The public is being kept in the dark about what is happening in the US and world; they have been kept from finding out just how big this ‘mutation’ issue is becoming. Please pass this site on to as many family and friends as you can and post links to it on as many sites as you can. We will continue to update as new information becomes available.

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OFFICIAL ‘UKRAINE CRISIS’ NUMBERS 11/26/09

1,751,546 SICK

104,332 HOSPITALIZED

414 DEAD

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Has the Ukraine swine flu mutation spread to the United States?

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Bleeding Lungs and Tamiflu-resistance -Do H1N1 mutations make the swine flu vaccine less effective?

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Rise in pneumonia cases linked to H1N1- Also Says Convergence of 3 Viruses – Pneumonic Plague

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D225G Evades Human Immune Response

Worldwide Transmission Of D225G Confirmed

WHO Silence On D225G Evading Immune Response

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Global Swine Flu Deaths Surge

Swine Flu – Record UK Deaths In Last Week

China Readies For Flu Mutation Epidemic

Chicago begins offering inoculations at airports

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H1N1 (D225G) mutation now confirmed in China – Chinese watch for H5N1/H1N1 hybrid – YouTube

H1N1 is now a full blown ‘mutated’ pandemic in many countries – “fills lungs with blood”

Plague of ‘Black Lung’ Is Sweeping Through Europe

Iowa’s Announcement of Appearance of Virulent Swine Flu Virus Spells Trouble Ahead

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Probable Swine Flu In Congo – 3 Dead, Hundreds Sick

One Million Iranians Test Postive For Swine Flu

England Swine Flu Deaths Reach Highest Level

WHO Studying Swine Flu Mutations – (And Has Been For Weeks)

Man dies in Sweden from the “swine flu” – now 9 ‘official’ deaths

132 Flu Patients Hit with Brain Disorders Since July

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Vaccine-Induced Disease Epidemic Outbreaks

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Peer reviewed study in Virology Journal shows why H1N1 was most likely released from a lab – YouTube

From Where Did the 2009 Swine Flu Emerge?

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Military To Work With FEMA During Swine Flu Pandemic

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Foods That Can Help to Prevent Swine Flu

10 Things You’re Not To Know About H1N1 Vax

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Reported flu stats by country

(courtesy of Flu News Network)

China
•  8 cases of swine flu mutation (Link)
•  Chinese expert warns of H1N1 and H5N1 pandemic mutation (Link)
•  Detected H1N1 mutations ‘not dangerous’ (Link)

Canada
•  Helen Branswell – GSK says still no answer on whether H1N1 vaccine batch triggers more reaction (Link)

Japan
•  Japan to send experts to Canada over flu vaccine reactions (Link)

Latvia
•  Baltic states swine flu death toll rises (Link)

Saudi Arabia
•  Swine flu fears for hajj pilgrims (Link)

Slovakia
•  Ill Man with A(H1N1) Flu Virus Dies in Prievidza Hospital (Link)

South Korea
•  South Korea Unlikely to Buy Problematic H1N1 Vaccine from GSK (Link)
•  22 new deaths recorded last week, total now 104 (Link)

Taiwan
•  Confirmation of death of 4 yr old girl from H1N1 (Link)

United Kingdom
•  Scotland has 3 more deaths, 43 total now (Link)

United States
•  US: CDC says that the rates of ‘invasive pneumonia’ tripled in Oct vs 5 yr averages in Denver metro (log in required) (Link)
•  Decoding the turkey’s genetic gobbledygook (Link)
•  FL: New mom in coma w/ H1N1, newborn survived 5 days (Link)
•  IL: 2000 hospitalizations from H1N1 and 389 new hospitalized (Link)
•  IN: 33 of 35 deaths from flu so far are confirmed H1N1 (Link)
•  MN: Minnesota news reports seem inconsistent now (Link)
•  MN: Six Duluth deaths associated with H1N1 (Link)
•  NM: Two Deaths In Eastern New Mexico Linked To H1N1 (Link)
•  OR: only 17 more hospitalizations since yesterday, no new deaths (Link)
•  OR: Oregon Hospitalizations up 22 in four days and 4 new deaths (Link)
•  PA: (7) New Deaths on PA DOH Website for 11.25.09 (Link)
•  TX: 2 more deaths confirmed in El Paso (Link)
•  UT: Utah confirmed another death and 72 more hospitalizations last week (Link)

General
•  WHO: Possible Tamiflu resistance (translated) (Link)
•  Biological H1N1 Vaccines: Too Little, Too Late (Link)
•  Drug-resistant swine flu probed (Link)
•  The Hajj: A perfect storm for swine flu? (Link)

Like most Americans, I watch regular TV a LOT.  Nielsen reports here that on average, Americans spend 161 hours (153 hours of linear TV + 8 hours of time shifted programs) watching TV every month!  I’m not THAT bad but I do channel surf a LOT; not an easy task given the lame remotes and current programming guide that *cough* Comcast *cough* has. 

