Posts Tagged ‘video’

Akaroy Films

I ran a small business workshop in Port Adelaide last week and met a man called Derek who runs AKA Roy Films. While I am sure he is a movie producer/director/camera guy for hire, his company produces scores of short films on characters around the Port that make the sort of compelling viewing that most television fails to deliver. Derek’s background Video was print media, until he started out on this video path in 2008. Like he says, “little films have a big future”, which is exactly what I preach in my workshops.

There are a few films worth noting: Read the rest of this entry »

Country Fire Service
I have never profiled the CFS website and, in fact, it wasn’t until this weekend with all the fire warnings in place for Saturday, that I actually visited the website.

It is a very simple website which is probably the right approach for an emergency service that needs to ensure its messages are accessible to the widest audience possible. However, many, many, many points are lost because when you click on those stories, they download as PDFs. Whoever runs this website needs to see me ASAP. This is a silly state of affairs. PDFs often take longer to download than simple HTML content and are still confusing for web newbies. My advice would be to make those headlines click onto a standard, fast-loading web page where the text is available in full and from that page make a PDF available. The current state of affairs is plain silly!

Technical issues aside, some of the current highlights are:

• A busy stream of news updates on the home page – messages about fire risks, volunteer deployments, angle grinder safety (yes, angle grinding and welding on rural properties account for about 50 fires a year)
• An appeal for people in the Mitcham area to be part of a fire siren trial
• You can watch the latest tv commercial (the most recent one was better than previous attempts – I hope this is a sign that the government is no longer treating the CFS as a poor relation and is helping them fund some proper communications)
• Bushfire action plan

It was the action plan that made me go to the website. It is a handy document with plenty of ideas and suggestions for what to do. Ultimately, you have to decide what to include and exclude from your plan. Personally, I find the “go early” option the most attractive. At first I was thinking “stay and defend” sounded good, then I read in the detail for that approach that one of the things you need to be able to do is leave your property if it catches fire. Huh?

In the “join us” section there is an interesting article on a day in the life of a volunteer. It captures what goes on inside the mind of a volunteer and is good reading – only takes a couple of minutes.

One last helpful comment – I hope. The site mentions to travellers and others to listen to local ABC and 5aa during a fire – someone needs to add the frequencies available – especially for travellers because waiting until you are swamped by flames is not the ideal time for scrambling around to find a radio station. Visit the site at cfs.sa.gov.au.

Seesmic
This service is a short video service allowing members to upload video comments and then reply to other people’s comments with new video. Picture Facebook/Chatrooms etc but with video. It is purely addictive.

Once you have your webcam set up, you hit record and then post. Simple as that. Your video can be made private but the best choice is to leave it public. I did my first test video this afternoon and within an hour, two people had replied to me. And the video in question was not a controversial one with a clever title, it was just my simple video profile in which I was just testing out the system and sharing a mild gripe about the Australian government’s stupid and shrewd plans to censor our internet access and put a virtual handbrake on our internet speeds. I have an American man respond first, then a woman from Europe. And I am sure the conversation is just getting started.

I guess one way you could describe it is – talkback video instead of talkback radio. So, dear listeners, while you are waiting to chat on the air, why not upload your own comments and start a conversation stream of your own with a worldwide audience!

You can join at seesmic.com and you can see my profile at seesmic.com/stevedavis.

On borrowed time
This is a bio-diversity interactive created in partnership with the CSIRO. It is based on David Lindenmayer’s book, On Borrowed Time. As the introduction says, “the resource has four inquiry-based teaching and learning units and two decision-making interactives which allow students to reflect, consider and make decisions relating to Australia’s biodiversity.

The fun thing here is that you get control of a farm or a forest for five years.

On the farm you need to make decisions regarding vegetation management, stock, firewood collection, water management, and pest management. It is great fun. After you make your decisions for each year, you get a report on your property and a bank report.

In the forest, you need to decide what style of logging to choose to strike a balance between maintaining jobs and biodiversity. You work the forest in 50 year cycles.

I managed to destroy the farm and wipe out numerous species in the forest. Can you do better?

Visit the site at On Borrowed Time.

Obama Icon Me
Barack Obama is now US President. His campaign has left a mark in the field of online/social marketing through his use of social media and social networking sites.

One phenomenon worth noting was how many people changed their avatars (their little pictorial representations of themselves) to look like Obama during the business end of the election period. This flurry of creativity was inspired by Los Angeles-based street artist  Shepard Fairey, who created a striking portrait of Obama with very strong and simple colours. It became one of the most iconic representations of the president-to-be and if plagiarism is the highest form of flattery, then Shephard Fairey is the most flattered artist in the States!

