Washed It!

Fort Myers Video Production

It came from out of nowhere. One minute, basic websites were the norm, with blogs and a bit of audio at the most. Now we have interaction, videos, podcasts and all sorts of rich media filling them.

Most of us will have heard of YouTube, the viral video phenomenon and the effects it has on a company profile. To keep up with the trends, and make the most of the advantages video marketing offers, you need to know a bit about video production. To be able to produce good quality video that could just thrust your company into the limelight you need to either contract a professional or learn to make it yourself.

The attraction of many of the viral videos so far is that they have been made in bedrooms, basements or wherever, on a shoestring budget, but have the imagination, values or sheer appeal that captures our imagination. YouTube has become a Mecca for many web users of all ages and types who want to see what the world is up to.

Utilizing this attraction for the benefit of your business is a great concept, but you need an idea, a hook to capture that audience. The best way to use this guerilla marketing technique is to entertain. People don’t mind seeing promotions or advertising if they are entertaining. It also needs to be well made and adhere to video production values. There was a time when poorly produced videos were acceptable, no longer. With the advent of broadband, live streaming and decent compressed video formats, poor production is no longer tolerated.

One of the most effective viral marketing campaigns was for Blendtec. They posted videos of their blender destroying various items that wouldn’t normally be put in a blender like cell phones, marbles and magnets. Even though it was a marketing campaign, it was so entertaining that nobody minded. It raised the profile of the company and its products beyond their wildest dreams. That’s the power of internet video if you get it right.

The most difficult part of creating a guerilla campaign like this is coming up with an idea. If you can come up with something unique and entertaining you’re halfway there. Making the actual video should be quite straightforward, especially if you followed our blog on the three stages of video production.

Video can also be used for informational purposes. Instructional videos on a company website demonstrating products, showing how to assemble or use it, how to repair it and the uses it can be put to helps a potential customer visualize how they would use it. That removes a big barrier from selling over the internet, because it almost lets them touch it, which is the main disadvantage of distance selling.

Whatever you want a video to achieve, adding them to a website is a good idea. It shows you’re in touch, keeping up with technology and offering value-add services to your customers. They might not become the most viewed video in the world, but it will engage your audience, which is what every business wants.

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, President Obama caused a bit of an international incident this weekend when he bowed before Japanese emperor Akihito.

Not surprisingly, his adoring fans in the media have done everything in their power to cover for this peculiar demonstration by the most powerful man in the world.

With this in mind, the College Republicans at the University of Connecticut have put together a marvelous video to demonstrate how world leaders across the globe have addressed the emperor recently without bowing (video embedded below the fold, h/t Andrew Malcolm):

Now THAT’S entertainment!

A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed.

Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain.

He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.

Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said.

“It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” he said.

“And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.”

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‘Shared fabric’

The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data.

In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column – repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.

“It’s a new brain,” he explained. “The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions.

“It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.”

And that evolution continues, he said. “It is evolving at an enormous speed.”

Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column.

“It’s a bit like going and cataloguing a bit of the rainforest – how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees,” he said.

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“But it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity.”

The project now has a software model of “tens of thousands” of neurons – each one of which is different – which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column.

Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns.

“Even though your brain may be smaller, bigger, may have different morphologies of neurons – we do actually share the same fabric,” he said.

“And we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can’t communicate across species.”

World view

To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer.

“You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,” he said. “So you need ten thousand laptops.”

Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors.

Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works.

For example, they can show the brain a picture – say, of a flower – and follow the electrical activity in the machine.

“You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation,” he said.

Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.

But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other practical applications.

For example, by pooling all the world’s neuroscience data on animals – to create a “Noah’s Ark”, researchers may be able to build animal models.

“We cannot keep on doing animal experiments forever,” said Professor Markram.

It may also give researchers new insights into diseases of the brain.

“There are two billion people on the planet affected by mental disorder,” he told the audience.

The project may give insights into new treatments, he said.

The TED Global conference runs from 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK.

WASHINGTON – Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time.

The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and already pressuring the value of the dollar. There’s also concern about trying to reverse the deficit — by reducing government spending or raising taxes — in the midst of a harsh recession.

