I do this more often than I recognise. I used to find it very rewarding working with and teaching people who knew much less then me, and it made me think about what it was I was actually teaching them.

Working with the interweb is … just easy for me now. Mac, PC, Linux, HTML/CSS bugs, open source, doc types, user agents, bit-rates, it all makes sense to me.

So when I found these video posted by Google (via penn-olson), I was reminded that the world is full of people who know much less than I assume.

It is no surprise that Google are the people behind this PR / awareness stunt, they are battling to get into the Browser market, and, more importantly, they are aiming to deliver A LOT of media and services through the browser moving forward, to the point of which, the Chrome OS will feel a lot more like a browser than a traditional OS like Windows.

Here’s the spiffy little ‘info-mercial’ they knocked-up to help all those people unable to distinguish a website from a piece of software. (Do they really think any of them will find it ??)

So anyway….  nice of them to help everybody out…  – but, i doubt we will all be so keen to lose our desktops as Google hope…

In the meantime, be sure and choose the right browser for your needs…

*cough* Firefox FTW !

This is nothing odd, as ive watched most of the ASP events this year in the exact same way.

But in the corner of my eye for the last 5 days has been the little Hurley/Facebook logo from the corner, announcing that the expression session is going to be live on Facebook.

Curiosity got the better of me and I had to go check it out.

Hurley Logo

It turns out Hurley are pretty on-it in terms of Social Media and Networking…. and the Facebook site is just beginning.

http://www.facebook.com/Hurley

http://www.twitter.com/hurleylive

http://apps.facebook.com/hurleypro/?_fb_fromhash=4f8acfc4f79855cede6e234f91dca3f4

Between the event site, the fan pages, the live event on Facebook, and live updates via Twitter, there is plenty of info out there.

And the most interesting part is how Facebook has become a broadcast and event partner, standing side-by-side with Hurley to present the event. Considering the event winner’s purse was set at $105,000 – ensuring it set a new record – thats quite a big event to be hanging-out with, especially at home in Southern California.

Facebook is really storming-ahead, the lite.facebook site, the @replies functionality, its not Twitter that should be worried – its the market-place as we know it.

They are breaking new ground. We’ll watch as they advance..

Side-note;

If your really keen to get a varied social-media account of the Trestles event, you should check-out the Hobgoods – these guys have also got a good grasp on the Social Media world.

http://www.blog.thegoodss.com/hobgoods-227/

http://twitter.com/hobgoods

http://vimeo.com/user723842

and.. the ASP has a Youtube channel you can get the videos from…  here’s the Expression Session highlights.

I was reading a blog post last night, about why your blog doesn’t get read, most of which i agreed with. Therefore with a spurt of energy, im going to throw myself at writing more frequently and openly. Apparently its the best way.

Whats been taking-up all my time ? well, Agent Lynch has a shiny new website, powered by WordPress, Flickr, Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. We had fun making that happen. It was the first Facebook Connect integration I’ve done and was nice to see it implemented and working. Ms Lynch is a good friend of a couple of friends – if that’s even a sentence – one of whom is Roxy Velvet. It was great to get her a sit up and running that she not only liked visually, but could attack from a content point of view and really enjoy working with.

AgentLynch.com

The Facebook Connect integration was done with relative ease, using a WordPress plugin that needed only a small amount of kicking and hacking to get working as I needed. I did in-fact use two plugins, one for the on-page login, and one for the admin/user prompt login. All the other Twitter/Flickr/Youtube bits and pieces are the standard ones ive used elsewhere.

If 6 Was 9 – its back ! – Randall has got new designs and a new movie. After filming on his trip to the Mentawai’s, he posted the video on the We are If 6 Was 9 blog. The flash site was produced by him, i just helped get the pre-loader, hosting and analytics sorted.

Slatehall Riding Centre

I did a superb little shoot last week to get some shots for a local tourism brochure and book. Slatehall Riding Centre met me on the beach along with Claire from Imapct PR and we had some fun in the shallows. Nice looking shots we all thought. The full Flickr set is here.

Bamburgh Castle

Holy Island Castle

Beach gallop

Farne Island Divers

Finally, over the bank holiday I spent the weekend with the Farne Island Divers crew diving with the seals around the Longstone. A great few days that I recorded with my little Canon compact, and the result was this small but fun video chopped together fro the video clips..

