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dannyObanny - Dec 2, 2007

Nielson/NetRatings has issued a study showing that the top 10 social networking sites saw traffic grow 47% over the last year, with MySpace seeing the biggest growth (367% increase) and MSN Spaces (286%) seeing the biggest growth. Hosted blogging systems were included in the study. One thing to note about those numbers is that while Classmates had one of the lowest positive growth rates at 10%, they spend loads on advertising while MySpace, Youtube, and Facebook haven’t spent a penny. If I recall correctly, a couple years ago Classmates.com was one of the 10 largest spenders on online advertising. There are plenty of new social networking sites poping up but what get’s me why can’t myspace there instant messenger working. $580 mill and can’t afford to fix instant messenger BAD myspace. There are so many better ones how about http://cubiclelife.net for example has all the features of myspace plus quizzes, polls, webchat with audio and video oh and hey they have instant messenger. You have a long way to go myspace. http://seekingalpha.com/wp-content/seekingalpha/images/socialnetapr06.jpg

Twittervox is back on the air and there will be an episode at some point this afternoon, probably around 4pm GMT. During the most recent episode we were discussing Podcamp Boston 2 and one of the people that joined the conversation was Sara Steeler of Pygmae and NewBcamp. Her ideas are interesting because she wants to involve more people into using current technology on a daily basis rather than produce content for people to hear, read or watch. What makes the NewBcamp interesting is that it’s about creating an event where non creatives can meet and learn about the possibilities of new technology. She describes it as NewBCamp… I am designing it especially for people new to technology, I welcome people to suggest topics they would like to hear presentations on, as well as presentations they feel qualified to give. It differs from podcamp and barcamp events because it’s goal is to get more people to take advantage of all the content that is being provided. I want to get other people involved, people like the students in my classes, like my mom, like random people I know who have a thirst to know about how to do computer stuff. One of the things that frustrated me as a university student is that radio students, of all people, did not understand the purpose of podcasting. They want to do radio and to be on the well known broadcasters. They do student radio but how many of them took advantage of creating podcast friendly content. How many of them would create content that could be put on an RSS feed and downloaded for convenient listening? For a short period they had podcasts but that stopped quite quickly. It’s a shame because whilst I love the idea of listening to a friend’s content whilst on the move I hate the idea of having to be by the computer listening to a live stream, especially when it’s non time sensitive audio discussions. NewBcamp could help change that attitude, help develop awareness of what podcasts are and what you can do with them. It’s also about awareness. What podcasts are out there and what audience would find them interesting. At the moment we find technology geeks, current affairs and more but what about other programs. I’ve seen a few snowboarding podcasts, a few history podcasts, several environmental shows but the problem is that their audience lacks familiarity with the medium. There are a few universitites that have audio podcasts, there are a few radio stations that offer additional content. Through projects such as NewBcamp I hope that a new audience will discover and enjoy the pleasure of listening to a new form of distributing content and that the will experiment with it. I’d like to see a diversification in the type of content offered whilst including a broadening of topics covered. If you have some thoughts on the topic then don’t hesitate to come up with suggestions and participate in the conversation.

Dziga Vertov is an interesting personality because of his ideas of the Cinema eye. His notion was that with the cinema eye, the Kino Glaz you could capture life unawares whilst being involved in the creative treatment of actuality. After making some quick money by answering some social networking questions I dropped by the apple store only to find that computer games are far too expensive for what they are. I dropped down via the usual streets and got to waterstone’s. There is a small documentary section which I have visited on numerous occasions in the past and today I found an interesting book. It’s Dziga Vertov - Defining Documentary Film by Jeremy Hicks. It’s a translation of some of Vertov’s key texts so that the non russian speaking audience may understand his ideas more clearly. I only got as far as reading the introduction but I hope that through the reading of this book I may get some new views and opinions on the current media landscape.

Sam - Nov 4, 2007

Just so you know it’s impossible to brick your iPod touch, plugging it into iTunes and pressing will always always restore it to factory settings.

Today I tried to unblock the ipod touch and it froze the first time and started to heat up and the second time the screen went to black. I thought on two occasions that my ipod was bricked. I’ve been able to re-install everything and am now syncing the content back onto the device. For the first attempt the device was plugged into the computer and whilst I did see the install app on the screen the display would stop responding. Whether this is due to weak wifi or an incompatibility I’m not sure. On the second attempt the hack didn’t work and went so far as for the display to cease working. I tried re-starting it with the button and nothing changed. As I plugged it back into the laptop it detected that something was happening and so I was able to restore the ipod. In summary I’m not going to try that again with my own ipod. I’ll wait until February when they’ll allow third party apps to be included.