I happen to catch G4’s Attack of the Show with Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn and it was really entertaining – fast paced, funny, and really well-done product reviews.  I’ll start tuning-in more often.  Their guest was Peter Facinelli - Dr. Carlisle Cullen to you Twilight fans – who was sporting enough to be part of their Breaking Dawn SPOOF video (I laughed). 

Peter also did a really great job demo’ing his new Vampire Transformer iTunes app ($2.99).  Basically, you load a picture of you or someone you love/hate.  The app has transparent vampire/monster underlay images to choose from.  Pinch or spread to size to your image  and rub the parts you want to add (horns, gashes, blood, backgrounds).  The underlying part comes through and appears on your own image.  Use several underlays to create a ghoulish picture.  The cool thing is that you can immediately share your new creation to twitter and facebook.

Note to Peter:  get a copy of that G4 segment and put it on Youtube – it’s better than the ones currently up there.

With over 100,000 iTunes apps out there so far, how do you find the good ones?  It’s not easy.  Sound like a familiar problem?  It’s the exact same dilemma that I just wrote about (see my post).  Millions of online videos in an on-demand environment – it’s overwhelming.  So how the heck do you find stuff?   For starters, the answer is that better-than-what’s-currently-out-there discovery process.

Ultimately though, as the space matures, it’ll come down to regular old marketing and advertising.  Online is just another distribution channel and you’ll have to spend money to gain attention and market share.  I’m sure those lucky apps that got featured on Apple’s “We’ve got an app for that” TV spots saw a nice bump in downloads/sales (right WhatBird?).  Those who can afford to market will have better sales/ views/ ads/ revenues.  With random exceptions, WOM and social networking will only take you so far, and you have to be really good at it.  Peter got valuable air time because of his celebrity status.  Not everyone is so lucky. 

When you launch your next iTunes app, webisode, or on-demand seminar, how will you get the word out?

This year has been one of Winter Street’s most successful years to date…because of that we are very grateful for the people and opportunities that have been afforded to us to help make that happen.  We are also excited to continue to share with you our big ides for the future and look forward to an even more promising 2010.  In this time of thanksgiving, here are some of the the things we are most grateful for:

• We are thankful for our talented and passionate employees, you are the heart of our firm and have helped shape our future.
• We are thankful for all of our projects, small and large, each one has helped us make this a successful year.
• We are thankful for our clients and partners who have trusted us to help make their businesses better through design.
• We are honored and thankful that our leadership, employees and projects have earned so much praise this year.
• We are thankful for the opportunity to be a part of the technology revolution that is taking place in our industry.
• We are thankful for the warmth and love of our families, friends and community.
• …and lastly, we are thankful for the beer in our fridge, the laugh in our hearts and the promise of a new year!

Mostly from Google Reader:

• Betting that Brizzly will be huge
  From the LA Times; on 20 November, Brizzly went public – no more invites required (although folks can still tweet invitations)
• Brands Have A Role To Play In Helping People Find The Good Stuff
  Steve Rubel, writing for Ag Age, argues for digital curation.
• Google teams up with Tivo to give advertisers a clearer picture
  From the LA Times; “click-through count comes to TV.” (also posted to Twitter)
• How GoogleWave Is Changing The News
  The headline over-promises, but the short profiles are worthwhile. From Mashable; Chicago Tribune’s RedEye blog started a public wave on 10 Nov; Austin American-Statesman has started two public waves; TBO.com is using wave for internal collaboration.
• Social Media Editors at Big Media Outlets
  Craig Silverman, PBS, profiles four: Mathew Ingram, Globe and Mail community editor; Shirley Brady, Business Week community editor; Andy Carvin, NPR social media desk senior strategist; Jennifer Preston, New York Times social media editor.
• Taking Net Neutrality Personally
  From Robert Cringely, a look at two extremes on the net neutrality debate.
• Tools: How To Use the Google Chart API
• Visualizing California’s classrooms
  From 10000words; great example of alternative ways to envision data. (also posted to Twitter)

Looks like this might become a once-a-week post, but it’s not going to be daily. Here’s last week’s post.

