As transmedia pioneer Lance Weiler recently wrote in the pages of Filmmaker, mobile devices “offer opportunities for filmmakers to reach audiences directly, with little to no intervention from middlemen. While the selling of a film on iTunes requires a filmmaker to go through one or maybe two aggregators, it is possible to go direct to the App Store as long as the mobile app receives approval from Apple.” But while Apple’s iOS requires approval, Google’s Android does not. Not only is Google’s app marketplace more open than Apple’s ecosystem, but Android has rapidly rising market share, and now Google is releasing App Inventor for Android, a new tool for creating applications with drag-and-drop simplicity — no coding (or approval) required.

If you’re not a programmer, have no fear: the New York Times notes that “[App Inventor] user testing has been done mainly in schools with groups that included sixth graders, high school girls, nursing students and university undergraduates who are not computer science majors.” In fact, Google’s launch video makes it clear just how user-friendly they’re intending App Inventor to be:

Of course, there’s a problem with allowing just anyone to create apps — the Android marketplace, already disorganized and difficult to navigate, could see a deluge of low-quality applications. It’s interesting to keep tabs on Google and Apple’s dichotomous approaches to their app stores — Google seems to want Android to be a free-for-all, whereas Apple dickishly insists on controlling and approving (or rejecting, as it were) everything. While I can definitely see potential drawbacks to Google’s approach, as long as there are effective filtering tools implemented in the marketplace — sort by popularity, for example, not to mention an actual marketplace on the web, instead of only on devices — App Inventor should help rather than hinder Google’s mobile platform.

Google “will be granting access to App Inventor for Android over the coming weeks” — right now, a simple email sign-up form is all that is offered. In the meantime, any ideas for apps for your next project? The possibilities are endless — use GPS sensors to discover where your audience is located, use polls to receive feedback on episodes or trailers, send text messages to users in a low-end alternate reality game. I say “low-end” because only time will tell how advanced App Inventor can get. But it should certainly be a good tool for getting one’s feet wet with mobile applications, which will undoubtedly play a larger and larger role going forward for any kind of independent creative.

Link: App Inventor for Android

Web-based editing tools are nothing new, but what starts here as a simple set of tools for trimming clips might eventually grow into an actual NLE. I’m not saying that we’ll be tossing our copy of FCP to edit video in our web browsers, but I do believe cloud-based encoding is the future, and just as I’ve dropped Microsoft Office for Google Docs for the majority of simple tasks, cloud-based editing might have a place in everyone’s toolkit. Of course, video is different from word processing because of its datarate and storage requirements; to that end, I’m curious as to what a NLE would look like running on Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS.

Link: YouTube Launches New Video Editor Tool

Here’s Google’s launch video:

Play looks like a great way to get attention for your creative video, but despite sponsorship from HP and Intel, it doesn’t look like there’s any prize money or equipment to be had out of the deal. While having your content shown at the Guggenheim for two days is great, I’d like to see a little bit of that Google money shared with content creators; at least the Vimeo Awards have a $25k grant associated with their contest. Still, it’s hard not to view the near-simultaneous launch of both initiatives as some sort of indicator that online video is maturing into something more than a marketplace for clips of stupid pet tricks and people falling on their face.

Another video promoting the launch:

Finally, Google’s official blurb:

YouTube Play is a collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim Museum to unearth and showcase the very best creative video from around the world. To have your work considered, simply post it on YouTube, and then submit it at youtube.com/play. A jury of experts will decide which works presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, 2010 with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. The videos will be on view to the public from October 22 through 24 in New York and on the YouTube Play channel.

[via NewTeeVee]

In order to get the price down to $99, the rumored device sports only 16GB of memory. If it does indeed allow for 1080p streaming, 16GB is not enough memory to store more than a couple of movies. Together with Apple’s purchase of the streaming music service Lala — and their probable launch of iTunes.com — does this mark a sea change in Apple’s media sales strategy, a change in which they now want customers to store content in the cloud instead of on devices?

