MaxxoMedia Digital Media and Entertainment Trends

Media organizations increasingly rely on syndicated content, but access to such material typically requires expensive subscriptions or syndication deals. New York-based Mochila has devised a way to offer articles, photos, audio and videos a la carte while dispnsing with subscription fees and protecting authors’ rights.

Launched earlier this year, Mochila’s website is essentially an online marketplace for content. Sellers offer up their wares along with price and any restrictions; buyers search for what they need and choose the best match. Content can be instantly downloaded into any publishing system, and purchases can be made in two ways: either by paying the price set by the original content owner, or by agreeing to post advertising along with the item, in which case the content is free. In the ad-supported arrangement, advertising revenue is shared among the buyer, the seller and Mochila.

For sellers, the benefits include new revenue opportunities and increased exposure; for buyers, decreased operational costs, more ad pages and revenue opportunities, and the rub-off effect of big-name content are among them. More than 1,000 media organizations have joined Mochila so far, including Reuters, the Associated Press and Hearst Magazines—you can’t get much bigger than that.

The Nielsen Company reported that television tuning during the 2006-2007 television year (9/18/06-9/23/07) remained at the record levels set the previous year, while the number of homes with Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) more than doubled.

According to the Nielsen report:

• The total average time a household had a TV set tuned during the 2006-2007 television year was 8 hours and 14 minutes per day
• The average amount of television watched by individual viewers during the 2006-07 television year dipped by 1 minute per day to 4 hours and 34 minutes
• The number of households with Digital Video Recorders today stands at 20.5% of Nielsen’s National People Meter sample, up from 17.2% in May 2007. When Nielsen began including households with DVRs in its samples in January 2006, DVR penetration was estimated to be approximately 8% of households

On Tuesday, a company called Eye-Fi launched the Eye-Fi Card, a WiFi enabled 2GB SD card for your digital camera, that once set up to see your home (or other) wireless network, you pop it into your camera, go out and shoot photos, come home, turn on the camera and the pictures automatically go up to your photo destination site of choice and/or to your PC/MAC. It will change the way you share and print.

It is available from one of several online retailers at http://www.eye.fi/buy/

It is getting great reviews (see below). For anyone that wants to get their photos off their cameras and on to their PC/Mac and/or photo destination of their choice of 17 so far – Dotphoto, Facebook Flickr, Fotki, Gallery (opensource project), KodakGallery, PicasaWeb, Phanfare, Photobucket, Sharpcast, Shutterfly, Smugmug, Snapfish, TypePad, Vox, Wal-Mart, and Webshots – This is the easiest way to do it.