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Video Uploads to Flickr April 9, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Podcasts, Orlando, Events, Video, Film, Reviews, Trends, MySpace, photos, Facebook, BarCamp, Storytelling, Viddler, Web Services, Flickr , add a comment

Upload Videos to Flickr

My First Video on Flickr fit the new requirements perfectly: less than 90 seconds, and less than 150MB. That’s fantastic, and the streaming in good, embed codes, tagging, fits right into my flickr photo/video stream, awesome.

The videos on Flickr are going to make YouTube obsolete, or rather, the MySpace to Flickr’s metaphorical Facebook. The content in each place is different. I don’t go to MySpace or YouTube expecting quality, art, or intellectual content of the least kind. However, I know some real life people on Facebook, and some really serious photographers on Flickr.

By creating a constraint like this, the “90-second short film” will gain a place on the internet. I wouldn’t doubt if the next set of consumer-level cameras have an option to limit video clips to 90 seconds to allow for easy Flickr uploading.

…and it is SO easy. The same exact experience as working with a photo - I haven’t tried geotagging, but I bet it works. Now if they can get Viddler-style deep tagging working just like Notes on photos, I’ll be a very happy man.

David is a total goofball, now you can see it at 30FPS. Thanks Flickr!

Tell those bitches! March 4, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Markteting, Blogging, Music, MySpace, Public Relations, Friends , 8 comments

Don’t you love all those form letters you get about “We can get you to the top of search engines”, and “I’d like to buy text links from you”? I know I do, and I’m not alone…

My friend Marc, otherwise known as “marc with a c” to the music community of Orlando, has recently decided to let ‘em have it. He was contacted by a chain-lettering, canvassing, music rep from Hitt Music Group.

Here’s a sample of Marc’s reply from his MySpace blog:

You mean that THE Hitt Music Group is interested in me? Oh my God. Here I was thinking that MySpace was just A Place For Friends, but no… you really do make dreams come true.

Of course, you must be joking, right? This CANNOT be the same Hitt Music Group that brought us such unmitigated talents as Friday Night Gunfight and the Lords Of Conversation, can it?

OH MY GOD, I JUST CHECKED OUT YOUR WEBSITE. You guys TOTALLY are *that* Hitt Music Group.

One of the modern conveniences technology affords us - the ability to spam thousands of independent musicians on MySpace… yes!

This is good for a laugh, and probably an indicator that no matter how much transparency and genuineness gain value in the marketplace, there will always be a Hitt Music Group.

Cookie cutter PR is bad PR - but I’m no expert.

Flock Blogging with Photos September 14, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Blogging, Podcasts, HowTo, Events, Video, Browsers, Fringe, MySpace, Liberatr, Web Sites, photos, interface, Teaching , 1 comment so far

Part II, Electric Boogaloo!

This screencast demonstrates how to use Flickr photosharing and the Flock browser to add photos to a WordPress blog (or any blog or web page, really). Flock makes it dead-simple to upload, tag, and post photos. You can probably download the browser, sign up for Flickr and post photos to you blog faster than you can watch this video (about 7 minutes). Let me know what you think or if there are any tough spots.

Download the Screencast (in stunning 480×320 optimized for iPhone!)

There was a time when I was thinking of doing lots of screencasts and trying to build a whole site around it. Mike G of CFPHP and I were talking about something along these lines today - he’s the reason why you have an iPod-sized ‘cast. If you want to see anything else demonstrated, like if you want to teach your boss how to subscribe to RSS feeds, I would be happy to oblige. I am just sort of doing these as they come up until we come up with some cirricula.

People named Ryan Price September 10, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Site News, Music, Video, ryanprice.org, MySpace , add a comment

Ryan Price-Andy Weiss Song

Add to My Profile | More Videos
Ryan Price Music

I am a songwriter. Music offers everyone something unique, and it is my form of meditation.

I wrote and recorded my first record while I was in school. It was an experiment in a lot of ways. I was learning to sing, record, produce, arrange and write songs. I got a few friends to help out, but for the most part I played everything, and because of budget I even mastered it. The release of the album has been a learning process, and I’m still learning. That I think is the key to staying inspired.

Today I am sitting on the heals of about 30 new original songs, as you can imagine it is a lot of work and I want to give them all a change before I will inevitably be forced to retire some of them. I have also been very focused on the music end of my career, but I’m started to realize how much work is in store for me as an independent musician in today’s “here today gone tomorrow” world.

Thank you for checking me out, tell your friends and let me know if you are interested in helping in any way. Ryan

PS: My first solo record “Time is a Healer” is available for download at:
Itunes and www.songslide.com

If Digg is Mob Mentality, Pownce is a Clique June 30, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, News, Career, Markteting, Orlando, Links, Quotes, Reviews, Trends, MySpace, Web Sites, Mr. A for Effort, Entrepreneurship, Facebook , 1 comment so far

I recently posted a comment on Mashable I’d like to share with you, my subscribers. The post was Rise of the Rose Bashers? and it pointed out people who have never used Kevin Rose & company’s new IM/filesharing service, Pownce.