In many ways this would make sense, as one of the ways my Android phone is clearly superior to iPhones is through its synching with the cloud. Emails, contacts, calendar events, applications — there is no need to plug an Android phone into your computer except to transfer music (which Android phones handle far less elegantly than iPhones). As it is, plugging in and syncing devices doesn’t feel particularly “magical and revolutionary,” to use Apple’s parlance. But would 3G networks really support music and movie streaming? In the case of the former, yes — the mobile applications for Pandora, Slacker Radio, and Rhapsody come to mind — but movies are another beast entirely when it comes to bandwidth. Furthermore, the question is less, “could Apple does this?” and more “why would Apple do this?”

The only reason Apple would do this is to make more money. Market research would have to show that iTunes purchases would rise significantly if purchased files were available anytime, anywhere (provided one has an Apple device and a cell signal). Customer surveys would have to tell the world’s most valuable tech company that its consumers were somewhat dissatisfied with the current system. Perhaps they could move to a pay-per-play instead of the current download-to-own model (or even a subscription service, ala Netflix). Regardless of how this shakes out, though, I doubt very much that Apple will be removing the obstacles to getting content into iTunes, so as far as filmmakers and independent content creators are concerned, my hopes are still pinned on Google TV.

Link: AppleInsider | New cloud-centric Apple TV to cost $99, run on iPhone OS 4?

You set the parameters for the dialogue, including the topic, the type of submissions, and the length of the conversation. Watch as submissions get voted up or down by your audience, and then respond to the top-voted submissions by posting a video on your channel. The platform operates in real-time, and you can remove any content that you or your audience flag as inappropriate. You can also embed the platform on your own website or blog.

You can see an example of Moderator in action at CitizenTube’s page. Additionally, Kina Grannis is using Moderator to crowdsource the lyrics to her next song:

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof (author of Half the Sky) is using Moderator to “turn the tables” and allow viewers to interview him:

However, of the dozens of examples on YouTube’s official announcement page, none are from filmmakers. Collaborative filmmaking sites like Wreck a Movie and A Swarm of Angels already exist, but I’m thinking that YouTube’s new Moderator module could be a good way to solicit and receive feedback on, say, a spec trailer. Coming Soon!

[via Mashable]

One of the reasons I’ve been running AdSense ads — other than the fact that they’re the easiest to get up and running — is to be able to accurately price NoFilmSchool’s ad inventory. Which, if you take their recommended graphic at left as gospel, is apparently terribly designed! The dark orange slots are the positions that generate the most revenue, and the white — where NoFilmSchool’s ads are located — are the worst. This does not take into account many individualized site factors, however, so I would not take that diagram as the end-all-be-all.

Anyway, if you have a website and you run Google ads for a month or two, you get stabilized eCPM figures, which is “effective cost per thousand impressions.” Google only pays you if someone clicks on an ad, so after running ten of thousands of ads and logging hundreds of clicks, you can get a decent sense of what an impression is worth (as opposed to a click). Then, should you decide to go out and seek out advertisers for your site — which I’ll be doing this week — you can look at your Google revenue and price your inventory accordingly. If you’re doing the legwork and are approaching advertisers directly, many folks on the internet have recommended taking your Google eCPM figures and doubling them, based on the assumption that Google was taking 50% off the top. Turns out Google’s a bit friendlier than that, which they revealed in a blog post:

AdSense for content publishers, who make up the vast majority of our AdSense publishers, earn a 68% revenue share worldwide. This means we pay 68% of the revenue that we collect from advertisers for AdSense for content ads that appear on your sites… Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

So basically the accurate multiplier is 1.5 instead of 2. If you have a website or are thinking about launching a website that might run ads, this is a good method of finding out what your ad slots are worth: turn on Google AdSense for a couple of months, and then multiply the resulting number by 1.5. That figure is the absolule minimum you should accept from advertisers, since you should be able to target your market much better than an algorithm. Regardless, unless you’re already getting several hundreds of thousands of pageviews a month (NoFilmSchool is approaching 100k/month), don’t expect internet ads to keep the lights on. They really work best as one slice of the pie.

