December 20, 2007

ALA has just released the following press release.

(CHICAGO) The American Library Association (ALA) will provide a free live Webcast of its national announcement of the top books, video and audiobooks for children and young adults - including the Caldecott, King, Newbery and Printz awards - on January 14 at 7:45 a.m. EST. The award announcements are made as part of the ALA Midwinter Meeting, which will bring together more than 10,000 librarians, publishers, authors and guests in Philadelphia from January 11 to 16.

Unikron, a streaming content provider, will host the ALA’s Webcast. Online visitors will be able to view the live Webcast the morning of the announcements by going to http://www.unikron.com/clients/ala-webcast-2008 . This link is not yet live, but librarians and others interested in following the action online should bookmark and use this URL - instead of the ALA home page - on January 14. The number of available connections for the Webcast will be limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. The press release announcing all of the winners will be available online at www.ala.org at 10:30 a.m. EST.

For ALA Midwinter Meeting participants, the press conference will be held in the Pennsylvania Convention Center Ballroom B and doors open at 7:30 a.m.

Awards to be announced January 14 are:

• Alex Awards for the best adult books that appeal to a teen audience
• Andrew Carnegie Medal for excellence in children’s video
• Randolph Caldecott Medal for the most distinguished American picture book for children
• Coretta Scott King Book Award recognizing an African American author and illustrator of books for children and young adults that reflect the best in artistic and literary expression of the Black experience in a pluralistic society
• Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults
• May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award recognizing an author, critic, librarian, historian, or teacher of children’s literature, who then presents a lecture at a winning host site
• Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature written for young adults
• Mildred L. Batchelder Award for an outstanding children’s book translated from a foreign language in a foreign country and subsequently published in English in the United States
• John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to children’s literature
• Odyssey Award for excellence in audiobook production for youth
• Pura Belpré Award recognizing a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth
• Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award for most distinguished informational book for children
• Schneider Family Book Award for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience
• Theodor Seuss Geisel Award for the most distinguished book for beginning readers

Additional information on the ALA Youth Media Awards can be found at www.ilovelibraries.org/youthmediaawards.

Adult book awards also announced during the conference include: Notable Books for Adults, the Black Caucus of the ALA Literary Awards and the Stonewall Awards. For more information on ALA literary awards, please visit: http://www.ala.org/bookmediaawards.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Webcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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December 14, 2007

by Manuel Rodriguez

 

The first Tivo units have been sold this week at FutureShop, and the first episodes of “Little Mosque On The Prairie” will also be sold for $1.99 at iTunes this week.

 

Are Americans taking longer to conquer markets up north?, when it comes to technology Canadians first observe what Americans are doing , and once they find out that technology works they acquire it in masses. What that tells us is that the iPhone is going to be a big success in the Canadian market.

 

 

The way Apple Inc. will inject hysteria to the market will be by filling it out with lots of Canadian content before they launch the iPhone in Canada. The following content will be available in iTunes: CTV (Corner Gas, Degrassi, Instant Star) and the CBC (Rick Mercer Report, Little Mosque On The Prairie). This programs are going to be available the day after it airs in Canadian networks.

 

Apple Inc. and the Canadian networks will share profits from the content delivered around the world. But just knowing that the Canadian video production has been for years heavily subsidized by the Canadian tax payers money; is somebody going to be policing the way that the money made will be re-invested in producing more Canadian content for a global iTunes market?

 

Who is going to be the target audience?, and who are we going to cater to?, are we going also to be overwhelmed by American video streaming content?, let’s keep in mind that iTunes content produced in the US has been available to the global market for over 2 years.

 

We will never be able to compete at the scale that Americans are producing, and we shouldn’t jump on the iTunes’ boat just to be a player, networks like NBC have left the boat and create their own independent distribution. iTunes will only be worry about re-selling our content, making the big bucks on the hockey games and not caring about any franco-phone production as the markets are too small.

All that we care about for now is to be able to watch the Rick Mercer Report on the iPhone (coming to a FutureShop near you).

 

We will react later….

 

 

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 11:03 pm and is filed under Video Technology, itunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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December 11, 2007

by Manuel Rodriguez

The price is down and the new Flash HD streaming is going up, flash video streaming server prices have been slashed, and Adobe wants you to create more content in High Definition, starting January 2008.

The open H.264 standard is not going to be used only in Blue-Ray or HD-DVD, we will be able to encode online videos with the High Definition standard used in movies. With more consumer cameras in the market claiming or having real high definition, we will see better quality movies streaming in Flash, therefore your home-made videos are going to have better quality, even if you are a lousy camera operator.

Is YouTube going to be the next high definition provider with high definition content?, not likely, at least not in the short-term they will not rush to it, we will see different content provider that will jump to the boat right away, more movie trailers will be shown in high definition, and I bet you they will not be using the QuickTime player H.264 codec, but it will be widely accepted but all the Iphone users. This Flash Player 9 update 3, features hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced, full-screen video playback for high-resolution, this is big!, it is going to be able to play Full-Screen videos in your low end processor.

Adobe Flash Media Server 3 will be available in January 2008. Adobe Flash Media Interactive Server 3 will be offered at $4,500. For single-server deployments, Adobe Flash Media Streaming Server 3 will be available at $995. Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 is available now for free download .

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 4:21 am and is filed under Flash Video Streaming, Video Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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