I’m very interested in the trend with devices such as XBox 360 towards a convergence of media types and delivery with it’s support of Sky TV through the XBox and broadband via Sky Player – Stephen Nuttall from Sky was quoted as saying: ‘Our partnership with Xbox is a further example of our commitment to put choice and control in the hands of customers.’

I’m particularly interested in the ‘blurring’ or perhaps integration is a better word between the different media types so the idea of interactivity around watching a football match whilst downloading stats and also interacting with other fans is cool, also concepts around adding value to experiences through ‘back channel’ activities is something becoming more prevalent, as is the concept of ‘on demand’ services.

I think the really interesting stuff will be when the boundaries between an interactive TV experience, a gaming experience or an internet experience all disappear to the extent that they become platform neutral and coherent rather than bolt on things. The announcement of the Boxee box earlier this month is a step in the right direction, this really is opening up the rich resources and putting power int he hands of the users. It also means that you no longer need to get content ‘produced’ on a TV channel in order to get your content to a large audience, consumers become producers.

I’m very interested in using gaming technology and interactive TV in more powerful ways to develop engagement and learning, supported with internet they become extremely powerful tools.

Follow up to my post on the search-engine exclusive (which was linked to by AtlanticMonthly) … other interesting commentary:

From Gizmodo, another reminder about Microsoft’s past:

This is the Microsoft we know from the last century, before great underdog products like Xbox and Zune. This is from a company who’s CEO recently told us that sales are more important than critical acclaim, preferring profit over better product. And this is a company that gets in its anticompetitive digs when it can: For example, in Internet Explorer, it’s really hard to set Google as your default browser, not being listed in the alternative choices to Bing. Yet, in Google Chrome, it’s easy to set Bing as the default search. [...]

People, I’m telling you, this is bad news. People talk about net neutrality like it’s only about the data’s prioritization over the pipes. But what good is equivalence in data speed and prioritization if you can’t find it in the first place?

From eCommerce Times, on the gamble this is re traffic:

“If you’re giving up a big percentage of potential exposure to your existing or potential customer base, can you make up for that somehow? That’s like canceling your ads on the Super Bowl. There’s more potential detriment here to News Corp.”

From TechDirt, on the flawed vision:

But the key thing is that none of this does anything to help users. And that’s the problem. It’s not adding even the tiniest sliver of additional benefit to users. And these days, that’s a strategic error. If your business is focused on making life more difficult for a competitor, rather than adding more value to users, you’re doing the wrong thing.

From BoingBoing (Rob Beschizza, not Cory) on just how much Steve Ballmer may hate Google:

But there’s one gamble which does make some twisted sense: that Microsoft is an irrational consumer. It’s easy to believe that it may spew senseless riches into publishers’ pockets, radically distorting the news market, just to spite Google.

From the NZ Herald, a summary of the emotions coloring this announcement (the myth of rationality, front and center):

NewsCorp is furious that Google pays it not a dime for the content it skims from its global publishing empire, while Microsoft is fed up with seeing its own search engine service, relaunched earlier this year as Bing, so comprehensively outgunned.

From Hitwise, more data (emphasis added)

As of last week, WSJ.com’s referred and non-referred traffic from Google and Google News amounted to 15.3% and 11.0% respectively.  [...] The potential loss of Google News traffic is potentially more serious. As reported here, over the three years, WSJ.com’s traffic from Google News has grown from 2% to over 11%. As we see in the table below, the Journal is receiving more than double the traffic from Google News than newspaper sites overall (a custom category including national and regional papers). Bing, a potential News Corp. suitor for search exclusivity provides less than half of Google News’ volume as of last week.

Direct marketing blends the art of the message and brand in a communication written expressly for you, delivered to (or viewed by) one person at a time.  So why is data so important to direct marketers?

Direct marketing relies on the 3 R’s:

• communicating the Right message
• to the Right person
• at the Right time

This is an iterative process and direct marketers test, test, and retest so that we know that are delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.  We have the data to back that up.

Once you understand who your best customers are (what channels they shop, what they buy, when they buy them, what messages they respond to, where they live, etc, etc), then you can go after more of them by marketing to highly similar people where are throughout the day. 

Proper segmentation of your customers enables better targeting and higher ROIs.  Conversely, it also allows you to avoid or suppress your lowest performing customers.  With better targeting, each message that is written expressly for them and delivered at the right time has a much higher likelihood of being received and an action taken.  And with data, you can track all of this, every step of the way.

We hope you’ll join us and your arts & cultural colleagues from around the county for CONVERGENCE CONFERENCE 2009!

