Staying sane in the digital world
Elbow patches and giant sideys at the ready today here on Don’t Go Mad (a la 1970s Open University) with some adult education video. Isn’t it amazing what you can learn on the Internet? Who knows when this kind of knowledge might come in useful to you, probably never.
Chicken Head Tracking
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_dPlkFPowCc]
Drinking Coffee in Space
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7LcugO3zg]
Category : Internet, Music, Video, convergence
With the festive season fast approaching, one of the best gifts money can buy is an Internet radio. I’ve had one for six months or so now and it sits in the kitchen, merrily blasting out any genre of any music from anywhere in the world that happens to take our fancy. From disco classics to flamenco and everything in between, Internet radio caters for both mainstream and guilty pleasures with the simple turn of a dial.
Image by The Rocketeer http://www.flickr.com/photos/kt/ Some rights reserved under Creative Commons Licence.
Apart from the immense choice of music (explorable by region, genre, popularity, and all the other options you’d expect from Radio 2.0) what’s really impressive is how Internet radio joins the power of the web with the everyday ease/familiarity of an old-school household appliance. The device takes seconds to install; it simply attaches itself to your wifi and the quality is superb. You tune it with a dial just like you’ve been tuning a radio for years. It’s the new wireless wireless.
I suppose the technical demands of radio are easier to overcome than the demands of video. But it is starting to become feasible to watch video over the internet and I don’t just mean short clips on YouTube. The phenomenal success of BBC’s iPlayer proves there is a market for viewing TV-quality content online and on demand.
The trouble with video online is that it’s not yet compelling enough (and by that ultimately I guess I mean easy enough) to consume purely online. OK, you might watch a few shows on your computer or portable device but I bet you’ve still got a TV in the living room and probably have a DVD player, etc etc. Early adopters have home media centres, but imagine a video version of an Internet radio which integrates the web with a traditional mainstream appliance.
So, while we’re waiting for video, why not live the future in a rather old fashioned way and get the best of both worlds with an Internet radio? You can even pull an RSS feed onto the front display so you’ll always be up to date with your favourite blog.
People wonder what web 3.0 will be. I reckon it’s when the Internet becomes so integrated into everyday life that we don’t even notice. Don’t go mad.
Category : Internet, Video, user generated content
More on the debate about whether user generated content is loser generated, and my thoughts about user created versus user uploaded. The following video comes from The Onion:
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=X4dSsla-q6o]
Category : Film, Internet, Video, user generated content
Part of the YouTube future shorts campaign. A clever way to tell a story without saying a word…
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=P5_Msrdg3Hk]
Category : Internet, Reputation
We often talk about the need for transparency, especially online. The Internet community contains experts on everything — anyone who is not transparent risks being exposed.
Accordingly, this article in The Times caught my attention after questions emerged about the possible digital reworking of a picture which features North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
So how should brands, etc take proactive steps to avoid even the remotest accusation that they might not be totally transparent? Some thoughts in future postings.
We often talk about how to grab an audience’s attention. The drummer in this clip certainly manages that– you might say for all the wrong reasons.
Saw the new Bond film yesterday, Quantum of Solace, which I did enjoy but can’t help feeling that the baddie was a tad disappointing in his bid for world domination. He didn’t seem to have much depth of character and wasn’t much of an adversary for our Jimbo.
Anyway, why be disappointed when you can be your own Bond baddie, thanks to The Times? Just need a fluffy lapcat now and a Volcano hideout in the garden.
I was a bit disappointed by the baddie in Quantum of Solace -- but now I can create my own!
Perfect video for mastering some moves in time for the weekend. Might need to bone up on the Finnish first, though.
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=zwakjoSs754]
A few more thoughts on yesterday’s post about User Generated Content. Having thrown myself into UGC at Sky for two years, I’m inevitably an advocate of its benefits for brands.
Thing is, I think people don’t quite understand what “User Generated” actually means. User “created” perhaps is a better description because it’s original material created by the user rather than film clips, music videos or something they’ve ripped from TV. Just because a user has uploaded some content it doesn’t mean they necessarily created it. What’s more, TV shows, films, music, etc enjoy copyright and other protections — so if a user uploads something like this to the Internet they could be breaking the rules and run into big trouble.
To me, user generated should mean user created not user uploaded. The opportunity is to engage people in the user created area.
The competition Doritos ran around the 2007 Superbowl sticks out as a prime example of how to do it — they asked people to create an advert which they would ultimately broadcast during the game:
At £1m plus for 30 secs of airtime, that’s quite a commitment to user contributions.
