Seesmic

Back from Paris

I’m back from Paris and what you can expect from me this week are a post with two or three short video clips of people exposing what they discussed at Podcamp uk as well as two or three amusing videos from the Paris Seesmic meetup.

The Paris Seesmic meetup

Next Saturday I’ll be catching the TGV to Paris to meet with a few friends from the Seesmic community. I had planned to do this for over two months but never got the opportunity due to various events. It’s fun to go to meet people who you know via online social networks because of the friendships and the inspiration they may provide. In London whilst looking for work i took great advantage of all these events, trying to go to as many as possible. That’s how I got interested in twitter and so much has grown from that point. The people in Paris are not unknown to me. I have met Fred of Blugture in London and Virginie from two meetings in Lausanne. Now I’m going to Paris and I’ll see many more seesmicers in person. It’s good fun and you never know what interesting projects and events they may talk about. It’s just fun to meet people who we’ve spent the past few months conversing through a number of methods I’ve written about previously.

The Nokia N95 and some fun to be had.

Seesmic’ favourite phone at the moment appears to be the Nokia N95 and after months of thinking about whether to get the Iphone or the Nokia I turned to the Nokia because of everything it allows you to do. It’s a GPS, web streaming camera, time lapse camera, e-mail and web browser among other things. It’s also easy to use with services like Jaiku. Streaming Video stremaing from computers is becoming commonplace and as a result we’re growing tired of that piece to camera straight from people’s desk. That’s where Bambuser, Qik and seesmic come into play. Bambuser is still in alpha and has an intuitive easy to use streaming interface giving you an easy selection between the main camera and the front camera. It’s very simple to use and I’ve played quite a bit with it but there are lag issues where the stream doesn’t keep up. The settings can be adjusted quite specifically by the user allowing for quite a bit of experimentation. A second service is Qik. This one has a nice user interface and has in built buffering. This means that as you stream the application buffers and indicates the delay between what you are seeing on the phone and what is being seen. This service has too main options. Optimised for quality or optimised for creating a reliable stream. Seesmic has already been discussed but it’s a good video sharing website. It allows for conversations to take via video similarly to instant messaging. The Seesmic application still needs some work but if you’re using shozu you can record your seesmic posts and FTP the files to the site for others to enjoy. I’ve done a few posts from the car once I’ve arrived at work and the results are good, except for a loss of synchronisation… but that’s in camera rather than seesmic.  Jaiku Jaiku was developed by people who worked for Nokia and it’s similar to twitter but with a better front end mobile wise. The application automatically displays where you are, whether you’re free or busy to answer calls and you can follow conversations. **Photo Camera ** One interestig feature of the camera that I haven’t used is the ability to take a picture every ten seconds. In other words to create time lapses that last as long as you would like. I haven’t tried the option but the idea is interesting. **GPS ** I haven’t played with the GPS so far but so far it looks nice enough, I’ll write more once I know more. So far I’m happy with the N95 because of all it can do and I’m looking forward to using it extensively in the near future. As I learn more about the phone and what it can do I’ll write most posts.

Did I mention I'm up to twenty thousand tweets

Did I mention that I got all the way up to twenty thousand tweets last night? I’m officially a very heavy user of twitter and many people celebrated the event with me in true twitter style. They @ed me. It’s not everyday you get to that number. I also seesmiced a few thoughts about twitter which someone can find and link to in the near future. I’m feeling a little lazy in that regard. Also today was my first proper full day of work and it went well. I’m tired as a result and tomorrow should be more fun. See you then.

