Beyond banner ads: making money with your blog

Paths to making money with your blog from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

In this 3-minute video interview, Dana Loesch of Mamalogues.com discusses the "More to Monetization than Advertising" panel she participated on at BlogHer in San Francisco on July 19. Loesch, founder of the St. Louis Bloggers Guild, urges bloggers to think beyond the banner ad.

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Wrapping up BlogHer

Wrapping up BlogHer 2008 from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's a quick video interview I did with Jory Des Jardins, co-founder of BlogHer, on Saturday night as the fourth annual women bloggers' conference was ending. Jory talks about some of the highlights of the gathering, which drew about 1,100 attendees.

The lighting at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco is poor, so apologies for the subpar lighting here.

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ManyEyes: a useful visualization tool

Visualization tool: ManyEyes from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

At the Future of Civic Media conference at the MIT Media Lab in June, one of the best presentations came from the co-creator of ManyEyes. Here's a 7-minute video interview I did with Fernanda B. Viegas, research staff member of IBM's Visual Communication Lab in Cambridge, following her talk.

Fernanda describes some of uses of this visualization tool. For example, during the Congressional testimony of then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a visualization Word Map graphically showed how often he used the phrases "I don't know" and "I don't recall."

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Here's a dataset I just uploaded to ManyEyes on civic engagement and mobile media. You can see it as a tag cloud, as a word tree, or in other ways.

'The magic of performing arts'

Young actors: The magic of performing arts from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I met Cie Probst, a fellow resident of Pleasanton, Calif., just a week ago, when she came by to pick up a rocking chair I was giving away — for use on the set of The Music Man.

Then I swung by for a few minutes yesterday as her group of young actors were putting on their final performance of the musical. (The clip contains a short singing scene from the show.)

Cie talks about the nonprofit Tri-Valley Young Performers Academy, which she founded a year ago with another mom and two directors. In this 7-minute video on the set of The Music Man, she talks about "the magic of performing arts" and watching the development of young people — in terms of social skills, not just acting ability — in such a short period of time. The academy is a wonderful addition to the San Francisco East Bay's cultural scene.

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Michael Litz, US CEO of OneWorld.net

CEO of OneWorld.net from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

I've been under the gun with the upcoming relaunch of Ourmedia.org so I have a backlog of video interviews to get online. Here's the first one:

At the annual NetSquared conference for nonprofits and social change organizations in San Jose in May, I interviewed Michael Litz, CEO of the US edition of OneWorld.net. In this 4-minute interview, Michael talks about the mission of OneWorld, its global scope, the kinds of organizations that participate, its growing role as a citizen media news aggregator, and its plan to implement social networking capabilities.

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Pop17 surveys the pop culture scene

Sarah Austin on Pop17 from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

In this 5-minute hi-def interview, Sarah Austin talks about her popular new pop culture site, Pop17.com, which launched in February. It chiefly focuses on Web sensations — grassroots efforts that make a splash — without the trashy, celeb-worshipping aspects of TMZ.com or Perez Hilton.

I'll be working with her as part of the Intel Insiders program at Intel headquarters in San Jose, Calif.

Watch the video on Ourmedia in H.264 (at the original size of 480 pixels)

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iJustine on 'lifecasting'

iJustine from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

At the first meeting of Intel Insiders at Intel HQ in San Jose the other day, I finally had the chance to meet Justine Ezarik, better known by her online handle, iJustine. She gained instant Internet fame (she now has thousands of friends on Facebook and Twitter) when she began "lifecasting" her life 24/7. Yep, wore a webcam, just like Justin Kan of justin.tv. She has no regrets (turned her into an Internet celebrity) but wouldn't do it again.

In this brief 4-minute video she talks about the downsides of total transparency, and about her upcoming new Internet TV show, The Really Big Internet Show. Here's a recent announcement about the show with another photo of Justine. For more, read her blog at Tastyblogsnack.

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Cross-posted to SocialMedia.biz.

MAPLight shines light on money and politics

Maplight: shining a light on politics and money from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Sean Tanner, research director of MAPLight.org, talks about how the organization provides transparency to the political donations system through widgets that tap into pubic information databases. We spoke at the NetSquared conference in San Jose, Calif., in May 2008, where MAPLight won top honors last year.

Here's the current Presidential Money Race Widget, one of several widgets you can customize:

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Miro, the democratic media player

Miro, the democratic media player from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Here's an 11-minute video interview I conducted with Nicholas Reville, co-founder and executive director of the Participatory Culture Foundation, maker of Miro at getmiro.com.

Miro's a cool application that lets you watch and subscribe to millions of channels of content created by us (any video with an RSS feed, for example). You can browse through more than 4,000 channels in its directory listing. I've been using Miro for almost two years now (free, open source, what's not to like?).

I interviewed Nick as the NetSquared conference in May in San Jose, Calif., was winding down, which accounts for the distracting noises in the background. (Apologies for the lighting; the aperture kept closing and opening due to a bright object in the distance. Live and learn.)

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Amazee: a new site for social collaboration

Amazee from JD Lasica on Vimeo.

Dania Gerhardt, co-founder and chief of finance and operations for Amazee.com, discusses "the world's first social collaboration platform." Her company, based in Zurich, Switzerland, launched 10 months ago and the platform went public in May 2008. She discusses Amazee in this 7-minute video interview conducted during Supernova 2008 in San Francisco two weeks ago. I'll definitely be following Amazee's progress in the months ahead, since I'm working on a couple of other media collaboration ventures right now.

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I liked the quality of the video, helped my natural lighting and fill lighting from an LP-Micro Litepanel, so i encoded it at 800 bps and at 480 pixels wide. (We're working on a new embed player, but see it at its original size and in its original format at Ourmedia.)