Free E-Book: Kevin Kelly's Favorite True Films

Looking for a good documentary to watch? Kevin Kelly has already done the legwork for you.

He's put together an entire free e-book of what he considers "the best general-interest true films I've found" -- along with a companion Website, TrueFilms.com, that keeps the list updated (and solicits suggestions from fellow non-fiction film enthusiasts).

I define true films as documentaries, educational programs, non-fiction cinema, instructional how-to's, and what the British call factuals - a non-fiction visual account.

As dogged as I have been in tracking down great true films, I have seen only a fraction of the estimated 40,000 that have been made. So I am ready for more. However I will only list true films and documentaries that are available as VHS tape or DVDs at consumer prices. In other words, films that are easy for most people to see upon request. I won't include films that are only shown in theaters, or available via high-priced rentals, or simply out of print.

Kelly has organized them into quirky yet useful categories, including: Artists at work; Competition stories; Culture Design; Disenfranchised / downtrodden; Explaining Science; Extremists; Hard to believe / extraordinary; History; How to do it; Investigative; Lengendary characters; Living history / reality survivors; Monologues/interviews; Music Performances; People at work / inside view; Play; Sports; True adventures; Visual anthropology; Visual wit / cinematic poetry; Wackos / crazies / eccentrics; Wonders of the living world.

This little book will steer you to the best true films in English. Each film gets a short review of why it is worth your time, and then I feature 4 or 5 screen grabs from the film to show you what the texture and style of the film is. I also include a picture of the cover and indicate where you can rent it (say on Netflix) or purchase it (from Amazon). All the films reviewed are available on DVD or tape at consumer prices.

This is the golden age of documentaries. Inexpensive equipment, new methods of distribution, and a very eager audience have all launched a renaissance in non-fiction film making and viewing. The very best of these true films are as entertaining as the best Hollywood blockbusters. Because they are true, their storylines seem fresh with authentic plot twists, real characters, and truth stranger than fiction. Most true films are solidly informative, and a few are genuinely useful like a tool.

What am I looking for in a great true film? It must be factual. It must surprise me, but not preach to me. If it introduces me to a world or subculture that I never thought about before, even better. There's a plot - a transformation from beginning to the end.

Kevin Kelly himself is a true renaissance man, judging from the fact that his status as co-founding editor of Wired magazine is probably his least impressive credential!

You can download the free 201-page PDF file of True Films 3.0 (2007) here.

True Films 2.0 (2006) is available as a paperback from Lulu.com in black-and-white ($9.50) or color ($37.58).

Kelly's next book, What Technology Wants, will be published by Viking/Penguin in October.

How the Mystery Mac Will Change Journalism

The journalism world eagerly awaits the now mythic Spring arrival of Apple's game-changing Tablet, or whatever they're going to call it. It's been a big hush-hush secret for so long, that sometimes it seems like maybe the whole notion was just a dream.

That hasn't stopped graphic artists -- with no inside knowledge of the tight-lipped Apple kingdom -- from imagining what this unwrapped dream toy might look like.

Ron Callari gathered no less than 20 possible designs on Inventor Spot, and frankly they all look pretty cool. We'll be happy to play with any of them -- just hurry up and get one on the market already!

Will it look like an oversized iPhone? A souped-up Kindle? A touchscreen MacBook? A Mac Pro with app-like navigation buttons? A lidless laptop? A big docked PDA with keyboard?

And what will it be called? iPad? iTab? iTablet? MacTab? MacPad? MacTablet? TouchPad? TouchTab? TouchTablet? TouchBook?

Bets, anyone?

To see what this mystery Mac might do to transform print journalism into a total multimedia experience, check out this video of a hypothetical issue of Sports Illustrated. It's like the magazine literally comes to life. Tell us you wouldn't spend a couple bucks for an app that sings and dances like this:



The smarter print publications (e.g. Conde Nast's Wired) are prepping for this day, since they know that a customer who won't spend a nickel for a print issue, or for Web content, will happily fork over a few bucks for iPhone apps -- and this will seem like an extension of that.

