Beema Blog

Miami Heat Momentum Beema Animation

2011-05-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type. Who are you banking on?

Movies: Bridesmaids comparable to The Hangover

2011-05-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

Lady Gaga Mentoring Failure

2011-05-16T10:14:00.000-07:00

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

Questioning The Top Ten Gay City List

2011-05-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Seriously...San Francisco not in the Top Ten? New York City not on the list?

Secret Service Beema Animation, Twitter

2011-05-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

Nick & Mariah Name Babies

2011-05-05T15:03:00.001-07:00

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

The Royal Wedding: A Tongueless Affair

2011-05-02T11:38:00.000-07:00

Give the people what they want!

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

Mobile Phones in the South

2011-04-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

Ahead of the curve or behind the times? We don't know the answer, do you?

A New Beema Character Delivers The News

2011-04-26T03:00:00.000-07:00

Hard to imagine what good could come from a Trump Candidacy but that's because you haven't looked hard enough. There is a silver lining in it.

Check out www.beema.com to make your own talking animations almost as fast as you can type.

Charlie Sheen Makes A Very Good Point

2011-04-24T15:54:00.000-07:00

He may seem off his rocker at times but his logic on this one seems pretty solid.

Tiger Talks About The Lessons of Golf and Life

2011-04-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

It is good to know lessons were learned.

The Economics of Suicide

2011-04-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

Good to know we are all doing our part to bring down the suicide rate isn't it?

Tim Russert Reports on 3D Porn

2011-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

Who better than a virtual reality anchor to report on virtual reality porn.

If you'd like to report the news as you see it go to www.beema.com and have a ball.

Osama Bin Laden Announces a New Strategy

2011-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

The scary thing is it seems to be working.

Mr. Met Is Feeling A Little Defensive

2011-04-18T11:06:00.000-07:00

It is tough to be a ports team in NYC if you aren't winning.

If you'd like to make Mr. Met talk with your voice just head on over to www.beema.com and sign up for a free account.

Deaf or Just Not Listening

2011-02-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

Who Knows?

Geithner Parses Mexico's GDP

2011-02-25T08:00:00.000-08:00

Who knew?

Black Swan Bummer

2011-02-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

I just doesn't pay to eat your popcorn as if it comes from a feedbag.

Facebook Stalking Automated

2011-02-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

Yikes!

Tripoli and Charlie Sheen - Coincidence?

2011-02-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

I think not.

You Can Reply Like the Old Spice Guy

2010-07-15T11:32:00.000-07:00

Without Investing as Much Time and Money

But You Still Need To Be Funny

The Old Spice social media campaign was a fabulous success by pretty much any standard. Wieden+Kennedy the PR firm that orchestrated the campaign did a lot of things right and got great results. This article by Chad Catacchio of The Next Web outlines some of the early quantifiable success.

Of course a campaign of this nature takes some serious resources. If you are interested in exactly what sort of resources were required wander over to Marshall Kirkpatrick’s article at Read Write Web for a rundown on the production effort for this campaign.

Because these videos were being churned out at a rate of one every 7 minutes everything was simplified to the point that the Old Spice Guy was little more than a talking head for most of the videos. And you know what? That was OK because he was funny and relevant. No one cared that it was the same guy in the same towel in the same bathroom video after video after video. The content was good and that is all that mattered. Or as Jaime Weinman of Macleans.ca put it in her article, a commercial can be successful “as long as the material is reasonably funny and the pitchman doesn’t choke on-camera.”

So what do you do if you have the wit but not the budget of Old Spice? What if you have great responses to your Twitter Followers but can’t afford the time to setup a ton of camera gear? There is a solution. Beema.

We understand that this is a self serving answer, but it is also a very relevant answer. If you have any desire to respond in your various social media streams in a manner similar to the Old Spice Guy then you owe it to yourself to give Beema a try. You can do so right here, http://www.beema.com.

