Splashcast embed

This Next 'embed' is from the video site Splashcast.
These guys are pushing the 'video blogging' angle

Veoh video embed

I’ve signed up for the Vox beta test facility so that I can play around with the ‘embed’ feature.
This is the first in a series of ‘embeds’ from Web 2 sites, that I’ve been building content on.

First up Veoh, a video site that is hoping to compete with YouTube.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

YouTube, gravestones, and Even!

gothic even

Continuing this experimenting with YouTubes ‘audio replace’ feature.

I’ve taken some old footage that I had, and used YouTube to lay down the sound track.

This is dedicated to Cybette in the hope that she softens and risks her job by making me a gift of her N95.
(hummm, come to think of it. Last I saw of the phone it was in pieces. Maybe not then ;-)

OK, here is another ‘mission’

...for the folks lucky enough to have an N95 within their hot little hands.
I’ve been reading about MotionJpeg Vs Mpeg4.

What sort of difficulties is one facing when one wants to edit footage acquired with the N95?

Has anyone tried to suck the N95 video into Premier or another non liner editor?

I’m currently doing all my captures with a Pentax W10 which is Mjpeg and I have no probs editing the stream.

Could someone do an experiment and see if they can re-encode the N95 footage as an Uncompressed Avi?

Entry for March 18, 2007: It would seem that Sean and Gypsy have been dreaming.

I’ve been cutting up my new epic, so this is a quicky…

I had a dream during the huge thunderstorms that were sweeping the city a week back.
There was so much lighting slicing through the air, that I fell asleep at half twelve with blue light flashing behind my eyelids.

And I dreamed…
There was a girl in this dream and things were moving along to an interesting climax.
She was blond and round and happy. We were both naked and it looked like there was going to be a happy ending.
But as I was posed between her legs, just about to slide into her, something would interrupt us.
Some guy appeared that might have been her dad, There was this dog wondering around, Stuff like that.
One interruption was a little weird cause it occurred in real life.
I half awoke and got up to close the bedroom window as it had started to rain.

When I fell back into sleep, she was there waiting for me, but I don’t think there was a climax.
You know what it’s like when ‘the mood’ just evaporates?
I think there were too many interruptions to sustain the interest and the dream lover floated away.
I should have just let the carpet get a bit damp.

Entry for March 14, 2007: Sunshine

Went and saw a preview of Sunshine, the new Danny Boyle (Train spotting, Shallow Grave, and 28 Days Later) flick.
The film was ok, it resonated (third time I’ve written this word tonight) with all the other space type flicks I’ve seen before, especially 2001.
The film didn’t ‘move me’ like some of his others, but heck when you have a previous body of work such as his, you have to cut the guy a bit of slack.
The film ends with a shot of a snow bound Sydney opera house (earth has been frozen by a dieing sun which the crew in the spaceship are trying to ignite,) which might turn out to be our ‘statue of liberty embedded in the sand’ at the end of planet of the apes.
After the film, there was an interview, followed by a question and answer session with the director.
There was a question about how much the film cost
Forty mil, which they attempted to stretch so that the film looked like they had spent a hundred mil.

He was a bit worried that the physicist was a bit too good looking, but told us that the physicist advising on the film was good looking so they let it pass.

The film was shot at a small studio in London, which he prefers to some of the bigger ones.
At facilities such as Pinewood, the staff are so used to James Bond spectaculars, that they reply with ‘right you are governor’ but they really mean ‘you cunt,’ cause they reckon they know better.
Danny liked the ‘lets give it a go’ attitude of the smaller less well known studio.

Danny told us that the film is about eight scientists flying through space strapped to the back of a bomb.

I’m not sure how well it’s going to do when the competition is 300 sweaty guys in red underpants.

Sunshine

Went and saw a preview of Sunshine, the new Danny Boyle (Train spotting, Shallow Grave, and 28 Days Later) flick.
The film was ok, it resonated (third time I’ve written this word tonight) with all the other space type flicks I’ve seen before, especially 2001.
The film didn’t ‘move me’ like some of his others, but heck when you have a previous body of work such as his, you have to cut the guy a bit of slack.
The film ends with a shot of a snow bound Sydney Opera house (earth has been frozen by a dieing sun which the crew in the spaceship are trying to ignite,) which might turn out to be our ‘statue of liberty embedded in the sand’ at the end of planet of the apes.
After the film, there was an interview, followed by a question and answer session with the director.
There was a question about how much the film cost
Forty mil, which they attempted to stretch so that the film looked like they had spent a hundred mil.

He was a bit worried that the physicist was a bit too good looking, but told us that the physicist advising on the film was good looking so they let it pass.

The film was shot at a small studio in London, which he prefers to some of the bigger ones.
At facilities such as Pinewood, the staff are so used to James Bond spectaculars, that they reply with ‘right you are governor’ but they really mean ‘you cunt,’ cause they reckon they know better.
Danny liked the ‘lets give it a go’ attitude of the smaller less well known studio.

Danny told us that the film is about eight scientists flying through space strapped to the back of a bomb.

I’m not sure how well it’s going to do when the competition is 300 sweaty guys in red underpants.

