Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
This was taken from the dl.tv episode 124. Whats very interesting is the 4 laptops reviewed are exactly the same as what was on my final list and they also recommend the Dell XPS 1210, even over the Mac Book.
Oh I forgot to mention my wife also bought a new laptop. A HP DV2000 from Comet which she loves at the moment.
Ok this came out of the blue – LennyHenry.TV . Started at 22.35 (GMT) for Mins: 30
Lenny Henry takes us through the best comedy shorts available on the internet, from the most outrageous CCTV to exclusive online TV
I can't seem to find anything about it on the BBC site except for the bit above. And for some crazy reason no one at the BBC has even registered the domain LennyHenry.TV! There was some more information on the Tiger Aspect productions site
So about the show. Well its Lenny Henry commenting and playing some of the funniest and most shared videos across the web. Yep its like the a cross between America's most funniest home videos crossed with Diggnation. Graham Norton use to do a section on his show where he talked about something internet related but it lasted all of 4mins while Lenny Henry's show is 30mins. In the first showed classics like the treadmill
dance and dancing cop.
Although I'm in two minds about this being on BBC One, It was good to finally share this stuff with my parents. Lenny Henry's funny commentary does add to the show and his general natter with the guest nicely takes it out of the America's funniest home videos category. I look forward to hearing what others thought soon.
I'll certainly upload a part somewhere for review
From Torrent freak, which I've been meaning to blog for a while…
The award winning Canadian documentary The Corporation has been released on BitTorrent for free. Filmmaker Mark Achbar just released an updated official torrent of it. Everyone is free to download, watch, discuss, and share it. Although the torrent download is free, the filmmakers encourage people to donate a small fee if they like what they see. We asked Mark Achbar how the first round of donations went. He said, since my initial torrent launch of The Corporation at the end of August, there have been $635.00 in contributions. They ranged from $2 to three very generous gifts of $100 each. All are very much appreciated. He added, my only regret is that I didnt put up my own torrent sooner.
Although this is great stuff, I couldn't find the licence anywhere. So I'm assuming its downloadable, sharable but not remixable? Shame because its a great documentary but I would like to see a slightly shorter version which I could lend to some friends without them falling a sleep. You could easily do a 1hour version which gets the core message across and then the 3hour version full of examples and more depth.
Looks like its all true now – Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock. Everyone's eating it up but to be honest, does it really matter that much? I've yet to be convinced about the importance of this deal except Google now on top of Fox with there MySpace.
I would never have thought I would be linking to a BBC blog but this short piece from some American show (which was uploaded to YouTube) is a interesting look at the UK Grime scene. Oh did I mention Mistajam now has a BBC Blog? I'm aware of the grime scene but stay well clear because I'm not the biggest fan of this type of music. But I do respect where this is coming from, even if its lost its way a little. There is a really good point made about the true differences of UK and US hiphop culture. People don't have 23 inch rims on there cars and wear diamonds simply because they can't afford it and they would be robbed. Yep, I'm certainly hearing that. I wouldn't even pull my ipaq on the train ride into peckham sometimes.
At long last dabble has added distributed back into the mix. Dabble can be thought of yet another video hosting service but actually you would be overlooking its main feature. Its more like del.icio.us than anything else. Simply put its a bookmarking service for online video. So no matter where your video sits, google video, archive.org, youtube or even on your own site, you can bookmark it and share it with anyone via dabbler.
In the usual style you can also add tags and create playlists for other people and friends. Its such a simple idea and although dabble is very rough around the edges, I can see myself using this a lot. I actually rememeber this type of service being applied to Podcasts but it was so simple and clever, it actually is a shame it doesn't do audio too.
Sarah Blow beat me to this exclusive, so I'll just quote her.
The London Girl Geek Dinner short film has just been released. Here is an exclusive first look at it prior to it going on FourDocs. It was filmed about a month ago by Angela Saini of ITN who was just fantastic at both directing the video and setting everything up. I hope you enjoy the video and feel free to let anyone else know about it!
I hope to see other short video's and films from the girls over at BlogHer after the conference.
The next London Girl Geek Dinner is to be announced at a later date… it is looking like some time around the end of August/ First week of September. If you want to get updates of our next event feel free to join the mailing list on www.londongirlgeekdinners.co.uk or syndicate with the rss feed on the site!
PS: Many thanks to Angela for doing the film for us and for her support and also to Ian Forrester of www.geekdinners.co.uk for his ever constant support for the girly geek dinners!
Thanks Sarah! I've been sitting on this documentary from Angela for quite some time now. I think its a fantastic documentary and well worth everyone's time to watch. I'm now interested to see what conversation develops following the documentary. You can also now watch get the documentary in Windows Media and Quicktime formats here.
I've not really mentioned the rocketboom split, I only found out when I noticed nothing was not being downloaded since the start of July. So I checked out the site and read the announcement
Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.
