Tag: video

Joost on the Mac

Joost for the Mac got properly launched on Saturday (well into public beta anyway), so like a good little nerd I rushed off and downloaded it straightaway.

First impressions…

  • Very slick piece of software
  • Very intuitive
  • Video quality is varied, but way better then most full screen streamed online video out there
  • Very little buffering – quick to start
  • Content is slightly limited – but there’s some great stuff on there (especially in the indie movie channel) and I was interested to see that Deepak Chopra was in there tooc

I’m not sure why, but the feeling I came away from using it was: “This feels like a super-slick in-flight entertainment system”. Which is not necessarily a bad thing at all. But that’s how it made me feel.

It’s definitely one to watch though.

Plundering UGC Cash, Who’s In?

I’ve just been flicking through New Media Age. And after my earlier comment about User Generated Content, I was dismayed to see how many column inches have been given over to terrible UGC ideas – but with MASSIVE cash prizes. I did a quick count, and I reckon that this week there’s about £20k up for grabs. Not to mention holidays, TVs, etc. I reckon there’s probably cars and things out there too if I were to go and look. (Doritos just put up $50,000 in cash for their ‘Crash the Superbowl Promotion‘)

Suddenly a really evil plot hatched in my brain…

  • Most entries to those things are not very good – I know from bitter experience of being on the receiving end.
  • Most of them don’t get that many entries
  • If you were good at writing, making short films, photography, etc. it wouldn’t be that difficult to win a lot of the contests that exist. They’re all being judged by marketing departments after all. And we all know what clients want to hear (or at least we’ve got a reasonable idea).

Anyone fancy forming a loose ‘A-Team’ (or a rubbishy B-Team) of creative types with a single-minded ambition of seeing just how much we can extract from UGC campaigns? I’ve got a fantasy of releasing a story to the marketing press with a bunch of people swimming in a pool of ill-gotten cash?

Anyone up for it?

Website with Semacode, Why?

Semacodes are pretty cool.

The all knowing Wikipedia with it’s dazzling array of cross-links describes a semacode thusly:

a URL can be converted into a type of barcode resembling a crossword puzzle, which is called a “tag”. Tags can be quickly captured with a mobile phone‘s camera and decoded to obtain a Web site address. This address can then be accessed via the phone’s web browser

In essence you take a photo of a thing (see top right) and your phone does something interesting.

In Japan (rumour has it) they’re very common. But they call them QR Codes. And they’ve started doing things like putting them on their business cards so that you can just photograph it and then get the contact information into your address book. Kinda Cool.

But…

Where all of these sorts of innovation fall down is using them just for the sake of it. You’ve got to ask yourself that question, “wouldn’t it just be simpler to…?”. For example just taking a disposable photo of an address instead of bluetoothing it to my phone – see my previous post on Photonotes.

So I was puzzled to see this Nike site with a QR code on it:

I’ve sat and thought about it. In fact I’m still thinking about it….I’m sure I’m missing out on something because I don’t read Japanese. But in the best case it’s going to add something to my phone (a graphic, an application, a screensaver, a bit of video?) or, and I really hope this isn’t the case, it takes my phone to a web page. But either way surely getting someone to use their phone to do something when they’re already engaged on a website seems a bit odd.
Or even more bizarrely… If someone was accessing this website on their phone (as many people in Japan do). How are they supposed to take a photo of this QR code?!?!

Please can someone Japanese put me out of my ignorant misery, please. I’d love to know why this is there.

Venice Project Becomes Joost

The project formerly known as The Venice Project has now turned into Joost. It’s the latest venture from the guys behind Skype and in a nutshell it hopes to do to television what Skype did to telephones. As they put it: ‘taking the best of TV and mixing it with the best of the Internet’. It’s all based on peer-to-peer technologies (don’t forget these are also the same guys who developed Kazaa – one of the best early p2p applications). I don’t have any idea how they’re hoping to deal with copyright issues, but I’m sure they do…

It’s in ‘invite only’ beta phase. I’m in the beta testing program, but it’s PC only at the moment. So I’ve not really had a chance to play with it.