[via Mashable]

Google just announced Google TV, a device/spec that obliterates the line between “TV” and “computer.” Suddenly it’s going to be a lot easier to get content from around the web onto your TV — because your TV has full access to the web. Sure, some TVs and devices support limited web functionality today, but with Google TV it will no longer be a matter of which widgets your set-top box or Blu-ray player supports, because Google TV is a full operating system (powered by Android) that can access any website (including Flash-based content) and run applications (from day one, you’ll be able to run Android apps like Pandora). While I think there will be problems with how the OS organizes this wealth of content, the fact is that Google TV is going to make it a lot easier to get independently-produced content onto the big (home) screen. Video and analysis after the jump:

The problem with the Apple TV is it is closed. Basically Apple is just selling you a box that you pay for the privilege of using to buy more stuff through Apple. iTunes is a walled-off store that’s blockbuster-oriented (only recently has Distribber stepped up to the plate to make it easier to get indie content into iTunes, but it’s still not a cakewalk). Google TV, on the other hand, will pull content from all around the web indiscriminately, listing independently-produced content alongside releases from walled-off stores that only sell studio films.

This is going to be huge for YouTube Rentals, because now the consumer is paying to rent something on their TV very similarly to how they would through a VOD cable channel. Much of the reason YouTube Rentals hasn’t taken off to date is because people do not want to pay money to stream something over Flash video on their computer; they’re used to that being a free viewing experience. Which is totally reasonable, since the quality isn’t that high and the screen isn’t that large. But combined with Google’s efforts to release VP8 as a royalty-free video codec (even if it might have some issues), Google TV should bypass Flash (similarly to how YouTube uses h.264 for iPhone and iPad viewing) and allow the quality of a YouTube Rental to match the quality of, say, Netflix’s HD streaming, which is pretty damn good as long as the connection is sound. Additionally, YouTube is launching YouTube Leanback, a new interface designed for the TV. I suspect and hope that, for independent filmmakers, this will be a BFD, because now all a TV-watcher has to do is call up the Google search box:

“Mother’s Day MILF” is listed right there in the search results, and I’m guessing that’s not because it’s a $300 million FOX film in 3D. No, it’s listed there because of a search algorithm, which is much more democratic in enabling audiences to find content than, say, a curated page in iTunes. Using Google search, audiences can find our films, and immediately click “rent” or “buy” — all on their TV. This means, now more than ever, search engine optimization (SEO) for a project is of paramount importance. Hell, audiences can even tether their Android phone to Google TV and just say our film’s title using voice search. More on SEO in the days to come.

The proof, of course, is in the pudding, so when Google TV comes out in Fall 2010 (it will be on set-top boxes, built into TVs, and integrated into other devices like Blu-ray players and (hopefully) game consoles), we’ll know more. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s full of bugs and not nearly as refined from a user experience standpoint as an Apple product — just like the first version of Android wasn’t that great. But then Google released a huge update with Android 2.0 and now Android phones might be outselling iPhones. The difference here? Google TV will outsell Apple TV from the day it comes out, because Apple TV isn’t very popular. And while Apple TV was largely meaningless for independent filmmakers, because of its openness Google TV is the concept we’ve been waiting for.

Link: Google TV Combines TV, Android and All of the Internet – Gizmodo

[search image courtesy TechCrunch]

Some unexpected Adobe-related news came from Apple, just days prior to Adobe’s CS5 launch. I’ve written multiple times about Adobe Flash’s ability to export one application to several platforms, and how it could potentially allow indie productions to be able to produce cross-platform apps on the cheap. But then Apple gave Adobe the finger, inserting new language into its latest iPhone SDK potentially banning non-native applications from the iEcosystem; Adobe fired back by demonizing Apple, going so far as to say, “Go screw yourself Apple.” Short of both sides sending their programmers into an all-out, Braveheart-style battle to the death, no one knows how this is going to shake out — but the corporate battle does have potential consequences for independent creatives.

Blocking applications originating in languages other than objective-c is a dickish move on Apple’s part, since they already have an approval process within their app store. Their reasoning — that non-native applications don’t live up to native programming, from a quality standpoint — is a blanket statement that should really be applied on a case-by-base basis. Realistically I don’t expect Adobe’s cross-platform Flash exporter to work like magic, but I do think casual games and other relatively simple apps could perform perfectly fine. As an independent filmmaker/designer/writer who is planning on releasing application components as part of my next film project, I had high hopes for developing the app once and releasing on many different platforms at no additional cost.

