Cross-Media Entertainment

Earlier this month, PayPal launched PayPal Mobile (only available in Canada, US & the UK..grrrr). The service connects your phone to your PayPal account, making you able to purchase from your phone. Advertisements on posters, on websites, in magazines with the icon of Txt2Buy prompt you to enter a code and SMS it to PayPal. Whammo, you’ve got it and it will be delivered to you immediately. So, when you’re walking down the street, and you see a CD advertised, you can satisfy that on-demand urge and buy it immediately. So now, you can buy things immediately online and immediately on the street. We’re getting further and further away from the bricks and mortar… 

Another thing you can do is Txt2Give. By texting WATER you can donate to Unicef, other codes you can donate to Amnesty International and so on. Or you can transfer money to someone immediately. No fees apply, just your normal SMS cost.

Outside of PayPal is another service in Australia: mCode. This system provides the same code number prompt, but sending it triggers details to be sent to you. So, once you’ve registered with them, if you see a poster advertising an event you’d like to see, all you have to do is text the code. An email will be sent to you, outlining all the dates, times & avenues for buying tickets etc. In the spirit of PayPal, I’ve called this Txt2Know.

All of these services make sense, because everyone carries their phones with them all the time. I’m interested in creative uses of this system too. What if I read a story that asks me to Txt2Be…text to be closer to a character or the storyworld. I love the use of words as commands, to have ramifications in the real world.

In Wired recently Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, commented on the need for a metaverse (a term apparently coined by Neal Stephenson — though I cannot imagine it never being uttered until 1992), a unified platform in which all our avatars can roam freely between the various virtual worlds. He argues:

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I think everyone is aware of so-called ‘convergent devices’: devices that provide functions (such as text, sound, moving image, net-enabled) that have previously only been available is separate units. A premium example is Microsoft’s upcoming Origami [see YouTube video]. I like the idea of a device that can do everything, but I don’t like the idea of a device that has a fixed shape and size. I don’t care if the screen is rotatable or reversable and I don’t care if a keyboard can fold out or not. I’m talking about the actual delivery device. There are times when I want to lie on a couch and watch a show on a big screen TV, times when I want to have a small device I can use as a phone, times when I want a couple of medium sized screens to work on, times I want a larger screen for presentations, times I just want a small radio, times when I want an unobtrusive screen while on a train. So, that is why the converged devices, that we are being offered at present, do not satisfy me. My dream machine is a device that is made of some flexible material, like a firm jelly, that I can manipulate to the shape I want. I can stretch it to a screen size that suits, and it sticks to walls. It can also shrink in my fist and stay small and compact. I want the feel of it to be changed from a luminous screen to paper and so on. That is my ultimate converged device. How long do the scientists need?

Since I’m on this soapbox I might as well add some other things I’d like to see happen sooner:

• I want a light and/or tone to indicate on my TV when a show I like is on;
• I want a light and/or tone to indicate on my TV when a recommendation for a TV show to watch from my mum comes through;
• I want a website seen in a show or movie playing on my TV to automatically open up on my computer, inviting me to join in with what the characters are seeing and doing…

What do you want? What is your dream machine?

Jason Romney is a Melb Barrister who is also the founder and CEO of itvworld.com. He attends every new media event that goes on and harpoons the best speakers for a video chat. He shares these interviews for free through iTunes and at his website: netvideo.com.au, in many formats:

• Quicktime for Mac users
• Flash Video for Windows PC users
• Sony Playstation Portable version
• Apple Video iPod version
• 3GP for video-capable cellphones
• Microsoft Windows Media
• Audio only MP3 version

Luminaries include Andrew Lilley, Sophie Walpole (BBC), Noah Falstein, Brian Seth-Hurst and our own LAMP director Gary Hayes. There is some interesting conversations to watch/listen to.

Just over a year ago I posted about the webisode by Blair Witch co-creator Daniel Myrick: The Strand. They use a method approach of minimal lighting, actors and non-actors. On the website it is described as having “the authenticy of a documentary, but with the narrative storytelling of any scripted show”. Back then, the pilot could be streamed for free or downloaded using Bitpass. On the website there are a range of content:

• Pilot streamed for free
• Videos of some of the characters
• Character Bios
• Blogs: Gearhead; director; bartender; Sid the agent
• Forum
• Link to products for sale at CafePress
• Press about The Strand

In an email just delivered to The Strand subscribers (which includes me!), they announced having over 50,000 international viewers and exposure to media such as CNN, The New York Times and ABC. Now, they’re offering the a 2 DVD set for $19.95. The DVD, The Strand: Volume 1, contains:

• A brand new behind-the-scenes making of documentary
• Commentary by myself, the shows producers and writers
• 5 original never before seen improvisational scenes
• DVD exclusive Web links
• Interviews with the shows actors.
• A unique, 3-D Binaural Audio Adventure that will allow you, the listener, to experience the sensation of making out virtually with Margo from “The Strand!”