Wikipedia describes it thusly.

Here’s a couple of useful videos:

This is how it looks when it’s working (pretty slick):

Here’s an (audio only) interview with Janus Friis one of the founders:

I really don’t like the design of their website though. It looks like they’ve tried to progress the 2.0 aesthetic but I don’t think it quite hits the mark…

Tag-5-things-o-rama

OK! OK! I’m going to do it. I’m gong to succumb to the blog tag 5 things meme. Thanks to the following for tagging me. I might have missed some others (if I have let me know and I’ll add you to my thank you list).

In case you’ve not come across this thing it’s basically like a blog chain letter, only it’s not really. There’s something quite nice about the fact that it creates new links between blogs and their authors. (I only really ‘recognise’ 2 of the people who tagged me – I think).

Anyway, it works like this:

Once you have been tagged, you have to write a blog with 5 facts about yourself. Then choose 5 people you want to tag and list their names. Then leave a comment on their blog letting them know they’ve been tagged.

Actually I had to go and find someone who’d written the rules down, as lots of people seem to be propagating the meme in different ways. I suppose that’s the thing with memes, they get ‘chinese whispered’ as they go around. I’ve even seen some people suggest that their tagees have to write 7 things. How wrong is that!

Anyway, enough waffle, here are 5 ‘interesting’ things about me.

  1. I can fit my fist inside my mouth. I can’t remember how I found this out. But I’ve always been able to do it for as long as I can remember. Sometimes it hurts the edges of my lips, but not normally.
  2. I’ve never eaten meat in my life. Well never intentionally anyway (I once had a British Rail pizza at Kings Cross station that mistakenly had ham on it. I think I ate some. My mum complained to British Rail and they were very sorry, or so they said).
  3. I can’t drive a car. I’ve never really felt the need. Occasionally it’s a pain – on holiday and things like that. And I suppose for moving things around the place. Actually it would be useful quite often, at least to be able to hire a vehicle. But I suppose the real fact is I’m now quite scared of driving (in London anyway), there’s so many nutters on the road and I’m not sure they’d like me getting in their way. Perhaps I’ll take my test in Brighton… But I did used to own an Austin Allegro 1300 Estate. Perhaps more embarrassing than not being able to drive is the fact that I drove one of these for a year (when you were simply allowed to drive with a passenger who’d passed their test sitting in the car). It was voted the worst car ever a couple of years ago. I quite liked it at the time though.
  4. I like dancing. I have done ever since the heady days of breakin’ in the park back in ’84. Culminating in the near legendary uprock outside the Burton-on-Trent branch of WH Smiths. I can’t do that stuff anymore, but there’s an Orange video banner from last year that features me dancing. Thankfully hardly anyone I know has seen it.
  5. I have a secret love of trashy reality TV shows. I watch them and it makes me feel unclean. However, I try to justify it to myself in the name of anthropological research ;-)

Phew, done it. Now who am I going to tag. I pick:

5 fine, upstanding people who I’d like to know 5 interesting things about…

My Top Stuff of 2006

I’ve been thinking about doing a post on stuff I’ve liked in 2006, if you’ve got a blog it seems like you have to. But I didn’t know what to put in it or how to organise it. But I got re-inspired by The Design Conspiracy annual (a thing of much loveliness which you can download here). I liked their top 10s so I decided to use their format as a kind of template, but I’ve altered it a wee bit…

