Metacafe and Viddler enhance their free offerings...
A couple of posts ago I wrote about managing your multiple video uploads with tubemogul. What's really fanstastic is that those Youtube clones are also coming up with some fanstastic new ways of branding your content and engaging your user across your video's timeline.
Branding With Viddler - a whole new level!
What is there that you can't customize and brand with the viddler player?
You can visually select your colours via ineractive colour weels to change: background, player shading, player colour...and even the very colour of the player controls!...and don't even remind me about branding with your logo. Check it out!
Metacafe is getting with the FX
PLYfx - is what metacafe labels as the new way of mega pimping your video player & video experience to a new level. Metacafe now allows you to add custom effects, tittles, speech bubbles,animation and hyperlinks to any part of your video in any part of its timeline. check it out.
So now you can build a consistent image with your projects and squeeze much more out of your tight budget, so that you can enhance your front line services even more, and still look professional!
Resources
Viddler's branded player preview
http://www.viddler.com/learn-more/#build-your-brand
Metacafe's PLYFX
http://blog.metacafe.com/?p=165
...and not just in the workplace - according to researchers & psychologists
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, is based on her continuous research at Standford University. It reveals that individuals with an open attitude to growth and developmen have a stronger likelihood to evolve. And this 'mindset' enables them to quickly adapt to circumstances and learn from their mistakes by seeing these as opportunities for that very growth. The New York Times has an interesting summary.
These findings are also supported by research shared in the book, tribal leadership, which I mentioned in a previous post.
If you have an organisation that is led by values, and corresponding individuals are recruited to reflect these philosophies and a desire for growth and sharing, then you will have something really, really great. These statements are corroborated by the fantastic book called spiritual capital.
These finds are worth reading - if you can borrow the books, otherwise it may be worth bying to share! well worth reading.
PrimoPDF - a good & free PDF writer
Posted by William Doust at 15:50 Labels: charity, free, non-profit, nonprofit, open source, opensource, PDF, PrimoPDF, publishing, workflowThis PrimoPDF writer is almost perfect, but not quite...
PrimoPDF Dialogue (when making PrimoPDF default printing device)
Stickam - The Live Community beta invite to Payperlive
Posted by William Doust at 16:07 Labels: cd4 the band, concert, HIV, stickam, stream, webcastStickam - The Live Community webcam broadcasting channel is to launch the Payperlive service which will be a god send to charities
With claimed stream views of over 1,979,095,XXX, as of 2 July 2008, 23:44PM GMT (London 00), Stickam has officially opned its beta invite to Payperlive. This service then has a large audience and has been explored by individuals in various communications roles.
Love the YouTube info-ads, loved the 'narrowcast' on Stickam
The best appeal I could find with google was a UNICEF appeal called StickAid which sarted in 2006 and has continued for the lat two years. YouTube appeals were put out there as 'adverts' to seed the community and invite them to the broadcast. The technique of inviting the crowd to spread the word has resulting in growiing donations.
The initial 24 hour webcam-athon raised initial donations for UNICEF reaching £500 pounds, through to £3,500 in 2007. How much did they raise in 2008?
Maybe a bit of snooping on YouTube would give this away. You'll find the first link clue at the end of the article.
So check out stickam and sign up for the PayPerlive beta if you feel your charity could benefit.
My firends who run CD4 community project are giving stickam broadcasting a go for a live concert to be aired from Sheffield Sunday july 27 18:30(London GMT 00). We'll go live, fingers crossed, hopefully no technical glitches with the WIFI connection.
Useful links
Stickam
http://www.stickam.com
Stickam's Payperlive
http://www.payperlive.com/request
StickAID 2008 - July 18, 2008 - UNICEF...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MdX5HYHG1Q
StickAID 2007 - The Build Up... charity event 24hr done by Stickam representatives
http://mefeedia.com/entry/stickaid-2007-the-build-up/4460800/
CD4 community project Live concert
http://moourl.com/cd4concert
Flipping out over FlipMags - the eMag eVolution
Posted by William Doust at 17:19 Labels: flipbook flipmag flipmagazine ebook embed facebook myspace orkut friendster typepad livejournal publishing socialmedia socialnetwork charity nonprofit non-profitSo excited that I made an 'Issuu' out of it and started this post at 01:24am (GMT 00)
My sweet wife who works at homlesslink was working from home today researching web 2.0 and social media related content with regards to how these could be deployed effectively in the third sector.