With the Beema system you can:
* Choose an avatar from our library of almost 500 characters
* Have us create your own avatar from a photo
* Give your character voice by recording your own voice online or by calling our 800 number in the US.
* Use our text to speech engine to turn the written word into a video with a talking character
* Animate your Tweets by adding the @bmatwt tag to your Tweet.
* Make and review a video in a matter of seconds
* Have us post your video to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any one of a host of other social media sites.
* Make, review and post your completely custom video in a fraction of the time it took the entire Wieden+Kennedy team to make their videos, without any of the setup time.
* Do all of this for free, or extremely inexpensively if you opt for our BeemaPlus or CustomBeema services.

If you believe that the personalization and one-to-one connection that Old Spice accomplished is a worthwhile goal then Beema is worth a try. If you know that this sort of personalized attention to your community is something you need to do but are concerned about the cost, you have found your solution.

Give it a try and have fun.

Video Hosting Sites for Twitter

Hey folks. As those of you who know us know, we post a lot of video various social networks including Twitter. A whole lot. As a result we are always playing with the latest and greatest sites out there and figured we would share what we have learned along the way. We hope you find this useful.

As of our last spin through the video tweet ecosystem we have found seven services that are devoted to helping you post your videos to Twitter. Now before you rip me a new one by saying that YouTube, Viddler, Blip and every other video hosting site belongs on this list because they can share with Twitter directly let me say, 'You Are Right.' However, for this particular post we will stick with those sites whose main focus is integrating with Twitter and to have Twitter integration as their raison d'etre. So here they are in alphabetical order.

Tweetube: A good basic service whose pros include the ability to upload multiple types of files beyond video and images. Tweetube's cons are the relatively limited options for uploading when compared to other services.

Twiddeo: Another solid basic service focused more on webcam uploads then anything else.

Twiew: This service is even more basic than the previous two focused mainly on sharing video via URL. They do have an API for you developers out there.

TwitC: One of the most complete services offering the ability to upload a myriad of different files types in numerous ways including from your computer, a URL, your phone and a webcam.

TwitLens: Focuses more on video files and less on webcams. They also allow for uploading images. Like Twiew TwitLens provides an API.

TwitVid: Also focused on video including webcams and provides and API for developers.

yFrog: seems to be almost as full featured as TwitC with the addition of an API for third part developers.

We hope you found this useful and assists your video tweeting decision making process.

*Full disclosure purposes we are not in anyway associated with any of the companies mentioned in this posting, but we do presently use TwitVid's API to post Beemas to Twitter.

How Do People Use Beema?

2010-05-03T11:04:00.000-07:00

Cool Technology – But What Do People Do With It?

This is one of our more frequent questions. The short answer is that people use Beema to create unique animations from any of the hundreds of models in the Beema site. Others that wish to be one of a kind send us their own pictures that we turn into a Beema Model which our users then animate over and over again. We’ve made Beema models from pictures of pets, newborns and kids, avatars, you name it.

I Get the Animation Part – I Just Want To Know Why

Fair question. We’ve gone a long time without the need to make animations in an instant why start now? Then again we’ve gone a long time without the need to send an update on what we ate for lunch to a bunch of people we went to school with ten years ago. Times have changed and social broadcasting is what many people do with their Beemas. They post the Beemas they make to their social streams like Twitter and Facebook as a way to stand apart from the crowd. With Beema’s service you get all of the fun of posting video with no more effort than sending a Tweet.

With Beema’s ability to automatically post animations you can update a video blog with a quick phone call or a few lines of text. Some of our users remove the pressure of filming and producing a piece of video content every time they want to share a thought by just calling our 800 number our using the text-to-speech feature of the site.

Others just want to add some color to their web site, provide help videos or answer frequently asked questions and they can do that in just seconds with Beema without having to worry about camera gear, poor lighting or a bad hair day.

Do You Use Beema In Some Other Way?

That’s just some of the things people do. If anyone has other ideas don’t be shy, add them to the comments section. We love hearing how people are using our technology to make their life easier or more fun.

Some New Social Media Ideas

2010-04-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Where To Start?

Social media is a new marketing channel and you know you have to get involved. But how?

- Buy ads into the Facebook news feed? You can't do that.

