TechnoStones

2009 will be the  year that many business’s will be tightening their spending belts and find more cost effective ways to market and advertise their product or business.  Online advertising will increase and traditional advertising will decrease as the cost is much higher to produce.  In 2009 review your ROI and investigate how to spend your budget wisely and not go with the saying “this is what we have done for the last 5 yrs”.

If you are unsure of where to begin with Online advertising, TechnoStones Interactive will answer any questions you might have.  Let TechnoStones Interactive evaluate your current Marketing/Advertising plan and provide the insight on how you can use online advertising in the upcoming year.

I am unsure if this is good for the 3d community. After the aquisition of Softimage, Autodesk will own almost every major high end 3d software package on the market. The only 3d software manufacurer that is still hanging on is NewTek. Interesting!

I will interested to see how Autodesk will differentiate between Softimage and Maya. Both can produce high end 3d renderings. Which one to choose? 3ds Max - play nice with your office mates.

Came across this nifty little start up.  http://www.faceyourmanga.com  Yes, you too can look like a cartoon!   First one is free.

More people are using Firefox 2+ and IE 7 as their browser of choice.  There is good reason, tabbed based browsing, better data optimization and more flexibility using Web 2.0 technology.  Many company’s that provide online applications are starting to drop support for IE6.  37 Signals, a development firm that brought us BaseCamp announce that as of August 15, 2008 it will no longer support IE6:

IE 6 is a last-generation browser. This means that IE 6 can’t provide the same web experience that modern browsers can. Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.  - http://productblog.37signals.com/

We here at TechnoStones Interactive applaud their move to drop support for IE6.  Moving forward with technology is always hard, especially when you drop support for a platform with the penetration of IE6.

With more people turning off the Television and logging on to get information and entertainment, Internet Television is gaining popularity.

Old School
Imagine wanting to see your favorite sitcom, or documentary but you worked late and missed the time it was typically scheduled.  Oh well missed - maybe you can catch a rerun

New School
Same situation, but you go to your computer and you can watch your programing when you want and how many times you want.  Not held down by a programming schedule.

The old school way it was simple to sell advertisements for a program.  More viewership more money for your 30 second spot.  Now advertisers are finding new innovative ways to connect with the audience.  More interactive ways to engage their audience and more than the mind numbing 30 second spot.  Below is a screen shot of an advertisement for a interactive portal by Kleenex.  Yes, you can design your own tissue boxes - how cool is that!

Adobe has finally launched their new Media Player. There has been alot of buzz about the player and what it can and can’t do. So to keep up with the other bloggers, I am going to deposit my two cents into the blogoshpere.

I visited Adobe.com to download the new Media Player. I could not miss the download as it was taking up the main branding image on the home page. So the download is very quick 1.4mb, this download also forces you to install Adobe Air the platform it was built on. About a 45 sec install on a broadband connection.

Once installed double clicked on the Shortcut on my desk top. A nice clean interface appeared with call outs to prompt me to click on something. After a few clicks I was into the actual video content.

Once into the actual video content the compression quality was very good, even at full screen. The video compression utilizes the VP6 or H.264 codecs. But, some footage was compress from some very sad start quality. A sample of that is inside PBS Great Performances with Eric Clapton. That compression looked as though it came from VHS.

Stay Tuned - I will be diving into the whitepapers next!!

I recently attend a small seminar on Virtual worlds.  The presenter commented on how the younger demographics are bored with Facebook and Myspace.  It is a flat page with no where to go - I somewhat agree with them.  Facebook and Myspace are great platforms for the 18-40 crowd, but more and more pre-teens and teens are flocking to the virtual world of Second Life and Webkinz.  If you are marketing to this younger demographic - look into the virtual worlds available and get your brand identity out there.  Remember if teens are using it now - us older folks are already outdated!!!

Now that Toshiba has removed itself from the game of Next-Gen DVD choice, Blu-Ray has the backing of all 6 major studios.  So with the decision made, hopefully, we can move on with our media creation!  If the need arises TechnoStones Interactive will still create HDDVD’s for you as long as there is blank media available!

First Avid dropped out of NAB(National Association of Broadcasters) Convention and now Apple? WOW! I am interested to see if Discreet will see an increase in leads by attending the show as one of very few Post Production distributors.  Adobe?

There has been alot of the buzz if NAB has lost its luster. If you think of it this way, you spend 6 figures to attend a trade show to present your latest and greatest. But if you spent that 6 figure budget in other marketing areas, I am sure you would have a better ROI.  You could get a lot of Clicks for 6 figures.

Mac or PC, if you are in the post video industry you have heard or used Avid and or Apple. I am interested to see if these two will pull out of SIGGRAPH later on this year as well. Ah it doesn’t matter - we all go to these trade shows for the t-shirts and the parties!

The first time someone mentioned Drupal I thought it was another flamboyant character from the 90’s.  But it is not….

Drupal is a very very robust backend framework that allows for a great deal of flexibility.  It provides the users many options including, 3rd party modules and themes, to make a very comprehensive social site.  Here at TechnoStones Interactive we are diving in head first to see what it’s limitations are.  Were are not finding too many limitations thus far.  I am excited to see that we have come a long way from custom built solutions that cost $250k+ and are able to use open source coding for the small company’s.

If you would like more information about Drupal visit http://www.drupal.org