On day 2 of a 4-day Aspen Institute roundtable on cloud computing, Arturo Artom, founder and president of San Francisco-headquartered YourTrumanShow, gave me a demo of a new online video technology being announced this morning called TagLift, a new video advertising targeting technology.

As anyone in the grassroots video space knows, sites like YouTube, Vimeo and others have had a hard time getting businesses to advertise on a site where user-created videos aren't vetted. TagLift aims to solve that problem, not by analyzing the contents of the video but by using a sort of automated crowdsourced approach, analyzing the preferences of viewers across multiple social networks and video services.

Or, as they put it: "TagLift is the first tool for metadata validation that
leverages user behavior to 'green-light' or 'red-light' metadata
quality."

Arturo said in a statement: "Video on the web can be monetized effectively and on a large scale.
You just need the right tools to automatically match the right ad with
the right audience. Our technology learns about user usage patterns and
checks context and metadata against that information."

Sounds more promising than some of the other solutions out there, and worth a look.

At PBS's MediaShift blog, Mark Glaser conducted a roundtable last week on import of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video released by the Center for Social Media at American University. (I wrote about it here.)

Participating were:

• Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University, Code of Best Practices co-chair
• Anthony Falzone, Lecturer, Executive Director, Fair Use Project, Stanford Law School
• Mizuko Ito, Research Scientist, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California
• Rebecca Tushnet, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Georgetown University
• Josh Metzger, senior VP, corporate development, Veoh Networks
• Francesca Coppa, Director of Film Studies and Associate Professor of English at Muhlenberg College
• JD Lasica, co-founder of Ourmedia, video blogger and social media expert
• Rx, video mash-up artist, ThePartyParty.com
• Owen Gallagher, digital media entrepreneur, founder of TotalRecut.com, for fans and creators of video remixes, recuts, and mash-ups.

Here's the first part of his series: Will Code of Best Practices Help Video Mash-Up Artists Stay Legal? Writes Mark:

I convened an email roundtable to talk about the new Code of Best
Practices for Fair Use in Online Video -- the idea being to show people
which ways they could use copyrighted video in their own remixes
without running afoul of the law. As JD Lasica, one of the roundtable's
participants says: "It is important for users to know in broad terms
what they could
legally share or not -- without having to attend law school at night."
This is Part 1 of a three-part series.

The Daily Kos on Lawrence Lessig's important new initiative, Change-Congress.org.

Yesterday, we reviewed Lawrence Lessig's diagnosis
that Congress needed fundamental change because the influence of money
has corroded our ability to trust the institution to get the "2+2=4"
basic policy decisions right.  (His NN08 keynote is online here and here.)

Today, let's talk about solutions, and the Change Congress movement he and Joe Trippi founded is organized around four principles:

1. No money from lobbyists or PACs

2. Vote to end earmarks

3. Support reform to increase Congressional transparency

4. Support publicly-financed campaigns

I'm flying to Aspen, Colo., early tomorrow to take part in another Aspen Institute roundtable. This one is on Cloud Computing: Implications for Social Interaction, Governance and Money.

Should be geeky but interesting as hell.

Too bad I missed the Dalai Lama by three days. As you might imagine, blogging will be light this week.

In December I attended an Aspen Institute roundtable on civic engagement and mobile media held in San Francisco with thought leaders in the mobile space such as Jed Alpert, founder of Mobile Commons, and Katrin Verclas, head of MobileActive.org.

I wrote a report about the gathering's conclusions, and the Aspen Institute just published it as a small book: Civic Engagement on the Move. It's full of interesting analysis, case studies and recommendations. Alas, I don't control the copyright and the Aspen Bookstore charges $12 (less for bulk purchased).

Update: I overlooked an inside link: You can download the 95-page report for free as a PDF here, and in chapters here.

From the bookstore description:

Civic Engagement on the Move looks at how leading edge
practitioners are using mobile media to engage citizens to solve
problems, bridge differences and strengthen community. Mobile media
technologies provide new tools for journalists, government and
nonprofit agencies, civic organizers, elected officials, activists and
ordinary citizens to inform, to reach out to others and to galvanize
community action on a wide range of issues. Written by J.D. Lasica, the
report details the hallmarks of successful mobile campaigns around
civic engagement and provides case studies of several successful and
emerging initiatives, including those above that came out of the recent
Aspen Institute Roundtable on Mobile Media and Civic Engagement. Noted
experts in the field add their insights on using mobile media, with a
list of "Mobile Advocacy Dos and Don'ts" by Katrin Verclas of
MobileActive and "A Mobile Media User's Guide" by Jed Alpert, CEO of
Mobile Commons.

I learned a lot about the state of mobile in support of the public good during this terrific gathering.