Here are a few of the “perks”:

• Be motivated. Don’t miss our keynote luncheon speaker, Stuart Rosenfeld, one of the country’s leading experts in helping communities develop their creative economy assets.
• Be inspired. Local visual, performing, and literary artists will display and showcase their work throughout the conference.
• Be engaged. Breakout sessions on social networking, the future of fundraising, arts education and more. Sessions also include a chance to test drive the new county-wide arts & cultural online portal and free legal information offered by attorneys at Miller Canfield. (Pre-registration is required for the legal information session by Monday, Nov. 23).

Registration until November 24 is: $35 for Arts Alliance members; Others – $50. (For membership information, click here). A final count is needed by Tuesday, Nov. 24 for breakfast & lunch orders. Please register today.

Register online HERE.

DATE: December 1, 2009

My direct marketing friend Laurie and I were lamenting the strange knowledge gap that seems to be cresting among our younger online siblings.  Given the comparatively really, really inexpensive costs of online advertising (versus any offline tactic), why not optimize a campaign to achieve the lowest CPC, CPA, CPO – afterall, why not drive traffic at the lowest possible cost?

For a start-up going from zero to post-launch, this makes perfectly good sense.  But once you start to scale, and start to get a base of customers, this front-end only focus will ultimately kill your business.

The reason is that driving for the lowest possible CPX assumes that all visitors to your site are equal in value to your business.  Take the total number of visitors, apply some average conversion rate and average order size, and bingo – you have a revenue projection.  But visitors are far, far from being equal.  Remember the old 80/20 rule?  80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers?  That rule still rules today.  Not only are visitors to your site not equal, but none of your customers are equal either.

That is where the back-end analytics and data analysis comes in.  Once you start developing a base of customers (B2B or B2C - doesn’t matter), you must start understanding them in-depth.  Where did they come from?  What message did they respond to?  Basic demographics.  Basic behavioral data.  Conversion efforts and costs.  Retention efforts and costs.  All must be figured into a Lifetime Value metric by customer at best (for large enterprise customers) or by profile for B2C customers.  A good direct marketer (online or offline) will have this background.

The problem that I’ve seen with a lot of companies is that marketing (and therefore, IT) doesn’t understand the scope of data that should be captured for these types of analyses.  Therefore, their databases are inappropriately structured, and unfortunately, usually not scalable.  Integrating databases and ultimately migrating to new platforms and adding BI is probably one of the largest IT infrastructure investments that companies need to make when they are ready to jump to that next level of growth.

Without understanding who your best customers are, you’ll flood your organization with low value, generally high maintenance customers, while your best customers get lost in the shuffle and are driven away.  Don’t let that happen to your company.

Just ran across this tool called Wordle. It enables you to generate word clouds based on pieces of text that you paste into the online tool. The resulting image is Creative Commons licensed to you, though the program/code it runs on is not under a CC. More info on the page. Here is an example Wordle cloud I created from my research blog:

You can look in the rear view mirror and lament the past or you can get excited about the future. With all the gloom and doom in the photography business in this poor economic climate, I remain optimistic and see it as a time of opportunity.  It’s tough to be an optimist in times like this but if you look back through history you’ll see that many businesses got their starts in bad economic times.

There’s nothing new about video but with increased bandwidth and the proliferation of mobile devices video is “hot” right now.  In some markets like the corporate and institutional sectors, I’m seeing more of a demand for video.  I’m hearing from traditional print graphic designers who are asking me if I shoot video because their clients are requesting it. Their clients want to add a video presence to their online communications that can be distributed internally and externally. And can also be spread virally through social media networking.

Editorial markets have expanded into video.  Just about every magazine has an online presence and nowadays it’s not just a regurgitation of their print edition but a lot more.  Take a look at NY Magazine or Zagats.com.

The travel market is ripe for video. When I’m researching a destination I like to get as much information as possible so if I can watch a 2 minute video – it usually hooks me further into that website to explore more and link to other sites where I can  facilitate my travel plans.  Many times videos made for online travel sites are repurposed and used at trade shows. Check out what Intercontinental offers as destination pieces about places where they have properties.

Of course there are hundreds of instructional videos and pod casts, and on the retail end there’s weddings and family biographies.

Even if you don’t shoot video or want to offer video to your clients, you may want to consider using it to promote your own business.  A short web video about your business or your creative approach with some behind the scenes footage of you working provides added insight and information to potential clients.

These are just some of the areas I see opportunities in.  I love to hear from other optimists where they think the opportunities are.

Google holds 71% of the search market; Bing, 10% (chart).

