Tag: youtube

Miss America Pageant gives more scholarships to women than any other?

Somebody pointed me at John Oliver’s Last week Tonight show, the other day. They said I will be spitting blood watching it. And to be honest they were not wrong.

Unfortunately to watch it, you need to be in America or on a VPN as its geo blocked.

However basically its all about how The Miss America Pageant claim to give more scholarships to women than any other organisation in America. And if you like me and John Oliver are thinking this has got be bollox. You would be wrong!

Yes a organisation which objectifies women, parades them around like dolls, dismisses women who have had children and many other things. Gives out more scholarships to women than any other…. in America!

Seriously wtf! *sad face*

We’ve all danced on a treadmill

Blame Herb and Laura. It kind of looks like me (same kind of build I guess?), but trust me its not! I use to be a slick dancer but no longer. However, I posed this comment,

“…although I have experimented on a trendmill me and Sarah bought many years ago. Mainly dancing on it rather than smooth moves… You tell me you’ve never tried moonwalking on a treadmill!?”

And as I thought, I can’t be the only one to try it… Quick dive into the vast ocean which is youtube…

Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the not new concept of… Moon walking on a treadmill.

Instapaper added video support, since when?

The Magazine

I switched from Pocket/Read it later ages ago when instapaper started supporting Kindle deliver. I use it all the time and at some points, its been the main reason for having my paperwhite kindle. The nice thing is its pretty much automatic, and I tend to just turn the kindle on and it automatically gets the latest instapaper over wifi.

I side stepped the Kindle’s annotation system by having the same document on my phone and being able tweet it directly. Its all pretty great, although I did consider using diigo’s readitlater feature, especially now the mobile app is better.

However I have wanted a solution for saving non youtube videos (I use watch later for youtube at the moment). The amount of times someones posted a video to Vimeo and I have had to bookmark it or something else.

Well it seems somewhere in the updates, they added support for video from youtube and vimeo! Great stuff my pro payment is well spent, not only that the ifttt channel has been updated with a number of improvements, but I really need to start using the highlights/annotation feature more.

Dating in the 90’s vs Now, which do you prefer?

Tim continues his run of good quality links on twitter. This time something from Buzzfeed Yellow Youtube channel.

Dating in the 90’s verses now… is a witty look nostalgic trip back to dating in the 90’s (loving the drink reversal btw) Something I see a throw back to in many dating apps. I hear everyday from certain friends, I just want to meet someone like the old days… Well this is a reminder of what it really was like.

I’m not saying things are better now, just different. As I said in my Primeconf talk, the geeks won but it was a pyrrhic victory (not peridoc victory as I thought it was spelled in my talk). People have been left alienated and hurt by the way things have changed. I’m unsure if people will get over it or it will swing back the other way?

Fascinating reading the comments on youtube following the video.

Gareth Ferguson writes…

Virtual dating is for cowards. Nothing says success like meeting a girl somewhere in public, flirt for a lil bit, and get the number. There is no mystery, what you see is what you get. When using the Internet, its common for fat chicks to use old pictures of themselves so they can give the illusion that this is who you are talking with. Where is the confidence in that? Then you get persons who seem to be so interesting online til you meet them in person and its like BORING!!! Give me a real date than a virtual date any day

As you can imagine that caused a massive load of comments… but there are some interesting ones mixed in.

atomic jacob replied with…

it has nothing to do about not having courage, its infact the opposite. women need to stop taking the role of submissive and have the courage or balls go out and get what they want. i admire women who have that sort of courage, and that doesnt make me weak or lacking balls(i liked that term lol)

On balance, I prefer to float between both ways. There is a feeling that a nostalgic look back is waste of time really? And ever so easy, maybe this part of growing old? Sorry things are the way they are, learn to adapt… Change is the only constant.

The fight over dating will rage on, and anyone who manages to get the balance right will make a killing, specially if they don’t manipulate users too…

Perceptive learning resources

Future of StoryTelling

For the last few Wednesdays I have been watching the Future of StoryTelling hangouts online. I first heard about them from Matt Locke and Frank Rose last year when I gatecrashed a planned hangout with Perceptive Radio.

The Future of StoryTelling speaker Hangout series continues on Wednesday, January 15th, with a discussion about interactive gaming, and how great entertainment can transport you from your daily life and immerse you in another world.

You can watch the whole thing here on youtube. and last weeks with Google creative labs Robert Wong. This weeks Including my question which is based off my noticing, interaction and narrative keeps getting thrown around together when they are quite different things.

