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December 28, 2004
eXeem beta.
Someone posted a link to an eXeem beta download in the comments over at unmediated today. gonna dust off the old XP box and take a look at it later today.
Posted by yatta at 2:05 PM | TrackBack
December 27, 2004
Lookin fine wit yo bad ass self...
Give Drew props for his redesign of the Rocketboom main page. It used to have the layout of a text blog. Site navigation was in a narrow column to the left, while content sat in a column offset to the right. This works well if you're scanning lines of text, but didn't work so well when the content was spatially static like video.
With the new layout, the video is front and center with thumbnail links underneath. (Love the thumbnails!) It just makes sense. I hope the archives end up looking exactly like this.
Or maybe not exactly. I wonder what it'd look like if he replaced the "previous | next" text links with image links instead. Or maybe after about five minutes in Photoshop, I don't have to wonder at all:
Kinda works, kinda doesn't. All the attention gained by placing the day's video in the center is chipped away by the size of the previous and next vidcaps. I'll email Andrew and see what he thinks. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm playing with his schtuff. ;)
By the way, check out the dance dance revolution clip in the middle of the r-b christmas montage. Cracked me up.
Posted by yatta at 8:21 PM | Comments (2)
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demandmedia || Seymour Hersh: Bush Wins. What Happens?: In a talk given September 19, 2004, Seymour Hersh predicts the Bush "victory" and warns what a second administration will entail.
The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami Resource blog: Using a blog to spread news and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.
BBC R&D - MixTV: Technology which enables the merging of real and virtual elements - MixTV allows free camera movement and zooming and enables interaction with virtual elements in production.
Testing cell phones ties up 911 / CHP: Call someone else with new gift: Christmas morning, the annual cell phone frenzy as thousands of people open up their shiny new presents and, just to see if the thing really works, start punching in the first number that comes to mind -- 911.
Posted by yatta at 8:19 PM
Cally's got mittens.
We can now commence with the 'Peace on Earth' thing.
Posted by yatta at 5:21 PM
December 23, 2004
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C I N E C Y C L E: Brooklyn-based film production company devoted to urban bicycle culture.
EffecTV: realtime video effects: EffecTV is a real-time video effector. You can watch TV or video through amazing effectors.
Live Cut - Multi camera editor for Final Cut Pro: Live Cut is a tool for editing multi camera shots (up to 4 cameras). Editing can be done in realtime, by simply switching between four synchronized sources. Live Cut is used as a preprocessor for Apple's Final Cut Pro.
Livid Union: Union transforms your computer into an all-in-one live video-mixing studio with hundreds of effects, live video inputs, and complete MIDI integration just to name a few features
veejay - Video Editing & Visual Instrument: Veejay is a live performance tool featuring simple non-linear editing and mixing from multiple sources. You can load multiple video files, record new clips from existing clips or (live) streams.
Avid High-Definition Market Brief [pdf]: Avid is offering an "HD Handbook" for free download as a pdf file. Only a small amount of it is specific to their products. They include a long glossary with diagrams and easy to understand definitions.
modul8 - live video mixing on OS X: "Modul8 is a MacOS X application designed for real time video mixing and compositing. It has been designed for VJs and live performers."
Gennum Corporation - Using the GT4122 & GT4124 Video Mixer ICs: Build a DIY videomixer.
Resolume VJ software: Resolume is an application for live video performances. Trigger video clips, Flash files, and pictures. Scratch, apply real-time effects
Posted by yatta at 3:35 PM
"Dancing with the one what brung you..."
... that's how Cinema Minima states their link policy on "reblogging" interesting posts. Makes sense to me. We've kinda had a similar unstated rule for the unmediated reblog -- hence the "via" link in each non-original post -- but sometimes it can get a bit sticky, like when someone realizes that their name isn't in the credits. (By the way, has anyone else noticed that Don Cheadle's name doesn't appear in the roll for the Oceans 11 remake? Just an aside.) Divvying up the link love can be a tricky thing.
I probably spend a good two hours a week thinking about this, particularly while riding the subway. Not just for the credit issue, mind you, but also for the meme thing. How can you track the spread of an idea? How do you measure the influence of a source? How fragile is the trust inherent in these connections?
And, ultimately, can you guard against the exploitation of these connections without being authoritarian?
