Clipsource: Online Marketplace For News Videos
Clipsource is an online marketplace for news videos. Launched originally in Sweden in 2009, the service enables media companies to buy, sell or share news videos that have been produced in-house or sourced from viewers and readers.
The company aims to capitalize on the recent proliferation of video content on news and media sites. According to Dan Willstrand, CEO of Clipsource, "As online video advertising offers nearly ten times higher revenue per impression than standard banners, there is a strong economic incentive for the publishers to show more video".
CrowdIPR Seeks To Crowdsource The Patent Process
While the increasing number of innovations from small R&D companies have made our lives easier, the process to legally register new products has become much more complex. Between 2003 and 2008 the number of patent filings has nearly doubled to 6.37 million filings per year, making it difficult for companies to research prior art before filing their patent application.
Some online tools like Google Patents have made aspects of this process easier and cheaper, but still lack the depth and quality of an expensive patent lawyer. The Estonian startup, CrowdIPR, seeks to bridge this gap by introducing crowdsourced knowledge from technology experts into this specialized area.
Define How Nelonen Media Should Sound Like With Audiodraft
Creating customized soundtracks for a brand or a product is not as easy at it seems. You need to find a professional, go through dozens of samples and spend a lot of money and time on it. Audiodraft makes the process a piece of cake: it crowdsources music production to its community of amateur and professional musicians. Their service works through contests: companies that need any type of customized audio file set up a competition on Audiodraft's website with a monetary reward for the winner. An average competition lasts between 2-4 weeks and receives around 50 entries. Since Audiodraft's public beta launch in July 2010, they hosted 42 contest with some well-known Finnish companies like Marimekko, YLE, Microtask, Salomon and GameHouse. This week they are launching their first contest with Nelonen Media, one of Finland's biggest media houses. Nelonen is looking for an audio identity pack for their brand and are cashing out $2,400 for the winning entry.
From Paper Forms To Spreadsheets - Microtask Forms Digitize More Content
Microtask lives up to its slogan 'we love the work you hate'. Many companies require customers to fill out paper forms, be it an insurance, a job application, a large purchase or a medical form. Typing those forms into a spreadsheet is time-consuming, mundane, dull and takes time away from doing more important things for your company. The pain was well-spotted by Microtask who this week introduced a new service - Microtask Forms - that helps convert paper forms into digital spreadsheets. From the clients' side the service is extremely straightforward: they can email or fax paper forms they need to get typed in and by the end of the next working day they get the forms back as digitized spreadsheets.
Stockholm Partners With CrowdCulture To Fund Culture
CrowdCulture is a new initiative in Sweden, which looks to bring a new way of creating culture. The concept combines private money together with public money to fund the creation of culture. It works in a simple way. There are projects in the service, which individuals can fund, the public will then double all the private money in the fund to bring more leverage.
Over 25 000 People Have Completed Microtasks In Microtask's Pilot
Back in February we wrote about Microtask launching a joint project with the Finnish National Library to use crowdsourcing to correct digitized content. Today Microtask has announced that more than 25 000 people have completed small pieces of work in helping correctly digitize the content through two games.
Lainaaja.fi - Social Lending Now In Finland
Lainaaja.fi (direct translation: "lender.fi") is slowly building traction in Finland. The service opened end of last year and it has attracted loans worth of tens of thousands of euros. The concept is simple. Anyone can apply for a loan on the site and lenders, regular individuals, can give offers based on the suggested terms the borrower is asking for. Essentially, it's a crowdsourced way to borrow money and for the lenders, it's a way to make money by borrowing with good rates. Most of the rates on the sites are between 15 and 20 percent, so relative to other "investing opportunities" out there, the return is good.
Microtask Launches Digitalkoot, A Service To Correct Digitized Finnish National Library Archives
Microtask has launched a new service called Digitalkoot (digital communal work/barn-raising - very loosely translated) to help digitize the Finnish National Library content. We wrote about the plans to do so already in October. There are currently four million pages of digital content from 1700 to 1900 in the form of magazines and newspapers in the Finnish National Library. More and more content is continuously digitized from the archives as well. Previously used way to go about this would have been to use OCR software. However, the old language has characters that current OCR software is unable to recognize. According Kai Ekholm from the National Library, 2% of the currently digitized text has errors in it. Microtask's crowdsourcing service helps correct these errors and make the archives more accurate.
Nokia Puts Crowdsourcing At Its Core
Talouselämä has an article about Pia Erkinheimo, a newly appointed manager in Nokia, who is to put crowdsourcing matters into the core of Nokia. While this is simply an appointment to a new post, I think this is a larger step inside Nokia that will be the turn of events for things to come. Erkinheimo has been working with Nokia for the past three years planning a dialogue strategy for the company, among other things. In her new post, she's making sure consumers and developers are better listened to, for example in the development of new products.
Revamping The Finnish National Library
I sat down for a chat with Otto Chrons from Microtask at last week’s MindTrek conference. We covered Microtask late this summer when they closed a seed round from Sunstone Capital. Otto Chrons had some very interesting news to tell this time round as well, they are soon starting a large project with their first client. Microtask is going to help the Finnish National Library with its archives early next year.
Companies Look To Outsource Innovation And Ideas
This is a relatively interesting move and possibly a trend may follow if this picks up more momentum. A few days ago Hammerkit took to the web designers to try out their service and challenge the traditional web principles. In other words, they are trying to get a dialogue going between designers and that sort to leverage their knowledge and also market the possibilities Hammerkit has to offer them.
Hammerkit is a Finnish company based in the Techonopolis Ventures incubation pipeline. They are developing a framework for web development to leverage modules for faster web application production. With the dialogue with designers - they will be holding webcast sessions to futher untie possible knots in the co-operation and perception people may have towards their service.
This is a very wise move in my opinion for Hammerkit. I'd argue that they should be positioned more in the crowdsourcing space to tap into the knowledge of the web designers to better suit their product to their use. However, Hammerkit is not the only working in this front. A few weeks ago Nokia announced together with Technopolis a Nokia Technopolis Innovation Mill project to open up their patent registry to startups.
Seminar: New revenue models of music
Musiikki&Media organizes a free seminar with the theme "New revenue models of music" on May 16th 10.00-15.00 at Sibelius Academy, Helsinki. The seminar features opinions and insights around what seem to be the revenue models of the future and what are the changes already taken place in the music industry.
Why I'm picking it up is because the event might interest also those not directly involved in music business as Johan Vosmeijer, Managing Director of the interesting German startup SellaBand will participate. Crowd sourcing is one of themes covered in the seminar.
Free registration before May 13th is required. The enrollment and later on event details are available on the Musiikki&Media 08 web site.
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Photo by malingering.