The guest this week was Microsoft’s Shannon Loftis, General Manager at Xbox Entertainment Studios. She said a lot of things I agreed with but switching narrative for interactive, paused me to think about the origins of Perceptive Media.

I’m not going to say Games and interactive experiences are not storytelling. I would be very wrong, but what I’m surprised at is Microsoft have this amazing device with cutting edge sensors and they sound like they are doing some perception. But they are only using it for Games? Shannon even talks about the golden age of Television then slides off into Games again.

Real shame…

Anyway there was a question asking about what this all can mean for children. Most of the guests give some answers which I couldn’t disagree with but Charles Melcher (founder of future of storytelling) jumps in with something quite profound.

I clipped it and put it on Archive.org but its something I’ve been thinking about since the early days of perceptive media.

The beauty of media which adapts, responds or as I prefer preconceives the audience and the context. Is it can unfold one way and unfold another way for someone else. Like Charles, I’m dyslexic and sometimes just can’t get my head around learning resources which are written for a majority of people.

I understand why its been that way. The cost of creating multiple versions of a learning resource is going to be a bad idea from a resourcing idea. But that only applies if you build your resources in a solid non-flexible way (like a blob) your going to run into the same problem described.  However if you have something more fluid (generative) or object based you can change aspects on the fly.

Simple example, a Book (any book) vs a Ereader (like a Kindle). I’m sure I’ve talked about this before but line lengths is a common issue with people who are dyslexic. We tend to loose what line we’re on for a split second.

I can reshape the lines lengths to make it more readable for myself (thats interactive). An Ereader with sensors could follow my eyes patterns and reshape the line lengths and fonts to give me the best reading experience (now thats perceptive). This all works because the text is digital and therefore an object which can be manipulated.

Back to Charles, a resource which can be manipulated by a person is good but one which can be manipulated by a process of data and sensors is even better (if they are working to aid you). Combining/aggregating resources together gets you to a position where you can weave a story together. I won’t bore you with my campfire == perceptive media equals and this is what humans do thoughts. But I do feel this is the future of storytelling. Charles vision is achievable and its something I’d love to talk to BBC Learning about in more depth.

I’ll be honest and say not only has this one got me writing but I also started writing after hearing Robert Wong talking last week about leadership and inspiring people.

A couple of things people have sent me recently

Been a little quiet recently, mainly due to the season of partying and ending up ill with the flu…

Anyway I’m back…

Ok silly and funny… Thanks Tim Dobson.

Just so Tragic! Thanks Martinrue

Forgot who sent this to me but its a interesting one… How much eye contact, depends on your aim I guess.

Linked data on youtube?

Triples on youtube?

I thought I’d try writing some RDF/Turtle as I see it on youtube.

<http://youtu.be/jP6kzKygaOs>
dc:title "Jason Silva on London Real talks about Vanilla Sky";
dc:publisher "London Real";
dc:subject [
  dc:subject "Vanilla Sky"
  dc:type "Film" imdb:homepage <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259711/>
  tmdb:homepage <http://www.themoviedb.org/movie/1903-vanilla-sky>
  ]
cities:city "London".

Kind of reminds me of when people started hacking Triples into Flickr by using Machine tags. Still its interesting to see Youtube adding the ability to add a triple in a nice clean way (if its a well used ontology of course)

Kevin Rose interviews Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram

I assume this was recorded during or just before Facebook decided to buy Instagram?

Very interesting interview like most of the Foundation interviews.

Kevin Rose and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom sit down to chat about Systrom’s growing up with computers, his time spent at Stanford, and landing an internship at a startup destined to be worth billions. This ultimately led to launching his own startup which is now 15 million users strong and one of the fastest growing social networks on the planet!

Host of seraphim, gives me the chills every time

I remember listening to The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance, a while ago but I remember listening to it again soon after coming out of hospital last year. I believe I stopped dead when hearing it again during one of my more introspective times.

Then I heard it again while watching the Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, so I checked out the tune on YouTube, and usually the youtube comments are to be ignored, however this time it was amazing…

kristofolof – still gives me the chills every time i listen to it

jnrivers  – When the weight of the world stops you from feeling, listen to this song with a glass of wine and you will feel alive again. The Host of Seraphim is a masterpiece.

ttsmoke  – if i had one wish i would wish to know everything about everything in this universe.

JakotsuTheOne  – sad, disturbing, soul shaking and beautiful.

Emillysilly – I never cry…but this song makes me weep like a child…

morfridor – my body move by its self… like my soul want to come out from my body.

meatballsNspaghetti  – Overwhelming. Something powerful hit my heart, can’t explain just an incredible feeling.