The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.

The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. Paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.

The country’s soaring deficits are making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.

“These are mind boggling numbers,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at the Smith School of Business at California State University. “Our foreign investors from China and elsewhere are starting to have concerns about not only the value of the dollar but how safe their investments will be in the long run.”

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Government spending is on the rise to address the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate that has climbed to 9.5 percent.

Congress already approved a $700 billion financial bailout and a $787 billion economic stimulus package to try and jump-start a recovery, and there is growing talk among some Obama administration officials that a second round of stimulus may be necessary.

This has many Republicans and deficit hawks worried that the U.S. could be setting itself up for more financial pain down the road if interest rates and inflation surge. They also are raising alarms about additional spending the administration is proposing, including its plan to reform health care.

President Barack Obama and other administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have said the U.S. is committed to bringing down the deficits once the country has emerged from the current recession and financial crisis.

As states and Congress move to make e-tailers collect sales taxes, Overstock.com and eBay oppose them while Amazon.com calls for uniformity

By Olga Kharif

Amazon tax fever is spreading. In the months since a New York State law took effect that imposes sales taxes on products promoted through Web sites based in the state, other governments have moved to get in on the action, and online retailers aren’t happy.

Last year, New York became the first state to pass legislation requiring large Web-based retailers, including Amazon.com (AMZN) and Overstock.com (OSTK), to collect state sales taxes on products promoted through affiliated state-based Web sites. Cash-strapped states across the country are mulling similar legislation and a federal online-sales tax bill that may be introduced in Congress could be signed into law as early as this year.

The growing impetus for taxes on online goods has touched off a flurry of lobbying activity and lawsuits from online retailers hoping to defeat legislation that would take away some of the price advantage they enjoy over brick-and-mortar retailers. “”We’ll do everything in our power to assist our sellers so they are not harmed,” says Tod Cohen, deputy general counsel and vice-president for government relations at eBay (EBAY). “We want to make sure than small businesses aren’t strangled in their cribs.”

State Sales tax collections are down

States and local governments hope sales taxes would help them recoup part of the revenue lost amid a recession that has diminished property values and crimped demand for items sold in stores. In the fourth quarter, state sales tax collections dropped 4%, the steepest decline in 50 years, according to the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. Online sales taxes could help states generate at least $52 billion in added revenue over the next six years, according to an Apr. 13 study conducted by three University of Tennessee professors. Requiring virtual stores to collect taxes, even in parts of the country where they don’t have physical operations, would also place e-tailers on a more even footing with brick-and-mortar stores such as Wal-Mart (WMT), which collect sales taxes on in-store as well as online purchases.

Companies that sell products over the Internet say the taxes would hamper growth. “The introduction and passage of an Internet tax bill would have adverse effects on e-commerce,” George Askew, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus , wrote in a recent note. After New York’s law was passed, Overstock.com says it had to terminate agreements with some 3,400 Web sites that once promoted the closeout retailer in the Empire State.

Overstock ceased operating in New York altogether, says the company’s president, Jonathan E. Johnson III. After losing a court battle seeking to repeal the law, Overstock plans to file an appeal in the coming weeks, Johnson says. “These states are signing up for a lawsuit, or for businesses to pull out of their states,” he says.

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Cover the E-Tailers collection costs?

Overstock, along with eBay, is leading the charge against efforts on Capitol Hill that favor online sales taxes. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Representative Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) are expected to introduce a bill aimed at overturning Quill vs. North Dakota, a 1992 Supreme Court case that concluded states can only require retailers to collect state taxes in territories where they have offices or stores. If passed, the legislation could require all but the smallest retailers to collect sales taxes in the 23 states that are part of the so-called Streamlined Sales Tax Project, which unifies states that have agreed to simplify their sales tax laws. The number of states in the Project is expected to rise rapidly in the coming months.

