Posts Tagged 'youtube'



IBM: week in review

It’s been a hectic week, especially the last 2 days, and I had little time to comment about recent IBM/Lotus related events. When I saw this evening that our employee portal (w3 On Demand Workplace) has been updated with Lotus Symphony’s 2008 Product of the Year Award, I knew it was time to post.

Lotus Symphony wins CRN 2008 Product of the Year Award

Lotus Symphony acts much like Microsoft Office, which is good if you are looking for something to replace Office at a fraction of the cost (free!)… The Office 2007 installation here at the Test Center by default saves documents in the Office 97-2003 format (in the interest of backward-compatibility) so there were no problems editing files created in Symphony under Office 2007, or vice versa. The Test Center found Symphony a snap to use, and switching to Symphony after years of using Microsoft Office was painless.

Link: CRN (ChannelWeb) Best Products of 2008

Asteroid hits office building, servers are down
Bilal, my colleague across the pond, has launched (along with the Lotus Foundations team of course) the first ‘official’ IBM viral campaign in recent years (‘The Art of The Sale‘ preceded it, but was more a parody than a solution advertising).

Link: Lotus Foundations Ad Campaign is live! Office Panics!

Web Conferencing in the Clouds
After Lotus Notes and Domino have reached the skies, it was only a matter of time before Lotus Sametime will fly high as well. IBM’s award winning IM solution have been sporting a web version for a long time, that only improved with Web Dialogs’ acquisition. Lotus Sametime Unyte now available in version 8.2, with a new distribution partnership to InterCall’s customers around the world.

Link: IBM Delivers New Cloud Service for Web Conferencing

New: Lotus SocialText Community Wiki
My dear friend Alan Lepofsky has started the Lotus SocialText Community Wiki, a place for Lotus lovers to contribute, connect and create pages. What can you do at the wiki?

  • Create you own pages. Have some information you want to share? Questions you want to ask? Feedback you want to give?
  • Edit pages created by others. That is what wikis are all about! Please help keep the content accurate and up to date.
  • Comment on pages. I know you have opinions!
  • Tag pages. What attributes do you think of when looking at a page?
  • Follow people. This will let you easily see the updates they have made.
  • Tag people. Find people will specific skills. Group like people together.
  • Customize your Dashboard. It’s all about organizing your digital world!

Join now and help spread the Lotus joy 🙂


Link: Get Your Lotus Wiki On

VOI – Video On the Internet

The local internet scene is humming and buzzing for the last few months now, with new portal designs and the annual TV/Internet festival.
Only yesterday I read several posts and comments about Channel 2 latest announcement – mako.co.il, which was suppose to be the new face of Channel 2 online and instead reduced to ‘just another news portal‘.

The internet has definitely changed the way we consume content – my single source for information is definitely the web, being internal or external. Thanks to bandwidth and UGC I can now watch complete episodes/sketches of The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, SNL and others anytime I want to.

Why this intro? Well, I’ve been following Gal Mor‘s blog, Holes in the Net, for some time. He’s a savvy internet producer/consumer, and although (or maybe bacause) managing the Dev. dept. of Ynet.co.il, his insights into the space of content, internet and UGC is a must read. The new mako.co.il got low reviews from Gal, who put together an excellent post, disecting the different parts of the site. One might say that Gal is a bit biased, as mako.co.il competes with Ynet.co.il, but as Gal (and the comments) concludes, mako.co.il should be more focused on video, rather than ‘plain’ content. We want Video On the Internet.

What interest me is the fact that Channel 2 already has a video presence online – it launched IsraelNews at YouTube a month ago, with some clips on the ‘behind-the-scene’ action at a news room (and watching Yonit Levy up close and personal for 2:16min can’t hurt either.. 😉
That’s the kind of VOI I’m talking about. Even Yonit is saying that the internet provides the extra screen time they need, putting the full 15min interview instead of the 4min cut for the news item.

Bottomline – nice to see Channel 2 are taking risks, leaping into the VOI space, but they need to walk carefully. Already there’s some confusion between mako.co.il, israelnews, ch2news2, reshet.tv – some strategy and direction may be needed.

Danny Koshmaro welcomes YouTube viewers:

Why IsraelNews at YouTube is important (Yonit Levy):

Videoblog with Aharon Barnea at the US Elections:

The 4 p.m break

You nay know the feeling, especially if you’re working until late in the evening…
4 p.m is always a barrier, between the active lunch and the less active afternoon… when people are starting to leave and you have some time to read emails/browse the web/reed feeds/watch videos (circle your choice). I read that YouTube have some 100m videos watched each day. 100m, each day. That’s a lot. and that the average user is staying for 16-17 min on the site, meaning he’s watching several videos, not just one.

In one of those random visits I had to YouTube I came across this funny Heroes parody, from MADtv. Apparently Madtv (like SNL) produce parodies as part of the show, and you can find other videos in the related section at YouTube. So, for my 4 p.m break, and yours, I give you Heroes parody. ENJOY!

Here’s the link..

Putting Web 2.0 to use, courtesy of the NBA and YouTube

Web 2.0 concept isn’t new, and I’m sure all of you are familiar with some of the technologies relating with that term. The question is not whether or not you’re familiar with it, but rather are you using it, how and why. And that’s the greatness of a new technology – it’s hard to appreciate it, until you actually use it.

For those not into basketball, the 2007 NBA Playoffs are on, at the semi-finals stage of each coast (east/west). Although we have 4-5 sports channels in Israel, the number of games available are very slim, about 1-3 per week. As a hugh basketball fan, and a player on the weekends, it’s something I won’t miss, no matter the time. I can watch basketball all night, in fact, basketball is the only thing that I would consider setting a clock for (say 4a.m.), and actually getting up. Yesterday I saw the Nets-Cavaliers game #3, which started at midnight (local time) until 2:30 a.m. At 4 a.m the Spurs-Suns game #4 started, but it was too much for me, although that game was also aired.
Thank god for YouTube and the NBA.

The NBA have opened up a user on YouTube, and during these difficult times of many highlights they upload some content to YouTube. That isn’t taken for granted. NBA Video is a new feature at NBA.com, that allows fans to watch complete games, but they still decided to upload some content, especially Top 10 and game previews.

This is how I put Web 2.0 to use. Personal use. And my appreciation to NBA and YouTube for collaborating to the benefit of the fans just increased. And that’s what it’s all about.

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.