The New York Television Festival, in partnership with Tilzy.TV and For Your Imagination present The Web TV Producers Toolbox series of panels as part of Internet Week in New York City on June 1st starting at 2pm at For Your Imagination in New York City. Co-moderated by Paul Kontonis , CEO of For Your Imagination and Jamison Tilsner of Tilzy.TV these panels will broken into three main parts: development of a web series, writing and production of the series, and distribution and promotion. The current slate of panelists includes  Craig Engler, SVP and GM of Sci-Fi Digital, Adam Eland, Executive Producer of CBS Interactive, Dan Goodman, President of MRC Digital, Jonathan Stern, Writer and Producer of Wainy Days and Children's Hospital, Nikol Hasler, Creator of Midwest Teen Sex Show and Gavin McGarry, Principal of Jumpwire Media. For more information and to register please visit the Internet Week NY web site.

From Streaming Media East, see Streaming Media East Content Production Panel post.

My dad emailed me a link to  search upstart Cuil, which I had come across before but never adopted.  It got me thinking about the Obama administration's antitrust hounds barking at GOOG, and now maybe a credible competitor might be important.  But the standard- for being a credible competitor- is really high, I think.

Google's dominance stops when it's not useful, or as fast, as competitors. I think it's doubtful they will lose on speed, but utility is a maybe. Whether the Wolfram Alpha product solves the same problems, or solves some other ones may also affect this determination. 

In the long run, I think Google knows that it's don't be Evil motto really translates into "Don't be useless." 

• it wouldn't be useful to force users to download Chrome in order to search Google or check their gmail
• it wouldn't be useful to prevent people from embedding Vimeo videos in their blogspot blogs
• Google Docs kills Microsoft Office by being Useful for group collaboration
• Even if Google buys twitter, if they make it less useful, they'll have a problem

If they stick to that, they're probably in good shape.  The DOJ may wonder: is Google's ubiquity anticompetitive?  I think for the bulk of its interaction with the world, Google is just a bunch of nice guys who offer a free utility, or maybe a phone.  For those few (relatively speaking) individuals on this Earth who do some form of business with Google, it can seem like a monolithic, and scary, creature.  It's the latter group who want antitrust scrutiny of Google, not the former.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

This afternoon, NYConvergence attended the Web 3.0 Conference at the New Yorker Hotel; specifically this panel – “Leveraging Semantic Text Analysis for Marketing, Research, and Operations”  or basically “How to use the meaning of words to monetize your online content.”

The panel was moderated by Evan Sandhaus, semantic technologist, research and development at The New York Times and featured Amiad Solomon, CEO, Peer39, Tim Musgrove, Founder & CEO, TextDigger, and Brooke Aker, CEO, Expert System. 

The panel discussed how most of the world’s information is still in the form of text and how today’s semantic text analysis systems offer tools for extracting structured data and value from text.  This session also provided an overview of the types of applications and tools that are available to extract operational value from text on the Web, in corporate documents, and elsewhere.

From this, it seems that one industry’s pain (magazine, newspapers, etc.) is another’s opportunity…

[Editor's Note: Peer39 is a current client of Trylon SMR, publisher of NYConvergence.]

My dad emailed me a link to  search upstart Cuil, which I had come across before but never adopted.  It got me thinking about the Obama administration's antitrust hounds barking at GOOG, and now maybe a credible competitor might be important.  But the standard- for being a credible competitor- is really high, I think.

Google's dominance stops when it's not useful, or as fast, as competitors. I think it's doubtful they will lose on speed, but utility is a maybe. Whether the Wolfram Alpha product solves the same problems, or solves some other ones may also affect this determination. 

In the long run, I think Google knows that it's don't be Evil motto really translates into "Don't be useless." 

