Viewstream Research Posted by John Assalian on March 12, 2013 As part of our research group, we are publishing a few overviews of interesting companies in the social media space. Altimeter Group is not a marketing company, rather a research/consultancy company (Powerpoint company). Think Boston Consulting or Bain mixed with Gartner or Forrester, focus is “Social Business” which includes social media aimed towards customers but also includes how organizations are internally organized and how information is shared within a company. In some cases this can mean using social media tools internally, but it can also mean creating whole new org charts for large organizations. Their model is essentially as follows: produce a large number of free report’s which are then use to leverage engagements in advisory, speaking or strategy. For advisory, this is be the classic consulting job. Called in to provide research and outside eyes on a project. Classically consulting in large organizations to displace blame. i.e. idea fails well expert consultants said it would work. For speaking, past topics include: Hot or Not: Deciding Which Disruptive Technologies Matter Creating a Coherent Social Strategy The Future of Social Networks Convincing Your Curmudgeon — Getting Executive Buy-In for Your Social For strategy, Altimeter has published on: Get Engaged With Your Customers (or Employees) Recruiting an Unpaid Army for Word of Mouth The Customer of the Future Developing a Mobile Strategy for the Whole Customer Lifecycle Developing — and Investing — in a Social CRM Strategy Rethinking Innovation in Your Enterprise Strategy It’s the People Stupid: Designing a Social Experience Funding an Enterprise Strategy Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist Developing a Scalable Social Strategy Some great reports here: http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/webinars All altimeter reports are released under a creative commons license so you can pull their slides and use them in your own presentations as long as you give them credit.
Video Testimonials Posted by John Assalian on August 22, 2012 Viewstream Video Testimonials communicate the benefits of an offering through the voice of the customer. It allows marketers to reach across the sales cycle by building demand and driving sales through discovery, promoting brand awareness, and validating the solution. Video Testimonials can be critical to demonstrating how the solution is applicable in the real world. The combination of story and concrete details provide a strong approach toward inspiring prospects to action. Check out the link to view the latest Video Testimonials that Viewstream produced: http://viewstre.am/1o
Seeing a Future in Tablets Posted by John Assalian on August 21, 2012 It’s amazing to think the iPad is only two years old–and across the spectrum usage is skyrocketing (along with the stock). Avid readers in particular have been downloading magazines on their tablets, and engagement remains high. Seeing a future in Tablets for business communication and marketing, we unveiled Viewstream Mags recently. Viewstream Mags brings magazines to businesses for marketing, communication and data analytics. The Mags are beautifully designed and feature engaging content written by actual journalists. Plus, we can do something that other digital document formats cannot do: we can track everything! From page clicks and swipes to engagement patterns and view duration of motion content, our analytic datasets offer a rich source of data for better decision making. To find out more, watch the short video on Viewstream Mags here: http://viewstre.am/1m
Top Ideas of Peter Thiel CS183 Class Posted by John Assalian on May 24, 2012 Wouldn’t it be great to sit in on CS183 at Stanford taught by Peter Thiel? One student in the class has taken it upon himself to document this class, and has done a remarkable job. Having heard Peter speak many times, the notes capture his thought process very well. Recommended reading for a powerful framework to think about business and technology. Amazing insights into marketing, market intelligence, product choice and product marketing. Check out the link to the latest by clicking here. Thanks to Blake Masters, a student in the class, for documenting this.
Two Technology Trends that Change Everything Posted by John Assalian on February 6, 2012 There are two things trending right now that you should care about. Big changes involving mobile and desktop convergence are changing the way we are communicating digitally, and we are finally seeing the beginning of what can be called true multimedia. Mobile and Desktop Converge In today’s interconnected world, people consume content and socially connect on a range of “screens” – desktop, mobile, tablet, and readers. Imagine if you could write one set of code that allows content to be displayed on all devices – that would make things significantly easier to create. We don’t need to imagine thanks to extensible CSS, HTML5, and JavaScript. The use case for developing APP with native code (like C#) is slowly becoming obsolete. Only very discrete functional applications will need to be created specifically for mobile; for example, applications that rely on a mobile location. As a component of this, look to see more convergence over the next two three years in operating systems, so that OSX and iOS merge into one, similar to Windows 8. True Multimedia As of right now, two thirds of all browsers support HTML5. The remaining are considered legacy browsers – IE7 and IE8, to name a few. For now, Flash is still needed for some website functionality to support these legacy browsers, video being the best example. However within the next year, we can expect a complete transition to HTML5. This advancement will increase efficiency, and open new possibilities for technology. It will usher in a new era of Visual Communication where video communication and interactive content/copy will become closely intertwined. From a creative perspective, there is no doubt that the new visual language will be led by video. Ultimately, this might be the original promise to a true “multimedia”. At the very least, we will see another example of how technological change creates new mediums. Now that you’ve gotten wind of the changes to come — are you ready?
