This is a very informative video. Moderated by Guy Kawasaki.
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Category Archives: Community
How to tell you’re spamming DIGG
Now, you’re all familiar with the DIGG phenomenon. A few people digg your post and suddenly tens of thousands of people visit your blog.
I admit I have only managed to get it to work for me once (though I never tried hard anyway). My Starcraft 2 blog had a post with 1,500 diggs and around 50,000 visitors.
OK, here’s the funny bit (see on the right). That’s the captcha I got when I decided to submit another Starcraft 2 related post.
A funny coincidence or not?
Vietnam cyber dissident released
Vietnam has entered the spotlight as the next big thing in IT outsourcing. As the economy picks up pace, the contrast with Communist-led government is even more striking.
Today, BBC reports that the authorities has unexpectedly released Le Chi Quang, 34, who was convicted in 2002 because he posted online essays (blogged?) that were critical of the government. More from that story:
[Le Chi Quang] was jailed for four years in November 2002 … The Vietnamese foreign ministry said Quang would have to serve out a three-year term of house arrest which was given at the time of his detention.
Rights groups say at least six other cyber dissidents remain in jail.
Vietnam has introduced tough measure to monitor internet use. Internet cafe owners must keep records of all sites visited by their customers, including those deemed containing “bad and poisonous information”, for 30 days.
So much for citizen journalism in Vietnam. Bloggers beware…
BBC, citizen journalism, correspondent, free speech, Vietnam
Lighting web video
Poor video lighting isn’t something you can only find on the web. Amateur videos of all sorts suffer from its effects.
I wrote a little article on three-point lighting at the Wikipedia that describes the most basic lighting setup.
The three point lighting setup may be simple but it’s useful in 80% of cases – or even close to 100% if you’re shooting talking heads.
Let me give you an example of a bad lighting setup (see the image on the right). Both shots come from interviews that Miranda July did for her indie movie.
As you can see there’s a remarkable difference when you go from top to bottom. Note: the second one was shot by iFilm.
So what are the guys at iFilm doing right? Here’s a short list for you:
- Use soft light – a single large softbox is enough
- Use a fill light – if you don’t have a large softbox
- Use a back light – see that highlight on her hair, it creates much needed separation between subject and background
- Use a background light – if you’re shooting talking heads, it’s best if you use a background light with a color filter (blue) to improve the separation between subject and background
Apart from lighting, it seems that a little make up and a soft filter complete the magic.
For portraits, I recommend Tiffen’s Warm Soft/FX lens filters. Just make sure you turn the auto-focus off because sometimes it will hunt attemting to focus on the small particles in the lens filter.
filter, gonzo, journalism, lighting, user generated content, web2.0
BBC’s Huge Archive plans
This is a follow up to BBC’s Ashley Highfield (he’s BBC Director for New Media) plan to move BBC beyond traditional media.
The BBC has more than one million hours of video and audio plus supporting notes and scripts. The archive trial—closed to 20,000 consumers—will launch in May and is expected to last up to six months. It’s meant to gather info to use in proposing a “public service on-demand archive” that will require apprval by the BBC Trust and “to see where we should draw the line between a licence fee funded service and a commercial service.”
It will gauge interest in various old programs, how people want to see them and when—“‘lean-forward’ exploratory mode similar to web surfing, or as a scheduled experience more akin to TV viewing.” Highfield: “The BBC Archive would be an extension of the BBC’s seven-day catch-up on demand proposals, the BBC iPlayer.
As with that proposed service, the Archive journey has been, and will be, a long one. It’s a massive undertaking. Ensuring the right split between license fee funding and commercial funding will be complex.”
The statement comes from a planned presentation that Mr. Highfield is giving at the MipTV in Cannes. Note that BBC has already released a news archive online.
Citizen journalism vaguer than web 2.0
This rant has been triggered by a post at TechCrunch, which describes Topix.net’s brand transformation.
In short, Topix.net bought Topix.com and in the process decided to re-evaluate their product, brand, etc. According to their CEO, they asked themselves the question: “What do you do when your success … sucks?“. So what changed?
According to USA Today (~ sister company to Topix): “Topix.com homes in on citizen journalists.”
Who?
Citizen journalists, you know, people “who post stories and pictures online” (USA Today). Hmm, if they’re painting with such broad strokes, I don’t think they’ve missed anyone I know. Even my parents “post stories” by email.
It looks like all Topix wants is to recruit volunteers to post and moderate posts about their local communities. Why didn’t they say so?
So thank you, Doctor Gonzo (Hunter S. Thompson), for providing us with a term that’s much clearer and less susceptible to hype: gonzo journalism.
If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
gonzo, journalism, social, UGC, user generated content, web2.0
Marc Cuban was right
Marc Cuban was telling us back in October that Google is crazy to buy Youtube.
A lot of guys said Marc Cuban is crazy to say that.
His main point was that Google will turn into a GIANT target for all content companies who have their content pirated and put on display at Youtube.
It seems Marc is not so crazy after all as the first big claim has landed in Google’s lap. A cool billion dolllars in damages coming from Viacom.
A snippet from Viacom’s statement:
YouTube is a significant, for-profit organization that has built a lucrative business out of exploiting the devotion of fans to others’ creative works in order to enrich itself and its corporate parent Google. Their business model, which is based on building traffic and selling advertising off of unlicensed content, is clearly illegal and is in obvious conflict with copyright laws. In fact, YouTube’s strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.
In his latest post (aptly named You Go Viacom), Marc says:
…they should continue to sue the hell out of Google. Google blew it. They had no confidence in user generated content generating enough traffic to drive Youtube so they closed their eyes to the obvious. There is absolutely no value to a media company in letting users actually upload video.
copyright, google, Marc Cuban, streaming, UGC, viacom, video, youtube
BBC warms up to Youtube
BBC is (one of) my favorite news source. I usually tune to it in my car and sometimes I switch between CNN and BBC World Service on TV.
They’ve been putting most of their radio shows as podcasts on their site, so maybe it was only a matter of time before they decided to put video as well.
Youtube has announced (with great fanfare) its pairing with BBC. This is the good news. The bad news is only “trailers” will be uploaded to Youtube and the complete videos will stay at BBC’s site. So it will more like Apple’s movie trailer service rather than a library of BBC content.
Youtuber goes to Hollywood
Lonelygirl15, one of Youtube’s most popular “stars” will be making her big screen debut soon.
You can see her walking with Hollywood teen-heavyweight, Lindsay Lohan.
As far as rumors go, the plan is to promote the movie via vlogging. Stay tuned for the I Know Who Killed Me vlog.
On the positive side, this is some validation that vlogging could lead to something BIGGER. It’s debatable if this bigger thing is always better as Amanda Congdom found out when she left Rocketboom for ABC.
Podtech: Get your audio right
It’s a surprise to many vodcast filmmakers that audio is often more difficult to master than video. One reason is that video is pretty much WYSIWYG. Also, people are (somewhat) used to seeing poor-lit video on the web.
Podtech is producing podcasts by the bucket load, yet they can’t get the right audio levels. Proof below:
Exhibit A: Too much talking in the background
Exhibit B: You can bearly hear Scoble’s comments
audio, audio levels, mic, microphone, podcasts, podtech, vodcasts