Flip to animoto

If, like me, you like playing with low-tech visual media, (I am the proud owner of a Holga, Lomo and of course Flip camera) I recommend animoto . This app will turn a mix of stills and video into a seamless little visual presentation knitted together with a synchronised music backing track from your music library. If you crave words, these can be added, caption-like, and the result is strangely reminiscent of silent movies, but 21st century-style. Anyway it's free if the film is under 30 seconds, it's easy, and has a massive range of applications including corporate presentations. You can sign up for a whole year for $30. Oh - and it's available as an iPhone app. Natch. Goodbye PowerPoint, hello animoto.

The power of the moving image

Much is written about the iniquitous impact of the moving image on human sensibility. What you see translates into what you do. Violence begetting violence. Etc etc.

But how about the positive impact? How about using video for positive messaging?

How about movies that put you off. Right off.

Twitter makes the first draft of history

Much has been written about Twitter overtaking FaceBook in the social networking popularity wars, but for me the search or navigation part of Twitter has to get a good deal more sophisticated before FB need worry. If you're not on Twitter 24/7, you will miss the few tweets you really wanted to read in the vast avalanche of advancing messages that arrange themselves chronologically in real time on your home page. I dip in and out and have to spend much longer than I really want to sifting through the garbage like a magpie looking for the glint of something attractive. It's dull work, and will soon have me finding quicker, sharper alternatives.

This real time dimension does, however, have one inalienable advantage. When a major world event happens, Twitter captures real time eye witness accounts that add up to crowdsourced journalism, or history in its first draft. You Tube has revolutionised the reporting of controversial news with immediate, individual eye witness accounts beamed across the world, and Twitter does the same with its instant sharing of tiny messages.

How useful would it be now if there had been some passengers on the AirFrance Rio-Paris flight urgently uploading tweets on what was going on in that plane?

BlackBerry, Apple or Pomegranate?

I'm not quick to jump on new tech gadgets however quick I am to read about them. So I've been letting reviews, personal recommendations and a few hands-on sessions percolate through the stubborn layers of indecision before upgrading my antediluvian brickbat of a phone. (Actually I decided today that for all my love of all things Apple, I was going to be sensible and go for the BlackBerry Curve 8900). In the course of many happy Google hours interrogating the fruit salad of options, I came across the Pomegranate. Someone out there had even more time than me - check out especially the coffee brewing and shaving options.

Is it all vanity?

Over the last few months I've found that I was being asked quite frequently for examples of my various verbal outpourings, and being naturally disorganised, was spending silly amounts of time scanning in pages from dog-eared copies of the FT or various magazines and emailing them off. Then I thought why not put all this stuff together on a personal site? Much more sensible.

So it came to pass that lizbolshaw.com was born. It's unavoidably self, self, self and writing about yourself in the third person is somehow cringe-making, but on the other hand at least now people can drop in and find my various musings on Web 2.0, interviews with entrepreneurs and even a rather surreal piece on extravagant treehouses.

It comes as I succumb to Twitter and connect with old friends on FaceBook and generally paddle in the shallows of social media. All this mental junk food gives one a hunger for a bit of Proust or Foucault to chew on.

Opentable IPO

A quick trip to Sardinia to lie on the sand and swim in transparent seas, and I almost missed the Opentable furore. I have to admit to having followed this intently - as soon as Silicon Valley grinch Sarah Lacey poured scorn that it would never float let alone fly. And has it flown...

Here's VentureBeat's summary:

Online restaurant reservation site OpenTable (trading as OPEN) has stunned the market with the best IPO performance of any company since 2007 (Orion Energy Systems), reaping a 59 percent gain with share prices closing at $31.89 on the Nasdaq — a staggering upsell from its anticipated $20.

The stock spiraled as high as $35.50, a 78 percent gain, as market analysts watched, both concerned that it was overstepping its bounds and positing that the small size of the offering was buttressing its price. Only 3 million shares were sold. In its success, OpenTable defied the economic downturn — not only the recently frozen IPO market, but also a dip in business from its core customerbase: restaurants.

So far, the San Francisco company seems relatively untouched by its reported 10 to 15 percent drop in reservations between 2007 and 2008. The recession has eaten into consumers’ dining budgets and restaurants are clearly feeling the pinch. As mentioned in previous articles, the main reason OpenTable was even poised for an IPO is its consistent revenue stream from restaurants, which pay for the installation of its software system and monthly subscription fees. But the downturn cuts both ways. The site says more restaurants are actually signing up these days, viewing the service as a convenience that could lure more customers. Overall, OpenTable’s revenue rose 36 percent in 2008 (despite a net loss), and 21 percent in the first quarter of 2009 (bringing it back to black).

It's tempting to equate the UK's toptable with OpenTable, but that would be to overlook some substantial differences in the two companies' business models. Toptable has concentrated its efforts beyond the convenient and transactional to providing a much richer consumer experience for its user base. There's very clever personalisation going on behind the scenes - even more so since the launch of its bigger, multi-lingual site some weeks ago. The proof is in its revenue streams that include a healthy slice of third party advertising on top of restaurant booking fees and marketing. If toptable can break across borders to capture audiences in Europe, as it has set out to do, it will be a very serious force to be reckoned with.

Death of the Word

If you haven't read it and aren't yet sick of all things social media, Throwing Sheep into the Boardroom is a good place to get your head around the roots and branches of this explosive tree. Author Matthew Fraser is an academic at Insead and has one of those highly polished domed foreheads Victorian phrenologists would have loved. I'd also recommend his blog. His latest post about the demise of newspapers and more serious magazines isn't original but it's a useful summary of where things are.

We're about two weeks' in to the launch of digital magazine, Smart People. It's very American in that loud yet improving sense and on current form won't be getting my $25 sub, but it's good to see people getting together to launch digital, interactive alternatives to newspapers. Richard Addis, who knows a bit about newspapers, has been arguing for digital innovation in news for some time, while he goes round the world relaunching papers of the traditional kind. I'm a firm fan of la Huffington whose digital organ continues to do what it does better than the competition.