WauZzeWauzZ – to be honest, i got tears in my eyes…it has been a long time that i had tears in my eyes…but i love it this time.

superknuffi1  – this song is amazing.i don’t know how to describe it.I makes us feel sorrow and happiness at the same time……

TheSCOTCHSOLACE  – Music which transcends this world – music from another plane of existence.

You get the idea… Anyway I bought the original tune and the remastered version from Amazon’s Mpeg3 store.

The Batman Complex

If only… But what a amazing piece of work by a fan.

And so, as promised, this is the follow up to the teaser. Here we have a full length (well, a bit longer than the norm, but hey, what can you do…hahaha) theatrical trailer that delves a little deeper into the story behind The Batman Complex. As explained in the teaser, the gist of the idea revolves around a few fun topics, mainly the whole “what is real?” train of thought, and also every fans desire, deep down or upfront, to be Batman at least once in their lives. LOL. And so, I tried to craft a story where we see what happens when someone takes their dream of being Batman a little bit too far. An idea, after all, is a truly resilient parasite. 😉

While some of it is still left a bit ambiguous (both unintentionally and intentionally – while there’s only so much that can be strung together, I often like to leave a little bit open so as to see what fellow fans are able to imagine/create), I believe it offers a bit more than the teaser. As you might be able to tell, the theatrical trailer takes on less of a “horror” vibe than the teaser. For this extended look, I wanted to focus more on the character aspects (and a bit of the tragedy as well), and attempt to move past the initial shock of the psychological twist. One aspect I tried to hint at was the paralleling descent of both Bruce and Cobb. As Cobb and the team go deeper into Bruce’s mind, they start to encounter the truly dark issues that his subconscious houses. As a result, Cobb himself gets caught up in the obsession of all that lingers in the mind of a Batman. There are a couple fun things in there that are best left to surprise, but all in all, I’m relatively happy with how it turned out. It’s fairly fast paced and doesn’t leave much room to breath, which helps amplify the tension I think. But that’s just me. I hope it works just as well as the teaser did.

As for the future of the project, I’m not sure what’s next. I don’t think I’ll do a second theatrical trailer. Maybe a couple of TV spots, but other than that, I think I’ll let this one remain as it is. We’ll see. Perhaps I’ll be further inspired by some other ideas that’ll come to me in a dream… 😉

Google bought youtube and they laughed….

Google is buying video-sharing website YouTube for $1.65bn (£883m) in shares. So is this is a gamble or a winning investment?

Is this the best business model for an internet start-up? Have a clever idea, build a large audience while burning through lots of money, and wait to be bought by Google?

No matter how you look at it, you have to admit Google really did get a bargain with Youtube.com. Its now a corner stone of the web.

Funny enough further in the same piece…

YouTube is not MySpace

A few months ago the number of YouTube users overtook that of the web’s other great networking site, MySpace. Last year, MySpace was snapped up by old media giant Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation for $580m. This, though, is not about who paid more for how many eyeballs. It’s about the underlying dynamics.

Thats pretty funny with the current state of Myspace

What is it with White chicks and Gang signs?

Me and Sarah use to laugh our asses off at this video. Why because of the hilarity of the fact most white woman I know, when faced with a camera will pull some crazy pose and throw some kind of gesture with there hands. Why? Why oh why? Now to be fair not everyone does this but most do. Its like some kind of meme which has spread deeply in the consciousness of the woman of our little planet. To see the effects you need to breaks out a camera and ask to say cheese, bizarre!

The weird thing is, not many men know what I mean when I mention it. So for those men, here’s exactly what I mean.

I can’t work out if its a cultural thing either because I’ve known non-westernised woman to also throw a few signs when having themselves shot. What makes things even worst/sad is I’ve seen quite a few dating profiles pictures on Okcupid and many others (there’s plenty on plenty of fish, bad pun ignore me). One of the girls I’ve been out on a date with had all types of signs all over her profile pictures. I so wanted to ask her, so what the heck is with all the gang signs? Do you think its funny or something? Of course I never did, mainly because we had one date and never saw each other again (lucky escape I feel).

Of course this will be in my folder for geeks talk sexy part 2: The other half of population. Its very easy to imagine all men are weird (some more that others of course) but in actual fact woman are equally as weird. We’re a perfect fit for each other maybe? 🙂

If you want to see more of this type of thing and want to have your own say, sign up on the geeks talk sexy eventbrite page.

Inception on youtube

Imran showed me a video about inception (massive spoiler alert, do not watch before you seen the film) over twitter and I started to check out the related videos, theres some really funny stuff out there.