Cory Doctorow has a clear crystal ball. Earlier this month, Rupert Murdoch accused Google of stealing his content and threatened to cut the search giant off. Cory guessed that Murdoch might be angling for a search-engine payment deal:

Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites … what he’s hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you’ve never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year’s operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

According to the Financial Times, that’s just what is going on. (And Mark Cuban speculated about this approach last year.)

If the FCC thinks it’s important to require that bloggers disclose when firms give them products to review (a requirement from which news organizations are exempt), they should require Microsoft and News Corp to mark these search results “paid advertising.”

After all, in 2002, the FCC advised search engines “to provide conspicuous labels for commercial search listings or face possible action.” If a web site restricts its results to only one search engine, that sounds like a commercial search listing to me. (IANAL)

And will Microsoft privilege News Corp links over competing news organizations that don’t succumb to the bribe? (And how will we know?) One of the reasons consumers trust Google is because the company does not co-mingle organic and paid search.

What’s in it for News Corp.?
Short-term? Cash flow.

Advertising revenue for Fox Interactive fell 16% in the first quarter 2009; most of that division is MySpace. In August, News Corp. announced a fourth-quarter $203 million loss “due to huge charges at MySpace” and laid off 700 workers. Moreover, earlier this month, News Corp. announced that year-on-year earnings dropped $22 million.

The MySpace deal, which was touted as visionary in 2005, has not met expectations as traffic (eyeballs) moved to Facebook. In 2006, Google and MySpace signed a $900 million contract making Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace. Reportedly this deal accounts for a third of News Corp. revenue from MySpace. However, because MySpace has not “met minimum traffic requirements and guarantees,” News Corp. may be short as much as $300 million on that contract.

Long-term? That’s a good question. Google provides 25 per cent of WSJ.com’s total traffic, and about half of that comes from Google News. The $64 question: which has the greater long-term value, the eyeballs coming to news sites from Google or Microsoft’s bribe?

What’s in it for Microsoft?
The New York Times has 17.4 million unique17. web site visitors a month; the Wall Street Journal, 8.0 million. However, Murdoch owns far more properties worldwide than the New York Times, so that’s potentially more eyeballs that might become captive to Bing.

If Microsoft can make this deal work with News Corp., it may be able to bribe other news organizations away from Google. According to the Financial Times:

… Microsoft has also approached other big online publishers to persuade them to remove their sites from Google’s search engine. [...] “This is all about Microsoft hurting Google’s margins,” said the web publisher who is familiar with the plan.

Microsoft is doing what it always does: it’s trying to buy its way into a market that it’s been unable to crack, even after throwing millions (billions?) at it (while Google spent its time building an index and sticking to the knitting, so to speak). According to BusinessInsider:

Microsoft has been investing hundreds of millions a year in its Internet business for more than a decade and that investment has yet to generate a single dollar of return.  If you add up all the losses investment, in fact, you get a number that is similar to what Microsoft plans to invest over the next 5 years: $8 billion.

[...] the reason Bing had lost $8 billion over the previous decade was that it had been trying desperately to catch up with other industry leaders–namely, AOL and Yahoo–and that it had tried and failed to do this despite hemorraging money while both of those companies coined it.

This is not the first time that Microsoft has tried to circumvent the open web or used its Windows monopoly rents to kick its way into a new market:

1998: The browser war between Microsoft and the Netscape Communications Corporation already threatens a truly global marketplace that is fully accessible with any browser on any computer platform…. Such appetites ignore that the Internet exists in the first place because its technical protocols are open standards, freely available for use by everyone.

1999: In fact, the rise of Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) as the dominant Web server on NT shows much the same pattern as the rise of IE as the dominant browser: Microsoft got pole position by exercising its unique leverage as an operating system vendor.

Nor is it the first it used its deep pockets to bully a market leader:

1999: Microsoft publicly pressured AOL to adopt an open messaging standard after the leading online service blocked Microsoft’s new messaging software from communicating with its own offering.

However, this gauntlet is symbolic. Google has said that news traffic is a minor portion of its business. Google had 146 billion unique visitors in June 2009. If every single New York Times unique visitor started at Google, that would be 0.01 percent of Google’s monthly traffic.

Nothing I’ve read explains why Microsoft is willing to invest so much money to try to buy  eyeballs away from Google. The Murdoch skirmish does nothing for its franchise moneymakers, Windows and Office; both face long-term reduced profitability due to the disruptive nature of digital information.

The real question: how will the internet public react?

