The Web is but a canvas to our imagination - ideas and digital strategies to finding gold at the end of every Web journey

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

The Magic of the Silver Screen

As I flew over the Hollywood sign to land at LAX today, I looked down on the tiny cars traveling the coastal and city highways and I was reminded of the magic this city creates through the motion picture industry. Having just watched Tron over the weekend, I see those tiny cars as the light jets racing along beams of light, like the content on the information superhighway. I was so anxious for Jeff Bridges (as Kevin Flynn) to get out of his trapped world of programs and linear order. ( I did wonder how he created water, though – hmmmmm). The magic that was created on the screen was even more impressive that Disney brought old footage into the new movie. I often talk to customers about reusing content in new ways – well there you go – Disney did it exceptionally well. Imagine the miles of footage that must exist in their video closet – whew! I would not want to be the one to go through hours of video without a digital media system to help sort through the chaos.

I have to provide a shameless plug for OpenText’s Media Management solution. It handles media assets with ease; the slick new user interface, storage and publishing capabilities has made many a media company happy to have it in control of their most valuable assets. Check it out at: www.opentext.com/magic

But wait, there’s more. Perhaps you can relate to this story.

Year 1990
Daughter: “Do you have a picture of me in that red dress when we went to someplace when I was little?”
Me: “Hmm… can you be a little more specific?”
Daughter: “You know, the one where I was sitting on the piano in that red dress?”
Me: “Well, if I did have such a picture, it would likely be in the box of photos in the attic.”

- Skip forward in time to where photography is digitally stored and old photos have been scanned in –

Year, 2011
Daughter : “ Mom, do you have a picture of me from last Christmas with that cute reindeer hat?”
Me: “Yes, I tagged it with your name, Christmas 2010 and cute knit hat. Just search on MyPictureAlbum for the tag – I also ranked it with 5 stars seeing how you were so cute in it.”
Daughter: “Found it – it was at the top of the results list for '5-star hat photos'. Thanks mom!”

Without media management tools to store, manage and publish our most prized digital memories, we’d spend more time sifting through pages over and over again instead of going out and creating new memories to share with relatives almost immediately across the globe. Business is the same way. To really leverage the investment you make into a photoshoot or video production, it should be stored, tagged and easily retrieved for future use. Keeping control on digital assets is easy with the right tools.