At the moment, one of the most popular stories on Digg is entitled: “Kevin Rose & Pownce Get Pwned by Uncov“, in which potshots are taken at Rose and Pownce. Further insults are piled on by the Diggers.

The digg audience is almost entirely made up of followers, not leaders. That’s actually the business model for the whole damned site! It’s not a big surprise to me that a service that allows for individuality and groups and privacy would not appeal to the “me too” crowd. Digg users don’t like being told they can’t do something - they’re spoiled in that way. That’s why the HD-DVD code was such a big deal, and the comments changes too. If one person has a contrary idea and they can be persuaded, the Diggers will glom on so they can be “cool”. This is how pop/anti-pop culture works.

If this doesn’t apply to you personally, great. Generalities are not ultimatums. There is a sliding scale, I’ll be the first person to admit to that.

Pownce (without having used it) seems like a “friends only” type of service - it will end up having a completely different audience because the service is fundamentally different. You’re not sharing with the world, but custom groups. This is Facebook vs. MySpace. One is for friends, one is for the public. The type of audience you see on these sites is very different. A service that gave you the best of both worlds was LiveJournal, with friends only, private and public posts, as well as custom groups. This is just that idea with a focus on IM and file sharing.

I think Digg has proven over its 3? years of existence that it’s not going anywhere - actually, I wish they’d exapnd the service to include geographic categories - like countries, states, metropolitan areas - Outside.in is currently my choice for that kind of stuff, and Ma.gnolia could be if we could get some people using the service. I think that’s the big thing with any of these Web 2.0 ideas - if nobody participates, it doesn’t matter how good your service is. I’m working on a social networking site, and I’m planning to make my own local content offering, so I now see that you not only need to convince one group of users but that group ans several of their friends. This is the real trick. How do we do that?

8(eight) things you probably don’t know about me–probably June 27, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Links, Video, Trends, MySpace, Web Sites , add a comment

I got tagged with one of these internet Memes by Marc Rapp, and now let’s see who I can infect with such a device: Charlie, Mark Baratelli, Beth Marshall, Linwood Sassy, Barry Smith.

Ok Mr. Rapp - let’s talk sometime this week. I know you’re reading this.

Florida Creatives Happy Hour 6/18 June 15, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Markteting, Podcasts, Orlando, Events, Beer, Coworking, Coffee, Trends, MySpace, Liberatr, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, Facebook, Virb , add a comment

Third week of the month, the two events we host come around, and I blog/email/post the hell out of it! First of all is likemind.orl at Lake Eola Panera Bread, that happened already this morning, but it happens every month. Alex Rudloff and Ryan Price (that’s me) host this event for… well… anyone in Orlando! The likemind.us fellas in New York got a very nice company named Anomaly to send us some coffee/bagel money, so come for free coffee and good conversation.

Now, for the big news - Florida Creatives Happy Hour is turning 7 months old! Officially our baby is 27 weeks along in its development (but been drinking since day 1? ouch!). I’m really hoping we will be able to get some presence in the local schools once the next year gets started, so I’d like to have a short directed discussion about that, maybe record it, when we feel like we’ve got “quorum” (enough people to make decisions). John Rife is supposed to be returning from his trip this week, so I’m sure he’ll have stories to share. I’ve also spent the last 2 months on a big recruiting push, and just sent a couple of fresh emails today to local illustrators/podcasters. Not to mention the social networking groups and doing lots of outreach there too. If you’re on Upcoming (meaning you have a Yahoo ID), Facebook, VIRB or MySpace, join the groups. Don’t forget the mailing list.

Event Page & RSVP
Monday, June 18, 2007
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
crooked bayou
50 E Central Blvd # D
Orlando, Florida 32801

If you’ve never been to a happy hour, all you need to know is BE YOURSELF. We have a very casual atmosphere at Florida Creatives, and we are mostly made up of people who want to make some friends who are passionate about the same things they are. In addition to likeminded friends, we are most of us interested in learning about other disciplines, so we are here to learn as well. Last but not least, there are some of us who want to see this community thrive, and what we can accomplish by getting organized. Admission is free, business cards are plentiful, discussion is honest and friendly. Check us out.

SlideFlickr.com, My New Friend June 11, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Blogging, Links, Trends, MySpace, Web Sites, photos, mashups , add a comment

SlideFlickr.com is, well, they give you embed-friendly Flickr slideshows that work on MySpace - all the Flickr stuff requires JavaScript, so you never see the official Flickr stuff on flash only sites. If Yahoo is smart, they’ll get ‘em summa this!