Under the bill, which is still being drafted, the states would compensate e-tailers for the cost of collecting taxes, and would agree not to prosecute them for tax errors, removing much of the liability, says Neal Osten, federal affairs counsel at the National Conference of State Legislatures, which is helping to draft the bill. Stifel analysts are skeptical that the bill will pass, though they believe it will make more headway in the current Democratic-controlled Congress. “The effort appears to have a somewhat better chance than in prior Congresses,” Blair Levin, managing director at Stifel, wrote in a recent report.

Laws that vary by state would no doubt be a headache for companies that sell products online across the country. In the coming days, Minnesota’s House of Representatives is due to consider a bill introduced by Representative Jim Davnie that would levy a sales tax on digital downloads of e-books, music, movies, and even ringtones. The tax would affect a wide range of tech companies, including Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL). “There’s clear opposition from the IT industry,” Davnie says. “Apple, Microsoft have been in my office.” Microsoft declined to comment for this story. Apple couldn’t immediately be contacted.

Amazon.com Wants Tax Uniformity

Some Internet players oppose pro-tax efforts by local governments too. Priceline.com (PCNL) has about 50 lawsuits pending that involve various cities and counties trying to impose local hotel occupancy taxes on the site’s customers, says Darrel Hieber, partner at law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which has represented Priceline in such cases since 2004.

While Amazon.com opposes the New York State law, it supports efforts to impose taxes in a uniform manner. “We’d be O.K. with a mandatory collection requirement as long as the states’ tax systems were truly simplified and the collection evenhandedly applied,” Amazon.com spokeswoman Patricia Smith writes in an e-mail. Many small businesses are also making peace with the notion. “We think it’s fair for people to collect sales taxes on the same terms [as brick-and-mortar small businesses],” says Todd McCracken, president of the National Small Business Assn. “There’s a need for a comprehensive, national approach to this. There’s got to be some final resolution to this because these issues have been festering for years.”

The troubled US insurance giant has bowed to demands to restructure its bonus payments to its employees.

Top level bonuses to its executive staff are to be dramatically cut this year according to a letter sent by Edward Liddy, AIG’s Chairman to the US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The letter confirmed that 2008 bonuses would be paid because the company had no choice.  These were legally binding payouts, which were being honored despite being bailed out by the taxpayer.

It is still believed to be the biggest-ever government rescue of a US company.  American International Group (AIG) plays a key role in insuring risk for financial institutions around the world and was seen to be too important to fail.

In the letter, Mr Liddy said he had come under pressure from the Treasury to reduce the firm’s bonus payments.  He said bonuses agreed to in 2008, before the firm’s problems became known, could not legally be blocked.

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“Under the current circumstances, I do not like these arrangements and find it distasteful and difficult to recommend to you that we must proceed with them.” Said Liddy in his letter.

AIG had promised to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to staff for the year 2008.

AIG would do its best to cut bonuses by at least 30% in 2009, Mr Liddy wrote to Mr Geithner.

Additionally US President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser has said “outrageous” conduct at AIG as the bailed-out insurance giant prepared to hand out millions in bonuses to top executives.

Lawrence Summers, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, has said the Obama administration had “scaled back” the bonuses but said its hands were tied by contract law in how far it could go.

“There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what’s happened at AIG is the most outrageous, what that company did,” he said on US television.

But Mr Summers added: “We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts.

“Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by (Treasury) Secretary (Timothy) Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system. And they have, as a result of Secretary Geithner’s efforts, been scaled back.”

A white paper prepared by the company says that AIG is contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165 million of previously awarded “retention pay” to employees in this unit by March 15. The document says that another $55 million in retention pay has already been distributed to about 400 AIG Financial Products employees.

Mr Liddy has reportedly told Mr Geithner the bonuses cannot be cancelled due to a risk of lawsuits for breach of employment contracts, and AIG risks an exodus of senior employees if it does not pay out bonuses.

Mr Summers appeared to lend some credence to that argument.  “There is one other reality we have to recognize, which is that these companies have to be enabled to function, if the government is going to maximize the prospect of getting its money back.”

Massive losses at the division in London have forced the US government to pump about $150 billion into crippled AIG, and it is planning another emergency injection of $30 billion.

Condemnation of the planned bonuses came from both sides of politics.  “It is an outrageous situation,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said, while accusing the Obama administration of dodging culpability.