October 2011

A Filmmaker Wants to Help Others Use Product Placement

“He’s not selling out, he’s buying in,” says the slogan for “POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” Morgan Spurlock’s whimsical documentary about product placement in movies and television shows. Not one to leave a dollar on the table, at least when it comes to financing films, Mr. Spurlock now plans to help the rest of the documentary world buy in.

At the DOC NYC Film Festival, Mr. Spurlock is expected to join Thom Powers, the festival’s artistic director, and Claudia Strauss, chief executive of Grey New York’s Alliance unit, in announcing a program to help documentary makers round up product placement money for the marketing and distribution of their wares. The program is called “Launch PAD” — the letters stand for “prints, advertising and distribution.” The idea is simple, if somewhat unexpected, given documentarians’ frequent tilt toward subjects like death row (as in Werner Herzog’s “Into the Abyss”) or impending doom (in Jon Shenk’s “The Island President,” about the sinking Maldives). Alliance plans to approach potential brand partners with a roster of films selected by Mr. Spurlock, Mr. Powers and its own executive team, asking each for $50,000 or more to become identified with the marketing of a film. It is not hard to see the appeal for the filmmakers: Documentary makers are perennially starved for cash, particularly when it comes time to distribute a movie that may have cost relatively little to make. But companies may also have something to gain from an association with reality-oriented filmmakers who often pride themselves on speaking truth to power.

Census Confronts Budget Ax

Washington politicians often battle over what economic statistics mean and what to do about them. Now, they are fighting about the statistics themselves.

House lawmakers, facing record budget deficits, have proposed cutting some funding for the Census Bureau. The bureau says if the cuts go through, it would have to cancel the economic census, a once-every-five-year snapshot of the economy, due again next year, that is the basis for much of the country's economic data. The House Appropriations Committee didn't explicitly cut the 2012 economic census; the panel cut President Barack Obama's proposed $1 billion Census budget to $855 million. A Senate committee last month rejected the House cut, setting up a showdown between the chambers. Economists warned that cutting the measure would rob policy makers of crucial information. "If you're trying to figure out what policy measures America should be taking right now to promote job growth for families and workers, without data sets like the 2012 economic census it's going to be a lot harder to do," said Matthew Slaughter, a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and a former member of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee say they are responding to budget realities.

Steve Jobs's Advice for Obama

[Commentary] 'You're headed for a one-term presidency," Steve Jobs told President Obama at the beginning of a one-on-one session the president requested early last year. As described in the authorized biography by Walter Isaacson, Apple's founder said regulations had created too many burdens on the economy. Jobs was an Obama supporter, but his just-disclosed comments are typical of a new frustration with Washington among Silicon Valley executives. Their high-tech companies are supposed to be the country's engine for growth, but the federal government is gumming up the works. The culture of Silicon Valley is defined by engineers who approach problems logically, searching for the most elegant solution. Washington is different. Members of both parties prefer scoring political points on immigration even though this delays smarter approaches. It's no wonder that people like Jobs who value innovation find Washington so infuriating.

Secret of Self-Publishing: Success

Self-publishing these days is increasingly a tale of two cities. There are established authors, like Nyree Belleville, who says she's earned half a million dollars in the past 18 months selling direct rather than through a publisher. Then there are new authors, like Eve Yohalem. More than a month after self-publishing, she has grossed about $100 in sales— after incurring costs of $3,400. She said she's in no rush, though. Vanity presses have been available for decades. But thanks to digital technology and particularly the emergence of e-books, the number of self-published titles exploded 160% to 133,036 in 2010 from 51,237 in 2006, estimates R. R. Bowker, which tracks the publishing business.

Where things went wrong on the road to the video revolution

[Commentary] Two years ago it felt like I could almost reach out and touch the video promised land. This utopia was a place where I could watch any TV show or movie when and where I wanted on any gadget for a reasonable price. With Netflix streaming taking off, Hulu offering a growing catalog of content, and Comcast upgrading its systems, choices were expanding at prices that felt like a deal. The growing number and power of smartphones and tablets combined with faster broadband connections just added to the sense of momentum.

But in recent months, it has become abundantly clear that this revolution has been stopped dead in its tracks. "That fundamental change might still be out there, but for now we've taken some steps back," said Greg Ireland, a research manager at IDC. How did it all go wrong? And can it be fixed? The problem is money. The people who produce video content want far more money to make their shows and movies available online and on demand. What's more, they have tremendous leverage to make distributors like Comcast and Netflix pay up, and they're in no hurry to disrupt a system that is working just fine for them.

iPhone's Siri is worth talking about

[Commentary] Two weeks after its release, Siri has everyone talking.

