ImageSpan's LicenseStream Business Edition Empowers the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America" Photographer Joseph Sohm to Open Their Premie

Image via CrunchBase

LicenseStream Business Edition's Quick-Start, All-inclusive Service Lets Content Owners Showcase, License, Track and Fully Monetize Their Content Through Their Own Branded Online Stores

NEW YORK, NY – October 22, 2009 — ImageSpan Inc., the creator of LicenseStream, the market-leading licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media, today announced that several owners of premier collections and libraries of images, including the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy" author and photographer Joseph Sohm are opening their content for business using ImageSpan's new LicenseStream Business Edition. The announcement was made at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo, the large photography industry trade show at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York.

Sohm, whose "Visions of America" book and companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" narrated by Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across 50 states, said he chose LicenseStream because it allows him to make his entire catalog– not just the hits – available online for licensing. His work can now be found and licensed at http://voa.licensestream.com. Previously, Sohm has been able to offer only a subset of his images through stock agencies, which he says operate on the premise that a core set of images typically attract customers repeatedly.

Built on the LicenseStream platform, LicenseStream Business Edition gives owners of premier collections and libraries of images, video and audio a quick-start, all-inclusive, Web-based service that allows content owners to showcase, license, track and monetize the full value of their content through their own branded online stores.

"With LicenseStream Business Edition, content owners can publish their content directly to their own online store or anywhere else on the Web and to global search engines, enabling anyone in the world to find their search-optimized content and pay for it with a mouse click," said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer, ImageSpan. "This essentially makes the content itself the storefront. It dramatically speeds the pace of transactions and drives incremental revenues. Until now, media companies, libraries and owners of premier collections had a tough time justifying the cost of putting the head as well as the long tail of their content on the Web because the revenues they realized could not cover the costs associated out-dated manual licensing transactions. Now content owners of all sizes can make their entire catalog of media – not just the hits – available online to maximize their assets' value."

Missouri History Museum already has made available online via LicenseStream Business Edition more than 3,000 images, including a wide range of Civil War-era images, a wide range of early daguerreotypes and other photos and images related to American Indian people and culture, and images of oil paintings and artifacts related to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who headed up the first overland expedition by the United States to the Pacific Coast and back.

"We often receive requests from visitors asking us about the art and artifacts we display and how they can get copies," said Dr. Robert R. Archibald, president, the Missouri History Museum. "With LicenseStream Business Edition, we can now publish images of our collections directly to the Web so that anyone in the world can find our search-optimized images and pay for them with a mouse click. LicenseStream also has dramatically cut the time spent by our staff on searching for and processing such image requests so we can respond to requests in a day versus months, accelerating both of transactions and revenues while cutting costs." (Please see related release: Missouri History Museum Selects ImageSpan's LicenseStream to Maximize the Value of Its Photos, Prints)

American history teacher turned Producer-Photographer-Writer Joseph Sohm is now using LicenseStream Business Edition to license the more than 1,300 photographs included in his "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy," ($60; November 2009; Visions of America LLC/Midpoint Trade Books Dist.) a book that offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across the United States. For more than 25 years, Sohm traveled and photographed all 50-states. Images from his "Visions of America" collection have been published 50,000 times in his lifetime.

"LicenseStream Business Edition enables me to publish my work directly to my own branded storefront as well as to the Web and major search engines in a way that also lets potential buyers license it on the spot," said Sohm, whose "Visions of America" recently won the Gold medal for "Best Coffee Table Book" at the 13th annual Independent Publishing awards in New York City. While requiring minimal investment, LicenseStream also allows content owners to retain a larger share of royalties for each transaction – multiple times the 20 percent royalty fee offered by most major agencies. "That key difference makes it affordable for me to shoot, metatag, process and offer my customers a much greater selection of photographs online."

LicenseStream Business Edition pricing starts at $5,500 annually with a 25% transaction fee. The annual fee can be billed one-time, monthly or quarterly to suit a client's needs.

Link to LicenseStream website: http://www.licensestream.com/licensestream2/Portal/company/press.aspx?pid=52

Are We There Yet?