Posted by yatta at 2:16 AM
December 21, 2004
melissa on stage @ 12.35a
Posted by yatta at 2:55 PM
December 20, 2004
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gapingvoid: happy trolls: The blog-frequenting Happy Trolls are quite different animals from the internet trolls of 1997. They’re not trying to turn a Martha Stewart chatroom about home-decoration into a foul-mouthed, hostile flame-war about whether or not the Holocaust actually
Fear factor: 44 percent of Americans queried in Cornell national poll favor curtailing some liberties for Muslim Americans: In a study to determine how much the public fears terrorism, almost half of respondents polled nationally said they believe the U.S. government should -- in some way -- curtail civil liberties for Muslim Americans, according to a new survey released today
LinspireMobilePC: 2.9lb Linux laptop for $800.
Posted by yatta at 5:39 PM
December 17, 2004
Crossing The Bridge @ 10.34a
Posted by yatta at 11:57 AM
JayTV (BrowseTV Redux?)
Funny how things work out.
Every now and again I get an email asking if BrowseTV is going to be back on the air anytime soon which is so wonderfully flattering. Yesterday I received three. It's really disappointing to have to respond with a "no", that I don't have time to get to a TV studio anymore, that streaming it over the net isn't as interesting (for the show), and that the niche BrowseTV filled is already being explored by videoblogs like RocketBoom. But while RocketBoom explores some of the same content as BTV, there's still one thing that I miss and that's the interactivity. Because the live camera was iChat (AIM) based, viewers would text chat with me online and on the air. The text was always fun but half a step away from what's really interesting: interactive video on TV.
Enter Jay Dedman. Yesterday Jay hooked up a webcam to a computer in a TV studio in Manhattan and asked people to do video chats on the air with him, live. The results were a lot more fun than BrowseTV ever was.
The next step is to get people to submit regular TV programming by webcam which -- knowing Jay -- will come any day now. ;)
Posted by yatta at 11:46 AM
December 16, 2004
tag the planet, free the content, or just start anew?
Had a really good meetup at Jay's place this past weekend. Josh was there. And I got to meet Peter, Mica, and Mason for the first time.
While talking about content feeds for both the me-tv and ANT projects, I started thinking out loud about all of the user-generated content out there without RSS feeds, without metadata tags, and -- unfortunately -- without open-content licenses. Not everyone is videoblogging, but there are a ton of people out there already making their own content.
Even if we don't pull off the citizens' media equivalent of drilling for oil in Alaska, there's about two tons of viral video and potty humor already on the web. There are the folks who want to post video of their greatest acts, from skateboarders to the socially uninhibited (NSFW). There is a sea of fans out there who've taken control of their media by taking their favorite video game footage, anime, and mp3s in order to remix and re-contextualize it all into homebrew music videos and bastard bootlegs. All of this content is out there, and it wold be wonderful to tag all of this content and start feeding it into me-tv.
But metadata isn't the only problem with much of this media. Even if we did arm the world with webjay accounts and set them to playlisting it all, it'd still be a legal nightmare. Much of the homebrew and viral content out there was created with video that hasn't been licensed and audio that hasn't been cleared. So for something like me-tv or ANT or, say, a P2P television service, all of this content is unusable.
So what do we do? Abandon it all? Tell everyone that from this day forward, all work intended for distribution through these services should be licensed openly, uploaded to friendly servers, and set creators' pleas of "but how do I make money?" on the back burner until someone comes up with a good participatory media business plan?
Well, perhaps, yes.
Posted by yatta at 2:39 AM | Comments (1)
December 15, 2004
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BLADOX: Inexpensive circuit boards and software for smal sensors
Atheros develops WiFi access point on a chip
Geekcorps Mali: Geekcorps is teaching Malian radio stations and community centers how to work with Linux-based tools and software, connect the systems by WiFi over several kilometers, and maintain both with minimal expense.
Gary Webb is dead.: "Gary Webb, a former Mercury News investigative reporter, author and legislative staffer who ignited a firestorm with his controversial stories, died Friday in an apparent suicide in his suburban Sacramento home."
Posted by yatta at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)
December 13, 2004
post-Hanami bliss.
Just found this on the CF card from last week.
