As an pre-assigment for MediaBizLab we had to generate some media service ideas. Now after first lecture we were ordered to refine our ideas. I decided to continue with my advanced web grocery store idea. I call it now grocery shopping 2.0. Main motivator for me is that everyone has to eat (except zombies), I hate shopping and therefore I'm big fan of web shopping. So here's my refined idea as SlideShare slides.
September 29, 2011
Manual of Me
In first MediaBizLab lecture we had to analyze ourselves based on Foursight analysis technique. My result was that I'm driver. Means I'm high ideator & high developer. So here are some points you should know when working with me.
- I usually have lots of ideas and if I get excited about some idea I might feel little bit aggressive to other people because I put so much energy to implementing it quickly. Just remind me that maybe we should think little bit deeper and I'll calm down. And I really value all opinions :)
- If you're more clarifier or developer I really need you because you slow me down and focus better on right problems and select what ideas we should really push forward.
- Clarifiers! If you need some implementing horsepower maybe I'm the right guy for your group.
September 20, 2011
Experimenting with Adobe Muse
As a part of MediaBizLab studies I'm participating to Tools of Digital Media -course where we have to do some exercises with Flash, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Final Cut Pro. Our first exercise was to build website where we can host all our other exercises. We were supposed to use Dreamweaver for that. I'm not a coder (although I've done some webpages by hand in the beginning of 2000) and maybe because of that Dreamweaver has always felt awfully complex piece of software for me.
I read from Adobe Muse and realized it's freely available for beta testing. So I grabbed my copy and started to experiment. I have to say I feel very positive about the software. I understand it's restricted at the moment for simple websites without content management systems and maybe the code it creates is little bit long and not so clear but it seems to be valid and working. There's definitely still need for real web developers with coding skill but for some small businesses, personal home pages, prototyping etc. Adobe Muse is awesome!
You can find the page (only in Finnish) I did as an course exercise with Adobe Muse here.
I read from Adobe Muse and realized it's freely available for beta testing. So I grabbed my copy and started to experiment. I have to say I feel very positive about the software. I understand it's restricted at the moment for simple websites without content management systems and maybe the code it creates is little bit long and not so clear but it seems to be valid and working. There's definitely still need for real web developers with coding skill but for some small businesses, personal home pages, prototyping etc. Adobe Muse is awesome!
You can find the page (only in Finnish) I did as an course exercise with Adobe Muse here.
September 16, 2011
Pre-assignment for MediaBizLab
So like I posted earlier this academic year I'll be doing MediaBizLab minor studies program. It's about to begin next friday (23th of September) and we had to generate some media service ideas as an pre-assignment. So here's mine.
1) Advanced Web Grocery Store (with open API)
With some limitations it's been possible to order food from web and get it brought home. I'm super bad/lazy cook and even if I found recipe I like, I find it painful to find all the ingredients from market. I would any day pay for the service where I could choose food I'd like to cook this evening and with one click get all the ingredients brought to my home few hours later. I think Kesko or S-ketju should build database (I guess they already have some kind for inner use) for all the foods etc. they have in their each individual market and create open API that 3rd party developers can access and build services on top of that. Of course they should build their own web grocery store also but API would let many recipe sites, courier companies etc. build different services on top of that. Everyone benefits. I'm sure there's market for this. Everyone has to eat :)
2) Final Cut Pro X Freebies
Apple Final Cut Pro X is an video editing program that was launched this June. It should narrow the gap between professionals and amateurs because it's easy to use interface. Final Cut Pro X has never before seen possibilities for different kind of effect templates, graphic templates, storyline templates etc.. And people are creating lots of these templates at the moment because it's so easy and fun. Nowadays more and more companies & individuals are creating video for different kind of purposes and any help they can get from professional created templates is valued. At the moment free templates people have made are all over the internet and it's very hard to find the good ones. So I'd like to create ad-driven website called fcpxfreebies.com where I gather best of the best templates with clear descriptions, pictures and videos. Actually I've already registered fcpxfreebies.com domain but it might be I'll never have enough time to put it up. Previous version of Final Cut Pro has over two million users (probably more to come with Final Cut Pro X) so there should be some kind of market for this.
3) "I want to be in silence" -service
People want and need silence to be healthy physically and mentally. It might be difficult in todays technological landscape where you're interrupted constantly. I'd like to make service that integrates with phone, email, Facebook, Twitter etc. and informs people that I won't be available for next X hours/days and puts some nice quote there telling people how good it's for your health not to be always available. Someone said "killing your account in Facebook" is todays "I don't have television". I think not being available/being in silence can easily become trend. I think it's already for down shifters. Maybe the service itself is not bringing money but all the other things you can link to this thing (books, seminars, courses…) can easily be monetized.
1) Advanced Web Grocery Store (with open API)
With some limitations it's been possible to order food from web and get it brought home. I'm super bad/lazy cook and even if I found recipe I like, I find it painful to find all the ingredients from market. I would any day pay for the service where I could choose food I'd like to cook this evening and with one click get all the ingredients brought to my home few hours later. I think Kesko or S-ketju should build database (I guess they already have some kind for inner use) for all the foods etc. they have in their each individual market and create open API that 3rd party developers can access and build services on top of that. Of course they should build their own web grocery store also but API would let many recipe sites, courier companies etc. build different services on top of that. Everyone benefits. I'm sure there's market for this. Everyone has to eat :)
2) Final Cut Pro X Freebies
Apple Final Cut Pro X is an video editing program that was launched this June. It should narrow the gap between professionals and amateurs because it's easy to use interface. Final Cut Pro X has never before seen possibilities for different kind of effect templates, graphic templates, storyline templates etc.. And people are creating lots of these templates at the moment because it's so easy and fun. Nowadays more and more companies & individuals are creating video for different kind of purposes and any help they can get from professional created templates is valued. At the moment free templates people have made are all over the internet and it's very hard to find the good ones. So I'd like to create ad-driven website called fcpxfreebies.com where I gather best of the best templates with clear descriptions, pictures and videos. Actually I've already registered fcpxfreebies.com domain but it might be I'll never have enough time to put it up. Previous version of Final Cut Pro has over two million users (probably more to come with Final Cut Pro X) so there should be some kind of market for this.
