January 2010 Archives

Paul Boag wrote an article a while back entitled "The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" over on Vitamin/Carsonified and I really thought it was a useful item to ponder over as a CMS user. Then I thought, "This totally applies to digital asset management software as well, somebody should write up the same thing for DAM." So here goes (with all due respect to Mr. Boag):

The 6 Hidden Costs of Running a DAM System

The ever burgeoning amount of digital items generated by a person or company is quickly outgrowing our ability to handle and track them. These assets (digital images, designs, layouts, training clips, music tracks, digital videos, presentations, documents...) are quickly filling up our CDs, DVDs, Blu-Rays, external drives and server space and we likely don't have any idea where a particular file might be, much less have any useful information attached to it. We may well be recreating assets that we have lost or don't know exist in some other division of the company. So we naturally turn to digital asset management (DAM) software and hope it will streamline and organize our work.

Besides the initial price tag, there is a lot more to consider when making a DAM investment and achieving a successful implementation:

  • The cost of training
  • The cost of ingestion
  • The cost to quality
  • The cost to functionality
  • The cost of redundancy and flexibility
  • The cost of commitment
Let's take a closer look at each of the six cost areas...

OWLE bubo Camera Rig

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OWLE bubo boxThe holidays came a little bit early for me this year due to a shipping address mistake (it should've been a surprise from my geek-girl wife) and when I saw the box label's return address I was indeed very surprised! Thankfully she really knows me and allowed me to open my gift early so I could play with it.
What is it? The OWLE bubo, an iPhone camera rig. The OWLE bubo is a stabilizer and lens adapter, allowing you to get more stable shots and a wider angle of view than with a stock iPhone 3Gs. Since it also includes a stereo mic, the audio is much improved as well. Let's take a look!

OWLE bubo demo from Jeremy Wilker on Vimeo.