I was finishing a blogpost about a free PDF writer, when she excitedly told me about the Free Issuu flipmagazine publishing platform. I got so overwhelmed that I decided to do this post instead, although the articles are kind of related as you shall discover.
Issuu Turns your PDF into a flippable eMag that can be embeded almost everywhere - for free!!!
Issuu gives anyone the ability to upload a PDF document and publish it as an online flippable/page turning magazine. Their tag line ‘Read the world, Publish the world,’ is based on building within the platform a community which shares commonn interests and 'reads'. But what's really, really powerful about Issuu is that you can 'embed it' into social networks/platforms like FaceBook, MySpace, orkut, Blogger, Friendster, TypePad, LiveJournal, or or on a webpage of your choice, either as a mini or as a link to a cutomized & larger version.
Other Free embedable 'enhanced PDF viewers' don't stack-up
Some may argue that Scribd and DocStoc offer poorer possibilities. But I must confess that I'm completely won over by Issuu's well thought out design, navigation and layout of the whole platform. But if you need your bases all covered, you've got the other two and if you have a teen market you want to reach you could check out Flip.
Well, afterall it appears that you will need a good free PDF writer to output your magazine design work...stay tuned. Meantime, check out the samples below.
Below is an embedded mini-mag to give you an idea...
But that's not all check out the quick tour that follows, to give you a better idea about how it works.
Image one Issuu magazine before zooming in...
Zommed Issuu magazine with tools
Issue magazine embed option - also notice facebook icon
Issue magazine embed code customisation view
Final embed code (as HTML option)
References & Further Reading
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/06/finally-a-web-based-pdf-viewer-that-does-not-suck-issuu/
http://dn3sxsw.wordpress.com/2008/03/10/talking-issues-with-martin-ferro-thomsen-of-issuu/
http://www.spellboundblog.com/2008/03/02/issuu-interesting-platform-for-online-publishing/
http://www.flip.com/
http://www.scribd.com
http://www.doctoc.com
How can a leader be effective in an organisation with multiple tribes?
Posted by William Doust at 15:13 Labels: business performance, coaching, evolution, mental health, mentoring, organisational culture, tribal leadership, work environment...given that every organisation is a microcosm of tribes!
'why is it that you go into some companies and leaders seem to do everything wrong and yet that company does well and you go into sother companies and leaders seem to do evrything right and yet and nothing good happens?The question and answer posed by Dave Logan to an interview with Stuart Varney on Fox, is that, 'it's cultural and has to do with these naturally occurring groups that happen within organisations'.
The book titled, 'Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fischer-Wright'explores organizational echo systems that are made up and run by tribes consisting of between 20 to 150 people.
Tribes coallesce into groups through shared mind-sets and worldviews about work, life and the cymbiotic relationship that culminates in work ethos or lack there of. And this is reflected in the language indivduals use to describe their current experience.
The heart of Tribal Leadership -on the level..erm, stage
Logan, King and Fischer-Wright designate the mind set stages as follows: "Stage 5," or the "Life is great" stage, is a plateau beyond "We are great" (Stage 4) and even further up on the scale of cultural improvement than "I'm great" (Stage 3), "My life sucks" (Stage 2), and "Life sucks" (Stage 1).
The goal as tribal leaders is to create more effective organisations and climates that nurture teams and individuals and to achieve this you've got to get them to stages 4 and 5.
Stages 4-5 are where real team-work whose fundamental foundation is shared values and these are based on triadic-relationships that releases individuals from the confines of 'lone ranger' hero roles that require so much energy and are typical of stage 3. At stage five you no longer consider competitors, but the possibility of how far can you go.