Apple’s not only getting prickly with Adobe; while they played nice with Google for a while, now they’re killing the Google search button on the new iPhone, complaining about being violated by the big G (not a pleasant experience, I imagine), and warning of porn on Android (although that may be more of an endorsement to some). All of this makes sense — it used to be that Google was “just” a search company and Apple “just” a hardware/software company — but now Apple’s MobileMe intrudes on Google’s cloud services (albeit relatively poorly), and Google’s Android phone, forthcoming tablet, and set-top box intrude on Apple’s iPhone, iPad and AppleTV territories. By excluding and badmouthing competitors, to a certain extent Apple is just behaving as any corporation would (and as a certain rival company has so famously). But blocking Flash and inserting new language into a SDK specifically to block Adobe’s cross-platform strategy is not only competitive, it’s also creatively stifling to developers, designers, filmmakers, and anyone planning on releasing an app for iPhones or iPads.

Personally, I’m committed to the Apple platform for creative work; I have too many Mac-specific applications that I use on a day-to-day basis, and the OS is rock-solid and efficient, so I have no desire to switch back to a PC. But I also enjoy having a much more open Android phone, and despite my use of iTunes to listen to music, I have never purchased a DRM’d file from the iTunes store. There are two sides to Apple: their solid technological foundation, and the “our way or the high way” consumer-facing ecosystem. I’m reliant on the former, and have a strong distaste for the latter.

This duality is one of the reasons I wrote earlier this year that I might switch to a PC. After thinking about it some more, I realized that it’s probably not going to happen (if anything, to save money I’d build a hackintosh). But the catalyst for my thinking about switching was Adobe CS5’s Mercury playback engine, demoed here at NAB:

Why is this important? Because increasing our efficiency and that of our team is going to be the only way many of us will be able to achieve our creative goals in the coming year. Like a lot of people, I don’t have a bunch of employees carrying out my will, and so I need to find ways to be more productive myself. With only so many hours in the day, something like the Mercury playback engine could easily convince me to switch from the Mac-only Final Cut Studio (of which I presently only use Final Cut and Compressor) to an all-Adobe workflow. I’m not the only one considering this, because, by extension, switching to exclusively Adobe programs opens the door to no longer being reliant on Mac OS.

From a strategic standpoint, Apple’s been focused on the iPad and other mobile devices lately, even going so far as to lay off 40 Final Cut team members. They’ve seen their most profitable quarters in history by switching their focus from pro hardware and applications to these lower-cost devices. Whither the future of the Mac as a superior creative/development platform? Apple should get something similar to Mercury out the door using their own OpenCL technology soon, or I won’t be the only one dropping Final Cut in favor of Adobe CS5.

Here are some interesting (p)reviews of the new versions of Adobe’s flagship video-centric products: After Effects CS5 and Premiere Pro CS5. At this point I plan on building a hackintosh as a sort of “best of both worlds” approach, to run a Mercury-optimized Adobe suite. When and if this happens, I’ll post a how-to — complete with filmmaking-centric components and benchmarks — here at NoFilmSchool.

(And yes, the Apple logo up top is supposed to be stretched; it’s a visual entendre…)

UPDATE: It seems I was wrong, but not before others picked up on this idea. As it turns out, the Google Nexus One isn’t nearly as disruptive as a VOIP-driven, ad-supported device could be. I still maintain that the below is possible, and hopefully we’ll see it one day soon.

This isn’t specific to film, but considering mobile devices today are much more than just phones — they’re connected computers that serve as our digital, personal assistants — this has bearing on how all of us will be interacting with each other (and content) in the future. So I thought I’d throw around some unqualified and totally speculative speculation about What’s Next when it comes to mobile platforms.