I am a fan of the “blog this” button, but again, no MySpace support, but that’s not their fault. Honestly, I hate MySpace, but it is too useful right now.

Sharing Some Stats June 9, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Site News, Markteting, Blogging, Podcasts, Orlando, Events, Video, Trends, Fringe, Wordpress, MySpace, Liberatr, Web Sites, statistics , add a comment

OK, now that the Fringe Festival is long over, and the spike in traffic for Blogging Fringe has come and gone, what do we have to show for it? Not as much as I’d like, really. The fact that lots of our content is spread across other sites (MySpace, YouTube) doesn’t really require anyone to use our site to get the content. With this audience, we don’t really need to worry about feeds taking away from our traffic.

fringe_may_stats.png
Note: As of today the daily average is 45 visitors.

The festival started on Friday, with a small event Thursday where I got to hand out some cards and meet some of the cast members and producers from shows. That’s where the traffic starts.When we reach the half-way point of the festival (Tuesday), the increase of traffic we were seeing just drops off, despite the fact that we had new and compelling content hitting the site, with myself and the street team pushing the site to everyone we met.

Here’s where I was stupid: Headline Animator. Feedburner tracks the stats for this dynamically-generated image, since they know you’re normally hosting it somewhere other than your site. You can even generate multiple headline animators and track them individually. A few months ago, I took the HA off of MySpace in favor of the more interactive SpringWidgets option. However, I’m now thinking that this kept people on MySpace more often.

What I should really do with headline animator (done now) is post one in the header of the MySpace Blog - the header appears at the top of every blog post and the blog home as well. A really great example of what to do with your blog header can be seen at the Six Characters MySpace Blog. They use an html image map with deep links to their site - so smart.

fringe_may_stats2.png

Last, here’s a breakdown of my visitors. It’s sad that Internet Explorer outnumbers Firefox 36 to 106 - maybe that’s a good cause to sprinkle some FireFox (or Flock, Songbird) banners around the site.

What’s the short list of things I’ve taken away from this experience? What am I going to aspire to for our next event (Orlando Puppet Festival)?

  1. Figure out how to get people coming before the event.
  2. Track MySpace views - Headline Animator will do nicely.
  3. Track MySpace Blog views with a second Headline Animator.
  4. Outfit the MySpace page and blog header with deep links to the site.
  5. Include links (and deep links) back to the main site in every MySpace blog.
  6. Try making a MySpace bulletin for every blog post on the main site.
  7. Consider including a “MySpace code” textbox in every post, a la YouTube.
  8. Invest in a Related Posts widget for the sidebar - who knows how much this could keep people on the site?
  9. Continue to seek out methods of Viral content like the Fringe Crush - people were hooked on new ones and were very eager to record one with us, though we didn’t see any user-generated videos this year.
  10. Push VoiceMail Reviews like nobody’s business - I waited too long to start pushing that idea, it could have worked out better.
  11. Consider posting Twitter inside the main blog chronology - after 24 hours, the posts don’t appear on the flash widget, but there was useful stuff going in there several times a day.
  12. Include more personality stuff (that’s normally my mantra), i.e. facetime. one of the most commented on video clips was a small part of the opening night video where I couldn’t get in to the VIP party.
  13. Form more artist relationships before the festival (coming back every year helps with this). Standing next to TJ Dawe and having him point out the podcast on my behalf was better (in context) than any marketing plan. Word of mouth was our #1 best campaign.
  14. Don’t forget to mention the day job and hand people cards when they ask about it. Blogging Fringe is also a portfolio piece, don’t forget to let it drive some business back to myself!

Florida Creatives Updates June 6, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Orlando, Events, Beer, MySpace, Web Sites, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, Facebook, Virb , add a comment

First let me remind you that we have an event coming up on Monday the 18th at the Crooked Bayou, our home now for 4 of 7 months of Florida Creatives Happy Hours. As usual, meet and greet will be from 6-9PM officially. I have often stayed far past 10 o’clock myself, but you’re welcome to come and go when you like.

Also, If you haven’t seen already, a Florida Creatives group now exists on several major social networking sites. If you have friends living elsewhere in the state, get them to join these groups and meet some other creatives in another commmunity.
Mailing List - 51 members - http://groups.google.com/group/florida-creatives
MySpace - 151 members - http://groups.myspace.com/floridacreatives
Facebook - 21 members - http://ucf.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2731760310
Upcoming - 9 members - http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/2967/
Virb - 5 members - http://virb.com/groups/15363582

I’ve also just spent a bit of time writing an About Page at FloridaCreatives.com - check it out, let me know if it needs clarification or updating.

Hope to see you all on the 18th! Thanks for supporting Florida Creatives.