The episodes are still available for download: $1.00 for ep 1 and .99 cents for eps 2-5. The purchasing of the episodes (download or DVD) will do more than give the consumer a product they own, an extended insight into the creation of the show, more episodes, access to hidden web content (sounds cool), and do more than compensate the makers for their time:

The purchasing of these shows, whether on DVD or download, enables us to go out there and shoot more episodes of “The Strand.” This is merely the first of many Gearhead Picture projects where the viewer’s support will determine the outcome of the sequential episodes and programming.

The connection between commerce and ongoing content creation is unobtrusively drawn here. Networked and digital technologies enables a direct relationship between consumer and producer. Which means content creators are also having to market themselves. I wonder, are we seeing the emergence of a sincere sales rhetoric or just spin in its infancy? I’d like to think the former.

A couple of months ago I posted about a web-based viral campaign: The Secret. The website provides short streaming video clips that contain “clues” to uncovering what “the secret” is, as well as photos at Flickr. You can also subscribe to iTunes and download them there. They have a blog that makes it really easy to pass on (read: virability) the content:

• Furl it
• Blogmark it
• Email it
• Delicious it
• Direct link to them
• Bookmark it
• Ribbon
• Recommend it
• Refer to it

Rather than provide just website visit numbers, they supply a cluster map (love it!) and an animated map that shows how many people, over a 12 day period, have subscribed. But what is interesting about their latest move is that they’re making the full feature film available online and in DVD to subscribers three days before it is launched worldwide (launched 26th March). They’re using Vividas technology to manage a pay-per-view basis of US$4.99. Oh, and despite the large clusters that have formed on the website visit map around my part of the world, and despite the company behind this being in Victoria, and despite the Vividas company starting in Australia, “contractual obligations” do not allow for Australian, New Zealand or Papua New Guinea viewers to watch or purchase the DVD!?! ;( What is interesting, too, is their comments (in the subscriber email I received) on the Vividas technology and how it will tie in with future cross-media distribution:

The beauty of the Vividas launch is that it will marry with various other platforms we have in mind in the near future. The team behind The Secret Scrolls continues to seek out opportunities to bring the video to as many people around the world as possible, with Cinema, Broadcast Network, Cable and Satellite TV, Podcasting and 3G Mobile Phone options to follow.

Perhaps this Vividas technology is a gatekeeper that can manage the video for all these broadcast channels? I cannot find anything about such functions on their website, just that they offer a streaming video technology to big clients such as Dreamworks, United International Pictures, EMI and Virgin Music.

Anyway, here are two approaches to marketing and distributing content. I feel thoroughly courted, but does the seduction outway the attraction to content? The problem with such compelling campaigns is that they sometimes rely on a splatter-gun approach, attracting many but appealing to few. Initial interest doesn’t indicate how many will persist with the property. Are we putting artists up for humiliation or a difficult time by requiring them to appeal to mass audiences initially? I think this is one of the down sides of viral campaigns. They are successful in hooking people in, just like trailers and teasers. But then the actual story is often something different, something that only a specific audience would enjoy. I wonder, is there damage being done here?

Fresh from the The Convergence Newsletter is news that the Broadcast Education Association’s 2006 convention is on “convergence”: Convergence Shockwave: Change, Challenge and Opportunity. It runs from April 26-29 in Las Vegas. There are over 20 sessions dedicated to discussing convergence in many forms: content, management, advertising, culture, technology, curriculum and teaching. There are two plenaries:

“Convergence and Content Plenary: Convergent Journalism: The State of the Field” which includes a CNN reporter, convergent journalism manager, audience expert and researcher on the panel

“Convergence and Technology Plenary: Leading the Convergence Shockwave” which includes execs from Adobe, Apple, AVID and Panasonic.

Other sessions include:

Hyperlocalism in the Age of Convergence: Something Old is New Again

The Convergence Shockwave: A Swapshop of Teaching Ideas

An International Perspetive on Convergence: From Americas to Europe

Managing Change Internally while Seizing Market Opportunities in the Convergence Shockwave

Public Media’s Convergence Shockwave

Cultural Convergence: The Challenge for Educators and Students

Convergence Trajectories: Different Paths to Integration