing to remember what phone model or number you are using when trying to find applications.

GetJar not only helps out the end user but the developer as well. GetJar gives the developers who sign up with them a way to manage all their applications from the GetJar Developer Site. From there they can track their performance, downloads, and much more.

Get Jar has some pretty big plans for the future. Ilja Laurs Founder of GetJar told us that they plan on rolling out a new version of their mobile application store. It will look similar to the iTunes App Store and be accessible through an icon located on mobile phones' homesreens. They are working on a few partnerships with mobile carriers so when they launch the new store it will already be in the hands of consumers.

We interviewed Ilja during the Pepcom MobileFocus event during CTIA. Find out how he changed the focus of GetJar to what they are today:

#140Conf The Good and Improvements For Next Time Around

jacob.nahin@gmail.com (Jacob Nahin) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:06:29 +0000

Image by krynsky via Flickr

#140Conf Los Angeles was fantastic, full of familiar faces. Still, no event is perfect, and with that, here are a some things we loved and a some things we thought could use some improvement:

Good: The meeting room on the first floor was the hub of mingling. If you wanted to meet new people or chat with familiar faces, this was where you did it.

Try This: No free food? Sure, the complimentary soda, tea and coffee were appreciated, but while we had press passes, we feel that those who shelled out greenbacks for admission deserved at least a bagel or croissant.

Good: Each panel crammed in a freighter-load of intelligent information given the time each was allotted.

Try This: Power Point presentations are a cornerstone of conferences and keynotes, but at 8 o’clock in the morning, flow charts and bar graphs are a bit much for a crowd that spent the previous night partying. We thought some of the most effective presentations had no PowerPoint at all. If Power Point is a must, stick to pictures.

Good: The meeting room was packed with power plugs and the Kodak Theater had free WiFi.

Try This: The Orchestra/Mezzanine had very few plugs compared to the number of laptops and cell phones glowing in the audience. Thank God for the Squid (Efren's surge protector). Next time, equip the room with a few surge protectors. Also, the Wifi was terrible. Once again, the number of devices using the Internet overwhelmed the building’s capabilities. For a conference based around Twitter, fewer people were able to Tweet than otherwise could have.

Good: For any big event, organization is important, and can make or break a conference. The organizers of #140conf did a stellar job and delivered a fast paced event.

Try This: The Oscar music seemed a little out of place. Pick a different song.

Still, despite these suggestions, 140 Characters, Los Angeles was full of several nuggets of wisdom, and, from an organizational standpoint, compares well to other events. As future conferences come up, we hope that the #140 Characters crew will take these suggestions for what they are, improvements that will enhance the experience for all attendees.

Free Pass And Hotel Stay To Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

efrentoscano@techzulu.com (Efren Toscano) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:56:02 +0000

Calling all mobile App developers! Mobile application analytics provider Motally is giving aways a pass and free hotel stay to the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. They are calling their contest "Trackappalooza", and all you have to do to enter is insert their API intro your mobile application and your done.

Straight from the Source:

"Motally is giving away over $15,000 and a free pass to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (we're even throwing in the hotel stay). It's easy to enter your app: just sign up, add the Motally API, and you could win!

Grand Prize: A Pass to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona plus Hotel

Grand prize to be judged by representatives of Motally, Blue Run Ventures, and other industry experts

2nd Place: Fifteen Prizes of $1,000 each

A total of $5,000 for each platform
- Android
- BlackBerry® smartphone
- iPhone
$1,000 per Metric
- Most New Users
- Highest Average Session Time
- Highest Average Sessions per User
- Users in the Highest Number of Countries
- Highest Total Actions Tracked
Contestants are eligible to win multiple prizes (for multiple metrics and multiple platforms)

3rd Place: $500 drawing

One app will be chosen at random to win $500

To enter, sign up for a Motally account and integrate the Motally API into your applications for tracking by December 15, 2009.

Prizes will be announced February 2, 2010.

Winning apps will be listed on Motally's site."

Even if you already use an analytics software you like there is no harm in trying out a new one for a bit. Afterall you can find yourself in Barcelona ;)