Will consumers reject this contractual vertical integration and tell Microsoft and Murdoch to take a hike? What about the advertisers, will they want to have their ads on web pages that are restricted to only one search property? Will bloggers link to articles from news organizations that defect from the open web? Or will the Twitter search integration that is taking place at both Bing and Google (eventually) make this entire discussion moot?

This article also appears at The Moderate Voice and Newsvine.

Introduction by Dr. Simon Chan

Convergence theology is essentially a trinitarian theology that the church actively pursues in the liturgy. When the church faithfully practices the liturgy, it is also practicing a trinitarian theology which includes both the evangelical and charismatic dimensions. This means that if we isolate the evangelical or charismatic form of worship, we are not practicing a trinitarian theology. Trinitarian worship stands in contrast to these two inadequate forms of worship that are quite pervasive in the contemporary church. Evangelical worship tends to be Christomonistic, as seen in traditional evangelical churches. Its roots are in the 19^th C evangelicalism and pietism, especially the late 19^th C Holiness movement and early 20^th C Pentecostalism. The central focus is on the individual experience of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We see this in the gospel songs of the late 19^th Century.

Listen to more of the practice of convergence part 1….

…

EDITOR’S NOTE: Guest Post by Ron Dawson

To see Part 1 in this series, go to : http://photofocus.com/2009/11/16/primer-for-still-to-video-shooters-part-1/
To see Part 2 in this series, go to : http://photofocus.com/2009/11/17/primer-for-still-to-video-shooters-part-2/
To see Part 2 in this series, go to: http://photofocus.com/2009/11/18/primer-for-still-to-video-shooters-part-3/

Editing Your Project

Now that you have your footage “in the can,” it’s time to do the editing. I won’t go into any details regarding editing systems. There are too many. Unless you’re a pro, you’ll most likely use Movie Maker on a PC or iMovie on a Mac. In any case, the concepts are the same.

• Capture all of your footage to the computer.
• If you have the ability to categorize and separate your footage, do so by creating general topics (e.g. childhood, college life, career, family, etc.)
• As you watch and listen to the interview footage, set aside the takes that are the most “meaty.” These are the part of the interviews that say the most in the least time, are the most emotionally powerful, most funny, etc.
• Whittle the interviews down to the best takes and reveal the essence of the story you want to tell.
• Order all the takes based on how you want to tell your story. For instance, do you want to start with childhood then go through marriage. Or is the video just about the subject’s family life, so you’ll start with their wedding and go through the birth of their latest child.
• As much as possible, add photos to spice up the video. A talking head can be boring. Zoom in and out of the photos to give them movement. This is often called the “Ken Burns Effect,” named after the technique used in the famous historical documentarian’s many films. Also, throw in all that juicy b-roll I told you to get while on set.
• Add music and sound effects to round out the video. Try to time the music crescendos and beats to fit with the interviews so they complement each other.
• Make your DVD, pop it in the player, then sit back and enjoy.

This whole series is a very simplistic overview. You could take a class for a whole semester on making these kind of films and still only scratch the surface. And as I mentioned in the beginning, these techniques are applicable to just about all kinds of filmmaking/video work. Like anything else, the more you do it, the more you’ll learn. Have fun.

Before my brief hiatus with a trip to Shandong (very worthwhile, despite the illness that stuck me down) I was talking about convergent characters and the importance of examining all the available evidence and not just a select feature or two. However, that post was written rather quickly and I didn’t have time to expand on it in the way I wished so now I’ll push on with a few more observations.

While last time I mentioned only specific characters like spines or claws that can arise convergently, it is course possible for entire suites of characters to evolve convergently. While a big and specialised ungual will help you break into a termite or ant nest, a well evolved termite eating animal will have modified arms to provide power to that claw, and have a long snout and / or tongue to reach those termites, perhaps specialised sticky saliva, digestion suited to large amounts of formic acid, lost teeth and more. Eating ant is more than just a claw, so animals that specialise for eating ant are likely to have whole sets of characters which all help to increase ant-eating abilities and thus evolve in the same way in multiple lineages – in other words convergence. After all, if you want to run fast, having a long lower leg is great, but having a long metatarsal too, and cutting down on the number of toes, and actually shortening the femur as well are even better.

This takes us nicely to the second point – that when those suites of characters combine in certain parts of the body this can cause taxonomic and systematic problems. Animals that are highly specialised for running often have the characteristics I note above, but what if you recover a fossil that is *just* a pair of legs? If you have an anteater arm then you will spot the big claw and modified ulna, but there are also some other features that should help reveal its true identity – pick up a maniraptoran theropod leg though and things get trickier. It is perhaps no surprise that there were early questions over the phylogenetic position of things like alvarezsaurs and oviraptorosaurs with their specialised cursorial legs – there is quite a lot of convergence there.

