Synfig, the Free and Open Source animation studio, needs your help to stay alive!

The project, which began life as a proprietary tool for the Voria animation studio, was open sourced upon the closure of Voria. Unfortunately, due to a lack of interested developers and community, the project has slowed.

Robert Quattlebaum, founder of the project, posted a message on his blog about the status of the project as of now.

The project is not dead per-se, but I am not able to contribute to it in any significant capacity any more other than to be a resource for anyone with questions. Paul Wise, who has all but taken over managing the project, is currently on a three-month long sailing trip. Things have grown a bit stagnant without him.

Think you can help the project? Able to report bugs and develop? Any support helps. YouMakeMedia fully supports what Synfig is trying to do, and wishes it the best. Personally, I know I’ll be seeing if there is any way that I can contribute.

In what is now the first episode of the YouMakeMedia podcast (this episode is shared with GizBuzz.co.uk), we interview Nicholas Reville, a co-founder of the Participatory Culture Foundation. The Participatory Culture Foundation is responsible for Democracy Player, VideoBomb, and a full suite of video publishing and promotion tools.

Discussed in the interview:

• The Participatory Culture Foundation and its goals
• Old media + new media = ?
• Long tail’s role in the foundation’s work
• Running an open source project as a staffed, funded effort
• The Participatory Politics Foundation, where does media fit into the political spectrum?

Feel free to listen to the interview over at Odeo.

In another sign that User-Generated Content is imperative to the success of media in the next few years, Time Magazine, a top-down, bureaucratic organization, awarded the concept of user-generated content, the bottom-up, collaborative creation system, its coveted “Person of the Year” award.

Past recipients of the award include Bill Gates, Queen Elizabeth, George Bush, and Albert Einstein. We are in good company. I expect that Time will send the invitations to the celebration party any day now… They did have to print six billion copies though, so if mine arrives a bit late I’ll forgive them.

I’ll have more thoughts on this tomorrow, however at the moment it is rather late (thirty minutes until tomorrow in fact) so hang tight. Heck, if you’re just passing through, why not subscribe? Or you can go back through our archives (they’re in the sidebar) and see what we have around. And if you really want to get involved, email me or comment (be sure to pester about Part 3 of the podcasting tutorial!).

Just a quickie follow up,

Today I was contacted again by StupidVideos about yesterday’s rant. While a small gesture, it meant a lot knowing I wasn’t dealing with a robot! I’ve since replied and I hope we’re on the way to a better relationship (and a good learning experience on both sides).

Warning, this is a rant. It’s somewhat appropriate to the YMM cause, as it covers a marketing blunder (much like yesterday’s Sony story) but if you aren’t interested, ignore the post.

Today in my YouMakeMedia email inbox (editor at youmakemedia dot com!), I received an email about a site called “StupidVideos” launching some incredible new service. My first thought was interest, I always love to cover companies when they launch new versions or products, and when the project is something exciting, I’ll cover it and let my thoughts be heard. If it’s not exciting (or at the least, interesting), I pass and ignore the email.

This case, however, is different. The “new service” being launched, that StupidVideos claims is so exciting isn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world.

StupidVideos is launching an e-card service. Yes, e-cards, the bane of many an inbox, are finally coming to StupidVideos.

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Sony, the company that everyone loves to hate, has screwed up a holiday viral marketing campaign for the PlayStation Portable (PSP).

The campaign, “all i want for xmas is a psp”, is a horribly set up imitation of an actual user who would want a PSP. The number of mistakes are numerous, the most obvious reason for them being that the marketing firm, Zipatoni, is obviously out of touch with their target market.

Sony has had a horrendous 2006. Their DRM rootkit crippled millions of computers and alerted the general public to the concept of DRM (a major no-no). The PS3 received a mild reaction from early adopters and strong competition from the Wii and XBOX 360. On the advertising front, their ads are incohesive and often unrelated to the product - a terrible problem if you’re trying to convert consumers to your platform.

As one commenter at Kotaku’s coverage of this debacle pointed out, this is a “complete failure of PR and marketing”. I don’t want to stretch too far from the general YouMakeMedia topic range here - but I’d go further to say that this is a failure at every level of Sony. Sony, more than any company I’m acquainted with, is crippled by a painfully slow moving corporate bureaucracy. It’s lack of transparency (likely due to the cut throat environment that rises out of age-old honor comittments) forces deals to be cumbersome and riddled with complications. Unfortunately for Sony, this marketing deal with Zipatoni leaked into the public conscious rather quickly.

And now, if you wish, click past the jump for a list of the obvious mistakes made in Sony’s marketing scheme:

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VLC is not your average media player.

In addition to supporting every single format known to humans, it has more features than you ever thought you’d need. VLC (which stands for VideoLAN client) just released a new version, 0.8.6.

I’ve always been a loyal user of the application, but in celebration of the release, I decided to learn more about VLC and figure out why it’s unchallenged in its field. Here’s a rundown of three features offered by VLC that bump it up from “average media player” to “uber media player”.

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I was alerted to Twango by its co-founder, Randy Kerr. Kerr described his site as a “new media sharing service”. Twango though, seperates itself from other media sharing sites like YouTube or Odeo. It doesn’t just handle one type of media — it handles them all.

The site is organized similarly to other “Web 2.0″ video sharing sites, like YouTube or Revver. There are tabs along the top where you can select your type of media (they only show audio, video, and photos, however the site also has other types permitted such as Word documents or Flash video). Click into a tab, and you’re given a page of thumbnails - now you can choose a bit of media and enjoy it.

The similarities stop there though. When Twango says it’s for sharing, they really mean it.

Read how, after the infamous jump…

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