  1. Favourite Top 10 list of 2006 – The ones in The Design Conspiracy Annual – as you might guess I feel a little guilty in taking my inspiration from their hard work so I’m making sure I give them healthy credit ;-)
  2. Music: So This is Goodbye – Junior Boys. Emotional electronic music of the highest quality.
  3. Music Video: Gnarls Barkley – Crazy. It might actually be that it’s the song that makes it. But I reckon that the song and the vid just work really well together. Subtle and simple, I like.
  4. TV ad: Maybe it’s a sign of the times. Or maybe it’s just that my head is a bit fuzzy today. But I really struggled to remember an ad that I really loved in 2006. I’m really struggling. Hmmmm… I like the 3 ad for free messenger I don’t think that the insight is particularly amazing or anything. I just really like it as a little film (and I think it does a nice job of making something intangible feel tangible.
  5. Film: Little Miss Sunshine. If you haven’t seen it. See it. By the end I couldn’t work out if I was crying with laughter, or just crying and laughing at the same time. The whole cinema was properly laughing out loud. Genuinely funny and moving. Manages to navigate between sentimental and mental really well.
  6. Website: YouTube. Perhaps an ‘obvious’ choice. But think back to an time ‘BYT’. Can you remember it? It’s tough. How many links have you been sent to things on YouTube this year? I’d wager that it’s likely to be a similar number to the total number of links you’ve been sent to all other sites combined. Of course it’s not YouTube’s content. But without a doubt YouTube has changed the shape of the web immeasurably.
  7. Design Thing: Nintendo Wii. I got mine last week. My body hurts from playing it too hard. It’s a magical thing. It’s completely redefined the gaming agenda. Fuck polygon counts and blu-ray. Wii is all about fun. And it’s got shedloads of it.
  8. Person: Sophie.
  9. Item of clothing: Nike Air Force One Nordic Edition they look a bit nasty in these photos, but they’re lovely and comfy and warm, and they don’t look too shabby either. IMHO.
  10. Place: Brighton ;-)

I might also do a list of the blogs I’ve enjoyed over 2006. But it’ll take me a long time to pull it together. Perhaps until 2008…

Breaking the Cycle of Depression

DEPRESSSION

A couple of days ago I mentioned that I was de-motviated. Then I got some lovely comments (and a couple of emails) from nice people, which re-motivated me :-)

Then I posted something over on Faris’ blog about how certain trends (like McDonalds blogging) are starting to depress me. We then had a chat about early onset digital depression and how we should set up some kind of support group. Although we agreed that darkness and winter might be contributing to our down-feeling.

Then it turns out that both of us have helped to depress a young planner by the name of Organic Frog.

I feel really guilty now.

Time to break the cycle and laugh a little. Here’s the South Park set in World of Warcraft:

The Value of Experimentation

I agree with Russell when it comes to the value of experimentation and play. Asi also brought it up in relation to the video-fronted search engine I mentioned yesterday.

I’m all for play and doing new stuff. But there is a degree of responsibility that we should collectively exercise. The same kind of critical questioning that we’d apply to doing things in the real world should apply online.

And yes, within that, we should be taking risks and pushing boundaries. But some things I’ve seen recently just feel like absolute folly. I suppose as long as people are aware that their ‘solution’ could just be something that crashes and burns, then there’s no problem. But I do get a feeling that people are being misled and missold things. I’d love to think I’m wrong and clients are up for spending money experimenting in bold ways, but I’m positive that this isn’t always the case.

As an aside, I tried some more to get into Second Life, this time with the help of a guide from Wired Magazine. I still don’t get it, but at least I’ve found somewhere I can buy genitals. Phew!

Cock shop in second life

Amen to That

This is a long video clip. 18 mins in total. And it might bore you if you’re not a music geek. It’s all about how a 6 second drum loop from the B-Side of a single by The Winston Brothers, released in 1969, has become a cornerstone of modern music.

Even if you’re not a muso I reckon it’s worth watching for a couple of reasons:

  • The style of it is very basic, but it works. The spinning record is strangely mesmerising. And it works alongside the slightly hypnotic drone (in the nicest possible way) of the narrator.
  • There’s some incredibly interesting stuff in there about the point at which a cultural artifact essentially becomes public domain, and copyright becomes irrelevant. We’re reaching a point where loads of things are becoming so appropriated that it’s impossible to unpick them from their surroundings and give credit to the source.

And from a muso’s point of view, it boggles my mind that over the years a single beat, a noise made by one man hitting a drum, has been replicated, multiplied, sliced, re-ordered and rejigged in so many ways. In thousands of clubs all over the world every Saturday night you’ll be able to hear the noise of that man hitting that drum. You may not recognise it, but it’ll be there. Somewhere…