Eyebeam put together a very successful, very fun benefit event last week. so after all the guests had left and all the sushi and sake consumed (or, at least, about to be), Harner, Peretti, and Koh reveled in a bit of post-Hanami bliss:
Posted by yatta at 5:46 PM | Comments (1)
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Smarty : template Engine: Although Smarty is known as a "Template Engine", it would be more accurately described as a "Template/Presentation Framework." That is, it provides the programmer and template designer with a wealth of tools to automate tasks commonly dealt with at the programming level
cmsmatrix.org - The Content Management Comparison Tool: This site is provided as a community service to everyone interested in looking for a means to manage web site content. Here you can discuss, rate, and compare the various systems available on the market today.
Romeos told not to post notes on Juliet’s house: Love letters attached to Romeo and Juliet's (Verona) castle to be thrown away, replaced by video screen displaying text messages.
The Herald-Mail ONLINE - County couple sues Wal-Mart over lyrics.: A Washington Cty couple who bought an Evanescence compact disc and DVD at a Frederick, Md., Wal-Mart filed a class action suit in Maryland on Thursday because the CD did not have a parental advisory label about explicit language. (MD is a blue state, btw.
NEWS.com.au | Saddam, aides on hunger strike (December 13, 2004): Saddam Hussein and 11 top leaders of his regime awaiting trial for crimes against humanity have gone on hunger strike in their US detention centre, one of their lawyers said today.
FaceStation - avatar based facial animation: FaceStation is a suite of software applications that work together to give you a complete toolset for facial animation. Just point a camera at your face and enjoy hands-free, natural facial animation
Posted by yatta at 1:54 PM
December 12, 2004
The problem with "excluding" content
The perfect Way is without difficulty,
Save that it avoids picking and choosing.
Only when you stop liking and disliking
Will all be clearly understood.
A split hair's difference,
And heaven and earth are set apart!
If you want to get the plain truth,
Be not concerned with right and wrong,
The conflict between right and wrong
Is the sickness of the mind.
(from the Hsing Hsing Ming.)
Posted by yatta at 10:35 PM
that bit about not needing a desktop "video RSS reader"...
Forget I said it.
Yeah, it hit me yesterday. There are a ton of reasons why someone would want to use a desktop RSS enclosure viewer. It can be so much more than a caching device. I was probably guilty of the same logic that wrote off text newsreaders when they first came around.
Posted by yatta at 12:32 PM
December 11, 2004
Remember Run DMC's music video for 'Christmas in Hollis'?
Well I'm announcing my intention to do a shot for shot remake of it one day. I'm not exactly sure when, I'm not exactly sure why, but I want to do one, dammit. It needs to be done.
Posted by yatta at 1:44 AM | Comments (1)
December 10, 2004
The view from DUMBO
The Brooklyn Bridge as seen from DUMBO. It's a bit foggy out tonight.
Posted by yatta at 11:30 PM
Apps and services for RSS 2.0 enclosures
On the audvidsyn list, Ryan inquired about a way to convert any XML document into an RSS 2.0 doc with enclosures.
I'd been thinking about the same thing recently, looking at a bunch of existing stuff including FeedBurner's SmartCast and 2RSS's RSS 2.0 Generator script. Eventually I settled on futzing with the Python-based FeedParser for a couple of weeks. In my case, I wanted a new way to bring new content into the vogbrowser. I had started using vogfeed with a cronjob and it was the kludgiest kludge I've ever kludged. (Well, except for that emergency where I had to run four channels of cablecast TV by forcing the master control automation to take commands from FileMaker 4.1. It was my greatest Rube Goldberg evar.)
All this is to say that it eventually led me down the path of rethinking the vogbrowser. I mean, it's more a service than an app to begin with. So the only way the service has value (well, the primary way) is if I'm prepared to give the support necessary to make it an authoritative source for parsing RSS feeds with video. Pair this with my expectation that Feedster, Bloglines, and Blogdigger may adopt vogbrowser-like interfaces for viewing enclosure feeds soon (play it in an iframe, duh), and suddenly I'm feeling like the Martin Short character in that SNL skit on synchronized swimmers.
So maybe I stop working on the vogbrowser and lend Peter a hand on me-tv instead. I'm gonna meet up with him and Jay this weekend. Maybe they can help me think through it all.