Finally, we come to a point about defining characteristics. Things can look very different from a general description or a very detailed one and apparent convergences can vanish in a puff of adjectives (like the flippers of penguins and turtles shown here). Both birds and pterosaurs have wings, but one has feathers and reduced fingers, the other a hugely elongate arm and membraneous wings. Bats can try and muscle birds out the way with their long wingers and ‘skin’-like wings, but again, closer examination shows that pterosaurs rely on a single finger to support their wing, not a whole hands worth. These are, of course, especially coarse examples, but I hope the point gets home.

That largely wraps up convergence, or at least as much as I wanted to say about it for now. Coming up soon, something else. For once I’m a bit bereft of pre-prepared posts so I’m not sure what I’ll get round to finishing up and posting. Stay tuned!

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From USA Today:

Time Warner made it official: On December 9 it will divorce AOL, closing the book on one of the most disastrous mergers in business history.

The media giant will spin off the online operation, turning it into a separate publicly traded company. Investors will get one share of AOL for every 11 shares of Time Warner that they own on November 27.

The transaction is structured as a dividend that will be tax-free, at least for federal income taxes.

AOL shares will trade on a when-issued basis beginning November 24. Regular trading will begin on December 10.

The spin off is part of Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’ effort to focus on news and entertainment, particularly the company’s film studio, magazines, and cable channels including TNT, CNN, and HBO. In March he spun off Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 cable operator.

But by cutting the connection with AOL, Bewkes formally ends former CEO Gerald Levin’s grand dream from 2000 to create the world’s largest, most diversified, and most technologically advanced media power. Reflecting the enthusiasm of the time, Ted Turner — then Time Warner’s Vice Chairman — said the $163 billion deal was “better than sex.”

That optimism vanished soon after the merger took place in 2001. Investors lost about $200 billion as the Internet bubble collapsed, executives at AOL Time Warner engaged in internecine warfare, and the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission challenged the company’s accounting practices.

Time Warner shares, which soared over $200 in early 2000, closed Monday at $32.35.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Guest Post by Ron Dawson

To see Part 1 in this series, go to : http://photofocus.com/2009/11/16/primer-for-still-to-video-shooters-part-1/
To see Part 2 in this series, go to : http://photofocus.com/2009/11/17/primer-for-still-to-video-shooters-part-2/

In parts I and II of this series, we covered framing and image capture. In this part, I’ll offer a few tips on lighting and audio. Note: this is not meant to be an exhaustive discourse on how to light for a set. You may have heard about three-point lighting. This will not get into that. These are some helpful tips and reminders for those of you looking to do some down and dirty video interviews.

Lighting
• Indoors—when filming indoors, if you are not using a professional lighting set-up, try to pick a location that is bright, but does not have a harsh, overhead light. Overhead light will cause pockets of shadows in the subject’s eyes, under the chin, nose, etc. Avoid fluorescent lights whenever possible. Also, beware of backlighting.

• Outdoors—DO NOT have the subject in direct sunlight. Again, this can cause shadows or “hot” spots on the face. Look for an area where the light is more even. If it’s not too dark, a shaded area can work. Use reflectors if you them available and have an assistant to help.

• White Balance—most consumer camcorders have auto white balance. This affects how the camera looks at the color white. If the camera is not properly white balanced, everything may look blue or orange (depending on your location). Your camera may also have pre-set white balance settings for indoors and outdoors. Read the camera instructions to learn how to properly set white balance. If you look on the view screen and everything appears blue or orange, you know that your white balance is off.

Audio
Every videographer worth his weight in salt knows that audio is just as important, if not more so, than the visuals. Poor visuals (e.g. shaky camera work, poor white balance, etc,) can often be fixed in the editing room with creative filters, b-roll, etc. However, there is very little that can be done to fix poor audio. If at all possible, use a microphone connected to the camera to get clear, crisp sound. If that’s not possible, keep these guidelines in mind:

• Use a microphone—if at all possible, use a wireless lavaliere microphone on the subject. Run the lav wire underneath the shirt or blouse so it’s concealed. Nothing screams amateur as much as a long ol’ ugly lavaliere wire running down the front of a person’s shirt. If you’re a male putting a mic on a female, be a gentleman and turn around as she works to get the wire up her blouse or shirt.

