This month we celebrated July 1^st as Happy DTS 7.1 Day! “Give me 7.1 surround sound or give me complete silence”.

http://www.celebratesevenone.com/

Celebrate 7.1 on 7/1! from DTS Digital Entertainment on Vimeo.

DotLot played the producer role and called on some of our finest crew to shoot this production. We had the chance to work with some amazing talent: Fred Willard, Lou Wagner, Richard Horvitz, Robbie Troy, John Pollow along with some talented DTS buddies. This was a quick one day shoot which took plenty of preparation. We all had a great time on-set and off-set!

Even the Agoura Hills Mayor Denis Weber got into the act by proclaiming July 1^st to be “DTS 7.1 Day” in honor of their cutting edge 7.1 surround sound audio technology.

Also … signup and be a part of this celebration as DTS is given away Blu-Ray Discs, Playstation 3 and a 7.1 audio system! Go on and have some entertainment!

Recently I’ve been exploring and learning about Twitter. What is this thing? How can Twitter benefit me? Like most people, I had signed up at one point but hadn’t done anything with it after that.  What’s its purpose and why should I spend any more of my valuable time on it when I already have email, a smart cell phone and FaceBook?

So I started by learning a little more about it in plain English. Thanks to CommonCraft,  I got a simple and clear understanding of Twitter’s function and uses.

I love the action hands with the cutout pictures. It makes the message so clear as it’s not distracted with typical heavy graphics and digital sprinkles of eye candy. From this video I started to understand its basic uses. I began to follow people of interest from a variety of areas: video production, social media, friends & family (of course), public servants, and some celebrities, why not?

I’ve come to see that little messages lead to interesting and hard to find information. For instance, @mashable Reading: “10 Golden Rules of Social Media” - http://bit.ly/4by3vD. Or other entertaining pages: “Three Wolf Moon!”, fun Amazon reviews : http://bit.ly/s8gVL.

So now the question is, how can I take advantage of this tool for DotLot and myself? One way I’ve begun is to search the chatter on Twitter for what other production companies are talking about or sharing.  For example: @nilsbreckoff: Cranking up for another fine day of video production, or @Xcelus: We are putting two new marketing scripts into video production. A JR Golf video and ecommerce video.

Lastly I’ve found little nuggets of information that is very useful that has been right under my nose. For instance check out the Speech Search from Adobe.

Moving forward I can see myself using Twitter to research companies we’re doing business with or are targeting. This little bit of information will give me more insight to the target audience, the users and the advocates, and see what messaging is getting a good response and what’s not working. Our job as media professionals is to help our clients connect with their audience in the best way possible.

I’ve leave you with this last bit I found on Twitter from @carloguillot. I think all media production people can relate to this video:

You can find me @NBHaus.

Recently our DotLotDigtialStudios YouTube account was invited by ScenicVideos to become friends. In looking at their content I was delighted and surprised at what I found. They have developed a channel for meditation and relaxation with nature scenes in HD and a soothing soundtrack. What struck me at first was the simplicity of the content was actually relaxing to me. Normally, in my YouTube journeys I’m bombarded with images I sometimes can’t share with my daughter. In this case I was stopped by the majestic tranquility of the moment. And that is what this channel was created for, “to meditate and relax for stress management and a quick break during the day”.

Another interesting aspect is the invitation to download the video and music for FREE. In today’s world of hard economics and squeezing out every penny, I was happy to see the free internet is still active. All you need to do is credit him and you’ve got your content. So how do people feel about this open content and sharing of footage?

Last thought about this channel and content is that if you have your computer hooked up to your flat screen monitor you’ve got instant artwork and something to relax and ponder.

So let’s take the time. Sit back and watch Mother Nature’s art in motion. Thanks for the invite ScenicVideos!

Google has now entered into the browser world with its deployment of Chrome. At first it takes a little getting used to as the toolbars are now incorporated into the whole interface. But, what I think Google does best is how they use videos to walk you through how the browser works and what to look forward to. This form of explanation through illustration is ideal for all us visual types. Check it out: How To’s

There are several interesting features you might want to take a look at. For instance, dynamic tabs allow you to rearrange your tab’s order, move it to create its own window, and drop it back in to consolidate windows. It reminds me of Adobe’s new interface where you can create new windows for bins or tools as well as place them in the same window for tab navigation. It makes a cleaner interface and over crowding with toolbars and other nonsense we all download.

Another interesting feature is the “Incognito Mode”. It allows you to browser the web without storing a record on your computer. Now there’s an interesting use of browser technology. Now I can check the scores with peace of mind.

Google set out to create a browser to run on today’s complex web application better. Being a participant in this digital media space, one has to wonder how this new browser is going to handle all the other pitfalls of creating web pages with video, Flash, Flex, Air, Papervision, etc.  Overall, I’m very excited of this new entrant and I’ll be testing its limits to see if it retains my default browser award. Has anyone been using Chrome and want to share their experiences with us?

YouTube may be getting ready to push the envelope of online video advertising even further. Accoring to the folks over at Mashable, YouTube may soon be experimenting with big ads and captions. The idea is that premium content would draw premium viewers who would be inclined to check out premium video ads.

As an advertising professional who is usually resentful of being advertised to, I can say that I like the idea so long as the ads remain specifically targeted to me based on the content I’m viewing.

Read the whole article here: Big Ads and Captions to Make YouTube More Like… TV!

Online video is making great strides to providing more content where television networks and nonaffiliated channels cannot. As we all should know, the Olympics are being held in China this year. NBC has been covering the games using traditional television distribution, but this year NBC has put a lot into delivering content via broadband video and the number of viewers is incredible . Check out these numbers: NBC TAMi rating. Looking at online viewers last week (8/8 – 8/13), NBCOlympics.com has attracted 25 million unique visitors, driving 456 million page views and 22 million video streams which total 3.5 million hours of video consumed. As of August 18, 2008 NBCOlympics.com has severed 40.7 million video streams, more than 750 million page views and more than 36 million unique. This shows the reach that online video is having.

NBC used Microsoft’s Sliverlight to create a brand new experience in online video with picture-in-picture, 4 live concurrent streams, zero buffer rewinding and full screen video. We’re seeing a new dimension being added to the online experience. I’m excited to see how other online video players will respond.