Just for the record, I finally switched my web address to http://momentshowing.net.
http://momentshowing.typepad.com will still work…but why live in the past?
Just for new people, it took me 3 months to figure out how to buy a new domain and attach the blog to the new name.
It only took a short afternoon to figure it out…if blogging is new to you, you got to muscle through this stuff.
Now it’s easy.
Momentshowing.net
I live with 3 other people in a small apartment in Harlem.
We each have our own room. It’s like a hotel I guess, that’s incredibly expensive.
For the obvious reasons, we have no TV.
Cable is expensive, most TV programming sucks, and it’s not worth the money for the few good existing shows.
I love TV. Hell, I work at a TV station and make it all day.
But you can only be condescended to so much while you do your best to ignore the 15 minutes of mind-numbing commercials each hour.
This is why I’m so into videoblogging.
The obvious vision is create a stage for people to inject their own video.
Call them original TV channels that come through your broadband connection that you watch on your computer…and may eventually end up on your video iPod or the TV itself.
In this process, Im even learning how we can be different from TV and take it further.
In the meantime, my roommates listen to a lot of radio…AM radio…talk radio…which is pretty rich in NYC.
Mike Malloy is the recent favorite….a radical progressive.
I worry when our media becomes so one-sided…right or left…but I got to admit that it’s very empowering to hear someone speak plainly about the "Bush crime family".
CLICK TO WATCH
The election is over…Bush has won…and many in New York are dealing with the anger, confusion and fear of what kind of country the US is becoming.
Mike Malloy reads a letter from a woman to the people in the red states.
Its truer than anything I hear on TV. You may not agree with her opinion but it’s good her opinion can be heard.
So this video is how I imagined she would make a videoblog if she knew how to videoblog…instead of writing a letter to a radio host…which is the traditional way to get your voice heard at this time.
How lame. How cool we are now.
This is just an audio clip of the Engadget Podcast which I regularly listen to on my iPod.
So you can just play it and listen while you do whatever.
It’s about 4 minutes long.
The host, Phillip Torrone, explains very clearly why most people with video cameras don’t know what to do with the video.
Everyone has a digital camera these days…they can record easily…but how to edit?
No manufacturer is making it easy.
So this is exactly what is holding videoblogging back.
Part of my day job is teaching people how to edit video (iMovie or FCP).
The free workshop meets 4 times for a total of 10-12 hours.
And it’s absolutely true…most people coming in could not learn this stuff alone.
Even when they do learn how to edit their home video…very few actually do anything with it.
We should teach kids to video edit in 3rd grade. Why not?
Teaching adults to edit video is like teaching them Chinese.
They can see the logic but have no reference for the flow.
They forgot how to play and have fun.
We have a lot of education adn work to do if we want to hear and see people’s voices and ideas.
It also reminds me why we need a simple editing tool.
Now that we can share video…its time to make video.
Anyway, just a shout out for the host of Engadget, Phillip Torrone.
I dont know the guy, but he gets it.
He seems to understand that technology and activism go hand in hand.
Activism as in being in control of the technology being created.
It’s about making the world more true, than more confusing.
He speaks about products with integrity and is gaining a solid reputation.
Priceless in these days.
Phillip is one of those guys who has every cool gadget that comes out…figures out the hacks…and tells people about it.
It’s about having fun and making this shit crazy….beyond what manufacturers and commercial interests had in mind.
His own blog is all about How-To’s.
For instance, HERE he shows you how to put a search engine on your belt buckle.
I bet Phil would get videoblogging and what it’s going to be.
He’s one of those voices on the Net that I’m grateful for…helping to set the agendas and lead the way.
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"Feedster.tv :: Rich media feeds for your aggregator"
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Right now, the only way to watch videoblogs is to go to each individual blog and watch each individual video.
As of November 2004, there is no way to see videos all in one place.
It’s as if when I want to hear a story, I got to run around town to each person’s apartment to hear the story.
I want a stage where we can all come together and tell stories to each other.
FeedsterTV is a site that lets you subscribe to RSS feeds with enclosures.
For instance, you can get a feed with just music files or just video files.
Blogdigger has been doing this since the summer of 2004.
For audio, this is great because you can use a free application like iPodder to automatically download the music files to your iPod or MP3 player.