But it is not over yet. You can now use a simple tool to help you create your own Obamaesque profile at ObamaIcon.Me, dubbed “post election fun” on the host website, Paste Magazine.

It’s not only fun, it is simple to use. Snap yourself in your webcam or upload a portrait shot, play with the colours, add your caption – President, Hope, Freedom, or your own – and add it to the gallery. Or just save the image and plaster it wherever you want it to be.

I have created the Steve and Sean campaign posters, as you can see.

Other people are being very creative such as:

• Kermit the frog with the caption – Frogress
• George W with the caption – Fail
• A little baby with the caption – Obaby
• And a blank poster with the caption – WMD

Have a look at the site at obamaicon.me - you can even upload the application to Facebook.

Video on how the world is changing and at what pace
This video compiles a number of facts and estimates relating to humanity and technology. Here is a taste:

• Google 31 billion searches per month
• By 2013 there will be a supercomputer with more computational capacity than the human brain
• By 2040, there is likely to be a $1,000 computer with more computational capacity than the entire species!
• The US govt estimates that the average person born today will have had 10-14 jobs by the time they are 38.
• The Top Ten in-demand jobs in 2010 will not have existed in 2004.
• Technical information is expanding at a phenomenal rate, to the extent that the information an engineering student learns in the first year of a 4 year course will be out of date by third year.
• Indian companies have developed fibre optic cables able to transmit 210,000,000 phone calls per second, or 2,100 CDs worth of data! That speed is expected to double every year for many years to come.

What does all this mean? It means we are on a path heading forwards at ever increasing speed and every moment we pause we get further behind. There is no place to hide, we need to stay in the loop. Get ready for a breathtaking ride:

Jing
Have you ever had to show a parent, aunty, uncle, or co-worker how to do something on the computer? Sometimes it would be simpler to record your screen as you do the action, overlay a voiceover, and send them a video to watch. That whole process just got easier and it is free! It is through a service called Jing.

Jing is software you download to your Mac or PC so that you can record what is on your computer screen either as a still image or as a 5 minute video.

Furthermore, your free download also comes with a free account at screencast for uploading and storing your videos online.

Have fun with this software! To show you how easy it is, I just did a 15 second video and it is here http://screencast.com/t/fMQxvyHqsjq.

To find the link to Jing, visit Richard Pascoe on Computers.

PS Dave from Adelaide called during the live talkback show to mention VNC as an alternative. It is free software for allowing people to grant remote access to their computer to a friend, colleague, etc. Thanks Dave. The link to the current free version is here – VNC version 4.1. If that link doesn’t work for you, go direct to http://www.realvnc.com.

Postsecret
This is an incredible project and website. Forget watching commercial TV or dime-a-dozen Hollywood movies, visit this site for poignant insights into the human condition.

On this site, people from all over the world send in artistic representations of their deepest secrets anonymously.

Through these postcards, people share their fears and their naughty secrets, their regrets and their anger, and their optimism and hope.

It is hard not to be moved by most of the submissions. It is also hard not to find a few that could easily have been written by you! It underlines just how universal many of our private and personal quirks actually are.

Frank, the guy behind this project, says people have two kinds of secret: those we keep from others and those we keep from ourselves.

I have posted two videos that explain the concept more eloquently.

You can visit the site at postsecret.com – note that images are replaced every week. You can get them sent to your inbox and Frank would like you to buy the hard cover collection books to fund the site, he also raises money of a suicide prevention hotline.

Opensourcefood
This is the height of online open source websites – Open Source Food.

On this site you will find more than 2,000 delicious recipes and gorgeous photographs of the finished dishes. It is a feast for the senses in many ways.

The photos look so good, the recipes thus far seem relatively simple – this site could see me back in the kitchen very soon!

Here are some favourite recipes:

• South Asian Pork Soboro (a minced pork stir fry dish – other users, in the comments, made it with minced turkey with success and a thing called “?evap ?i?i mince” which is equal parts pork, lamb and beef)
• Roasted Brussel Sprouts (yes, this caught me by surprise too – I can’t wait to try them)
• Chocolate Truffles (this is a very simple recipe – just chocolate and cream cheese. These might replace the White Santa’s Balls I made last Christmas)

Plus, I added my Pasta Exotica recipe which you can find here – Steve’s Pasta Exotica recipe

The front door to the site is opensourcefood.com.