How to Record an iPad Screen Posted by John Assalian on December 1, 2011 A couple months ago, we posted an article about marketing mobile solutions with video. A growing number of our video clients want to show off their mobile chops—to illustrate their new app, to give tutorials on software use on the go, or to display their work on mobile devices. As we mentioned in the article, one of our clients recently tasked us with recording a demo from an iPad, which presented a number of challenges, including harsh shadows, rough resolution, and flickers on the screen. Fortunately, we devised a system that worked. We thought that we would answer the question, “How do you record an iPad screen?” We’ll even take this a stop further and explain how to create a final video with a composited, animated background using a green screen. 60 is the Magic Number Most videographers know that shooting television and computer screens has historically been an issue, as the refresh rate of the screens never seem to match the standard video camera frame rates. This issue has been negated by LCD screens, which do not create the annoying CRT-like flicker. Mobile devices, however, have brought back the challenges of screen refresh rates. The iPad 2, for instance, refreshes at 60Hz, or 60 times per second. If your camera’s frame rate is not matching this, you will experience shuttering and flickering throughout your video as you record the screen. In addition, filming screens in interlaced (vs. progressive) mode can lead to blurry motion and jagged images. We overcame these challenges by recording at 720p/60p. For our needs, 720p created an image large enough for our final output. With a native frame rate of 60 progressive frames per second and a shutter speed of 1/60.00, we knew we could match the refresh in the iPad. To dial into the refresh, we used the Syncro Scan feature on the camera set at 1/60.00 to ensure the camera and the screen were hitting at the right times. Shuttering and flickering were gone instantly! Positioning and Lighting Another challenge with recording an iPad is the need to have it steady and flat on a table for easy access by the hand that is navigating the screen. If you shoot straight down, you will get the camera’s reflection on the screen. Plus, with improper lighting, you will have harsh shadows on the iPad screen, as well as on your tabletop, which is challenging if you plan to key out the background. That the angle of the iPad screen and that of the camera lens must be parallel. If they are at different angles, with this close of a focal length you will definitely notice a distortion on shape of the iPad in post, with one side longer than the other. We slipped a notebook under our cloth to prop up the iPad, and matched that angle to the angle of the camera lens to ensure we were hitting it straight on. Your iPad also has an option to turn off the automatic orientation feature, so the slight angle you keep the device at will not flip the image on the iPad screen. QUICK TIP: Shoot the iPad upside down so the hand enters the camera viewfinder from the top. This way, your tripod will not get in the way of the actions of the hand. Just rotate the image 180 degrees in your editing software. With the right camera settings and sotting techniques, you can capture clean, flicker-free shots of your tablet or smartphone in action. Also, you want to create a consistent soft light across the entire area with as big of a spread as possible. You can achieve this by using two softlights off to each side of and above the iPad, and/or reflecting bright lights off a large white surface, such as a wall or bounce card, to achieve the same effect. It took some tweaking between light placement to make sure we were not getting light reflection on the iPad screen, and that we had effectively removed any unwanted shadows. Make sure to move the hand around above the iPad, and bend the fingers to check for dark shadows on the skin. QUICK TIP: In setting the iris on the camera, you need to find a balance between the brightness of the iPad screen and the hand working the device. You can adjust both the camera’s iris and the brightness of the iPad screen to find a bright, consistent image for the camera’s sensor. Once the camera’s settings are in place, and the lighting is where you want it, you are ready to record! While Shooting During the recording, make sure your hand model removes their hand from the screen area anytime it is not being used to manipulate the screen. This way the viewer can have a full view of the screen, and edits between screens remain seamless. QUICK TIP: Keep the shot clean by wiping the iPad screen with cleaner between takes. In this lighting, smudges can obstruct what you are trying to show on the screen. Adjustments in Post In the case of our project, we wanted to create an animated backdrop for the iPad. We placed the iPad on piece of green screen cloth, and made sure our lighting did not create the harsh shadows that would make keying difficult. With a shadow-free surface, adding the key channel to iPad video is relatively painless. But remember that you will likely lose quality on the actual screen itself due to the key. To get around this loss, simply create a duplicate layer in your edit, with a matte around the screen for complete image clarity. As more and more businesses move their offerings and platforms to mobile devices, creating videos to illustrate mobile capabilities will certainly become more prevalent. With the process outlined above, you can ensure clear and clean demonstrations of your mobile solution in action.
Marketing Mobile Solutions with Video Posted by John Assalian on September 27, 2011 Today, the number of iPad apps in Apple’s iStore is nearing 100,000 unique offerings. As a result of this growing industry, more and more of our clients want to show off their mobile chops—to illustrate their new app, to give tutorials on software use on the go, or to display their work on mobile devices. In fact, one of our clients recently tasked us with recording a demo of one of their app solutions for iPad. Shooting an iPad presents a number of issues, including harsh shadows, rough resolution and annoying flickers on the screen. Our in-house production team developed a series of techniques to address these challenges and create a crisp, clean image for the client’s video. As more and more businesses move their platforms to mobile devices, creating videos to illustrate mobile capabilities will certainly become more prevalent, and mixing the two media will continue to change the way we produce digital marketing material. VP of Content Production Tom Jagger and Producer William Wroblewski working with our client on set.
Viewstream Goes Stereoscopic Posted by John Assalian on March 21, 2011 In our last post we showed you our video about gaining 3D capabilities for 2D drafting. Get your glasses out now and check out the full stereoscopic version!
Our Latset Video – Moving 2D into 3D Posted by John Assalian on February 28, 2011 3D capabilities for 2D drafting? Oh yes! We just delivered a short promotional piece showing the benefits of 3D in design software. Take a look!
Viewstream Does 3D Posted by John Assalian on January 26, 2011 As 3D enjoys a popular resurgence in the entertainment world, we see an opportunity to do some innovative, creative marketing that pops out! Viewstream just wrapped on a stereoscopic video shoot at a studio here in San Francisco. The final video will be one part of an integrated campaign for a $10B software company. You can find more photos from the shoot here. (Photo Credit: D. Alan Brown Photography)