Steve Jobs is conditioning us the same way he got all the music freeloaders to pony up a buck a song via iTunes -- thus revolutionizing the music industry. True, the record companies and record stores still took a lethal hit, but he proved that there's a viable market for music; it was just a matter of upending the financial model by altering attitudes and behaviors. We suspect he'll do the same for journalism.

So news organizations would be wise to to learn from the mistakes of the entrenched music industry that bemoaned its fate (and hastened its demise) by cursing its customers. It fell into extinction while a savvy outsider came along and drank its milkshake. What can you do today to prepare yourself or your company for a multimedia future, so that there will be no more blood?

Here's our recommendation. Invest heavily in the best videojournalism talent, training and equipment. Make sure you and your staff recognize the value of video that is professionally produced, and represents excellent journalism standards and storytelling qualities. Newspaper- and magazine-produced online video is coming of age, in fits and starts. Because publishers didn't experience an immediate return on their (minimal) financial investment, and those pre-roll ads didn't materialize as quickly as they had hoped, a lot of them got nervous and withdrew from that arena. Or, worse, they stayed in the game with orphaned third-rate product, which nobody watched, and so they buried it deep on their Websites so nobody could even find it, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that "nobody watches serious video."

But with the new Mac whatchamathing on the horizon, now is the time to re-think video strategies. Apple will succeed where nearly every journalism Website has failed. Why? Because it will successfully integrate words and moving images, in a new and exciting way that has mysteriously eluded print publishers and broadcasters. The device's portability and touch-screen capability will help catapult the online visual experience to the next level.

But ultimately, it's just a platform -- a fancy bucket waiting to be filled. iTunes is pure genius, but it would be worthless without talented composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, producers. Similarly, for multimedia journalism to succeed, we'll need talented reporters, writers, shooters, editors and producers.

Trust us, video is where the future lies. At KobreGuide, we're betting the farm on it.

Follow Reporters' Tweets on MuckRack.com

More newspapers and media organizations are having each of their reporters maintain individual Twitter accounts for professional use. By following these reporters -- ranging from network anchors and hotshot columnists to small-town weekly general assignment reporters -- readers can get a sense of developing news stories, with links to updates.

Now one site has corralled them under one big roof. At MuckRack.com, you can find an overwhelming but well organized array of journalists' tweets, representing news sources ranging from ABC and AP to Wired and the Wall Street Journal.

What if you could get tomorrow's newspaper today? Now you sorta can, by tracking the short messages on Twitter written by the journalists who do the muckraking for major media outlets. Muck Rack makes it easy to follow one line, real time reporting.

Muckracking? Frankly, we don't see much of that here -- or anywhere these days, for that matter. But on Muck Rack you can follow not just individual reporters and theiremployers, but also specific "beats," which include major cities and also topics (e.g. Politics, Arts, Sports, etc.).

Lightscoop: Perfect Holiday Gift

Looking for that perfect inexpensive holiday gift for your favorite amateur photographer whose camera has a pop-up flash? And, attention, pros: This is the perfect gadget for all those folks who ask you how to make their pictures better.

It's an easy-to-use device that easily slips onto your SLR camera and dramatically improves the quality of flash photography.

And it's got a catchy name -- Professor Kobre's Lightscoop.

OK, you don't have to take our word for it, just because we happened to have invented it.

Everybody's singing the Lightscoop's praises. Listen:

Wired:
"LightScoop Rescues Horrible Built-In Flashes"

Bizzie Mommy:
“Lightscoop: My new favorite photo accessory. I was actually on the verge of buying an external flash before I discovered the Lightscoop while flipping through a photography magazine.”

Doobybrain:
"WOW! The Lightscoop is amazing!!"