Leopards are a strong animal capable of lifting animal carcasses into trees to keep their catch safe. It’s also the new Apple operating system and I purchased it. After taking about two hours to install the operating I’m quite happy with the new operating system. Safari has had some new interactivity added. With most browsers the tabs are fixed at the top of the page and there’s not much you can do. If you’re in a playful mood then open up safari in Leopard and you can switch the tabs between each other. If you feel that one tab deserves it’s own browser window simply pull down the tab and it goes to a full size browser. The user interface for the finder is quite a bit more fun. You’ve got coverflow for you pictures. What this means is that you can go through your pictures with no need to open iphoto and other applications. As a result the ability to be disorganised is greatly enhanced. At the same time looking at photographs and documents is quite a bit easier. The time machine is an interesting piece of software that backs up your data every hour for 24 hours, then every day for a month and after that every week for as long as there’s space on the hard disk. If you’re on a desktop and your external hard drives are always plugged in then this is excellent. If you’re like me and you’re using a laptop the idea is not that great because the time machine is only active whilst I’m taking the time to plug in the hard drive. Setup is really easy therefore anyone with an external hard drive that mirrors the space used on their computer should be able to use it.  If you’re using an internal spare hard drive does it work the same way Items in the dock look the same as in tiger except there is a blue dot at the moment to display the applications that are currently active. The mail application has an RSS feed of apple news, just in case you’d missed the latest. You have both to do and notes  included straight within the mail application. The calendar has had one or two improvements of which the most useful is the pop out when you’re adding an event. In previous versions you would have to go to either side and type in additional information. With this one data input is overlayed  over the calendar greatly increasing usability. The ichat chromakey technology is quite interesting. If you want you can choose any background you want from the database of videos and photographs you have on your laptop. Simply choose the background you want. Move out of shot and wait till it’s seen the image. When you move back into frame you’ve got whichever background you chose. It works moderatly well depending on the type of background you’re using though. Leopard is a nice operating system with a number of new features that make it fun to try out and use. The way information is displayed is interesting and the additional features like cover flow for document browsing, time machine for backup and more are taking advantage of the fact that people’s use of the computer has progressed over the years. By being better at media browsing the operating system is more intuitive to use. So far I’m happy with it.

Whilst in Paris I was given a coffee due to a misunderstanding between the waitress, a friend and I and as a result this was the first coffee I ever finished. It’s almost a week later and I’ve just been to see the documentary Black Gold which discusses the plight of Ethiopian coffee farmers. The documentary is shot in an observational style with the use of intertitles rather than voice over. As a result those that are telling the story are those that are most affected. We have one main character who works on bypassing several links in the chain from farmer to coffee shop whilst having the conventional chain being illustrated in parallel. The documentary touches on a number of interesting points but I will leave that to you to discover as you watch the documentary. The documentary producer was present at this screening and took some time to explain the reason for which he chose this topic, how certain coffee companies tried to discredit the film as a result of which I think some time should be taken to get more information about the topic out there. Fair trade is a hot topic so why not have a blogactionday which is focused on poverty alleviation and which informs us about what should be changed and what is already been done.

The digital era of communcation is a great one because research for video material is no longer restricted the archives of the INA, France television, BBC, TSR and other archives to find footage you’re looking for. A producer from steamboat films was working on a documentary about the walkman and found a lot of historic footage to make the subject come alive. She aslo needed some comtemporary representation of how the modern walkman is used and came across silent disco and my footage. The screening took place at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in the basement where there are two cinema rooms. The cinema was filled to more than half it’s capacity as all those who had worked on the three documentaries met to get to know their fellow contributors. The three documentaries are The Bookworm, The Concorde and the Walkman of course. Each one is an individual documentary with it’s own merits. I had the opportunity to see the Concorde documentary almost in it’s entirety twice as I arrived whilst they were testing to make sure everything was in order. Having watched the Walkman documentary three or four times already, once with house mates and two or three times by myself it was fun to see an audience’s reaction. It’s fun to be surrounded by a professional group of people rather than fellow students. You see them laugh at moments that are both typically French and old fashioned. What they didn’t laugh at so much is the silent disco footage, probably because it’s too close to home. People did laugh, but not quite as many as I would have liked. I suspect the reason for that is that they’re thinking of how they dance so laughing would be making a slight joke of their own dancing. There are two reasons why I enjoyed this event. The first was that it was the first time I’m surrounded by professionals as I get my first screen credit on the big screen at a cinema projection. It was also an opportunity to meet with the people that are behind the screen producing these programmes. I look forward to future collaborations in the near future.  I look forward to what the future holds.

TedC - Oct 1, 2007

Exactly…!

Twittoholism is seeing the world through twitter. Rather than reading newspapers, books and other intellectual adventures you see the world through what others are twittering about. It’ a bit like a chatroom but you take this one with you wherever you go, from your bedroom to the living room, across town on the bus and even to your computer. As you get a greater diversity of people so your twitterfull existence progresses exponentially.