During the pre-conference we had at MIX08 there was also a presentation from one of the guys that works on the Surface team. To give an introduction of the Surface for those who wouldn’t have seen it he showed a video about it. The funny thing though was that he didn’t show the original video, but a spoof made by SarcasticGamer.com. Apparantly it’s around for a while but I hadn’t seen it before. Kudos to the guys who created it and also to the Surface team for using it in their own presentation!
This last post about the MIX conference is not that much related to the conference anymore actually. The conference stopped on Friday around noon and since most of the Belgians only left on Saturday morning, we had booked a helicopter flight over and trough the Grand Canyon with Sundance Helicopters. What can I say, if you are ever in Vegas do treat yourself with this, because it’s absolutely brilliant!
The Sundance company comes to pick you up with a limo by the hotel and drives you to their spot at the airport. Once you get there you sign in and about 15-20 minutes later you’re airborne, over the airport straight to the mountains. The total flight time is close to 90 minutes back and forth, and there’s a scheduled stop somewhere in the middle of the Grand Canyon offering you a fantastic view accompanied by a glass of champagne and a small lunch.
And as an image says more than a thousand words, here is what it looked like.
During the flight the helicopter films both inside and outside of the whole trip and you can buy the DVD with that footage. I’ll let you know if that’s any good by the time it arrives via post mail. Anyway, here is the full set.
We ended the day at Morton’s Steakhouse (a personal favorite) making this the perfect ending to a great event.
The key session of day 2 at MIX was without a doubt the Q&A between Guy Kawasaki and Steve Ballmer. You’ll have to watch it and see for yourself what you think of this, but I found it a quite unique experience (and I think many did with me). Can you think of any other CEO of a company such as Microsoft to do a keynote this way?
During the rest of the day, before and after the keynote, I focused mainly on sessions that talked about web2.0, social networking and mobile. Here are some videos worth watching of these sessions:
There are a ton of sessions I still have to go through, all of them are up on http://sessions.visitmix.com/ for your viewing as well (requires Silverlight plugin).
That evening we joined the European MIX08 guests at the European party in Club 40/40 together with David Armano and his wife. The party was good fun and some magic but no pictures to share from this one… what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas I guess ;)
These Coke Zero ads are pretty absurd, but I do like them. They’re fun and the messaging is pretty clear - great work from W+K if you ask me. Check out this video:
There are 3 more of the same series here, here and here.
I’m not such a big fan of predictions like we see them all over on the web at the start of the New Year. There are a few good ones like those of John Batelle for instance, but other than that many predictions sound more like acknowledgement of something that’s already happening today or a wish-list for something we would like to see happen.
One good example is mobile for instance. It’s going to be the year of mobile since 2005 I think and as I said before, 2008 is not going to be the year of mobile either. Or talk about video, I had a discussion with someone recently about online video after a statement that 2008 would be the year online video will get big. That’s just not true, 2007 was that year already. As a counter argument I did say I believe 2008 will be the year in which online video will become more useful, of better quality, with better metrics, better advertising, … you name it.
And that’s what is happening today indeed. Yesterday Read/Write Web reported on the launch of Dailymotion HD upload & playback, including automatic bandwidth detection which allows easy switching to lower quality versions. Check out the HD example in their post. Now I can see how HD quality might not be on top of everybody’s wish-list for online video, but I do believe it’s a must have for future development of online video.
Now as I am in advertising, I’m interested in this but not only for advertising purposes. If you watched the video you will understand that there are also opportunities for websites for instance to relate archived content to in-video content (think news sites) or how the technology can create automatic chapters in a video for more useful video browsing for instance. There are quite a few exciting technology usages you can think of with this new development.
A last improvement will be about making video more searchable. The technology mentioned before will definitely be able to help in that area, but quite a few startups are working in that area as well. A few weeks ago at the LIFT Venture Night we saw Viewdle showing off their approach on this, including face recogniation etc. Neat stuff as well.
Content analysis, speech recognition, chaptering, contextual advertising and content (based on the video - not on title or tags), HD, … Yes, online video is big already, 2008 will be the year in which it will get better.
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