The feeds need to have Enclosures, so it works great.
(although Andreas will tell you that bits all very sloppy and asking for trouble. Ask him why.)
But for video….there is no device that lets you play video files other than your computer.
So who cares that there’s a RSS feed with video enclosures?
You’ll notice that the Feedster site doesn’t really talk about video much..no one knows how to handle it. How will we watch all these videos in 2005?
Im sick of having to click to each individual blog to see each video.
I want a viewing experience for videoblogs.
A viewing platform.
It will only be like TV in the sense that it’s video on a screen…from there we can do anything we want with it.
I believe that we need to create a tool to bring all these videos together.
Like an RSS reader for video…and I think it’s got to be for video only.
Ill subscribe to video feeds that certain people that I trust create…they’ll be great video collectors with taste.
Kenyatta made a prototype tool. The beautiful VOG BROWSER.
Who’s going to finish it off? (it needs an interface that allows you to add RSS feeds.)
The other thing we need an iPodder-like application that sucks in videos while you sleep.
We already have FeedsterTv which sends our an RSS feed with video enclosures.
Then you can wake up and watch them in a nice viewing window.
We’re working on this right now. (Mac only for now)
And this tool be necessary once there’s some portable devices to watch these videos.
I spent the afternoon with Peter today.
Hadn’t seen him since he videoblogged in India this summer.
It’s all making sense. The biggest success are people videoblogging now.
i see it coming; the tools we need are clearer and doable.
I’ve said it before, but let me say it again.
Up till pretty recently, the only videos you could easily find online were movie traliers and porn.
If you wanted to use the Internet to “connect” to the world….you could really only do it through text.
Since the late 90′s people have tried to put video on the web…but only the big guys who could afford fast servers could really do it.
Even then, not till 2003, did more people ditch their dial-up and get Broadband connections that can handle video.
Im interested in people.
Im interested in people in other parts of the world.
I spent a lot of my 20′s working and living in places I wanted to learn about.
Now I could go online and read about these places, probably find some pictures, but its not the same.
I like to know about the people..what is it about them that makes them interesting?
And you got to see and hear them to get it.
I like the fact that we live in a “Global World”…not like the way corporations say it…meaning bigger markets to sell to and cheaper labor force to exploit.
No, we live in a world where increasingly we can talk to each other.
Let’s start sharing experiences and understanding of our lives.
let’s trade notes.
There’s going to be some madness that will come…since this can be overwhelming…but it’s worth it.
if our two countries are going to fight a war, let’s get to know each other first.
So Im searching around and find a posting about these French soldiers who opened fire on a crowd in the Ivory Coast about a week ago.
Amazing.
Some guy with a camcorder, recorded the event, and it got posted.
I can see it sitting at my shakey desk.
You can too right HERE.
The video is graphic.
Meaning?
it’s real life. this is what happens when men with guns on tanks are threatened by a crowd who is angry.
They shoot…people get shot…15 seconds of violence..then people stand around trying to figure out what happened and what to do next.
The recording starts…gunshots…the camera goes blurry…
We see all the people…the camera strap is dangling in front of the camera…as it moves back and forth trying to figure out what’s up.
Then, we look at the most obvious thing. Who got hurt?
People laid out on th sidewalk of an ordinary city.
Solid shots of each wound.
This is what it looks like when a bullet grazes you.
This guy got hit pretty badly, but he’s alive.
This is a human body with no head that people are standing around.
This is what happens when a high-caliber rifle hits a human skull.
People are angry at the French soldiers on their tanks.
So why would i watch this?
Because I want to know without some “reporter” who was not at the event choosing the shots and pushing the “official” interpretation of the event.
I wish there was a whole network of bloggers in countries around the world who recorded the struggles they go through.
Then I could share in it.
I want daily life stuff too…but the world is pretty chaotic right now…true reality programming.
I mean, who do you want the story from?
I like the video because it’s unedited..or at least minimally edited.
Unfortunately the video is not attached to a blog.
I wish the person who taped it…wrote a story on his/her experience.
These are unmediated moments from the Ivory Coast, November 2004.
Now we know.
This is not about videoblogging, but it is about what we’re doing.
When Napster erupted in the late 90′s, it was huge.
Suddenly people from across the Earth could share their music.