3) "I want to be in silence" -service
People want and need silence to be healthy physically and mentally. It might be difficult in todays technological landscape where you're interrupted constantly. I'd like to make service that integrates with phone, email, Facebook, Twitter etc. and informs people that I won't be available for next X hours/days and puts some nice quote there telling people how good it's for your health not to be always available. Someone said "killing your account in Facebook" is todays "I don't have television". I think not being available/being in silence can easily become trend. I think it's already for down shifters. Maybe the service itself is not bringing money but all the other things you can link to this thing (books, seminars, courses…) can easily be monetized.
August 10, 2011
Cool new plugin from MotionVFX
I've been lately testing MotionVFX's new lens flare plugin called mFlare. It should be soon available to Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 and I can warmly recommend it. It's great! In this promo I used mFlare for beginning sequence (first 8 secs) and also very subtly to some other shots.
Learn more about the mFlare plugin: http://www.motionvfx.com/mplugs.html
Learn more about the mFlare plugin: http://www.motionvfx.com/mplugs.html
July 5, 2011
Use clean title as adjustment layer in Final Cut Pro X
I love the collaboration between Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5. You can make generators, titles, transitions and effects to Final Cut Pro X with Motion 5. Each of these behave little bit differently in Final Cut Pro X.
One thing I love in After Effects are adjustment layers and I just realized you can actually use titles as effects in Final Cut Pro X and they behave just like adjustment layers (actually you can go much further in Final Cut Pro X). For example if you color correct in Final Cut Pro X it's very easy to create illegal colors and to get colors back to legal you're supposed to create compound clip and then apply broadcast safe effect to it. I also love compound clips but those can make your projects really complex and another thing is that you have to render everything once again after you apply filter to compound clip.
So titles process everything below in Final Cut Pro X even with effects applied to those. So why not just build clean title in Motion 5, put that to top "track" before starting color correction and add broadcast safe effect to it. This way everything is rendered straight to broadcast specs and you don't have to hassle that much with compound clips.
This technique works with all effects (also color board works on titles) so for example if you want to have certain look for some period of time simply add clean title to top track for that time and add effect to it. I think this technique has tons of potential for people who want to keep their timelines in order and don't want to create complex compound clip messes.
If you don't have Motion 5 you can download Adjustment Layer here. Just extract contents to your Movies/Motion Templates/Titles folder and you'll find it in Final Cut Pro X Titles under Adjustment Layer.
UPDATE 10.7.
Mark Spencer informed me in CreativeCow with this very essential information:
If you don't have Motion 5 installed, you won't have the necessary folder structure for placing that title into. You'll need to create a "Motion Templates" folder in your "Movies" folder, and inside it, create folders for "Titles", "Transitions", "Effects", and "Generators".
And still, this won't work until you do a get info (command-I) on each folder and add the ".localized" extension.
THEN it should work.
One thing I love in After Effects are adjustment layers and I just realized you can actually use titles as effects in Final Cut Pro X and they behave just like adjustment layers (actually you can go much further in Final Cut Pro X). For example if you color correct in Final Cut Pro X it's very easy to create illegal colors and to get colors back to legal you're supposed to create compound clip and then apply broadcast safe effect to it. I also love compound clips but those can make your projects really complex and another thing is that you have to render everything once again after you apply filter to compound clip.
So titles process everything below in Final Cut Pro X even with effects applied to those. So why not just build clean title in Motion 5, put that to top "track" before starting color correction and add broadcast safe effect to it. This way everything is rendered straight to broadcast specs and you don't have to hassle that much with compound clips.
This technique works with all effects (also color board works on titles) so for example if you want to have certain look for some period of time simply add clean title to top track for that time and add effect to it. I think this technique has tons of potential for people who want to keep their timelines in order and don't want to create complex compound clip messes.
If you don't have Motion 5 you can download Adjustment Layer here. Just extract contents to your Movies/Motion Templates/Titles folder and you'll find it in Final Cut Pro X Titles under Adjustment Layer.
UPDATE 10.7.
Mark Spencer informed me in CreativeCow with this very essential information:
If you don't have Motion 5 installed, you won't have the necessary folder structure for placing that title into. You'll need to create a "Motion Templates" folder in your "Movies" folder, and inside it, create folders for "Titles", "Transitions", "Effects", and "Generators".
And still, this won't work until you do a get info (command-I) on each folder and add the ".localized" extension.
THEN it should work.
June 19, 2011
Here I come MediaBizLab!
I just got information that I'm accepted to MediaBizLab minor subject studies (http://mediabizlab.fi/2011/06/new-students-in-the-mediabizlab-minor-studies-program-2/). So my next academic year will be about innovation and business development process of digital media services. I don't know if I told you already but my first year was really media art focused so it's very interesting now to focus on business side (dark side?) of things.
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