Frank Casanova, Apple’s director of QuickTime product marketing headed the keynote panel during today’s main attraction at QuickTime Live. Casanova spent a few minutes talking about the “incredibly positive” feedback Apple has received in the last 24 hours since announcing QuickTime 6.
Casanova also said that the momentum of QuickTime is continuing and people are still coming to Apple’s Web site to download the product. “Yesterday alone there was 330,510 downloads of QuickTime 5,” Casanova said.
The keynote panel was made up of QuickTime experts in different segments of the market. Panelists included Ken Waagner, Smartley Dunn Solutions; Peter Abraham, Fusion Films; Sam Jones, Fusion Films; Jay McCarthy, 3rd Bird Media Group; Django Bayless, Signatures Network Inc. Mike Brandvold, Signatures Network Inc.; Jon Alper, WGBH; Azmat Mohammed, ID Interactive; and Glenn Bulycz, senior manager of QuickTime Development.
While you may not recognize the companies listed above, you will recognize the clients.
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One of the most interesting stories was that of Mike Brandvold. Mike started a fan site for the rock group Kiss. Mike’s hobby has since turned into a full time job after receiving a phone call from legendary bass player Gene Simmons. Now Mike travels with the band, shooting video of the concerts and behind the scenes footage to post on the Web site.
Using iMovie, his Mac and a DV camera, Mike edits his movies sitting on the floor at airports and “just like Apple’s ‘middle seat’ commercial on airplanes going to the next city.”
Mike said with the power of QuickTime and various other Apple products, he has footage on the Web sometimes within hours of it happening. Mike showed his setup to a producer friend of his in Hollywood and he was amazed that he could get such good quality from a program like iMovie, when he had to attend school for three years to learn how to do the same thing.
Mike also showed off a new Ozzy Osbourne interactive CD — which brought a huge smile to Casanova as he bowed to the screen that showed Ozzy.
Jay McCarthy showed the keynote crowd how he works with QuickTime to produce interactive content for Motor Trend online and Azmat Mohammed demoed interactive CDs.
Mohammed said that while interactive CDs haven’t caught on in the U.S. yet, they are huge in London. He feels that the interactivity is enough of a value add that people will once again buy CDs for the experience, rather than just download the audio file from the Internet.
The overall message from the panel today was that QuickTime as a technology is expanding the way they do things and the way we see and listen to multimedia. Clearly, without QuickTime, much of what we take for granted on the Internet would not be possible.