This was something I heard a lot this past summer as I steered the minivan along the interstate toward a destination that seemed to be moving further away the closer I seemed to get. I think this can be akin to the process of setting out on the road to a successful DAM implementation. As you make progress the goal may seem to be moving further away.

A DAM is a continuously evolving process, to quote an earlier post..."a DAM is an Eco-system." All parts of this ecosystem are connected and need to work in unison. A successful DAM evolves to a natural balance. So, if it's evolving how will you know when you are done and for that matter...what is the definition of DONE?

"Done-ness" is a state that depends somewhat on the size of the endeavor and the enterprise. Implementing a digital asset management project for a small media archive may have a completion that is defined as when all the existing content that was not previously in a digital environment is now digitized, searchable, accessible in its digital form and available for use within a business unit or enterprise as needed. In a larger environment, it may be defined in phases or stages with milestones tied to timelines, budgets, strategic business initiatives, etc. and may span over the course of many years and budget cycles. In some ways this may be more analogous to highway maintenance...by the time you finish filling potholes, it may be time to start resurfacing the road again.

So does this mean we are on a treadmill that never ends? Do we ever catch up?...or do we continue to repeat the past?

Yes...No... Maybe.

The point is that there are different stages of done and recognizing this, learning from them and reaping the knowledge benefits can make the next phases more effective and easier to accomplish..and so on. You will build on the momentum you generate and want to be able to tap into that energy. It should be easier to evolve than to invent anew. Harness the power of the lessons learned to better at the next steps and beyond.

I believe inherent to a media asset and technology project is the reality that we can reach a balance between objectives and the state of the art. As technologies continue to improve we need to refine, reconfigure, migrate, upgrade, recreate and reprocess, etc. All toward the continuing evolution of the ecosystem we've created. We become the masters of the Darwinism of the process. Dinosaurs evolved then came birds, fish, reptiles and mammals. Could you still be an efficient and competitive player in your industry if you were still using index cards, binders, mimeograph machines, 8086 computers, phone modems and pre-windows software? Maybe...but not likely. We've all evolved as opportunities became available for advancement within the ecosystem.

So are we there yet? We'll we're here now and the view is pretty good...but I bet if we keep driving in the right direction the view will be even better.

___

By Philip Spiegel
PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas
October 13, 2009
Link to original post: http://spiegelams.typepad.com/spiegel_ams/2009/10/are-we-there-yet.html

Digital Archiving Tool: Amnesty International’s ADAM

Image via Wikipedia

Link to original post: http://crlgrn.wordpress.com/
October 15, 2009

Amnesty International’s International Secretariat recently released an in-house digital archiving program called ADAM–Amnesty Digital Asset Management. The program, designed in conjunction with Bright Interactive, allows Amnesty field workers to upload digitally created photos, videos, and audio recordings into a central repository that all Amnesty members can access from within the organization. ADAM is a customized application of Bright Interactive’s “Asset Bank” tool which:

is a digital asset management system, enabling your organisation to create a fully searchable, categorised library of digital images, videos and other documents. It is a high-performance, cost-effective server application to enable you to manage digital assets – all that is needed to access it is a web browser (from Asset Bank).

The description for the product goes on to specify that the Asset Bank program that ADAM is built from is customizable, scalable, and multi-lingual.

Because the program is accessible through a web browser, field workers can submit their field materials from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet link (sometimes a challenge in the further reaches of the world). As users upload their digital materials, they fill in required fields for metadata and context information. Use and access restrictions are also recorded in the record for each uploaded item. At this point, uploading material into ADAM is voluntary, but according to AI’s digital archivist, response has been enthusiastic. The hope is that uploading material into ADAM will become standard practice for all field workers, thus streamlining archiving processes and making material readily available for AI reports and campaigns. This material could also potentially be available for scholarly and legal work by outside parties–always dependent, of course, on the access agreements that AI holds with the creators of the material and the individuals represented in images, videos, or audio recordings.