Evanescence misplaced

Water Sports

This is something for the Evanescence fans.
YouTube has a new feature in the test section called ‘audio swap.’
This allows you to swap the track of an uploaded video with a track from a licensed source so there are no copyrights problems, and one of the artists users can choose is Evanescence

On our left is a video with it's soundtrack replaced.

Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gra in Sydney

Last week I went down to the city to check out the parade.
I’ve seen it many times before. These days I tend to be more interested in what happens before, after, and on either side of the celebration.

Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gra sydney 07

This event was originally a lot more political and there was a café on
Oxford Street (this is our famous ‘gay street,’ bit like Canal Rd in
Manchester or San Francisco ;-) that had all the previous years posters
that advertised the parade up on the wall.

It’s amazing to watch the progression from hard edges screen printed
‘calls for political action’ to glossy ‘let it all hang out dance party
invitation.’

These days the event is all about the money. And Sydney has come to
expect big influxes of ‘pink dollars’ round this time of year.

While we wait for Nokia to release the N95...

I'm going to post entries about things that grab my fancy...

New Concepts for the Acceleration Sensor

https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=423&cp=0306A&entry=blog

I’m thinking of visiting Melbourne over Easter.

Any tips on interesting accommodation options?

I'm thinking St Kilda???

Why am I looking forward to getting my hands on an N95?

Does anyone here remember the Apple Newton?

I had one. It was the last incarnation of the device before Jobs decided to ‘can it.’
I had grown quite attached to this device.
(its demise is one of the reasons why I will probably never own another Apple.)

The thing I liked about the Newtown was that it was truly portable and fluid, communication and computing.
Nothing like the bulk of a laptop, and much more intuitive and useful then a PDA running Windows Mobile.

I think the Newton is what Microsoft is aiming for with the Origami project, but being Microsoft, they can't help designing things in their marketing department.

I’m hoping the N95 is able to replace my Newton.
I want ‘casual computing,’ this is a term borrowed from the ‘casual gaming’ ethos.
I want to be able to whip out a hand held device and do mail, or games, or web browse during the ‘in-between’ moments.

I know, I know, this is what everyone is trying to build.
Well how come it's so difficult to get the mix right?
Why is it, that there are so many little videos showing us what is coming in the future, but no one is able to drop the mother load right now?
I reckon its cause Marketing departments don't want to release the unit to the market in perfection.
They just love to drip feed functionality to the consumer, until finally after shelling out our bucks for all the past iterations, we get a device that works brilliantly.

I reckon the N95 could come the closest (after years of faffing around by Nokia) to replacing my Newton.
That said, though the Newton was brilliant, a lot of people reckon it never made any money for Apple.

Is this Viral?

I've had two contacts recently with what may be described as ‘viral marketing.’

Continuing the discussion on viral marketing...
http://socialmedia.groups.vox.com/library/post/6a00cdf3a28cf0cb8f00d4141a52166a47.html

First up, there was a pleasant comment left by Eric from Shoutfit on an item that I posted earlier...
I find it interesting that one ‘social network’ site has a presence on another.

I cross-posted this Shoutfit item over at 360, and got a bit more feedback. Here are the comments...

Siri
Where is the individuality?
How boring is this!??
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 11:56am

hotcl…
It was like paper dolls on the computer. Hey that'd be fun if we could alter the images and re-dress the folks on there?
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 11:58am

~Gypsy~
Wow... I never knew...
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 01:57pm

Sean
I like Hotclaw's idea.
Also, I am very disturbed that a majority of people seem to find being fashionable requires one to be headless. Is this really the price we want to pay to look good? Even if it is really, really, really good-looking?
That was my Zoolander impersonation by the way. Blue steel!
Wednesday February 14, 2007 - 06:03pm

Adrii06
"I want to be different… So I dress the same as all these other people"
Monday February 19, 2007 - 10:03pm

A broad spread of opinion, and I'm pretty sure that Shoutfit and the other sites listed probably got more then a couple of hits.

Speaking of which, have you guys seen this search engine...
http://www.like.com

If I were these ‘social network’ sites I’d be following Vox and going mobile.
Girls + Mobile phone + fashion blogging = Wow

Imagine the traffic generated if people could take a photo of clothing they liked on someone walking past.
Upload it to a ‘social networking’ site where friends would comment.
Then a search engine seeks out the best price for this item.

The second example of the subtlety that I feel is the mark of successful ‘viral campaign’ is an invitation to be 'a friend' I received on YouTube.

I pretty certain that this invitation was in response to someone seeing the videos posted on my YouTube channel, of a holiday that I took last year on a dolphin research vessel.
After receiving this invitation I followed the link back to a web site run by a whale research program here in Oz (called iWhales, cute!)

These people were looking for volunteers and must have searched out 'Dolphin' tags amongst the YouTube videos and sent out invitations.
Nice work. No pressure to look at the site or buy anything. They must be relying on people’s curiosity to draw eyeballs to their site.
It worked, cause I sent off the cheque to book a place for later in the year.

This could potentially backfire on them as if I have a bad time, I might post uncomplimentary things in my blog :-)
But they will have made a sale.

Time lapse cloud porn...

Same spot, same day, same storm.
Different airplanes.

Wild weather and evening in the park...