Technically Speaking

SplashCast, who we have heard very little from since the departure of their superstar new media person, has announced today that they have hired Charlie Baker as EVP as well as appointed him to their board of directors. Charlie has served on the executive board at Nike as a VP, and was CEO of Starbucks, Australia.

Also, they have solidified their grip on the music industry while producing branded content for Sony BMG. They are now working with 7 different Sony labels: Zomba Records, Columbia Records, Columbia UK, RCA Records, RCA Nashville, RCA UK, and Sony Legacy Recordings. Just in the past week, we launched branded channels for Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Journey, and The Clash (Sony Legacy), following the launches of pop stars like Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Chris Brown, and Alicia Keys. The other major music companies, Universal Music, Warner Brothers, and EMI, have heard about the successes at Sony and have reached out to us.

Last bit of news is that they are now generating revenue, which for a video startup (or any startup) is a good thing.

Technically Speaking, I was so use to receiving news on a regular basis from SplashCast due to the old now departed new media consultant mentioned above, that I was wondering and asking around “What happened to SplashCast?” I have been a big supporter of them from the get go, and I have seen vast improvements of their product line this past year. Glad to see they are moving in the right direction.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, who has become a blogging standard bearer, has decided to step down from his job as Director of Content at SplashCast and join the ReadWriteWeb team. This announcement may surprise many of you, in fact it may be the shocker of the day for a lot of you.

When he worked for TechCrunch I believed he took that blog to an even higher standard of online journalism. His insight on things such as simply explaining the reason why “the company” matters - is why I believe his writings are far superior than a majority of bloggers.

On every announcement such as this, there is an upside. So the upside to this? Well starting Monday, we will be able to enjoy Marshall Kirkpatrick - the blogger - once again. Some bloggers, you just skim, others you check daily, and than there are those that you can’t miss reading.

Technically Speaking, I wish Marshall the best in his upcoming adventures. This makes next week even more exciting for the blogger as well as the blog reader - Marshall Kirkpatrick the tech blogger —- is back. Not good-bye by any means, because he never really left the building!

Covered on SplashCast
Covered on CenterNetworks

SplashCast, who I have covered extensively on this blog had a rockin’ new announcement today. Already covered first by the new uncrowned King of Blogging, Allen Stern of CenterNetworks - who coincidently broke the Lending Club story last night.

Hey, what can I say about that? When you do a simple DNS switch that makes “www” live, and no longer fwd’s to the “blog.” - anyone - could have broke that story!

Now back to the real rockin’ story of the day:

We’re excited to announce today a new partnership with Columbia Records and three major new features to make the SplashCast experience more interactive than ever. New York’s Coheed and Cambria is the first Columbia band to have an artist channel built by SplashCast.

Coheed and Cambria’s channel will also be the first to deploy two exciting new SplashCast features. FanCast, our new mobile publishing feature, will allow the band’s fans to upload photos, audio files and video from their mobile phones to the Coheed and Cambria channel.

Here is the Coheed and Cambria channel:

Technically Speaking, the blog is rocking again, and well as I stated - SplashCast always ROCKS!

*Update - to be live and world wide in about 1 hour. Sorry, with news like this, sometimes you are changing it on the fly - that is why it’s called a blog!

SplashCast couldn’t wait, and they were going to wait, but they didn’t. The new improved SplashCast player has launched.

Many needed enhancements were added. I checked it out today, and what I really liked about it was the ability to leave comments right there. I also like the new “Mac” roll look on the different clips or rather preview that you can still choose in normal SplashCast style.

So where is this new player? It will be rolling out across the internet, and on a blog or two hundred thousand in the near future. If you haven’t used SplashCast yet, you really need to check it out now.

Here are some details:

In addition to the existing support for multiple files, multiple file types, inbound and outbound RSS feeds and much more - the new player includes:

* Item level navigation, with preview thumbnails and captions.
* Inline, multi-media commening - text, video and audio - with easy publisher moderation.
* “Follow me” email subscription to future shows by any publisher.
* A whole bunch of other changes, see the screencast below for details.

New, improved with some sex appeal - and without further ado - now the man of the blogging world - Marshall Kirkpatrick can tell you more via a screencast he did with Jing Project:

More details for you:

*Item level navigation with thumbnails and captions. Like YouTube’s related videos feature but controlled by the publisher for collections of media. Like Blip’s new player but browsable right from the front page and excluding content not chosen by publisher. Inline captioning adds a whole new level of richness for publishers and viewers can chose to turn off captions at any time while browsing through media items.

*Video, audio and text commenting inline. Webcam or upload, super slick playback - the new SplashCast commenting is more flexible and more pleasing to the eye than any other media service’s commenting online. YouTube video responses require between one and many new pageloads. Sony’s Grouper, one of the early innovators in inline video commenting, doesn’t allow audio commenting. Kyte allows inline commenting in chat format but not video or audio. We think that our new multimedia inline commenting features will substantially increase user satisfaction and time on site. Boo yah!

*”Follow me” email subscription. Not everyone uses RSS or wants to put a SplashCast player on their own website - now friends, fans and family can receive a link by email anytime a SplashCast publisher of interest puts out new content.

