Barton Gellman: Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency
I am early in reading this book, but so far Cheney comes across as the ultimate FU VP; at once highly aggressive in establishing his position, smart and thorough in setting up and vetting his conclusions and incredibly calculating at routing around people and process to secure his desired outcomes. This guy must have read Machiavelli more than once.
Douglas Preston: The Monster of Florence
Gripping true story of a serial killer who preys upon young couples in the throws of lovemaking in the hills of Tuscany (I'm not exaggerating), and the efforts to catch him/her. Lots of compelling backstories on Italy, Italian culture and the convoluted legal and policing system there. If you've visited these spots, it adds another dimension (albeit a very dark one) to an otherwise idyllic canvas.
Joe Simpson: Touching the Void: The True Story of One Man's Miraculous Survival
Gripping, jarring story of the power of the human spirit, and will to survive in the face of almost certain death. Into Thin Air meets Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
Anna Politkovskaya: Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy
A tragic picture of a Russia that was presented a glimmer of light following a long bout with communism. In the end, it was an Icarus, and proved too much for the government and the people to contend with. Something fractured, and Russia succumbed to moral corruption and organized criminal activity. That the author gave her life to tell the story (she was assassinated) only adds to the hardness of what's being chronicled. Very concrete stories bring to life the Chechen conflict, how influence is bought, how assets are accumulated and defended. Mostly sadly, they also show how completely the Russian people seem to be left with a sense of powerlessness, abandonment, and confusion on how things could be any different.
Burton G. Malkiel: A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Completely Revised and Updated Edition
Excellent, highly readable book that in layman's terms makes sense of stock market, from bubble logic and history of same to different models for analyzing stock valuation, etc. Largely concludes that index funds are best path for predictable, reasonably safe but meaningful, return on investment dollars.
Charles M. Madigan: -30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper
As old media unravels, it gives rise to something else, something new that while on one level is a wonderful thing, on another represents a loss of our core fabric. Newspapers are the 'Exhibit A' example of the great unraveling of Old Media and this book does a good job in a readable fashion of articulating why.
Felix Dennis: How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
Sage, simple, clear and actionable truths. Poetic tone of an earnest pursuit to getting rich. Straight-up delivery, including decisions made, outcomes realized and lessons learned. A joy to read.
Dan Koeppel: Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World
Excellent, enjoyable read on the banana as a much loved fruit, the cultivation and growing science behind same and the true dark meanings behind the 'banana republic' moniker.
Philip A. Fisher: Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits and Other Writings (Wiley Investment Classics)
I am a Ken Fisher nut (read his columns in Forbes - GREAT!), and Phil was Ken's dad. This book was written in late 1950's, yet all of the concepts are timely, the antithesis of the get rich quick, trend-o-month finance books. Good constructs for thinking about business in general (in addition to investing). Somewhat dry writing style.
Marty Neumeier: Zag: The Number One Strategy of High-Performance Brands
If you have read classic business books like Crossing the Chasm, Innovator's Dilemma or Built to Last, you can probably skip this book, which is a reasonably well written consolidation of best practices around market segmentation, positioning and product delivery. Nice title, though, and some effective metaphors which are intuitive and specific.
« GoogleTube: what it all means... | Main | vSocial gets some love on ABC »
The unification of social networking and online video is upon us.
The video interview with Bambi Francisco of MarketWatch that follows capture's vSocial's vision and product strategy for participating in this exciting space.
This is the news release on the topic:
vSocial Launches vConnect, the Social Networking for Video Platform.
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I don't know if you are aware of this, but after your video is finished playing, vSocial "recommends" I watch a video on how trafficgeyser can game Google Search by spidering a video out to all of the video platforms on the Internet, and then letting it seed visitors.
Something that is very true about video is that presentation matters more when you are talking about quality. I can read Matt Cassamassina's IGN Nintendo Wii reviews and they sound great, but when he is on IGN-TV, his comments don't sound as poignant. I haven't really seen anyone using vSocial or YouTube or another video platform and combine it with great presence. Usually, people do one taping and post it to the Internet. The amount of effort needed to get a REALLY GOOD video production is underrated.
Video platforms have therefore created a predictable new need: good video production.
Without good video production, sloppy vlogs (is that the right buzzword?) might not capture as many users. When you are dealing with customers considering whether to spend $500 a month for a service, you are probably dealing with customers who are also looking to do the same thing as trafficgeyser.com: game Google.com PageRank. And it's a pretty honest way to do it: If you have great presentation skills, you deserve to be a heavily trafficked vlogger.
Posted by: John "Z-Bo" Zabroski | November 26, 2006 at 10:18 AM
To your point, John, there is no doubt in my mind that someone will relegate/elevate (depending on your perspective) really good CHEAP video production into a cottage industry.
In the traditional broadcast advertising industry SpotRunner is doing that with the video ad creation process, using categories, templates and custom voices overs with a media buy and fulfill logistics value proposition.
Cheers,
Mark
Posted by: Mark Sigal | December 27, 2006 at 11:16 AM
ah ha! Finally a good use for the reference to the Nixon/Kennedy debate often referred to “study” noting that most people that listened to the debate said Nixon won and most the viewed the debate thought Kennedy won. Apparently this is really just political folklore with no real study to reference.
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/did_nixon_win_with_radio_liste.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Nixon_debates#Trivia
But who needs studies when the issue is as obvious as the one you raise. Yes, the explosion in video from 3 broadcast networks, and a few hundred local affiliates, to any one of the billion cameras sold capable of taking video and being distributed socially would clearly reduce the quality of video.
Even the artistic styles of editing MTVesque or reality TV violates earlier rules of editing. The art of the jump cut made trendy is just beautiful. In earlier days they would say the editor was just plain lazy.
Hooray for progress.
While part of me (the purest and older part) agrees with you about good video production taking time, heck just have some good lighting and it would improve a lot of the current video quality issues; the other part of me believes we are in a transition of all sorts and it's fun. It allows for all kinds of experimentation. More importantly I don’t need a million people to like my experiment for it to be a success. I just need a few thousand to tell two of their friends, and so it goes.
This is a transition of art, of substance, of responsibility. We are in uncharted waters and it will take time to determine what is acceptable in terms of quality. Some accept the lack of video polish as sincerity, honesty.
Some excellent production houses actually go for the “Gonzo” look.
I listened to Martin Nisenholtz speak at the Streaming Media East show in May. He is the Senior VP of Digital Operations of the New York Times. He noted a common theme from one of the New York Times web site readers and now viewers since the Times has several video reports on its website. He said readers appreciated that some of the reporters looked uncomfortable being on camera as it conveyed to them a more human aspect to the story. Another comment was that the video stories were better journalism than stories on television news because the print reporter was trained to go after a deeper side of the story.
Any way you look at it, it’s a great time to be in a profession that involves communicating. I leave you with a gripping story that while penned by a New York Times journalist, Manny Fernandez, the emotions you’ll feel are mostly attributed to the medium of video. It’s called Johnny’s Cave about a homeless man’s plight in The Bronx. http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=7f5f12d1d283eab9a377567c6ee362b6cc76ceb7
Posted by: Albert Maruggi | June 03, 2007 at 06:34 PM
Hi
Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much!
Bye
Posted by: rofovnifo | July 04, 2007 at 04:46 PM
Amazing how fast this is happening ... it's exploding and we're just at the tip of the iceberg.
Posted by: Partners in Grime | April 13, 2008 at 09:00 AM
Bambi is HOT!
Posted by: Robo | May 16, 2008 at 03:16 PM