Lifetime Moms:
“I have been avoiding taking indoor pictures at night because I just hated how the pictures would come out with the camera flash on... Luckily I stumbled upon the Lightscoop...”

A Cowboy's Wife:
“I attached the Lightscoop to my camera and voila! Now THAT is a HUGE difference! I’m already sold and that was just the first comparison I did.”

The Gadgeteer:
“Professor Kobre’s Lightscoop is a clever and inexpensive ($35) device that clips on to the hot shoe of your DSLR or SLR camera.”

Gear Diary:
“Tired of flash photography that makes your victims look like a deer in the headlights? Here’s a cool photography tool designed for the everyday picture taker.”

GadgetSteria:
“The 'Scoop redirects light upwards, bouncing it off the tops of walls and ceilings which ends up giving the immediate surroundings more of a glow instead of spotlight appearance.”

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Plenty more accolades can be found here, including raves from David Pogue (New York Times), and American Photo, which awarded the Lightscoop an "Editor's Choice" honor.

And here's how it works:



One-stop shopping at LightScoop.com. Guaranteed to make your holiday season brighter! (And more evenly lit.)

P.S. Here's a little gift for you. Use this gift code when you check out, and receive a 15% discount just for KobreGuide fans: HOLIDAY.

What New Media Has in Common with Jell-o

Did you have any idea how fascinating Jell-o is? Not just the product, but its colorful history. It's the subject of an engaging chapter in the new bestseller, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," by Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson.

Jell-o, a 19th century invention, was arguably the first product to exploit the concept of "free" as a successful marketing technique -- not by giving out free samples, but rather by printing tens of thousands of pamphlets with Jell-O recipes for its salesmen to distribute to homemakers for free.

Gelatin comes from flesh and bones. It's the translucent, glutinous substance that skims to the top when you boil meat. But if you collect enough of it and purify it, adding color and flavor, it becomes something else: Jell-O. A clean powder in a packet, far removed from its abattoir origins of marrow and connective tissue.

After its inventor had failed to make a go of marketing it, he sold the company to an enterprising businessman named Orator Frank Woodward, who devised the free pamphlet scheme.

Thus was born one of the most powerful marketing tools of the twentieth century: giving away one thing to create demand for another. What Woodward understood was that "free" is a word with an extraordinary ability to reset consumer psychology, create new markets, break old ones, and make almost any product more attractive. He also figured out that "free" didn't mean profitless. It just meant that the route from product to revenue was indirect, something that would become enshrined in the retail playbook as the concept of a "loss leader."

Anderson, who is also the author of "The Long Tail," was recently a guest on NPR's "Fresh Air" with host extraordinaire Terry Gross. He discussed "Free" in the context of media institutions struggling with how to survive in a world where their product has been seemingly devalued to zero.

Among the topics Anderson addresses:

• Why the traditional advertising model hasn't worked on the Web;
  
• Why media outlets haven't yet figured out how to customize video ads and match them to appropriate videos that showcase them in appropriate environments;
  
• How the Wall Street Journal is successfully employing the "free-mium" model, which invites everyone through the front door at no charge, and gives away an appreciable amount of content, and then charges for niche or premium content;
  
• How each medium copies the previous one -- radio was TV with pictures; the Web was print with hyperlinks -- and then builds to the next plateau;
  
• Where all the money really went when Craigslist decimated the newspaper classified ad business (Hint: it didn't go to Craigslist);
  
• The impact of "free" on the quality of journalism, with so many fewer professionals on the beat, domestically and internationally;
  
• Given that newspapers are dying but, despite e-books, print books are thriving, what is the role of the print magazine in this age?
  
• Will financial desperation destroy that formerly sacred impermeable wall between editorial and advertising, given that Google has successfully married church and state? (Or was our long-held assumption -- that editorial/ad adjacency connotes the possibility of corruption -- erroneous in the first place?)

For journalists and videojournalists struggling with the question of how to make a living in a world where their products are being given away for no money, this half-hour interview is well worth a listen.