*Other improvements include: a full screen view button in every player, a global pause button for everything including background audio and the ability to email links to whole shows or particular items in those shows from inside the player. We’ve also been working
hard at optimizing our player speeds and uploading capacity.

Technically Speaking, if you haven’t tried SplashCast yet - you really need to give it a try now!

Also covered on CenterNetworks

It’s time to do that SplashCast thing again. I put all the winning videos into a SplashCast player that you can share. The nice thing about SplashCast of course is that I can also put in the blurb pre-roll for each video from the official blog post.

Technically Speaking, if you want to skip past a video or blurb, upper right corner is your control to do that! And again, it is a better way to go than to get some life insurance no exam.

There are many detractors to Facebook apps, as well as many people over the last few days that have been publicly writing their manifesto’s on the closed platform of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks. I won’t address the later, as I partially agree that opening things up would really make the business of social networks take off 10 fold.

Let’s address the first item. This morning, I just received an e-mail from Marshall talking about the new NPR player. Where is it? The NPR player can be found here, available inside Facebook. While browsing around and reading more about SplashCast’s new initiative to make more branded player’s, I found this great branded player called - Raw Vegas TV; again - inside Facebook. You can find both the NPR and the Raw Vegas TV players on my Facebook page.

So how do you view them? Well you need to have a Facebook account! Why don’t you have one? Not only is SplashCast proving that business is working on the Facebook platform, so is the company that I work for currently, Lending Club. How do you use their service currently? Via Facebook!

Not only has Lending Club taken the business of doing business inside Facebook to a new level, but the other company I most recently started working for has done the same thing - Lookery. Both companies have ramped up so quick that it would make the average old timer’s business head spin like Linda Blair’s did in The Exorcist.

Why is it working? Well people have finally realized that if you have an audience of 30 million, and that audience is becoming more influential in today’s marketplace daily, you have a winner. Can MySpace or the other 100’s of social networks do the same thing? I believe they can leverage their own place, but that goes back to the part I won’t address - the opening up of the social network realm.

Technically Speaking, it feels good to see SplashCast doing well with their new branded players. Maybe I should get a Rex Dixon branded player? To answer your other question, yes, the Link Blog was updated! Many of you readers only just want a few free poker tables.

So in my last post, I was sitting there thinking. Hmmm….. “What would Marshall want me to do???” Well - DUH — this is the PERFECT use of SplashCast. Perfect time to use it.

For your enjoyment, or misery - so that maybe you finally get off your a$$ and make a video that has the potential to win $5,000 - below is a SplashCast I just created (took me about 10 minutes - that is why I talk about this company all the time! Easy!) — all in one player - the first 11 entrants12 entrants (new one just added) into the dash for the $5,000 cash! Enjoy!

Technically Speaking, watch the SplashCast and at the end you will have the link to the rules, etc. If you are too lazy to watch it, than here is that link. Too lazy to find out who the competition is by watching the SplashCast? Here is that link. Now that you see the competition and you also know the rules - Move along and let someone else win that $5,000.

OH — I guess I will be in good company now that SplashCast did a deal which gives them Pink! Rex Dixon and Pink - now that would be a video worth destroying!

10 years of blogging - I came on officially a little late in the game. My first blog was in 2002, and I didn’t see the point until last year. I of course understand the significance as well as millions of others that have started a blog since. One of the questions posed by Pete of Mashable is “Are we journalists?” I say “No.” We don’t have the red tape slowing us down that a traditional publication has to weed through to get an article online. I think we may help to enhance how traditional print media/online media - mainstream - operations are run. As far as any of us having any journalist creditability, that is a pretty far stretch.

Many bloggers write really well, people such as Marshall Kirkpatrick writes in a style that is both interesting to read as well as informative. People like Matt Marshall write in a stricter style that reflects his journalist background. Both are quite successful in what they do. Both are now bloggers or reporters of the news. Now I hear that Om’s group has a nice review style over there. I wouldn’t know personally, as I have never worked for Om, but the review process makes sense to me (from what I have heard about it).

Veoh: rocking the boat - It seems like the video sphere is amping up nicely. The many choices available today are making internet video the norm, vs the exception to the rule. If you have a video, show, or what not - it’s best practice to have it online. I like the fact that better options are coming out. I see more options hitting the entire sphere in late 2007 into 2008. Video online is getting much better, and again - buy that flat panel monitor - you will need one.

Technically Speaking, it’s Sunday and I hope you all enjoy it. Kind of muggy here in the STL, but what can you expect when you live in the STL?

Episode 22 notes:

My sincere apologies to my readers/viewers who had to put up with scrolling. I apologize to the SplashCast dudes, I should have known this - DUH!

Drag and Drop, no more scrolling! Just hit play!

Read - Lending Club blog
Follow - LendingClubber
See - Lending Club on MBL
Load - Criteo Autoroll on your blog

Follow - Rex Dixon
Enjoy - GMAFB and Sign Up/Register
My Company - Nuclear Inbox, LLC
My UStream.tv - RexTV URL and on Nuclear Inbox, LLC site
Feed yourself - This blogs Feed URL.
Read - Link Blog

I’m also located on social networks such as - Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ojeez, Vertagio, and the new Mashable one.