Archive for September, 2007

With increasing competition from a swarm of inexpensive stock photography shops and changing patterns in image purchasing, Getty , the market leader in stock images in the world, is offering its entire collection of photography with flat-fee $49 licensing.

• Royalty-free images may be used multiple times for multiple projects.
• Rights-ready images may be used in web or electronic media for commercial or editorial projects such as websites or email for three months.
• Rights-managed images may be used in one commercial or editorial website, email or mobile project for three months.

This makes it possible for web developers, email marketers, and bloggers to use the best stock in the world in their work at very good pricing. Landing pages can be tested at affordable rates without spending a fortune on the images, and if a particular image scores a home run, a longer term license can be negotiated.

Photographers are not very happy about this. Such price changes, while here limited to web resolution images, will have a trickle-up effect on the higher resolution marketplace as buyers get used to the model. Acceptable license fees last year will now seem exorbitant, specially as x-gen media buyers begin to make decisions. (more…)

If you’ve tried setting up your Blogrush widget, you may run into the “Invalid URL” bug where your widget doesn’t appear but “Invalid url” shows instead. Here’s the simple fix.

The fix is simple

When you get the code:

<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
blogrush_feed = “”;
//–></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”
src=”http://widget.blogrush.com/show.js”>
</script>

Just adjust the line:

blogrush_feed = “”;

…so it reads

var blugrush_feed = “XXXXXX”;

…where XXXXX is the ID for your blogrush account.

You can obtain that from your direct feed link

http://www.blogrush.com/rXXXXXXX…. just remove the “r”

Postscript:� Meh.� I removed blogrush.� I may remove this post, too.

Google’s Expected to roll out their “PowerPoint” killer soon, if not today. Even though I was one of the engineers on Harvard Graphics (PowerPoint was called the “Harvard Graphics Killer”) I am really a advocate leaving slides out of meetings. It’s far too easy to create slides. You need people staring at you at a table giving you feedback with their body language, good and bad.

When someone gets out a projector at a brainstorm meeting, I know the spirit is lost. Powerpoint presentations in general can be good or bad (and some say hugely wasteful) but their use can sap the spirit from meetings. I’m fine with using them to show user interfaces, or to surf the web in front of a group, but that’s about it. (more…)

AT&T announced that Lexington will be 3G, and it can’t happen soon enough for me. I think someone from AT&T Corporate got lost driving down I-64 while working on the 3G network in Frankfort (!) and discovered… whoa!… there’s a pretty BIG CITY (>250k) over here!

From their press release:

“AT&T’s third-generation (3G) wireless broadband network enables consumers and businesses to enjoy the benefits of broadband speeds throughout Lexington. Louisville and Frankfort launched the 3G wireless broadband network in late 2006. With the 3G network, customers can quickly access feature-rich wireless content on their 3G handsets, including videos, games, pictures and the latest music, entertainment, news and weather, through MEdia Net, the company’s mobile Internet portal. Customers on the network also can view razor-sharp clips through CV, an on-demand streaming video service that offers a comprehensive library of mobile video content from some of the top media brands.

The AT&T 3G network also offers AT&T BroadbandConnect mobile customers DSL-like speeds for their laptops, with the ability to access the Internet, their company’s intranet or corporate e-mail from anywhere within the 3G network. The combination of AT&T’s 3G network and BroadbandConnect — which simply requires a laptop modem card or a laptop with embedded 3G service, software and an AT&T data plan — is ideal for customers who want to increase business productivity and need to quickly download large files and run corporate applications.”

Google is offering FREE ads on mobile search pages until November 18th so advertisers can experiment with mobile search ads. “We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching Google from their mobile phones.”

Searchers can monitor ad performance via a performance tracking tag called “Performance Data: Search Ads on Google Mobile Search.” only on landing pages that can be adapted for use on mobile phones.

After November 18th, normal CPC rates apply. And as always, you may opt-out of this feature at any time.

More Information on Google’s Help Page

CBS will use 144 radio and its 212 TV affiliates to put more local content on sites in its CBS Audience Network. Furthermore, the local partnerships will bring new online opportunities to local advertisers while offering national advertisers the ability to target specific geographical areas.

Locally produced affiliate clips and other media will now be able to seep into the social media sphere via utomattic, Brightcove, Clearspring, DAVE Networks, Goowy Media, meebo, MeeVee, Musestorm, Ning, RockYou!, Slide, VideoEgg, Voxant and vSocial. These profiles widgets, wikis and other community pages will become more localized and hopefully colorful as a result. CBS will then be able to sell, of course, more targeted advertising with that media distribution and increase the amount of time spent with the CBS Brand.

It remains to be seen what kind of material will be produced for distribution on the networks, or if these local media outlets will simply open up their existing streams to the network. Local advertisers, however, will probably be able to find some new audiences via this mechanism - though I’m not yet sure what the media buy will look like.

blog readers: Note new category.