Archive for the 'Video' Category

What if we were to hook up with old friends in real life the way we do on Facebook? What if we related to our friends in the real world as if we were on Facebook?

This video gives us a taste of what may lie ahead for our friendships…

I wrote about the dangers of the omnipresent mobile phone camera last week in my post “Losing Control”. In the same week, a video posted on YouTube.com shows a cop in Baltimore losing it with a teenager, physically manhandling the kid without good cause and abusing him verbally in an intimidating and vicious manner. The kid’s offence? Calling the officer “dude” instead of “Officer” seemed to be the trigger.

Watch the video and be appalled.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri was suspended several days after the video hit YouTube, according to the Baltimore Sun.

In cases such as these, when bullies are caught red-handed and red-faced on camera - particularly those who are in positions of trust and authority - it can only be a good thing. However, as the Baltimore Sun report says, we do not know what took place before or after the recording so caution and proper investigation is always needed in these cases.

Back in 2006, Microsoft announced: “that effective July 2008 Bill Gates, chairman, will transition out of a day-to-day role in the company to spend more time on his global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The company announced a two-year transition process to ensure that there is a smooth and orderly transfer of Gates’ daily responsibilities, and said that after July 2008 Gates would continue to serve as the company’s chairman and an advisor on key development projects.”

Now that we are in 2008, Bill has made his last keynote speech and is winding down for July. This is a video of that last speech, which includes a little home movie that he made with his mates about what he might do after he steps down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft….

Following on from my post about the founding father of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, who created HTML and the follow up, giving a bite-sized explanation of Web 2.0, here is an excellent video that animates the whole story from the humble beginnings of HTML code to the dynamic interactive arena that is Web 2.0 - and how Web 2.0 and social media is now making us re-think copyright, authorship, rhetoric and just about everything else.

Thanks to Lucy Soutter for sending me this video.

I received an email in my Inbox a moment ago from the Online Journalism Review reporting that a German website is calling on the world to declare today, 04 Oct, “Free Burma Day”. The article explains:

“The state-controlled media in Myanmar has been tight-lipped, to say the least. Communication with international news organizations has been spotty, and soldiers continue to turn reporters away at the borders. The message has been clear: “Nothing to see here.”

But armed with cell phones, cameras and laptops, common citizens and protesters stepped in to expose the conflict in real time. Some ran blogs of their own. Many dispatched pictures and videos of police violence to off-shore bloggers and news sites. Either way, they loosened the government’s chokehold on communication.

Now, with the ebb and flow of information from within at a standstill, the offshore sites are left to sustain awareness. A brand-new site out of Germany, Free-Burma.org, calls on bloggers around the world to post a “Free Burma” awareness graphic on any posts today, Oct. 4. Organizer Philipp Hausser talked to us about “International Bloggers’ Day For Burma” and the impact of Myanmar’s citizen-journalist phenomenon.”

You can read the full article Bloggers organize international day of support for Burmese freedom

I’ve been watching the escalation of the tension in Burma through the blogs and online news. Here are some links:

Burma Digest - disturbing photos, videos and reports from right there in the demonstrations.

YouTube channel of niknayman - including footage of a dead monk floating in a river

The Democratic Voice of Burma

The Times article on bloggers who risked all

Del.icio.us tags for “Burma” - these show items bookmarked by web users around the world who have found articles and videos on Burma and tagged them in their bookmarking account at del.icio.us. (There’ll be those related to non-political events as well)

To find out how you can take action, spread the word, do your bit, go to the Free Burma website.

This is a cross-post from my writing and cross-culture blog, Fusion View

We see news items about politics and military operations in Iraq almost daily but sometimes, it can all seem very far removed from our daily lives.

The Alive in Baghdad project shows the ordinary lives of Iraqis affected by the conflict there. Their mission statement says:

“Alive in Baghdad is empowering Iraqis to share their stories with the world, and provides a place of education and interaction for global citizens interested in the real life political, military, economic and social situation in Iraq.”

This video features child artist, Sameer Muhammad and is father, Muhammad Rubaie, who are now refugees living in Damascus. “They, like many Iraqis, have been forced to flee their country and taken refugee in Syria. They talk about their lives as artists, and how they are continuing their work despite the circumstances.”

You can support this important project by donating via PayPal - go to their site at www.aliveinbaghdad.org to find out more.

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This is a powerful example of the use of social media to spread a message. These stories and narratives would not be so easily available a few years ago before YouTube and user-generated technology, when we were all more dependent on conventional news media as conduits for telling our stories.

This project is going to form part of my research for the book that I am co-authoring on New Trends in International Public Relations.

If you know of any other similar projects where people have come together to share their stories in this way through social media, please email me or leave a comment. I’ll credit you, of course, if your contribution is used directly in the book - you can check out my ongoing list of acknowledgements online.

Elton John recently ranted against the internet and social media, according to Neowin.net and other news sources. He is quoted as saying:

“The internet has stopped people from going out and being with each other, creating stuff. Instead they sit at home and make their own records, which is sometimes OK but it doesn’t bode well for long-term artistic vision. It’s just a means to an end. We’re talking about things that are going to change the world and change the way people listen to music and that’s not going to happen with people blogging on the internet. I mean, get out there — communicate. Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the internet. Let’s get out in the streets and march and protest instead of sitting at home and blogging. I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span. There’s too much technology available. I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting than it is today.”