- Getting your interns to tweet about your company seems insincere.

- Hiring a firm to take care of your Social Media strategy is costly.

So how do you make it fun, fast and easy?

Here's The Idea

Let your customers animate your brand and share it with their friends, wherever their friends might be…Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, pretty much anywhere.

Animating babies, geckos and cartoons to deliver corporate messages isn’t unique; but letting your customers and community get in on the act is a cool new twist on an age old idea. And helping them distribute your animated brand to their social networks gets your brand in front of more people where they will actually pay attention.

Letting people use your brand in their social streams can improve click through and conversion rates, and create some great social media buzz.

Feel free to contact us and we’d be happy to tell you how you can use these ideas in mobile and social media campaigns that can be moderated so your brand doesn’t sound like a sailor on leave.

408.341.1590 or beemainfo@beema.com

Make an Animation with Your Tweets

2010-04-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Free original animations with just a Tweet

As any of you that are familiar with Beema will know we allow our users to create instant original animations with nothing more than their voice or a few lines of text. Well now we are going a step further. We have recently added a new feature that allows anyone with a Twitter account to create an animated talking character with their Tweet text by simply adding @bmatwt (short for BeemaTweet) to their Tweet.

How Beema makes your talking character

The process starts with Beema monitoring the Twitter stream for any Tweets that include @bmatwt. When an @bmatwt Tweet is found Beema will convert the Tweet into a sound file and then use that sound file to animate a random character in Beema’s database. Once the character is animated it will be posted to a unique page at http://t.beema.com and a link to the animation will be sent back to the Twitter User that created the Tweet via an @reply.

Users can find their animation by searching Twitter for their @username or going to http://t.beema.com and searching for their Twitter Username in the search box at the top of the page.

Just seven extra characters and a regular Tweet becomes an animated talking character, delivered in a video file format. Making an animation or video just couldn’t get any easier.

Ways to customize your Beema Tweet

Users that would prefer to have their own character rather than a random character can sign up at www.beema.com and choose the character they would like to have animated from Beema’s database of almost 500 characters.

For those that want the ultimate customization Beema will turn pictures of babies, avatars, friends, products, brands or just about anything you can imagine into a Beema Model that can be animated with Beema’s system either from Twitter, a phone or a microphone equipped computer.

Those users that enter their Twitter account information when signing up at Beema.com or in the MyAccount section of the site will have their Beema animations posted directly to their Twitter account. When a Beema account is linked with Twitter in this manner, users can create an animation and have it appear in their Twitter account in about ninety seconds.

Give it a try by signing up at beema.com. It’s free.

To learn more about what you can do with Beema and how it works visit our Community site at community.beema.com.

Beema Blog

Miami Heat Momentum Beema Animation

Movies: Bridesmaids comparable to The Hangover

Lady Gaga Mentoring Failure

Questioning The Top Ten Gay City List

Secret Service Beema Animation, Twitter

Nick & Mariah Name Babies

The Royal Wedding: A Tongueless Affair

Mobile Phones in the South

A New Beema Character Delivers The News

Charlie Sheen Makes A Very Good Point

Tiger Talks About The Lessons of Golf and Life

The Economics of Suicide

Tim Russert Reports on 3D Porn

Osama Bin Laden Announces a New Strategy

Mr. Met Is Feeling A Little Defensive

Deaf or Just Not Listening

Geithner Parses Mexico's GDP

Black Swan Bummer

Facebook Stalking Automated

Tripoli and Charlie Sheen - Coincidence?

You Can Reply Like the Old Spice Guy

Without Investing as Much Time and Money

But You Still Need To Be Funny

Top Video Hosting Sites for Twitter

Video Hosting Sites for Twitter

How Do People Use Beema?

Cool Technology – But What Do People Do With It?

I Get the Animation Part – I Just Want To Know Why

Do You Use Beema In Some Other Way?

Some New Social Media Ideas

Where To Start?

Here's The Idea

Make an Animation with Your Tweets

Free original animations with just a Tweet

How Beema makes your talking character

Ways to customize your Beema Tweet