Lots of talk today about Chrome OS, the forthcoming operating system from Google. It’s a browser- and cloud-based operating system, and it’s definitely on its way. But yesterday the buzz was all about the forthcoming/not coming Google Phone, which everyone seems to disagree on. TechCrunch claimed it exists, despite Google’s assertion that they wouldn’t release their own phone and cannibalize sales by hardware partners (Motorola, Samsung, et al). Indeed, it’s hard to believe Google would develop their own device when they already have a strong hand in developing said hardware, as they reportedly did with the Motorola Droid (of which I’m a current user). But then TechCrunch speculated that the Gphone may not be a traditional cellular phone but rather a mobile VoIP device that uses Google Voice (similar to Skype) to handle all calling. Now their assertion starts to make sense, as Google Voice is already a game-changing application on Google’s mobile OS, Android (which is different from Chrome). On my Droid, I’m already using Google Voice to send SMS messages for free, bypassing the carrier’s ridiculous $20/month messaging charge ($30/month for data is understandable, but text messages are just that — data — and infinitesimally small bits at that, making the additional fee downright offensive). In Android, you can select what to use Google Voice for — all calls, international calls, or not at all. Say you turn it on for “all calls.” Now when you place a call you’re not even using your carrier’s voice network.

See where this is going? Text messages are data. Calls can be treated as data. TechCrunch’s assertion that it’ll be a data-only device is convincing. But it seems unlikely Google would make their own hardware, right? They’re a web services company, and no matter how smart their engineers and programmers are, they’d have no reason to jump into the personal electronics game, where margins are razor-thin and companies are foundering by the dozens. As more and more smartphones hit the market, the hardware will become commodified; a high resolution screen, multitouch, and decent speaker will get the job done. Android’s touch keyboard in landscape mode is the same thing as the iPhone’s, and it works fine; the iPhone’s competitors are catching up to the iPhone and the iPhone itself isn’t innovating as much either (from a hardware standpoint, the 3GS was just a faster 3G).

Google wouldn’t jump into the hardware game to build a better device (they already work with manufacturers on that) or to try to create something to compete at the iPhone’s price point. The reason Google would jump into the hardware game is to manufacturer something cheaply to give away for free.

If Google’s basic business model is, “give people something they want, charge nothing, and make money via targeted advertising,” then the mobile phone is the final frontier. Instead of web advertising motivating users to click on a hyperlink, mobile advertising gets someone to walk into a physical store. If you’re walking down the street and you search for Pizza, the results you get could be paid for. When you Google something in your browser today, this is already the case; there are the algorithm results, and then there are the Sponsored Links. Each time you click on a link, the advertiser pays Google. In the case of mobile search, when you find a store using Google Maps and then physically walk into that store, the GPS in your phone can report that as an acquisition; the store would then pay Google for the added foot traffic.

I’m not entirely convinced that Google will “make” their own phone (I say “make” because even if they do, it’d likely just be an unbranded Toshiba/Samsung/LG device). With Chrome their plan is to allow hardware partners to produce their own variants of Google’s reference designs; if they’re not going to build their own netbook, why would they build their own phone? If they did release a phone themselves, they’d have to have an ulterior motive. They could build a simple, straightforward, free device, make a billion in order to get costs as low as possible, and release it worldwide, all in the name of collecting obscene amounts of user data along the way. But they’re going to do this anyway with Android and Chrome and all their web apps, without giving away a piece of loss-leading hardware.

More likely is the possibility of a Google Plan as a free, lower-bandwidth alternative to plans from Verizon and AT&T. People worry far too much about the price of the device itself, as if the difference between plunking down $100 and $200 at the store means anything when you’re contractually signing away $2,400 on the spot (a two year contract at $100/month). Based on that knowledge, carriers subsidize the price of a device as long as you sign their hefty contract; seen this way, many phones today are already “free.” Therefore, it’s not the the device that matters. It’s the service. And it’s going to be free.

The money Google brings in from mobile advertising (they just purchased mobile ad provider AdMob for $750 million) will more than cover any data charges they will subsidize a carrier (this was probably why they bid $4.6 billion on that 700mHz spectrum). You won’t have a monthly bill. You’ll just have a free device that does everything.

Of course, the phone will be reporting your whereabouts and activities to Google Mothership, and this raises all sorts of privacy concerns, etc. etc. But Google already scrapes data from much of our lives anyway, especially those of us who use Android or Gmail or Gmaps. What’s a little more personal info, when it comes down to it? Privacy ain’t free.