The voice-control features built into the iPhone 4S are the subject of countless tweets, Facebook posts and giddy demonstrations with friends. Whole blogs have arisen devoted to cataloguing Siri's deadpan responses to impudent questions. The novelty of Siri's natural language processing is undeniable. But how useful is it? It's a question I've sought to answer over the past week, as I've talked to Siri more than I have most of my friends. I've used it to get directions, send text messages, check the weather and remind me to pick up supplies for a party. More often than not, Siri has gotten it right - and it's given me a new appreciation of user interfaces that rely on voice.

How Siri could revolutionize the 911 system

[Commentary] Next Generation 911 will allow for communications to be made by voice, video or text. Location will automatically be appended to voice calls, saving time and confusion when the caller doesn’t know where they’re location is — or isn’t able to verbally communicate it.

As someone who analyzes health policy (with a focus on long-term services and supports), I believe that Siri, Apple’s recently introduced natural language voice technology, has the potential to change not just our 911 system, but also to be one of the biggest consumer-facing technologies in health care that we’ve seen in decades. Imagine this scenario: an elderly person is having a cardiac event. She is having trouble breathing and is unable to complete a sentence. Dialing 911 is possible, but if the caller is unable to narrate the condition, first responders would still be in the dark until they arrive. Even after they do arrive, information still eludes them: some critical — including prior medical history, current medications and allergic reactions to medicines — and some logistical, such as health insurance and next of kin. Siri’s main features – its ability to understand natural language and its quick and contextual deep search, information retrieval and task completion – could drastically change all this.

Rep Langevin: Senate cybersecurity bill could spur House to act

Despite the apparent divide between the two chambers on the details of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation, the passage of a Senate bill would put pressure on the House to act, according to Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI).

Few lawmakers have more experience on the issue than Rep Langevin, the co-founder of the bipartisan Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus, and he expressed optimism recently that some form of legislation to improve the security of private sector networks would pass Congress this year. "I think the Senate passing something would be a major gamechanger and a major step forward in seeing comprehensive cybersecurity legislation pass Congress this year," Rep Langevin said. " Absent that, I think this thing kind of goes on in fits and starts."

The GOP unveiled their own recommendations for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation recently that favor incentives and information-sharing over government mandates. They also restrict the new rules to nuclear power, water treatment facilities and other high-regulated sectors. Langevin said his reaction to the Republican proposal was generally positive and suggested there is room for compromise between the two parties, particularly since there is bipartisan support for legislation that would allow firms to share more information on cyber threats without incurring legal liability. While Rep Langevin feels some form of regulation will be necessary for critical infrastructure providers, he said an information-sharing bill would constitute progress, especially considering how little attention cybersecurity received as a policy issue just a few years ago. "Four years ago when I first started with this issue, it was not something that was widely thought about or written about," Langevin said. "The process was just beginning....as a country we were just waking up to the fact we were getting hacked and penetrated at an unacceptable level." Langevin is particularly concerned about securing the electric grid, where he believes the potential for cyberattacks to create physical damage is greatest. He pointed to the development of more sophisticated viruses such as Stuxnet as evidence the threat is increasing. He also stressed the need for the administration and military to define what constitutes an attack and what the appropriate response would be, echoing the concerns of Senate Armed Services chairman Carl Levin (D-MI)

Why More of Your Facebook Fans are Seeing Fewer of Your Messages

Five weeks after Facebook revamped what users see when they visit the site, the verdict is in on the implications for brands and their messages: Reach is up but frequency is down, or so it would go in conventional media parlance.

Facebook's changes, announced at its F8 Developers Conference last month, appear to have boosted brands' visibility among more of their fans but decreased the frequency with which a brand's fans see its messages, according to a study of more than 300 brand pages by analytics firm PageLever. In what should be considered good news, the new layout has substantially increased fan interactions with brands. "Facebook is showing you to more people but less often per person," said Jeff Widman, co-founder of PageLever. "I would say it's actually much better for brand pages now. As a marketer, I'd totally rather reach more people every single day" than the same people more often.

Who Falls Behind When Homework Goes Online?

[Commentary] Though studies have shown that American schoolchildren in the past have done less homework than students in other nations, that trend is changing fast. As America grows concerned about falling behind other nations in learning, especially in math and the sciences, teachers are responding with more, and tougher, homework. What concerns me is the potential for some students, particularly those from poor families, to be left behind. That’s because the Internet is playing a larger role in homework assignments. And why not? The Web provides access to worldwide sources of information, far more than the tattered books on science and social studies that cluttered our kitchen table each school night.
[Parker is the president of Linking Solutions Inc., a business-development and community-outreach firm, and a partner in the law firm of Lawrence & Parker]