Sunday, April 17, 2011

Roger Ebert's Voice, AdTech Recap, ADTECH And Game Treat

Because Roger Ebert's voice is now computer-aided and while AdTech was last week, there's a ton of video to share, it made sense to mate the two, together in this post. First off: Roger Ebert.

CNN reports that the famous movie critic - who with the late Gene Shalit created the "two-thumbs-up" signal for movie reviews (that's now applied to everything from one's health condition to a recap of good sex) - is using a computerized voice Ebert calls "Alex." At the TED 2011 Conference in Long Beach, California, in February, Ebert presented his digital aide, and said...


These are my words, but this is not my voice. This is Alex, the best computer voice I've been able to find, which comes as standard equipment on every Macintosh. For most of my life, I never gave a second thought to my ability to speak. It was like breathing. In those days, I was living in a fool's paradise. After surgeries for cancer took away my ability to speak, eat or drink, I was forced to enter this virtual world in which a computer does some of my living for me.


Well, didn't know my Mac has a computer voice, but that aside, it's great to learn that Ebert's able to express himself in a way that's as close to normal as possible, given his condition.

AdTech Recap: ADTECH

AdTech was held Monday through Wednesday of last week, and this blogger interviewed a number of corporate representatives at the digital media conference.  Overall, AdTech 2011 was a successful focus on social media, which it seems the vast majority of attendees are still trying to figure out how to use for what they do. 

What's great is the widespread interest in it, but what was missing (and I'll focus on more another time because it "hit" me as the problem) was how digital ad-selling and social media could mix better than at present.  But I digress. 

Ok, here's part one of my AdTech recap, and it starts with that other ADTECH that conference goers confused with the event name itself. The other ADTECH is a division of America Online, which now calls itself AOL.

In an interview with Lou Sevrine and Rich Bush, I learned about the other ADTECH, which is "an ad-serving product, the wholly owned subsidiary of AOL," as Sevrine said. "We were purchased by AOL in 2007."

AOL liked ADTECH so much, and the firm was already hosting all of AOL's online ads, they bought the company. What you do with ADTECH is, if you're a blogger, or have an ad to post, you set up an account with ADTECH to handle all of your campaigns. Here's Sevrine and Bush on video:



Game Treat At AdTech

Game Treat is a very cool web app that allows bloggers to add games to their pages. While that may seem counterproductive to some, it actually does (from experience with similar concepts) increase blog site stay-rate and reduce the overall bounce-rate.

Tal, from Game Treat, shows us how their gaming offerings can be accessed below, and you can visit the website with a click here: Game Treat, and here's Tal..



There's more to come from my AdTech recap. 


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