As part of our Super Fan podcast series, I spoke with Jeffrey Bridges, founder and executive producer of Pendant Productions. Pendant is an audio production group dedicated to making radio dramas like the old radio serials of the ’30s and ’40s, only modernized for today’s audiences. Pendant had 986,000 downloads of their shows in 2007 which just goes to show how popular the productions are.

Jeffrey started Pendant in 2004 to pursue his interest in fan fiction and fan generated radio dramas. Pendant is an all volunteer effort producing more than a dozen different shows, both takeoffs on existing properties and original properties produced by Pendant.

Pendant got its start with “Star Trek: Defiant” a text based story list that Jeffrey started way back in 1995. Jeffrey got interested in producing an audio version of the stories, and was able to find enough sound effects and audio mixing programs to make it possible. He went on to produce “Star Trek: Defiant” as an audio file. Not long after starting the first Defiant audio, Jeffrey was listening to some of the old Superman radio serials from the 1940s and had the inspiration to do Superman audio too, which led to the formation of Pendant Productions in 2004.

Jeffrey told me about Pendant’s history and how they make so many great radio shows. It is a fascinating story that shows just how much Super Fans can achieve and produce.

 

 Digital Podcast 32 [15:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (813)

Superman: Last Son of Krypton	Batman: The Ace of Detectives
Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira	Supergirl: Lost Daughter of Krypton
The Pendant Shakespeare	Star Trek: Defiant
Star Wars: Blue Harvest	Seminar
This Week in Pendant	Dixie Stenberg and Brassy Battalion
The Kingery	Once Upon a Time in Vegas
Imperium: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman Crossover	James Bond: To The End	Indiana Jones and the Well of Life
Indiana Jones and the Well of Life

Downloads are available in web-quality and CD quality. The CD quality downloads are available via BitTorrent.

Technorati Tags: super fans, podcast, pendant productions, Jeffrey Bridges, superman, batman, wonder woman, supergirl

As part of our new Super Fan podcast series, we met with Chris Adams after last year’s Digital Hollywood conference to discuss his experience working with both movie producers and web producers. We focused on how these two very different organizational cultures need to learn from each other to realize the potential for online video and social media. Having done lots of work with both web based companies and feature film producers, Chris is able to provide excellent insights into the challenges these companies face in this era of new media. He understands the differences between the cultures and the need for help in bridging the gap.

In this podcast, Chris provides some great perspective on the organizational and personnel challenges these companies face in the transition to new business models. He describes the role that social marketing and super fans played in helping properties like Syriana and An Inconvenient Truth break out and build audiences. This podcast interview provides a behind the scenes view into where things are now and some of the major changes to come.

 

 Digital Podcast 31 [44:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1072)

Chris is founder and president of Orbit Media Group, where he consults with media and internet companies creating partnerships, programming and relationships between and to the benefit of media, entertainment and online brands. His current clients range from Facebook.com, one of the fastest-growing internet companies on earth, for which he helped to create and produce “Facebook Diaries,” the first-ever hybrid user-generated video/reality TV show to be distributed on Facebook.com, Ziddio.com, Comcast VOD and linear television and the IFC Channel, to HBO to Comcast, the largest cable and broadband company in the US to HBO to Glam.com, the number one site for women to film icons, to Born4Sports, a social network, marketplace and ecommerce platform for sports and sports lifestyle with presence in Europe, Asia and soon, the US.

Prior to launching his own consulting company, Chris co-founded Participant Productions in 2004 with Jeff Skoll, eBay’s first President. Participant’s vision is to create entertainment that inspires audiences to make social change. In this capacity, Chris developed and executed on the business plan, was intimately involved in finding and hiring initial executive personnel and managed the company overall. Participant’s first slate of movies — Syriana, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon; North Country, starring Charlize Theron; Good Night and Good Luck, starring David Strathairn and George Clooney, and the documentary Murderball - were nominated for an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards. Chris is also proud to have identified and helped to develop former Vice President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth which won the Oscar for Best Documentary and Gore’s work participated in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition to the above-mentioned films, Chris developed and Executive Produced Participant’s first feature: American Gun starring Marcia Gay-Harden, Forrest Whittaker, Donald Sutherland, Linda Cardelini and Tony Goldwyn.

Technorati Tags: Chris Adams, Super Fans, social marketing, social media, Digital Hollywood

As part of our ongoing quest to examine the intersection of media and monetization, I met with Trey Shelton, Founder and CEO of Music Interactive, to discuss the company’s new service that allows viewers/listeners to trade their time and attention for free content.