Currently, ADAM holds approximately 36,000 records, 159 of which are available for public viewing at the ADAM Web site. Though Web site visitors from outside of AI can’t access the full holdings, the public holdings allow you to see the types of information that ADAM users submit when they upload their digital documentation items. Information ADAM currently collects is as follows:

Descriptive

• Title of the video, image, or audio file
• Description of the content
• Keywords, or terms for searching and cataloging
• Campaigns that the item contributes to or was created for
• Tags
• Copyright type
• Copyright credit

Agreement Type:

• Agreement specifies the level of use that the creator of the piece and individuals represented within the piece permit within Amnesty International. Some items are publicly available and others are highly restricted.
• Agreement Notes specify additional use restrictions not covered in the standard agreements preset in ADAM
• Shotlist/Transcript information for video and/or audio material
• Date Created
• Creation Date Accuracy is a space for stating level of confidence for when the item was created.
• Place Created

Technical

• Size of the digital image, video or audio recording in terms of image density and/or memory space required for the file
• Orientation of images (landscape or portrait)

Admin

• ID, a catalog number assigned to the item by ADAM
• Date Last Modified
• Embedded Data
• Collections
• Categories

Related articles by Zemanta

• DAM software has enabled businesses to store and access all their digital intelligence within a single point of management (digitalassetmanagement.org.uk)
• Asset Management for Business in the Digital World (digitalassetmanagement.org.uk)

Getty founder knows how to develop ideas

By Dan Sabbagh
The Times, October 16, 2009

Jonathan Klein may only take pictures with an ordinary digital camera but, with the help of Mark Getty, a friend who he met when they were both bankers at Hambros in London in the early 1990s, he knows how to build a company.

Getty Images, which they started in 1995, gobbled up more than a hundred small photo agencies and libraries until it became the dominant image library in the world. Then, a decade later, the picture went out of focus.

The South African chief executive for all of that time acknowledges that, after a decade of growth, “profits peaked in the two years before we went private” in July 2008. Getty was suddenly hit, not so much by the internet, making available hundreds of cheap photographs through websites such as Flickr, but by the problems facing advertisers and traditional media.

“Print began to suffer. It is the best market for us, we get the highest price per picture, and so revenues began to decline,” Mr Klein admits.

Getty’s share price began to tumble, rendering it vulnerable. Hellman & Friedman, the private equity firm, bought the company, which began life on a scrappy thoroughfare near Camden, in North London, for $2.1 billion in a deal that made Mr Klein $53 million and Mr Getty $38 million. In addition, Mr Getty’s family vehicle netted $281.3 million. Some of that money was, however, reinvested by the duo for a 25 per cent stake.

Mr Klein stayed on, while Mr Getty, the grandson of the oilman who was once the richest man in the world, has become non-executive chairman.

Mr Klein says: “We talk about strategy but operational stuff doesn’t bother him. He’s chairman of the National Gallery now, raising money to buy Titians. We go for cheaper pictures here”.

He reckons that it is a good time for Getty to be in private hands, not least because the prevailing environment is so difficult. When the company was last public — the figures are for 2007 — turnover was $857 million and net profits were $125 million. This year, he says, sales will certainly be down — “find me a media company where sales are up” — as demand for images from advertising agencies has slumped, although cost-cutting means that “profits will be in line with last year”. However, with $1 billion of debt taken on since the acquisition — only three times” underlying earnings, Klein says — net profits will be down.

With declining demand for photos used in advertising, which start at $200 per photo, the largest part of the Getty business is tumbling.

But that is not to say that there isn’t any growth in imaging. The company sells digital images, including those taken by amateurs, via its iStockphoto website, and demand is taking off. Mr Klein says: “In December 2005, before we bought the company behind it, the site did $600,000 of business. Yesterday it did $850,000 in one day.”

Its growth is not surprising, considering that pictures start at $1.35. But it is not the kind of price that will pay a professional photographer’s mortgage, even though they earn royalties of between 20 and 40 per cent per photo, or offset the decline in the traditional print photography business.

Mr Klein also wants to experiment. Getty is involved in a joint venture with Time Warner, reviving its defunct pictoral Life magazine as Life.com and sharing advertising revenues. It is the sort of diversification, Mr Klein admits, that public company shareholders would not tolerate. He hopes that, if Getty were to buy “new images of Hitler or Marilyn Monroe”, they would also be exposed on other Time Warner media, such as CNN or People.com.