Posted by yatta at 3:29 PM | Comments (1)
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casino versus japan dot com: website of casino versus japan
Verb For Shoe: The communicating and self-repairing shoes: VectraSense Technologies, an MIT spin-off company, has developed a computerized shoe product “Verb for Shoe” that provides computerized shoe adjustments according to your movements. (Actual site is a very annoying flash movie. Stay away.)
FOXBlocker - Keep The Radical Right Out Your Home By Filtering Out FOX News!: "FOXBlocker is an innovative new product that filters out the FOX News network. Using a proprietary technology, the FOXBlocker filters out FOX News from your cable lineup. Protect yourself and your family, or send one to a misguided right wing friend."
Quite Possibly the First Time the Word "Blog" was Used in Comics: In 1959, the Lois Lane comic featured a story in which our two favourite reporters end up in one of those "valleys that time forgot"... What makes this comic noteworthy is the use of the word "Blog" as the name of a cave-dwelling nebbish.
Wired News: Video Feeds Follow Podcasting: With the success of podcasting -- a recent technology that lets anyone subscribe to and play back audio feeds on an iPod -- the natural next step is technology that can do the same with video.
Posted by yatta at 12:27 AM | Comments (2)
December 9, 2004
chris @ jess at 3.08am
Posted by yatta at 1:57 AM
December 8, 2004
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Mobile Audience: New blog on audience and mobile art.
Forever Network: mini-documentaries made of the media you leave behind.: Forever LifeStories are made by families working with our specially trained Biographers. They may include photos, text, video....These items are captured digitally and preserved as a permanent part of the Forever Memorial Archive.
3ivx D4 4.5 - MPEG-4 Compression: 3ivx is an MPEG-4 toolkit that supports MPEG-4 Video, MPEG-4 Audio and the MP4 file format. 3ivx D4 4.5 allows video and audio to be compressed to a fraction of its original size while maintaining high image quality.
just in teractive: CTCS505-Final - Annotated Video On The Subject of Play. : A video essay about interactive media, literacy and vocabulary, and games. Interviews with Malcolm McCullough, Liz Goodman, Doug Church, Jessica Hammer and Greg Costikyan.
envirosphere: Obsessive anime fansub/digisub tracking site.
MetaFilter discussion on Dow's "admission of responsibility" for Bhopal. : Dow Chemical Co said on Friday that there was no basis whatsoever in a BBC World report saying that it had accepted responsibility for India's Bhopal disaster. ("Jude Finisterra". Chuckle.)
Teilhard de Chardin - IS NOOGENESIS PROGRESSING? : Thus the result of Noogenesis is the birth of the Noosphere: a more mature, expansive and definitive layer, in an ongoing process of convergence of the collective thought of Homo Sapiens. It is open to every subtle modification from the primitive stage
miserychick dot net | v.5 » so, what the hell is a reBlog? : while eating dinner, i mentioned to my roommate that “i get to be a guest reblogger for the next two weeks, starting tonight!” the expression was only met by a blank stare and a couple of blinks, like, ‘you get to be a who?’
Posted by yatta at 11:46 AM
soph @ 12.38am
Posted by yatta at 1:25 AM | Comments (2)
December 6, 2004
Note to Self: In the future everyone will lifeblog and every editor will have a job.
To be fleshed out and rationalized into real thoughts later.
Lots of people (or their devices, rather) can capture and classify data. Moblogging, playlisting, social bookmarking.... People already know how to tag it all, but how many of them can find the story in it? Who's going to form the gestalts?
Will there be a need for people to make sense of all of their information? Will they want the expert storytellers out there to make sense of all of their data?
Can I pay someone to Spielberg my videoblog? Can someone make my audioblog sound like This American Life?
Will there be a renaissance for wedding videographer-tasseographers? (j/k)
There are so many unemployed media makers out there. What if I could turn your narrative into a Jerry Bruckheimer movie? Would that be worth something to you?
Will we replace all of the world's astrologers with data miners?
I think I just stated the same idea ten times. Remind me not to think too hard after a ton of Indian food and early morning bloodwork. I might sprain something.
Posted by yatta at 4:00 PM | Comments (2)
Building tables for Hanami @ Eyebeam.
Busy day today. Wonderful view from way atop the scaffolding, though.
-kc.
