Tag Archives: New Media

ProMed Network Programs Available on Roku



Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) July 29, 2010

ProMed Network shows are now available and easily accessible on the over-the-top box Roku, helping consumers and health care professionals find the latest and most comprehensive medical information directly on their televisions.

ProMed is a digital media destination on which medical and health programming producers share their shows with other medical professionals, students in the health care fields and members of the public interested in health-related programming. With Roku, ProMed enables health and wellness audiences to broaden their consumption options and content owners and publishers to reach a large and growing audience of digital media consumers.

“The members of the ProMed Network are very excited to expand our reach to the Roku platform,” said Jamie Davis, ProMed general manager. “We believe the future of web programming is in the living rooms and family entertainment areas of our viewers. ProMed plans to be there to share our knowledge with the world.”

ProMed was launched with 11 programs nearly two years ago and has expanded to 30 programs. Several other shows are expected to be added throughout the next few months. Topics include nursing, emergency medicine, primary care, pediatrics, psychology, neurology and disease and disaster awareness. Each show listed in the community is either produced by a medical professional or has been determined to represent peer reviewed or medically relevant information.

“Our producers are among the most popular shows in their categories in directories such as iTunes and we often have nine or 10 shows in the top 20 medical programs listed,” Davis said. “Clearly our listeners and viewers continue to come back for more. The programs on the network really do represent the best of the best.”

ProMed, powered by the RawVoice Generator platform, joins the Tech Podcasts Network and Blubrry podcast communities in providing content creators the ability to be seen and heard on television. The digital media communities are properties of RawVoice, a base for media sharing, discovery, publishing, hosting, measurement and monetization for a vast group of content creators and networks.

RawVoice delivers mass content through multiple platforms; the RawVoice media statistics system offers unsurpassed insights into user consumption: tracking audiences, listener-base demographics and geographical data with worldwide mapping – all delivered via web-based interfaces, custom reports and daily e-mail summaries.

Contact Davis at press@promednetwork.com.

About RawVoice Inc.:
RawVoice offers new media producers an easy, efficient means to get media online and measure audience behavior. The RawVoice Generator is a configurable, customizable, user-friendly media platform that combines the power of podcasting and new media with social networking. The RawVoice Generator lets you push content to portable and home media devices, such as iPhones, Roku and Boxee. RawVoice’s Integrated New Media Statistics analyzes downloadable and streaming media. It’s easy to use, powerful and flexible.

Brands:
RawVoice Generator, RawVoice Media Statistics, PowerPress Podcast Plugin, TechPodcasts.com, Blubrry.com, TravelCastNetwork.com, ProMedNetwork.com, Podcasternews.com


Popbox Initial Reaction



You all know my excitement for Over the Top TV due to our overwhelming success so far with our Roku channels, heck thousands of you are watching my show on the Roku every day. Since January we have known the Popbox was coming, and my team at RawVoice really wanted to have channels ready for the device. Sadly we did not get invited to their developers program until just recently, even after personal chats with the Popbox folks at both CES and SXSW. I was told at SXSW that the device would have a lot of premium, high value content on it, and that is how they were going to set themselves apart from the competition.

Yesterday when I received the Popbox that I purchased on Amazon I was surprised to find that the unit did not come with WiFi, and that they had a second model available that had a WiFi Dongle for an extra $20.00. My advice to Popbox kill the wired only model no one wants to run cables. So today after stringing a network cables to get it hooked to the network on my big screen here are my thoughts about 60 minutes into playing with it.

First shocker only 10 channels, plus no Netflix that was promoted back in January? Our competitor in the space Mediafly was not in the channel list either which we fully expected so I am not sure what the deal is with that. Does that indicate that Popbox does not want any user generated content on the device? Time will tell. While I understand they are promoting this box as a media center of sorts to play your pictures and your personal media. They could have had at least four more channels from us if they would have gotten us into their developer program.

When I loaded the Channel from Revision Three, the videos loaded pretty fast resulting in a pretty good experience, the one thing I did notice is that the menu system required me to do a lot of clicking to change channels and get to content. You have to exit each channel,  then load the next, it is not easy to quickly navigate the menu system.I am sure this is a limitation of the software running the device.

I loaded the YouTube application, went to my show channel, clicked on my latest show and guess what it never played. I played some other YouTube videos, and they are simply slow to start,  it appears to me that they are not using the flash media, but instead are using the physical media file. Probably the reason my show did not load is that the file I send to YouTube is over 900 megs.

Other videos in other channels loaded and played ok, the video quality is pretty good. I am sure that the Popbox folks will face the same challenges that the Roku folks did, but the Roku now has tons of content/channels. If the barrier to entry on channel development costs to be in the Popbox are as high as they are to be in the Roku then I am gonna have to really weigh my options on whether we develop for this device or not in lieu of the Vudu etc.

Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, they are going to have to get a lot more channels in the device in a hurry. Google TV is coming and in order to compete they are going to have to get a lot of content in their that makes it worthwhile for folks to purchase.


New Media v. Old Media



How social media points the way forward for journalism. It’s a real example of how traditional media are becoming social media-aware and are using Facebook, Twitter and their ilk to get the news stories out faster and with more information.

However, what really registered with me is at the very end of the article.

There is a word of caution that goes with trusting what we read on this great “word of mouth” network.  Recent rumour mill stories on Facebook on the private lives of footballers ended up in the press and were proven to be totally wrong. So while this new technology can speed up the newsgathering process, journalists will need to make sure they do what they have always done – double check the facts.

I have real concerns about the loss of the old news media.  Obviously there’s no single cause but the rise of new media, the Internet “no cost” expectation and the “now” culture are all taking the toll.    But what will be the cost to our society when we no longer have professional journalists?

What will happen to investigative journalism?  What will happen when hysterical but unfounded rumours sweep across the social networks?  How will politicians be held to account when there is no-one to report on their mistakes?  How much more easy will it be to cover stuff up?

I can’t think of a single other instance where it’s become acceptable for amateurs to take over the role of professionals.  Would you want an amateur doctor to treat you?  An amateur engineer to design a bridge?  An amateur firefighter to attend an emergency?  No, I want these people to study for years to become competent at what they do.  Why should journalism be any different?  Just because you can string a sentence together, doesn’t make you a journalist.

Now, you may think that it’s a bit rich coming from a blogger for a major new media site but to tie this back to the original news story, I think it genuinely points the way ahead.  We have to get away from old media v. new media, it has to be co-opetition not competition, symbiotic not parasitic, and we have to find a way to reward news organisations and professional journalists to keep doing what they’re doing.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do know is that it will be social disaster if we lose professional journalists because we were too cheap to buy a newspaper.