More bizarrely, Mr Klein is also interested in music, particularly in licensing music as sound tracks for advertising. There are obvious parallels between the image rights business and music publishing but, with the industry so concentrated between the four majors, it is hard to see how Getty can elbow its way in.

Mr Klein says that Getty considered buying Warner/Chappell, the music publishing arm of Warner Music, before Edgar Bronfman bought it. In addition, Getty represents a few unsigned artists. Unless a big acquisition is planned, however, it is unclear how the company can develop a presence.

Getty’s real success, though, has been in consolidating what was once a massively fragmented market, and, in some cases, cutting costs at agencies when acquired. Its dominance of imaging — it is four times the size of main competitor, Corbis, which is owned by Bill Gates — unsettles some photographers. “In 2000 we employed 25 photographers, now we employ 125, and I don’t know that newspapers will have increased their staffs during that time. We are photographer friends, but not photographer cuddly,” says Mr Klein, referring to the fact that profit margins sit at 35 per cent.

In sport, Getty saturates events such as the Olympic Games, but makes its money by acting as the official photographer for the event. “We cover all the medal ceremonies, and take all the pictures for the sponsors,” says Mr Klein, adding that that is where the profit is. But, with no big international events in 2009, the year is not looking good for Getty. The company, and its backers, will have to hang on.

“Hellman tell me that their average investment is for three-and-a-half years, but in a recession it could take longer,” says Mr Klein. “We’ll sell it or float it, and it depends on the strategies of various media companies, and whether they see imaging as an interesting business”. And, he says, when the company calculates how much revenue is left when the recession is over.

_______

Link to original article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6877227.ece

Karl Fakhreddine Q&A - Digital Asset Management At Orange Logic

Karl Fakhreddine
Company: Orange Logic
Position: CEO
Site: www.orangelogic.com

Describe Orange Logic in one sentence
We help picture libraries and photo agencies go one level higher than the canned licensing solutions.

When did you start Orange Logic?
In New York in 1998, then expanded the business in France in 2000.

What were you doing before that?
I loved to study so I spent a lot of time in school: I have two engineering degees and a medical degree. I also spent 4 years on Wall St.

Where are you based?
I am now back in New York.

How many staff do you employ worldwide?
12.

How many developers?
We have 2 project leaders and 4 developers.

Describe your Monday morning?
This morning, I was up at 4am to talk to the team in France and organize the daily workload. I actually spend a lot of time in product architecture because I love it.

Who was your first customer?
While in Med school in Rochester, my 'hobby' between two surgeries was to develop for Magnum Photos on a laptop in scrubs. One could argue that Orange Logic was born out of a cheap trick to impress the nurses.

Who are you running picture library systems for currently?
Photo agencies, news agencies, picture libraries and museums, including Reuters, Image Source, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society, Art and Commerce, George Eastman House, la Réunion des Musées Nationaux (60 French Museums) and others. We also work with well-known global non-profit organizations, it kills me that we can't name them because of their non-endorsement policy.

How are you dealing with customers wanting to add footage to their stills library? Some clients do incorporate videos into their library. Our products can handle various types of assets including HD videos, and audio tracks.

We are told the cost of digital storage is going up at the moment - why?
Hum, at least with us, it is going down.

What new photo library functions are you offering at the moment?
We realized in 2006 that our application had one of the widest functional covers in the industry and decided to focus on usability instead of functionality. The objective was for users to be able to use the application within 2 days of training. So we've rebuilt the application interface from scratch with intuitivity and improved productivity as main targets. This makes for a really enhanced user experience, both for those working with the application back-end and for those searching and licensing pictures on the front-end.

What one feature sets OL ahead of other DAM systems?
I would say the ability of our application to adapt itself to our clients' needs rather than the opposite. This gives our clients the confidence to quickly adapt their business model to the market as needed. We provide a service, not just a software, our clients don't have to buy anything from us and can stop using us any time (it has never happened yet).