Later: Katrin Verclas's sidebar in the report can be found here:

• the Do's and Don'ts of Mobile Advocacy at MobileActive.org

• Mobile Advocacy Do's and Don'ts at Calder Strategies

• Using Mobiles for your Cause: Do's and Don'ts of mAdvocacy at MobileActive.org.

A Mobile Activism User's Guide

I asked Jed for permission to republish his 16-page "A Mobile Activism User's Guide," and he agreed. So I just uploaded the guide as a downloadable Word doc to Ourmedia. Download the free guide here. Here's an excerpt from the guide:

Basics of SMS messaging

Text messaging, or SMS (Short Message Service), is everywhere.  In some parts of the world, text messaging is far more popular than traditional telephone calls.  Here in the US, text messaging isn’t just for the young anymore; SMS is popular among nearly every demographic, and the average age of a texter is 30+.

And why not?  After all, text messages are concise (up to 160 characters) and timely, and they can reach your supporters wherever they are. (95% of mobile subscribers have their handsets within arm’s reach 24/7.)  Better yet, mobile is a non-SPAM, opt-in-only medium.  And for that reason, text message open and response rates are higher than in any other medium.  In other words, mobile is a great way to reach out and mobilize your supporters – anytime, anywhere.

Continue reading »

The most interesting person I met at the Stanford Summit last week was Turkish-born Babur Ozen, whose business card says he's the "boss" of ZipClip, which has offices in Palo Alto, Calif.

Babur gave me and Valerie Cunningham a test drive of the free service. ZipClip lets you add video, images or music from the open Web to your cell phone or mobile device.Above is Babur downloading a photo of Valerie and Steve Gillmor from my Flickr page to his phone.

Ding, dong, ringtone sales are doomed

I've long been put off by the locked-down, closed, proprietary devices put out by the big mobile carriers. It's been difficult or impossible to swap photos or music clips with your friends, or even to download them from your own site. ZipClip changes the equation by routing around the carriers. (Other services may do the same things ZipClip, but I'm not familiar with them.)

I asked Ozen about sales of ringtones, now a billion-dollar marketplace. "That's dead," he declared briskly.

Glad to hear it. I still want a ringtone for my phone, but I want to choose my tone from my musical collection.

It couldn't be easier. Just add ZipClip as an add-on to your browser. Then Just right-click your mouse while browsing the web. Videos, photos, images and text are sent instantly to your phone. That's it! No fiddling with controls or software.

I'll be spending a lot of time with ZipClip and my Nokia N-series phones and the iPhone 3G I plan to get next month.

In the Civic Engagement on the Move report that I wrote for the Aspen Institute, I included this passage:

Jed Alpert, co-founder and chief executive officer of Mobile Commons, pointed to FishMS, a text service in South Africa that was set up to help consumers choose seafood with the least adverse impact on the environment. A conscientious consumer could text in the name of the fish and get a color-coded response on the status of local seafood species.

The World Wildife Fund reported: Species marked with a green fish can generally be eaten with a clear conscience because their population numbers are healthy. Orange means they're legal to sell, but if you have a choice you should opt for one of the ‘green’ species. Species marked in red are illegal to buy or sell in South Africa.

More about that South African program here and at MobileActive.org.

So I was intrigued when I was listening to Living on Earth on KQED Friday and heard the report about the fish phone. Looks like the idea has now caught on Stateside (though no mention of its South African origins). From the story:

When you’re in the supermarket or ordering fish at a restaurant, ever have trouble remembering which species has high mercury, which is overfished, and which is the most sustainable? Now, a new text messaging service can tell you everything you need to know, whether one fish, two fish, red fish or blue fish. Living on Earth’s Ashley Ahearn takes her cell phone to a local market to find out how the Fish Phone works.

RealAudio for this story
Download the story as an mp3

Just heard about a new citizen journalism site that
launched earlier this month: Allvoices.com, which weaves together traditional and new media sources to create a global forum for
sharing news, videos, images and blogs will end its beta version and officially
launch. From the announcement:

Allvoices provides eyewitness news and perspective that is
free from editorial filtering and censorship characteristic of global media
organizations. Using a set of proprietary algorithms, Allvoices has created a
technology platform that geographically and contextually categorizes
contributed content based on 4,000 professional and online news sources such as
Reuters and blog posts that determine relevancy, foster credibility and
maintain openness with each contribution made to the site.

Allvoices understands that citizen reporting is becoming a crucial element in
the world of journalism in order to ensure a global understanding of regional
issues across multiple culture divides.

Eli Spector of MediaMobz — the new video production marketplace that I'm helping out on — points to a new citizen media site geared to youth culture: Vimby, short for Video In My Backyard. The site showcases video and photos taken in backyards across the nation. The site encourages contributors to "help us uncover what's happening in backyards all over America."

Says Eli: "I like the name of their producer 'Preditor' program. One of the producers in our community (Corey) is a "Preditor" for them as well. Here's a video he produced for them."

Sounds pretty cool.