We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.
Rocketboom goes on.
Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.
While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.
After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.
But of course I followed a selection of links from the blogosphere and hit across a selection of, well lets say views and insights. Bear in mind that at the time Technorati's number one search was Rocketboom and sixth Amanda Congdon. First up this great thought from Tom
Amanda Congdon teams up with Cory Doctorow and friends and produces BoingBoingBoom? Quick, someone with a fashionable blog, write about it and tell Nick Douglas – it's a meme-in-waiting!
According to the huffingtonpost Joanna Colan is going to replace Amanda.
And of course before long, a link to Amanda's unboomed site and the now famous upside down map videocan also be found here). Its also worth reading in full Amanda's for the record post and the 180+ comments.
So the scene just ended on episode 20. Looking back its got slowly worst and worst. Don't get me wrong, its ok but the time between episodes and the general lack of speed though out the whole thing made it difficult to follow and enjoy. I stuck with it and felt very let down by the lack of direction once the main event (the group almost getting busted) happened. There were some slight cliff hangers afterwards but not enough to make you go back.
Anyhow there working on the scene 2.0 which should be out in 6 weeks now. Its the same format but different characters and plot. Hopefully they can think a little more about how the whole thing hangs together rather than throwing more complexty in. The scene should also really be shot in a higher resoultion video, so they can fit more on the screen. At the moment the chat windows use up a quarter of the screen and when talking to more than 2 people things get very clutered.
I'm being pretty harsh on this pretty niche tech soap, mainly because theres little to compare it to, except what you see on standard broadcast TV. I mean don't get me wrong, its actually not that bad otherwise I won't watch it at all. I quite like the real style of looking at mainly a computer screen, its a welcome change from the crazy graphics you get in movies and some dramas. End of the day, I'll check out the new series and if its not a big step forward from the old series, I'll spend my time doing something else. I've already dropped other internet soaps for there lack of direction and quality.
So I was almost done with my RSS aggregator for the night when I read Jon's entry titled I Watch Shows, Not Tv. As I was reading through, I was in total agreement with Jon. Some choice quotes which made me laugh.
The medium had become totally uninteresting to me. Reality Tv was everywhere, sitcoms sucked, and ads were worse.
Enter Bittorrent, Hd rips, and RSS. Ever since I set up my system, not only do I watched more shows, but I watch a LOT of shows. I probably have at least 10 shows I watch weekly without missing a beat. But not only do I get to watch them at my own convenience
The only television I watch is the television I watch. That makes sense, I swear. When I’m done with a show. That’s it. I don’t flip to the next channel to see what else is on. I finish and move onto another project. Just sitting in front of your Tv leads to watching Hugh Hefner’s Whores jumping around pretending they have enough content to constitute television. I’d rather sit down catch 42 minutes of Lost or 28 minutes of Curb and be happy.
Totally! I have a very simlar setup to Jon, xbox media centre and all. And he's so right, me and Sarah watch a lot of shows including Lost series 2, Prison Break, Daily Show, etc, etc. When I was in hospital recently, the lovely nurse asked if I wanted the TV on, and without thinking I replied “No, I don't watch TV.” Bang just like that without thinking about it, then I realised what I just said. Honestly me and Sarah turn on the TV for the BBC news 10min update at about 8am in the morning then we turn off and listen to the slashdot review podcast if there is time. When we get back in the evening, we may turn on Channel4 news for 1 hour and maybe once in a while leave it on and watch grand designs or something like that afterwards. But usually we turn off have dinner together and maybe put on a show or listen to a podcast while we catch up with news, emails, etc. Even with the daily show on more4 every day now, Sarah's not interested because shes use to timeshifting it. She does'nt like the idea of turning on the daily show at 8:30pm every day and sitting in front of the TV.
Hey and why would we? With TV RSS we can store them and watch a whole load together with friends on a weekend or watch it the week after if we choose to.
Moving on, I read the related link and found the tons of comments mainly in agreement.
But I say all this and I know something doesnt quite fit.
I've heard about studies in the BBC which went down this route of the show being more important that the channel and TV its self. But these studies say when that is the case, people look for brands they can trust. Channels are a odd thing, if you live in the UK, you may think of BBC one as generally massmarket but higher class than ITV (my view not the BBC's view), BBC two more documentary's and nature programmes but still some comedies and mass market contnet. BBC Three, for people 35 and younger, somewhat like BBC two but with lots of comedies and reality tv. BBC four, highbrow documentary's and some news.
People use these types of thoughts to decide what channel they should wait on or check out. Remove the channel and people try and cling on to many other things like brand to tell them more about the programmes and there expected audience.
So although I'm with you Jon, I need to err on the side of caution because people need to make money without killing the distribution method (as they do now). Itunes video is a good move away from tv and towards shows and programmes.