Awareness Test

So much for trying to not post youTube videos... I thought this was rather good...

Exciting Times, Convergence and The Great Technology Waterfall

Well; these are exciting times. In the last three weeks I've been glued to my technology blogs; and the underlying theme on Convergence is one which is plain to see.

First up was some great work from adrien.noterdaem (don't be put off by the page turn effect on his site!), who has used papervision, a globe camera, and some techno-creative wizardry to present us with a 360degree interactive video.

Here's a quick youtube screengrab, but I recommend you try it out for yourself.



Next came the amazing 2nd life hybrid space project, posted below.



And now you can have your own live interweb TV station, as brought to you by the nice guys over at Mogulus. This allows you to mix pre-recorded videos with multiple live feeds. You can also add graphics and overlay audio tracks at run time... and what's great is the service is free! Could this be the ultimate narcissistic exercise? I'm quite sure myself that it'll spawn a whole new wave of rubbish content, badly executed live events and recycled projects masquerading as "the real thing". Hence I would exercise a note of caution to anybody wanting to broadcast just for the novelty value; but I doubt anybody will listen to me.

What's really exciting for me about all these things is that they are great examples of convergence. The Great technology waterfall; where we start in the reservoir of the Military, before going downstream to University land before hitting the world of Pornography then into the world of the Populous. The Military usually develop the hardware, 360degree cameras, mobile communication stations etcetera. Then the Universities get involved and develop software; such toys as iptv, distributed location independent databases and browser plugins. Then comes the great content vacuum; lots of stuff, new channels, but no message to broadcast. It is nearly always the Porn industry who are the first to hook up these bits of technology and software in order to present us with download, live broadcasts and virtual simulations of X rated content in order to satisfy the lust which is hard-wired into human nature. Eventually these developed systems disseminate into the wider realm and while multinational co-operations will always develop ways to charge you for these services; the great converging brains out there on the web will also work together to bring you the service for free. That's the part I love.


Also check out Earthmine - GPS/Google Map/ Photo mashup - still in it's early stages but looking like it'll cause quite a stir.



What we have in with these first noteworthy projects of 2008 is the coming together of technology, ideas and innovation. It is still early days, but the potential here is very exciting stuff for all. The old divisions between 'Creatives', and 'Tech-heads' are breaking down; with the key players of the now being creative-techologiests, strategic-producers and techno-planners.

Ooh it's going to be an exciting year...

Malkovich 2.0

viao-john.com

Like Ewarwoowar, I try not to post much of the work that we do at Dare, in an effort to stay sane if nothing else. This site however is definitely worth a mention as to me it represents the good side of Web 2.0. It is a site to educate, to stir up ideas while asking for a well thought out response.

If only the Tube could have captured the essence of thinking before you upload as well as this small project. This project, of course stated it's claim in planet User Generated Content (a small moon orbiting Planet User Generated Crap) right from the start in that it was for Sony - a brand holding themselves high up.like.no.other in an otherwise over saturated technology market. Claridges, rather than McDonalds contributions please.

But beyond fast food video, there are still a large range of good video sites, quality controlled and vetted for the best which I still wouldn't think twice about sending my work too. However I took ages, with my mouse hovered over the submit button on this Malkovich site. Is it that I hold careful consideration of words as a higher art than the same of images? Or is it because I was hammered into writing with a fountain pen by my primary school teacher, while told there was no right or wrong in art class.

Who cares? The fact is that web is full of pictures of nudey girls, rude boy race-car videos, User Generated Idiocy and hastily designed pages. We are much less the land of flowing milk and honey for design as envisaged by the futurists, more like conurbation riddled with more back allies than Soho. Maybe it's time creators of 2.0 sites raised the bar in their briefs for quality over quantity of uploaded content. This is a site with a challenge I've enjoyed. Touché my friends.

The Beginning of The End For Web 2.0

This week's rant finally broke after a conversation with Flo last week regarding the amount of utter bollocks up on web 2.0 sites such as the Tube, the rampant and often hysterical misuse of the humble yet much overrated inverted comma, and an email from Yasmin regarding corporate sponsorship of live music.