 

 Digital Podcast 30 [19:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2359)

Trey founded Music Interactive in 2005 with the express purpose of creating new opportunities to bring together the advertising and music worlds and I think he’s found a nice way to mix the revenue opportunity of advertising with the rich media of music.

The service works like this. A major site, like MySpace, and a major advertiser, like Microsoft, want to run a promotion involving music. They line up an artist who also wants a lot of promotion and Music Interactive to provide the infrastructure for offering fans a free download in exchange for their watching a short video about the Zune.

Now we have a five way win. The consumer gets free music, MySpace gets some advertising money, Microsoft gets lots of attention, the artist gets huge promotion and Music Interactive gets a share of the ad spend.

Here are some screen shots of the service in action. In the first, I’ve added a big red arrow pointing at the ad for a free Jon Forman mp3 in exchange for “checking out the Zune”. The next two shots show the pop-up that plays the video and the download of the mp3.

It’s great to see this kind of innovation that creates win-win solutions for everyone involved.

In addition to MySpace, Music Interactive is working with Dodge, Hyundai and Ray-Ban on interactive music promotions.

Technorati Tags: Music Interactive, Trey Shelton, monetization, music

How to get podcasts into iTunes and how to get more than just the most recent show to download are questions I get frequently.

In the past, I have used the descriptions in the Digital Podcast Forums, but I thought I would create a short video tutorial that explains how to get podcasts into your iTunes player, download multiple episodes and delete podcasts from iTunes.

If you just got your new iPod and want to get some podcasts into iTunes so you can listen to them on your computer or iPod this video is for you.

Technorati Tags: how to get podcasts into itunes, how to get podcasts on iPod

Kina Grannis, an aspiring singer songwriter, caught my attention along with a lot of the tech community with a post over at Digg. The post linked to Kina’s YouTube page and had a song called “Gotta Digg”. The Digg fans went crazy for Kina and voted over 10,000 times for collection of posts linking to her blog and to the video at YouTube. Kina’s YouTube traffic skyrocketed up and “Gotta Digg” has gone over 180,000 views.

Kina is trying to win a contest and NEEDS YOUR VOTE. The contest is called Crash the Superbowl and the winner gets a recording contract and their video played on the Super Bowl broadcast. Kina was kind enough to spend some time with me on the phone discussing her career, the contest and the impact of her most recent experience with social media.

 

 Digital Podcast 28 [9:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2125)

If you want to hear more of Kina’s music you can visit her YouTube page, KinaGrannis.com or sign up for voting reminders at a site she set up for video blogging about the contest called Two Weeks for Kina.

Kina also has some CDs for sale on iTunes including One More in the Attic, sincerely, me and In Memory of the Singing Bridge

Gotta Digg Video

The Myspace Video

So GO VOTE FOR KINA.

Technorati Tags: Crash the Super Bowl, Kina Grannis, MySpace, Digg, YouTube, social media, social media marketing

Chris Brown, CEO of Metabeam, met with me at Digital Hollywood and told me about his company Metabeam. Metabeam makes menus, and not just any menus, but dynamic menus that help us navigate our DVDs and empower fans in new ways. Properties such as Terminator 2, Crash, Stargate and a host of others use Metabeam’s interactive menu technology to add extra features and interactivity to the DVDs. This is an important technology that helps engage and enrich the experience for true media fans.

 

 Digital Podcast 27 [20:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (9289)

Chris also told me about SimpleRom, an exciting new service for integrating DVD and web experiences. The services intent is to create a shift in the way that DVD producers migrate fans from existing content to new features, content and related fan fair on the Web. When a user puts a CD or DVD with SimpleRom in a Windows computer, the disc’s main feature (usually a video or music track) will begin playing in the user’s default media player software. Behind the media player, the user’s default Web Browser will display the Web page or url of designated by the DVD producer. SimpleRom is available on a pay-as-you go or subscription basis. The pay as you go plan costs $69 per disc image, monthly subscriptions run $99 per month.

Metabeam is also launching an interesting new service called ChatterFlix that allows users to chat while watching a synchronized playback of DVDs. ChatterFlix is definitely worth watching to see how it develops.

Technorati Tags: Metabeam, DVD, DVD menu, Digital Hollywood, Chris Brown, SiimpleRom

Chey Bell, host of Outside Voice, was hosting NowLive when I spoke with NowLive’s CEO Kevin Bromber. Chey and I had a good conversation about Digital Podcast, super fans, social media, podcasting and how people can promote their podcasts. If you have a show of your own it has some good tips for promoting your podcast.