It reminded me that there are still many people out there who don’t know much about online social culture and who for some reason don’t want to know about it. I think it’s a shame for them - there is so much creativity and experimentation online in terms of self-expression and artistic expression as well as increased communications between people and cultures.

Here are some examples:

Music

There are a number of virtual recording studios like Net Studio where musicians can collaborate with other musicians anywhere in the world, not just those who are in the same town as they are.

Podsafe music is music that can be used for podcasting without paying a royalty. Podsafe networks allow musicians to distribute their music globally over the internet and there are internet stations like Accident Hash that specialise in playing podsafe music. And a lot of it is really good stuff, too.

Individuals doing funky things with music for themselves and their friends and in the process becoming music legends online - like this young Korean guy playing Pachelbel’s Cannon like you’ve never heard it before.

Books and Blogging

Bhagdad Burning was a blog by a young Iraqi girl which was subsequently turned into a prize-winning book of the same name.

Blood, Sweat and Tea is a book that was compiled by the blog of a London Ambulance driver, Random Acts of Reality

The Blooker Prize is an annual prize for the best blog, modelled on the Booker Prize for books.

Photography

Andrew Losowksy started a collection of photographs of doorbells in Florence, Italy on Flickr, the photo-sharing site. He would write stories to accompany the pictures. He gained a huge following online for his stories and the photos and stories have now been transformed into a book The Doorbells of Florence that has won the Blooker prize.

There’s a whole genre of photography around the theme of a daily photo from your city eg City Daily Photo Blog, Santiago de Chile Daily Photo Blog, Brighton Daily Photo etc

There is a group on Flickr that creates short stories using a series of five photos.

Art

I love this web installation by filmmaker and artist Miranda July - it’s filmic, witty and a commentary on websites all at the same time: http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com/

Rhizome is a site that posts news about new media art and the intersection of technology and art, with great links to a vast range of different art websites and blogs.

Social Networks

As for making connections, blogging and social networks like Facebook help people connect so much more easily than in the days of snail mail. I’ve personally made some great new friends in Malaysia through the litbloggers network there and I enjoy using the online telephony service Skype to connect with my family. Facebook and Twitter has enabled me to keep in contact with a range of friends in the UK and Malaysia that I might otherwise not keep in contact with. In many ways, I feel I have a much richer social life through both offline connections with my regular local friends and online connections with those who are further away or in another country.

In my view, the things that are going to “change the world and change the way people listen to music” - and for that matter, change how we relate, connect and create - are already happening online with great energy and creativity. With or without the likes of Elton John.

The UK Department of Health has launched www.privatedickmovie.com, a website where you can watch short films that look like old ’70s porn flicks. You can create your own version by using your name and those of your friends as characters in the movies. After personalising the film, you can then send it to your friends.

A government department promoting porn - is this another example of the degenerate West? No, it’s part of a campaign to encourage safe sex. On the official campaign website Condom Essential Wear, it says: “Sex is great. But if you don’t protect yourself, it could soon stop being as much fun.” The aim is to “make condoms a fun and essential part of your sex life.”

Sex education in the UK really has come a long way since those TV ads in the early ’80s that featured a big monolith in a thunderstorm and a doomsday voice warning about AIDS. I recall being mystified by that ad, which told you nothing directly about AIDS or what to do to protect yourself - it seemed to be the darker, meaner version of the Monty Python “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” sketch.

This new campaign is cheeky and fresh and is clearly aimed at a very modern audience that would not give the time of day to being preached at. It’s in the same vein as the Colgate Smile campaign (discussed in my other post of today) in that it aims to make something rather dull and dutiful fun - and even a bit sexy.

Last week, I wrote about the Heinz user-generated video campaign that left the company with some egg (or ketchup?) on their face. Today, I’d like to look at the Yahoo! user-generated video campaign that appears to have been more successful.

Nick Chavez, Director of Corporate Marketing in Cool Stuff at Yahoo! explains the idea in this video posted on YouTube:

The key differences for the Yahoo! ad campaign compared with the Heinz ad campaign, I think, are these:

• Yahoo! has a maverick brand image that could comfortably encompass any weird or wacky or irreverent takes on its brand in contrast to Heinz which has a family-oriented “clean” and respectable image. In fact, a large part of the impact of the ads is the suggestive double-meaning around the word “Yahoo!” itself.

• Yahoo! seeded the campaign with an initial competition for videos made by film students, all of whom would have a personal stake in the success of their creations in terms of their career in film and advertising. They then chose the best dozen or so to seed the wider campaign, showing by the standard and quality of those films the high benchmark that others should be striving to better

The take home message from these two ad campaigns is about knowing your audience and your brand and how to leverage those two aspects to work together instead of against each other.

You can check out the various Yahoo! user-generated ads for yourself via the links below:

New Yahoo! Campaign

Videos submitted to the New Yahoo! Campaign site.

The health club student film mentioned by Nick Chavez in the video is shown below:

Here are a few more that particularly caught my eye (ear?):

Mother and daughter talking about “the change”:

What does your Yahoo! look like?

My boyfriend is always playing with his Yahoo!