But if you think about it, the tool was weird. Blank and dumb.
There was no way to search for anything…unless you knew what you were looking for.
You had to type in popular names to get copyrighted music.
There was no way to search for stuff you’d never heard of because there was no interface to suggest cool original songs.
So you got 237 versions of “Sweat Leaf”.
So of course it got shut down because it was bascially a tool to steal music.
The next generation is here…and Creative Commons is leading the way.
Why bother so much with commercial music?
Most of it sucks anyway.
Let’s look to ourselves.
Adn this is the tool for to find original audio.
CC Mixter – The remix family tree
The Mixter lets you download people’s music(spoken word, noise, etc)…add your own flavor to it…and upload it to be shared.
Or upload your own music to be shared.
This is a collaborative Peer-to-Peer system.
No one can call this illegal.
And all work is published under the Creative Commons License of your choosing.
The site allows you to search for styles, intsruments, vocals, etc….till you find the stuff you want to play with or use.
Logic, my friends, is here. (go lucas)
Click the Photo to watch
You got a big video file you want to send someone, but email doesnt allow you to send this much stuff.
So you hear about this Peer-to-Peer network called Bit Torrent that lets people trade huge files easily.
Anyone who’s ever tried to put use Bit Torrent…knows how frustrating it is.
You got to create a tracker…deal with plug-ins in Azureus.
You realize that only a few people even know how to download torrents…or even bothered to load the software on their computer.
The folks at Downhill Battle have finally released an easy torrent creator.
Blog Torrent – Simplified bittorrent .
“Why does Blog Torrent matter?
Making it easy to blog large video files means that people can share their home movies the same way they share their photos or writings. It lets people create vast networks of truly peer-to-peer video content– video that was made by individuals and shared with individuals, no bandwidth budget or distribution deal needed. Does this mean that we can do for television what blogs have done for news? Let’s find out…”
Once enough people start using the torrent software, it’s going to work.
But it’s one of those things with Peer-to-Peer networks..enough people got to be sharing.
Blog Torrent looks great…real rich…going to take some time to really appreciate what they’ve done.
The upload tool looks like the killer app…but they only have it for Windows.
Just wait. Mac users…donate some coins.
This stuff is being done by people who believe and dont get paid.
Charlene is one of the most prolific videobloggers in our group….posting 2,3,4 times a week.
She found the group through Mica….who is also always posting.
Charlene’s a professional editor by day…and seems to instinctively get the freedom that publishing video on the web brings.
When we first formed the videoblogging group…I was afraid it’d be just a bunch of tech guys.
I didnt have any experience with online groups…but this was my preconception.
But i knew Mica who instantly got videoblogging when i told her what we were doing.
She’d been thinking of the exact same kind of thing for years.
I guess when she told Charlene…the same CLICK in the head happened.
Neither has ever had ever blogged…but figured it all out easily because they knew what they wanted to do.
Suddenly we have two women showing us how to use this technology.
Why am I so impressed?
Because it’s only by example that videoblogging will spread.
They can discuss it all day long on Slashdot…but when people see videoblogs..they get it.
plus Charlene and Mica are posting videos that are personal and creative.
Not many cats in here.
So Charlene has been into this idea of collaborative video projects.
Some of us have tried to figure out techie ways to do link videos to each other.
But she just used the exisitng tools on her Tyeppad account to bring videos together.
She calls them the Exquisite Corpse Projects.
One person creates a video, telling a snippet of a story.
the next person picks up the story linking to the last video.
Like a choose your own adventure.
So the new soap opera is continuing HERE.
You can see Charlene’s list of episode installements to the right of her blog.
Anyone can and should join in.
You can do no wrong.
Just watch the videos in the story and take the story somewhere else.
Im telling you…you’ll make a woman very very very happy if you join in.
The latest Human Dog video is out.
Chris puts publsihes one video each week….like a TV show.
So you come to expect it.
He has a great style…usually a slice of real life…creatively done.
Without videoblogs, I would have never known that there are real live people in Southern Michigan.
See, I want to subscribe to a videoblog out of Iran…I bet there’s a guy with a similar sense of humor…dressing up like a Mullah and handing out breadsticks like Fatwahs at a party. Everyone laughing and scared at the same time.
We could see it here.
Anyone know any Iranians?