Posted by yatta at 1:21 PM
vipodder = vogbrowser = videobrowser: ideas with a life of their own.
With all of the stuff going on at Eyebeam lately, I haven't had the time to catch up with work on the vogbrowser. Or, more appropriately, I haven't had time to rebuild my project files since my laptop was stolen. Well, no matter none b/c interesting ideas (just a server-side vipodder) find a way of manifesting themselves despite anyone's personal schedule. Take a look at Peter's wonderful me-tv videobrowser.
I had dropped the idea of a desktop app (or a flash based-client) since the only purpose I could see of producing a desktop video viewer would be if you had an offline device (a teevee? a viPod?) to cache to. iPodder exists because you can't get the data to the device easily without it. As it stands now, ain't much of anyone hooking their laptops up to their televisions to view web video, and the bulk of the folks watching this stuff are doing it on broadband connections, anyway. The video is available on demand.
But that doesn't mean a video caching app won't be needed in the near future. That's why I'm really looking forward to Jay and Josh's semi-secret ANT project. It's a fun time for those making video. Now we just have to bring the rest of the world along.
Posted by yatta at 12:11 PM
December 5, 2004
liveblogging the pixies.
Just kinda. We're post 'Datsuns' pre 'Pixies right now. Drove three hours down to
"what-the-fuck's-up-with-the-local-govt" Camden, NJ with Brad to see the Pixies at the Tweeter Center. (Didn't get tix in time for the NYC shows.) Now we're killing time between sets wondering how many former presidents were senators first, if the vastness of the space made the Datsuns suck (or if they just plain suck), and whether former hipsters complaining about the current crop of young hipsters is funny or not. Half of the crowd around us is complaining about how old they are. The other half is complaining about all of the old people. We're just enjoying the show.
Posted by yatta at 9:44 PM
December 4, 2004
Big up to Terry Heaton.
Just wanted to give a quick acknowledgement to Terry Heaton of Donata Communications. He dropped us a good word in an email to unmediated a couple of weeks ago but it was lost in yatta's Great PowerBook Theft of 2004. Besides writing one of the most cited media blogs at unmediated, his thoughts have been an invaluable referral whenever I consult with folks from the teevee world.
Posted by yatta at 4:28 PM
December 3, 2004
callaghan @ 12.30am
Posted by yatta at 3:56 PM
December 2, 2004
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Burn The Mall:
UNofficial INdTV Forums: Forums and FAQ for applicants to the IndTV network.
Posted by yatta at 9:23 PM
December 1, 2004
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Language Guesser: Languid is a statistical language identifier. Give it at least 20 characters of UTF-8 encoded text and hope for the best.
pasta and vinegar : [Research] How to depict mobile behavior: Analysing and evaluating mobile applications require some visualisations. Jeff Axup, Nicola Balwell and Stephen Viller proposes 2 kinds of visualisations: 1. an information flow chart 2. a contextual information map.The former is based on an information m
CJR Issue 6: November/December 2004 - Blinded By Science: How "balanced" coverage lets the scientific fringe hijack reality
Esquire Cover Gallery for 1934:
HighPoint-RocketRAID 1820A: 8-channel SATA Hardware RAID card with drivers for OS X.
LA Times: PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror: Remember the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), which was closed after it was revealed the office intended to plant false news stories in the international media? "Much of OSI's mission...has been assumed by other offices throughout the U.S. government"
MacDevCenter.com: Modifying Stickies: In this article, you're about to learn how to update your Stickies application to give it abilities that its authors probably never considered.
PacketCable - Specifications: PacketCable 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and Multimedia specifications and technical reports are publicly available from this page.
Sputnik AP 220: "A carrier-grade, high-powered Wi-Fiâ„¢-compliant 802.11b/g wireless network access point (AP). With 200 mWatt transmit output, industry-standard power over Ethernet (PoE) capability, and a secure wall-mount enclosure with integrated theft protection."
TimesDispatch.com | Boom bust yields teen suspect: 15 year old kid makes big boom with soda bottle and household chemicals. Police call it a bomb. Charge him.
Posted by yatta at 6:59 PM
Ceremonial first Flickr mobile upload.
Finally, my first personal upload to a Flickr account. I feel like the boy in class who was left back a grade.
Posted by yatta at 11:19 AM