About Outside Voice:

Chey’s show delves into the hot-button social and political issues of the week, Outside Voice delivers a fresh perspective, and a chance for anyone to participate in the discussion. You can chat with public figures, analysts, and entertainers as Chey conducts a virtual town hall meeting that is smart, timely, and interactive. Add your voice every Wednesday, 7pm- 8pm PST.

 

 Digital Podcast 26 [27:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1631)

Technorati Tags: Chey Bell, NowLive, podcasting, podcast promotion, social media, super fans, Digital Hollywood

Kevin Bromber, CEO & Founder of NowLive, met with me at Digital Hollywood to tell me about NowLive, a social broadcasting service that lets you run your own multimedia TV channel. And it wasn’t the usual interview as NowLive was in the middle of broadcasting live from Digital Hollywood, so we did the interview and it was broadcasted live. Chey Bell, host of Outside Voice, was the host at the time so she and I had a good conversation afterwards. I will post that half of the conversation on another podcast post.

 

 Digital Podcast 25 [21:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1686)

About NowLive in their own words

NowLive is a social broadcasting network that lets anyone create a live, interactive talk shows, take callers, share media, syndicate podcasts, and more. NowLive empowers you to connect any time with peers, fans, friends, and new and interesting people. Communicate and promote the things that matter to you most! Who uses NowLive? Celebrities! Join Adrianne Curry, Christopher Knight, Bobbi Billard, Christine Dolce (ForBiddeN), Somaya Reece, and more! Bloggers (sport, political, travel, fashion, music…) - take your blog to the next level and host a weekly call in show at your blog site. MySpacers: create an interactive party line with all your friends. As one of our members said, “It’s like MySpace on Crack”. Bands: Start an international live concert from your garage. YahooGroups: add live teleconferencing to the group. Fantasy Sport: Have the commissioner of your league host a weekly get together so teams can negotiate real time trades and brag about last weeks standings. Businesses: invite your customers to an online Q&A session; Friends & Family! - this is a great way for your friends or family to share great conversation and experiences from different locations, all within a rich-media environment.

Technorati Tags: Digital Hollywood, NowLive, social broadcasting, social media, online video, Kevin Bromber, Chey Bell

I met with CacheLogic’s Chief Marketing Officer John Dillon at Digital Hollywood. John talked to me about Cache Logic’s approach to content distribution. The company provides a native peer to peer content distribution network that competes with companies like Akamai and Limelight Networks.

 

 Digital Podcast 24 [17:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1810)

Cachelogic has developed what it calls VelociX, a media delivery platform that combines P2P technology with a global network of content caches built using the vendor’s P2P Management Solution. Content is cached on these servers and that means large media files — such as movies, TV programs, and games — can be downloaded over a broadband connection in minutes instead of hours.

The real benefits, however, start to kick in when the end users’ computers start contributing to the content distribution as well. It increases the capacity dramatically and cuts the costs at the same time.

A number of other companies have tried to provide similar services using a client only approach. CacheLogic’s base network acts like a super P2P network that is available even if local peers are not. That increases availability on the network and helps speed up the last segment download which can be a problem on P2P services based only on distributed clients.

If you need to move large files, CacheLogic is worth checking out.

Technorati Tags: CacheLogic, P2P, Digital Hollywood, CDN, content distribution

John Durham met with me at the New Media Expo and talked to me about podcasting in California Schools. John is from the California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP). According to CTAP’s website

The California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) is a statewide educational technology leadership initiative, providing assistance to schools and districts in integrating technology into teaching and learning. In developing CTAP, the earlier SB 1510 Education Technology Act programs were restructured in order to place control at local and regional levels.

John is working with California schools to introduce new technology and especially podcasting. The Brent Coley’s class at Tovashal Elementary in Murrietta, California provides an excellent example of podcasting in our schools. The ColeyCast is Room 34’s very own podcast! Recorded by the students, each broadcast highlights some of the exciting things they’re learning in the classroom. If you want to subscribe, here’s the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/coleycast.

You can check out a sample podcast from Mr. Coley’s class below.

 

 Digital Podcast 23 [10:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1960)

 

 Sample of the ColeyCast Podcast [6:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (319)

Technorati Tags: podcasting, ctap, John Durham, podcasting in schools