Stage 3 heroics, and you can read between these lines and imagine the mind sets and corresponding baggage that forms part of the make up of typical stage three archetypes. The main challenge is to demonstrate to this tribe that channeling their efforts collaboratively will reduce burn-out, nurture relationships and achieve even greater results. But they need to see this with a different mind-set.
Being a Multilingual Tribal leader who has been through the stages helps...
A tribal leader needs to be multilingual, and can only therfore coax and coach people into higher stages by understanding what behaviours need to be tansformed and what corresponding activities need to be undertaken within those mind sets including relationship building.
An organisation that consistently outperfomrs others as though it is on steroids, according to the authors and their research, are those that nurture and promote the majority of the invididuals within an organisation into stages 4 and 5.
The authors have created the tribal working model based on a study 24,000 people in over two dozen organization over an eleven year period.
But there are chances for tribal member to relapse into lower stages...
Tribal Leadership acknowledges the fact that negative external circumstances within organisations can trigger relapses that will spiral people down into lower stages. They authors provide examples of 'dot coms' that exprienced problems, went down the tubes and so did invididual with their corresponding behavioural responses to the crisis. The authors stated that they didn't know how to remedy this situation.
According to the book called 'Afluenza', by oliver james, he exaplains that extrinsic drivers are the very malady that propels people to depression and negative behaviour (this books quotes, tons, and tons of research). Individuals driven by extrinsic values define themselves by their title, achievement, bank account, CV, mortage, holidays, etc. As soon as circumstnaces arise that will shatter the status of this external driven because those very things that define him wil be taken away, then they will spiral ino lower stages.
As a leader within an organisation you have to understand each mindset, the corresponding language, the triggers and the leverage points that will propel people into higher stages of effectiveness.
This book is a definite must read ;-) I thoroughly recommend it.
Related books, articles & references...
Author's intervieved on fox business news - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yybxMVkTH2A
How to Succeed? Make Employees Happy (Time Magazine)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818183,00.html
Guiding leaders to advance firms' tribes to higher values
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/books/20080224_Guiding_leaders_to_advance_firms_tribes_to_higher_values.html
Tribal Leadership website
http://www.triballeadership.net
Cornell University School of Hotel Administration (US)
This niche site has some interesing research related to 'job satisfaction and well being'
You have to go through the search results to pick out the gems
http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/search/search.html?query=%22job+satisfaction%22
Google Scholar also produced some results that need to be filtered when loking a the terms Stress and profitability
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=stress%2Bprofitability&hl=en&lr=
Afluenza by Oliver James (Paperback - 27 Dec 2007) (link to my amazon)
Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends by Pete Sanders and Tim Sanders (link to my amazon)
Working with Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman (link to my amazon)
Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter... by Daniel Goleman (link to my amazon)
Multiple Video upload getting you down?
Posted by William Doust at 16:15 Labels: blipt, googlevideo, metacafe, revver, viddler, video analytics, yahooUpload video once from one site to many...and track what's working and what's not
Today's web wondering's and curiosity has sprung this gem called Tubemogul.
Tubemogul.com allows you to submit videos to multiple video sites for which you already have accounts. You can view all the analatics within one dashboard, with a whole hog of features that are best to be seen. You are then in a position to examine what works and what doesn't and tailor your future deployments accordingly. At the time of typing this post, if you select five video sites, and upload one file, then this counts as five (5) deployments, which is your monthly limit. If you request further, apparently an amicable arrangment can be reached.
If you are a social enterprise and/or a charity, I would appeal to the support team of Tubemogul to extend this when needed by stating what you are doing to transform peole's lives.
Track with your analystics which ad-sharing video sites such as revver, metacafe, veoh, and blip.tv to name but a few are helping you create self-sustaining funding avenues. Let people know more about how you make a difference with your video channels, and each view will help you get along that much further.
Resources
http://www.tubemogul.com
http://www.tubemogul.com/about/features.php