Road Kill Cook Book
I was in the Riverland at Berri, South Australia, this past week, running workshops on online marketing, eBay and the various web2.0 technologies applicable to small business, and met Cathy from Emaroo Cottages. They run some holiday accommodation in Broken Hill and Mildura. She mentioned that their website boasted a Road Kill Cook Book, so I had to find out more. Sure enough, this free eBook is available from the website and contains these highlights:

Tender Pot Roast Rump of Emu: This recipe includes an interesting fact that an emu’s eyeball is bigger than its brain, making them high speed, clueless feather dusters on legs. It also includes such immortal recipe directions as – Take the selected rump of emu, remove imbedded bitumen, feathers, and any unwanted additives. Allow to stand for a few days while you search for a pot large enough to cater for the rump. And, rounds off with the unusual, serves 50-60.

Ribbon of Rabbit: The recipe notes that most large truck tyres will have already pulverized the piece into a nice flat ribbon. Soak rabbit overnight to help remove fur, tyre tread patterns and remnants of rubber. Moisten rabbit with garlic, olive oil and oregano and place over hot coals.

Silver City Snake Slithers in Batter: Great advice in this recipe – Ensure the creature is actually deceased, there’s no greater surprise than delivering this little trophy to She of the Kitchen than finding it mostly alive and more than a little grumpy with its ill treatment.

Goat au Gratin: Simply can’t go past this advice – clip its horns and wipe its ass, goat is best served rare.

You can find this book at http://www.emaroocottages.com.au/.

Zamzar
I cannot speak more highly of any online tool available. Zamzar is an absolute godsend. This handy utitlity can convert files from one format to another, and even grab YouTube videos for you to download and watch later.

I find it particularly handy for converting Microsoft’s ridiculous .***x extensions to .***. Of particular note, is the ability to convert these new extensions not only into the old Microsoft extension format but also into the Open Office format.

A variety of other formats are also supported, enabling you to convert your pptx files into whatever format is most useful for the program that you happen to be working in. The full list of supported formats is below:

• html – Hypertext Markup Language
• odp – OpenDocument presentation
• pdf – Portable Document Format
• png – Portable Network Graphic
• ppt – Microsoft Powerpoint Presentation
• ps – Postscript document
• swf – Macromedia Flash Format File

One of my favourite aspects is the saving of YouTube videos. I often find material I want to share with others when we are not online. So saving videos to share offline is a great advantage of this tool.

The whole service is free for basic conversions, with a variable turnaround time. If you want faster conversions and online storage, then you can pay between US$7 and US$49 per month. Visit www.zamzar.com.

Sendables – JibJab
This is an hilarious site from the US, where you can access sendable ecards and fun clips.

There is a focus on the upcoming US election with a fun rendition of The Times They Are A-Changin’, morphed into Time For Some Campaignin’. There are some classic lines that pull no punches in satirising all the main players, eg, Hilary Clinton sings about failing to quell Obama’s rising star, to which Bill Clinton says, alas you got close, but no cigar. You can see the video here: http://sendables.jibjab.com/sendables/1191/time_for_some_campaignin.

However, one of my favourite videos on the site (by the way, you find the videos under the JibJab Originals tab/button) is What We Call The News. This is biting satire on the state of mass media news coverage. It highlights the shift from real news coverage to the crap news channels need to concoct or scrape out of the barrel to fill their voracious content demands and maintain titillation for extended periods. You can see this video here: http://www.jibjab.com/originals/what_we_call_the_news.

Kids Around Town
Found an interesting website about a book that is being launched this month (September 2008) called Kids Around Town. It is for parents in Adelaide and unlike other voucher books, is totally family-friendly.

The book will have around 230 vouchers offering freebies, 2 for 1 offers, and 10%-25% off offers. They add up to about $5,000 in savings and there are some competitions in the book too.

Interestingly, the book is not just vouchers. It also contains articles from Mem Fox and Dorinda Haffner, along with listings of favourite playgrounds, markets, parenting rooms and local libraries.

The lady behind this is Sheree Hyde, who created the business so she can work from home, and also so she could raise money for her daughter’s school.

Kids Around Town has been divided into seven sections including BUMPS & BUBS; HEALTHY & HAPPY; EATS & TREATS; WATCH, LEARN & PLAY; GIFTS, TOYS & MORE; LET’S PARTY!; and GETAWAYS.

From mid to late September 2008, the book can be purchased online and at selected retailers for only $28. It will also be available through many schools. Visit http://www.kidsaroundtown.com.au.