If I am a UK based picture library who do I contact first?
You can get in touch with Chantal Muller (chantal.muller@orangelogic.com) or call her on +33 499 58 17 35.

What's the lead time to getting my picture library online?
It pretty much depends on what we're trying to build: a 2-story house or a 200-story skyscraper. The 2-story house requires a lead time of 2 weeks.

Can I design my own front end?
Sure, all our clients do. If you have a look at some of our customers' websites, you'll see they've got completely different front-ends (there is no comparison possible between www.pictures.reuters.com and www.imagesource.com for example). We've also integrated a CMS in the application so our customers have full control on their site's text, look and feel.

What do you do when you are not thinking about OL?
I cherish any moment I get to spend with my wife and 3 kids.

What magazines/newspapers do you subscribe to?
The Economist, Le Monde.

Which websites do you visit daily?
Flickr, Pandora and tech stuff.

Do you write a blog?
If only I had enough interesting things to say...

ENDS

About Orange Logic
Orange Logic story begins in New York in the 90s when the first version of Cortex was born and delivered to Magnum Photos, Art Resource, and the Artist Rights Society.

Our solutions now manage millions of images for photo agencies, picture libraries, media agencies, museums and galleries, NGOs, and other image-intensive organizations distributing and monetizing media assets on the internet.

Cortex3, our latest product, is the result of more than fifteen years of evolutionary solutions for managing photo archives.

By making use of latest technologies and constantly keeping ahead of new trends, we provide our customers with superior user experience, help them lower their operating costs, and increase utilization of their pictures.
www.orangelogic.com

Posted by Will Carleton
Photo Archive News
9/10/2009
http://www.photoarchivenews.com/archives/2009_10.html#003048

How do I explain what I do for a living with DAM?

Posted by Henrik de Gyor on October 6, 2009
Link to original post: http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/

People will ask you “What do you do for a living?” If you work with Digital Asset Management on a daily basis as I do, there are a few ways you can answer this question. You could:

• Explain what you do in some detail, sometimes boring and/or confusing the average person.
• Blab on and on, creating more hot air.
• Give your elevator pitch: a simple, concise introduction to what you do for a living.

Before I had a simple explanation meant for the average person, I also confused lots of people (which is unfortunately really easy to do nowadays). It took me a while to come up with this simple analogy. Here is how my DAM elevator pitch often goes whether I am speaking with an executive or someone I just met:

1. An inquiring individual asks the question, “What do you do?”
2. I reply, “I am a Digital Asset Manager. I work on Digital Asset Management.”
3. The inquiring individual often says “What is that?”
4. I say “Are you familiar with the iPod?”
5. They often say “Yes,” unless they admit living in a cave since 2001.
6. Whether that is the case or not, I quickly show them an iPod, scroll through its contents as I explain that “while this is meant for individual consumption of media (such as music, video, photos), I manage similar kinds of media (generally called assets). The big difference is we can share assets across an entire organization legally using a set of more sophisticated tools with a series of workflows, commonly referred to as DAM. This helps the organization save money by being able to search, find, use, reuse or repurpose what we already have in the DAM legally.” I show the how assets can be found using various information called metadata. With the case of music on the iPod by:

• Album
• Artist
• Genre
• Title

I answer any further questions they have, but that is my elevator pitch as to what I do for a living with DAM.

How do you explain what you do for a living with DAM as a user or administrator?

Equilibrium Releases MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS V.7.0 and Other MOS Compliant Newsroom Systems

MediaRich For MOS Is The Only Video Transcoding and Visualization System 
That Is MOS Compatible

Enables Creation of Web Ready Media While Integrating With MOS Protocol Devices

RAI AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, IBC Booth 7.D31, and SAUSALITO, CA - September, 11, 2009 - Equilibrium®, a software and hosted services company that specializes in helping enterprise clients of all sizes to manage, monetize and mobilize content, today announced the release of MediaRich for MOS which is compatible with Associated Press ENPS V.7.0. Together, EQ and ENPS help streamline newsroom production of online content through tight integration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS Server. Existing ENPS customers may download a thirty-day trial version of MediaRich for MOS by contacting either Equilibrium or the Associated Press.