The twitter back channels

Twitter is one of those places that takes some time to get the hang of but once you do it’s going to suck you in and won’t spit you out till you’re exhausted. It’s a little bit like seesmic except that in this case you don’t look like you’re so in love with your computer that you’re talking to it. In reality twitter is just the surface of our interaction with the groups of friends we have met and made through this network. Twitter is first and foremost about short messages to say what you’re doing right now. Over time though it’s become much more. As more and more people started to use it so the want to comment on what people are doing increased. Overtime as more and more comments were made so conversations occured. These conversations are a little more complex than you may think. Initially conversations via instant messaging services like ICQ, Skype, Yahoo and others are about one to one communication. Twitter is about the overheard conversation. In other words as I’m talking to one person another person overhears what I’m saying and they want to join. Over time a community forms. Some call it the twitterverse, others the twittosphere, and some call us the twitterati. The result is the same. It’s a community of people based around twitter. They are for the most part involved in the social media although a growing number of people are “tourists”, in other words they’re looking at this social networking system or tool and seeing how they can apply it to their own lives and business practices. There’s another dimension. The invisible conversations that are taking place. With some people I have exchanged hundreds of messages in private, via direct messages. With other people it’s via google talk and in other cases via the skype chatrooms. In other words it’s a dynamic conversation across a number of instant messaging services. There are a number of uses. In some cases some conversations are too personal to have out in the open, with others the conversations are very focused and the community is a community through a skype chatroom or conference call. As a result there is a strong feel of belonging within certain communities. Seesmic is one website and over time a community that has profited greatly from twitter, and I mean in terms of the members of the community rather than the wealth generated. As people created videos so a link with the video title would appear. As the “Seesmic” tag appeared more and more so a buzz was generated to create interest. As more people were invited through friends using twitter so more interest grew. It was also a two channel conversation. One channel being twitter where short messages could be exchanged easily and the second channel video where opinions could be exchanged through visual means. Quite a few parties took place then. Many questions are also asked by those that use twitter. Some of these questions are easy to answer within 140 characters and a list of responses is left as a blog entry. It’s a quick method of getting a number of points of view efficiently. Occasionaly entire conversations come to life about a number of topics and multiple people talk to multiple people and after three or four hours results and conclusions are drawn up and a comprehensive blog post covering a range of issues can be written up. Twitter is a simple way of keeping in touch with what friends are doing but it also creates links with people we would find very hard to get hold of using more contemporary methods such as facebook, e-mails and other. This is a glimpse of what the future of communication will hold. Skype, seesmic, gtalk, facebook are all there to add depth to the twitter conversations.

Valentine's - a social media perspective

Valentine’s day is a day both dreaded and feared by most for two reasons, as a couple because of the pressure you’re under and as a single because you’re single. In the social media though it can be one of the most amusing times. My social media valentine consisted in two parts. The first on twitter and the second a net2meet (From online to offline meeting) with a fellow seesmicer. The first one was fun thanks to it’s simplictiy. When you write @ username <3 it takes this to mean that you heart the other user. With maggie a fellow seesmicer we filled each other’s timelines as well as that of many others with this electronic sign of affection. It was amusing to see what a good mood it put both Maggie and I in as a result. The pressure Valentine’s day usually puts on people dissipated entirely. I reached my 17,000th tweet yesterday and I dedicated it to all the girls I have frequently tweeted with. They’re what made valentine’s day so much fun. I love the idea that I have so many conversations on a daily basis. We’re a community based around twitter and our love of new methods of communication. It’s a good community and I’ll spend many more ours there. I flew back to Switzerland and that’s where I met Pioupiounette a fellow seesmicer and within a few seconds we already felt comfortable with each other. That’s because in the social media we spend so much time chatting with and seeing people that when we meet in real life we’ve already got a collective experience. In french it’s “Un vécu commun”. As a little bonus I got to see the projection room of the cinema and the reels there. It was fun to hear the whirring away of the machine, seeing two arc lights, the cinema from another angle and such. In other words it was an adventure. The socia media are a fun place to spend some time and this year was one of the most relaxed valentine’s days because technology meant that I had some good friends to have an enjoyable time with. Keep in mind that Valentine’s day is the day I got my driving license so whilst others celebrate love and relationships I celebrate mobility and frienships. Yesterday was a pleasure and I hope next year will be just as good.

New Seesmic wth replies and latest tweet

The latest  version of Seesmic was rolled out this evening during the Demo Presentation by Loic Lemeur and amongst it’s newest features are replies counters so that you can see how many people reacted, a latest tweet display and faster loading times for the pages. There is an active conversations tab in the lower right corner and the shows tab has been replaced by a replies tab. The site is far slicker and easier to use. Great changes.