• it wouldn't be useful to force users to download Chrome in order to search Google or check their gmail
• it wouldn't be useful to prevent people from embedding Vimeo videos in their blogspot blogs
• Google Docs kills Microsoft Office by being Useful for group collaboration
• Even if Google buys twitter, if they make it less useful, they'll have a problem

If they stick to that, they're probably in good shape.  The DOJ may wonder: is Google's ubiquity anticompetitive?  I think for the bulk of its interaction with the world, Google is just a bunch of nice guys who offer a free utility, or maybe a phone.  For those few (relatively speaking) individuals on this Earth who do some form of business with Google, it can seem like a monolithic, and scary, creature.  It's the latter group who want antitrust scrutiny of Google, not the former.

NYConvergence ORIGINAL

The NY Video 2.0 Meetup borrowed space from the Streaming Media East conference last night and held their meetup at the Hilton New York in Manhattan's Midtown neighborhood.  Five startups, including Magma from Andrew Baron of Rocketboom, demonstrated their technology and three venture capitalists reviewed it a la American Idol.

The five startups were:

• Volomedia: The company has created a plug-in for Apple's iTunes which allows users to share and bookmark video which they watch there with others; the plug-in allows the company to gather metrics which can be provided to publishers.
• SesameVault: The technology facilitates the sharing of video content and according to an answer given to an audience member's question, it can handle up to 30 terabytes of data.
• Clearspring: They have developed a bookmarking tool to help publishers get their content in front of as many social-media users as possible, highlighting how it was used to promote the latest Vin Diesel flick.
• Aniboom: Not so much a technology as a community, the company aims to help animators network and receive recognition for their work.  Their demo consisted of a reel of highlights from some of their top animators.
• Magma: Online video pioneer Andrew Baron showed the audience how his team's latest creation could show the most-viewed videos on the Web across numerous social-networking services.

The panel of venture capitalists who reviewed the company's work included:

• First Round Capital: Howard Morgan, Partner
• Intel Capital: Sita Vasan, Sr. Manager, Strategic Investments
• Crossbar Capital: Charlie Federman, Managing Partner

After they had evaluated each, the audience, via SMS, voted for Magma as the best presentation and adjourned to the Hilton New York's Bridges bar.

Streaming Media is coming to the New York Hilton and Paul Kontonis, CEO of For Your Imagination is moderating the panel, "Content Production for the Web" on Tuesday, May 12th at 1:45pm. The panel will discuss the types of online video, audience engagement, production and monetization amongst other topics important to developing and producing web video. The panel features Tim Shey, Co-Founder, Head of Entertainment, Next New Networks, Christine Beardsell, VP, Creative Director, Digitas/The Third Act and Austin Chang, VP, Strategy and Development, MTV Digital. For more information visit streamingmedia.com.

Some of the coolest people around get really creative in the For Your Imagination studio in New York City. Recently Justin Johnson, creator of Indy Mogul, came by and shot "Grace Vs. The Critics" featuring Beyond the Trailer host, Grace Randolph, taking on the average movie critic.

I did a lot of work at Columbia on the mobile workforce, seeing labor in firms as units dividing their time between mutliple employers on an engagement basis.  The endgame there seemed to be the end of the traditional labor force.  I even suggested ata  conference last month that it would be interesting to create a real-time job index- jobs that need to be done in the next X hours or Y minutes.  Not sure we're there yet.

Reading a post on Please Feed The Animals, the post title speculates that perhaps there are Fewer Advertising Jobs, But Greater Opportunity.  The post links to a great WSJ article on freelance employment in the downturn.

I think the data are interesting to think about there. The ultra-mobile (where mobility is also lateral between firms) workforce is a chaotic place to be, and strategically, I think this robs many firms of the opportunity to differentiate through talent acquisition. Perhaps this really doesn't matter as much as it once did, and a firm having access to a network of talented freelancers is the talent differentiator these days.

I wonder: is this is a long term spike that will re-make the firm, or perhaps just an example of how firms cut way past the fat in their layoffs, and are burdened with cost structures that don't make sense anymore?  Could agencies have fixed that instead of laying people off?