• Monitoring and syncing sound—get a pair of headphones to plug into your camcorder and monitor your sound. Even if you’re using a camcorder that shows audio levels, it’s always a good idea to monitor your sound while recording. If you don’t, you could be getting static and not know it until it’s too late. Audio levels don’t distinguish between good audio and bad. If you’re shooting with a video DSLR, you won’t be able to monitor sound from the camera, so I recommend either a) recording simultaneously to a traditional camcorder and monitor sound from there, or b) better yet, record to a digital recorder like a Zoom H4N (a favorite among my peers). Use a slate or clap your hand in front of the subject’s face so you can sync the two media sources in editing. Just match the sound of the clap to the visuals of the hand or clap board striking. Just like they do it on a real film set. It’ll make you feel very official.

• Indoors—be mindful of room noises. Make sure the heater and air conditioner are off. If you are in or near the kitchen, make sure the refrigerator is temporarily turned off so as not to pick up humming. The same goes for computers or any other household or office appliance that hums.

• Room Tone—once you have conducted the interview, record the room for about sixty seconds with no one talking. This is called room tone, and can be used during editing to help even out sound when cutting to different shots. Before recording room tone, have someone say “room tone” in front of the camera to mark the spot. I should note that room tone is a “nice to have.” I can honestly say that in the seven years I’ve been in business, I’ve never taken the time to grab room tone.

• Outdoors—Try to stay as far away from traffic as possible, especially if you won’t be using a microphone. Most consumer video camcorders do not have wind guards, so if it’s a windy day, try to avoid interviewing outside. If you must, try to find an area where the wind will be blocked. I actually try to avoid filming interviews outdoors if I can help it. Even if the scenery is amazingly picturesque, it won’t do you any good if you have to stop every two minutes because of airplanes flying over, dogs barking in a park, or traffic whizzing by. Remember, when audio is key, good audio should trump beautiful scenery.

Today YouTube will announce a new collaborative effort with news organizations such as The Huffington Post, NPR and The San Francisco Chronicle, according to a New York Times article, “YouTube to Help Sites Gather News Clips.”

The new system is designed to connect citizen journalists with credible news organizations so that stories can be told more richly, even if a videographer never made it to the scene. This marriage between traditional media and citizen observers  is a daunting idea to grasp as someone who’s hoping to break into journalism, but it also is promising as it gives us a way to tell stories more completely and the increase in video evidence can provide more reliable facts and information.

For example, there was an altercation between Gainesville Police officers and partygoers attending Fest 8, an annual alternative music festival, over Halloween weekend. Officers attempted to break up the party and clear the streets, and one partier resisted. An officer responded by tasering the offender, but a handful of people ended up throwing things at, kicking and hitting the officer. Now, police are using videos uploaded to YouTube to determine whether the acting officer was at fault for using the taser and also to identify other suspects.

This case is a prime instance in which the video tells the story better than words can, and the fact that police are also relying on the footage to make a decision shows how much of an impact such technology has on judicial and journalistic decisions.

This week at KBIA, Hayley and I are working on my baby – a piece on pediatric chiropractors.  Many more practitioners are labeling themselves as family care providers and an alternative to traditional medicine.  We have called every administrative chiropractic association we could find, as well as many local companies – but no one has called us back yet, but I am not losing hope.  Hopefully we will be able to shadow the family chiropractor I discovered in Fulton, Mo.

This week is quite possibly the worst week to do this story though, because Janet (understandably) wants us to conduct as many interviews in person as possible, but realistically this is very hard.  Most of the contacts (with few exceptions) are at least an hour a way.  Most of the national and international organizations are located on the east coast (primarily Arlington).  It is just not plausible to drive all over Missouri this week with so much to do before break.  After break, there are only three more shifts at KBIA.  I have a lot of confidence in this story – I just wish we wouldn’t have to play the waiting game with this one.

Out of the learning stage of web production and on Tuesday and Thursday evenings I come in and update the web site with Courtney Flatt monitoring me.  I am confident in my abilites to do this – I just wish there was a checklist.  I think I am going to make one, and also make a guide for web production here at KBIA for the next person to come here and produce (much like I did at the Missourian).  I think a big problem with convergence majors in day-turn atmospheres is the lack of communication and sometimes the lack of knowing what is expected of you.  I plan on working on this throughout next semester so the producer next fall will know exactly what to do.  I also plan on going to the rest of the faculty meetings (on Wednesdays) for the semester to get better acquainted with the staff here.

A large time vacuum this week is project managing.  The teams will have to pitch their large, investigative stories this week – on top of my other team who seems to be having some difficulties getting their sources together this week.  I cannot wait until break.