Where do I start?

It is clear that the novelty factor surrounding video on the interweb is wearing off, and I for one am starting to get very worn down by all of the user generated rubbish which cloggs up an otherwise fantastic medium.

YouTube? YouShit I say; for the majority of the clips that you find are poorly shot, badly compressed and contain little of worth in terms of the value in their content. Last Week saw the Tube announce an increase in their upload limit from 100MB to 1GB. Tech talk aside, this looks to me like a desperate attempt to raise the perception of their site from the MacDonalds of video on the web to coming on Burger King status. While this might work in the short term, those of us in the know have been far more interested in more future facing services like Joost, Hulu, Stage 6, Vimeo etc for quite some time and it'll take more than a full fat option on a dying dog to temp us away from our rising stars.

But the trend only starts here.

Web 2.0 has, unfortunately, become just another excuse for people to upload more rubbish onto the interweb, dream up new services (often missing the point of UGC) and all too often simply repackage dynamic services in a new wrapper to sell back to the clients who already paid for it all the first time round. Even worse, is the recent growth in well executed bad ideas.

For example - the nice guys at Twitter sent out a news letter with a great new service called Foamee. Just another I owe you a pint dot com. I really see no point in this sort of business at all. If you owe somebody a pint, or more importantly if somebody owes you a pint then go and reclaim it; don't blog about it via a twitter based web2.0 mash up plugin type text message. Here you start to miss the point of the owed pint in question: a reason to meet up, share banter, stories and communicate in that 80% of the way digital communication currently prohibits.

Then there was Jott. This is a web based dictation service which only costs you as much as the call that you make to the automated response system, when then charges you a for a text message back telling you what you just spoke into the other end of the telephone. All rather silly if you ask me. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to carry a note book for the thinks I need to remember, and text twitter just to show off to everyone in my web 2.0 sphere of influence what a rock and roll life I have.

And so we return once again to these reoccurring themes of:

1. Being swamped with data, a Tube that's far too crowded with mobile phone videos of happy slapping incidents and no way to filter the good from the bad, or ugly.

2. Digital Pioneers, who face the future alone, as opposed to cashing in on the now. The innovate, they push the boundaries of what we can do with the technology, however they are still branded as Geeks.

3. Finding the great idea; at the center of a project which effectively combines the thinking of Geeks, Freaks and Future Thinkers and then makes it work.

So, web 2.0? Web 3.0? or a Really Useful quagmire of good, bad and ugly? Something has to change; and I for one hope that this change comes in the form of a shared feeling of responsibility. Now the novelty has worn off we need to take command of our ideas. When a client says "I want a face book application", we need to look them square in the eyes and ask them why they want a facebook application. Will it really help their image? Is it really right for their brand? Or are they just jumping onto a bandwagon that is running out of steam.

Racy Work For Barclays from Dare

Well, I've been away for a week searching for the last remains of the lost city of Atlantis (more on that soon); and it seems that Dare have been in the news while I've been away, having Barclays Ad's removed from MSN for being too racy. This YouTube video shows the full, uncut version of the Ad, written by Yasmin Quemard and edited by Kooch Chung. Nice work guys.




The project consists of a set of three Ad's, all spoofing some famous movie scenes. Each one carries comedy on its own merit, with this one being my favorite:

The Hakka in Action

I have to Direct a video shoot for our ITV client on Wednesday. I can't give anything away, but I've been looking at these guys for inspiration. Great stuff!



Power.

FlickrBlockers

Flo Sent this round at work. What a great idea... they would help prevent photos of me like this appearing on the interweb. Bann Flickr. Ban Web 2.0. Fuck UGC, everything should be censored.

Geeky Sony Fans

... who tune into You Tube to look at Sony related PR bullshit seemed to give my spoof video of the Tower Block blowing up rather a lot of attention.

A while ago I saw some mobile phone footage on You Tube, showing the Bravia boys shooting up an old Glaswegian tower block with balls of paint. "Colour like No Other" was the line. Below is my ironic take on the clip. Take it of leave it - I though it was funny for 5mins work. .... It's not suppost to be real by the way, despite the youtube comments.