Farne Islands Divers – Diving with Seals – August 2009 from swinhoe on Vimeo.

More once Ive got something to say…

A mere two years later, and I can barely go online without video being an intrinsic part of the daily web experience.

Despite the web being flooded with video content these days, its still easy carve it all up into different kinds. I’ll give that a go below.

First of all, there’s the copyrighted stuff that has been ported to the web -Hulu (which we cant get in the UK, but is like the iPlayer for the US networks), BBC iPlayer and 4OD.

Then you can get live TV and freeview channels on Zattoo.

After the copyrighted stuff we move into a whole new realm, and this is where it gets fun. These are all the sites that allow the syndication and placing of content, a selection of example can be seen below. They come in different shapes and sizes, and mean different things to different people.

Joost

Joost pushes all sorts of content through its site – mostly i dont get a lot out of the selection, but there is some licensed stuff.

Current

Current is a real digital TV channel, and its web content is blended between the TV stuff and the web-only bits. Its mostly news, movies, music and culture, but there is a good selection, including the Viewer Created stuff.

Youtube

What can we say – the original ‘broadcast yourself channel’ the good the bad and the ugly.

Vimeo

Vimeo is the Youtube for designers and creatives… slightly less popular, but nicely done and with good content generally.

Retrocycling Robot from Challenge Your World on Vimeo.

TED

The variety of informative content here is unsurpassed. All videos are talks given to live audiences and relayed to the web. Science, technology, art, culture and more. Superb stuff.

The Onion

Nobody beats The Onion. I think they invented satire. Even before the web-video period these guys rocked. Now its all in moving images.

Advocacy Group Decries PETA’s Inhumane Treatment Of Women

http://www.purepwnage.com

Projects like Pure Pwnage are sprouting up everywhere. The web-based sit-com/reality/weirdness is now being pushed to network TV. Can you say chicken and egg ?

Google video

The home of serious chunks of info. A huge selection and typical Google freedom. I love it solely as it hosts Zeitgeist.

Now, along with all these sites are the application based platforms. Enter Boxee, AppleTv etc… These apps do a selection of extra functions that appeal to users – connect to Online sites such as Youtube, Flickr NetFlix, Pandora, even the Apple movie trailer collection. They also allow you to browse your local machine and load content that you have lying around, and you can do all of this from your armchair, using a remote control.

These are just a selection of the video/content sites that offer a landscape of content, if you look hard there are hundreds more in the vein of comedy, movies, gaming, technology etc…  and we didnt even talk about Vodcasting…  and did i mention live event streams like the ASP World tour events ?.

In a nutshell, along with torrent’s, this is why I dont watch TV anymore. You can pick and choose whatever you want to view, and for the most part totally avoid advertising.

Im going to start and get to grips with the best system for us with WordPress.

Seesmic

Seesmic allows you to post longer than clips than 12 Seconds. Integrates well with WordPress, allowing you to record and post from within the WP interface, this is then published in WP and posted to your Seesmic account and Twitter should you want it to.

12Seconds

Testing more vloging tools and methods on 12seconds.tv

This uses the 12seconds plugin and shortcode to grab my feed, but its not ;
[12suser username="swinhoe" size="fat"]

Youtube

As-yet no WP plugin to record direct from the admin UI.

Vimeo – does not allow recording and posting from webcam direct to the platform.

To summarise, and i may review this at any point, I think Seesmic is going to win here. Its built right into the WordPress UI, so you can blog from the admin of your site, and its pushed to the Seesmic site and Twitter automatically, and its not forced to be a mere 12 seconds.

Youtube is cool, and will have a greater level of exposure for the larger audience, but you can work with that to get them to your site or blog are negate the issue. But I’ll prefer to keep Youtube for edits and films.

12Seconds. Well, its ok, but its not very long, and the audio compression is awful as you’ll hear below…

NOOOOOO on 12seconds.tv

Addendum

The other way….
Test video blog – via the iSight and uploaded to WordPress.
This page http://support.wordpress.com/videos/, indicates that you can upload your own video into WordPress, these could easily be recorded from an iSight and posted straight to the server. However, this appears not to be working currently, if I find out more this post will be updated. (There is the drawback with this method that the video is only posted to the WP install and not to other social media platforms…).

Bomb Planet Earth – Dotmasters & Teddy Baden from swinhoe on Vimeo.

and the Flickr set is here.