Equilibrium's MediaRich works with ENPS and other MOS compliant newsroom servers to automatically transcode production quality video for web use. This tight integration enables production and distribution of text and media content to the web using the same, seamless drag and drop workflow available in the past only to broadcasters. In addition, for each video or one of hundreds of recognized filetypes MediaRich for MOS automatically creates thumbnails, animated GIFs, as well as proxy images and videos.


With Equilibrium's optional connector to MOS, the MediaRich Server can integrate with virtually any MOS compliant systems including Associate Press ENPS to create faster, more versatile, and more interactive video-to-the-web workflows. MOS is a open, reliable, and widely-adopted network protocol for linking news production systems such as ENPS with broadcast equipment; enabling journalists to see, use, and control a variety of devices including audio / video servers and editors, still stores, character generators, prompters, automation systems, content distribution systems and services, and special effects devices. 


Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS connector prepares content automatically for web deployment. After news organizations have posted their footage to the web, the videos can be deployed to any device, anywhere using Equilibrium's EQ Network Ad-Per-View™ Software as a Service.

"Equilibrium is very pleased to connect our patented scalable media processing server technology to ENPS MOS to drive on-the-fly news video out to the web to meet growing consumer demand for anywhere, anytime access to news and information," commented Sean Barger, CEO of Equilibrium. "By helping news operations and stations everywhere to automate processing and delivery of web video while simultaneously providing visualization of all assets in the pipeline, station news operations can save on labor costs and increase advertising revenue at the same time."


IBC attendees are invited to see a demonstration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS in the Associated Press Booth 7.D31.

About MediaRich for MOS
MediaRich for MOS is an indispensable tool for the digital media world that features a scalable, high-volume media distribution and repurposing engine. It enables newsrooms to automatically create, process and auto-assemble graphics, audio and video files dynamically from original source files and then deliver them to websites, wireless and portable devices.

MediaRich offers dynamic, on-demand, massively scalable asset processing and templating on a wide array of documents, images, CMYK files and video frames up to HD in size. These can be processed and deployed without pre-processing and without the need to create a proprietary format. It provides the ability to view over 300 image and video formats on demand.

Running Order Control
ENPS dynamically builds and controls a Running Order playlist within MediaRich for MOS. Changes to the Running Order in ENPS result in immediate changes to the sequence of media objects queued for playout by MediaRich for MOS.

Item Status

MediaRich for MOS. sends real-time status information during playback and other functions that are displayed through ENPS writers and producers in real-time. This includes the use of a minimum set of standard status messages which enable color coding and the automated movement of the ENPS timing bar.

Media Thumbnails and Preview Video

MediaRich for MOS provides thumbnail images and proxy video which are closely integrated within the ENPS Story display and editing windows.

Story Send

MediaRich for MOS uses the full body of text within ENPS documents, including all media pointers and custom metadata. It also dynamically tracks the sequence of Stories and Assignments within active ENPS Running Orders and Assignment grids.

Media Awareness

MediaRich for MOS sends ENPS a description of the media it stores. The description contains structured metadata and a pointer to the media object. This information is used by ENPS to return media in search results. Pointers are used to link media to ENPS documents, including Stories, Running Orders and Assignments using simple drag and drop workflow.

About Equilibrium
Equilibrium, the world leader in media processing since 1992 when it released DeBabelizer®, the first automated graphics processing software. EQ spearheads the monetization of the next-generation Internet and mobile video revolutions. The patented, high-powered MediaRich® engine enables real-time personalization and delivery of music, images and video to website, wireless and portable devices. Equilibrium offers breakthrough cross-platform technology solutions featuring interoperability and integration for the workgroup, enterprise and web-server, delivering the same MediaRich CORE technology for cross-platform interoperability and integration virtually anywhere. The EQ Network can automate personalized video delivery and monetization via advertising from any web video. Equilibrium is a Microsoft Gold Partner. To learn more about Equilibrium and its products, please visit Equilibrium, EQ Network or the EQ blog.