Chris Weagel of Human Dog has posted all his videos from last year.
I’m always amazed at the quality and quantity of his work. He has such a distinct voice and vision.
Some people may know him from his series, American King.
I hope he one day gets what he’s looking for.
My friend Paris just sent me this link:
Very cool. It will be very awesome to start getting people around the world to uplaod videos about their own lives. This won’t immediately solve any problems…but at least we can all start from the point of reality.
I asked Paris how the site came to be. The site looks like it has obvious trademark infringement, but at least the power of the web is spreading. Here’s her answer….
Farsitube was founded by Shervin Noorian, a 21 year old student from Texas.
http://www.farsitube.com/contact
The site has been run since November 2006The following interview is from
radiofarda.com (tomorrow’s news in farsi)
http://www.radiofarda.com/Article/2007/01/24/f3-farsitub e.html
Here are the questions and answers:Q. With Youtube already established, why did you decide to make a site that is so much like it?
A. The goal of Farsitube is to provide Iranians access to video clips
that deal with iran/iranians, so that they can display and comment on
their videos. Before starting any kind of tv station, our goal was to
make Farsitube.Q. How long have you been working on this project, and how many of you are there?
A. Since November 2006. Besides myself, two of my friends are working on this.Q. So far what are people’s reactions to Farsitube?
A. Many people have shown interest in a Farsi youtube. People are
also interested in sites such as facebook and/or myspace, and have
links to videos, etc. Our advertising has been basically through word
of mouth, or through the web. Right now we advertise our site to many
young Iranians in America, and we hope to advertise this site soon to
Iranians living in Iran.Q. I saw a clip of Sadaam’s execution on Farsitube. Are there also clips that are not about iran or iranians on this site?
A.
Farsitube is not meant to have videos that are exclusively in Farsi.
Clips about Iran or Iranians can be published. Sadaams’s execution was
big news, and many people wanted to see it. Therefore, it was published
in the "political" section of the site.
Q. Is there a red line that the video clips cannot cross?
A. If the clip is not moral or ethical, or shows something disgusting or averting, it does not belong on the site.Q. Have you introduced Farsitube to Youtube?
A. Not yet, the opportunity has not arisen.Q. How does Farsitube hope to seek financial gain?
A. In the future we plan to use advertising to pay for the costs of the site, and allow the site to expand.translation by Paris Marashi
A response to Ryanne’s recent video. This is our feline. Her name is "Battle Cat".
Here’s an cool use of video.
Ryanne get harassed by construction workers so she confronts them on video.
You can see her shaking she’s so mad.
This construction site is across the street from Hat Factory, our coworking space.
I parked by these same guys later in day.
There were 4 grown men smoking cigarettes and cleaning the mortar off old bricks to be reused.
They were standing next to a pile of probably 20,000 bricks they needed to clean.
Drugery. Must make people mean.
Watching Ryan’s video makes me see how clueless these guys are.
And it’s weird that by having a camera, the guys become respectful.
If Ryanne didn’t have that camera, I bet they’d still be talking shit.
Someone’s going to get a bunch of justifiably angry emails from the Videoblogging Group tonight.
Imagine if a website launched…and they simply reposted blog posts from Boing Boing, Scobleizer, Engadget, etc. These kind of sites are called "splogs". Any funded site knows this is a no no.
But new video hosting companies are still all learning that you can’t build a site by stealing other people’s video either…which is exactly what MyHeavy.com has done.
See how my video plays in their page.
So here they have grabbed my video of Ryanne and I buying our engagement ring.
Now I got ads all over it. Great. This personal moment from my life has now become my worst nightmare (see video) thanks to MyHeavy….without my permission.
We’ve seen this kind of behavior before from a video hosting site: Veoh about 8 months ago.
The group at WeAreTheMedia did a great blog post detailing that situation:
A visitor comes to Veoh, finds a video blog, and falls under the
mistaken impression that the creator of the blog originally uploaded
the video to Veoh. Clearly, Veoh must be a good service if it’s getting
content that’s this good. Veoh profits monetarily from increased visibility caused by an unnatural wealth of content.
Sites like Blip.tv and others should be even more angry since our videos are being taken from these RSS feeds. Blip.tv spends time and energy building up good relationships with creators so people feel comfortable using them as their hosting site. Then a new company like MyHeavy comes along and grabs all this content without any effort.
MyHeavy just got funded for 12.5 million dollars from Polaris Venture Partners and Jacobson Investments. They probably felt like needed to make a big splash and start showing they have a whole lot of content RIGHT NOW. Why spend time earning people’s trust….just grab it. Who cares? We’ll see how they react tomorrow when they read the irate emails from videobloggers whose content they grabbed. Veoh ended up apologizing and immediately removing all the videos they scraped.
WeAreTheMedia has a good list of best practices for video hosting companies.
Our friends Jennifer Proctor and Aaron Valdez have just launched Lost in Light.
This site got off the ground because a whole crew of people funded it through Havemoneywillvlog.com.
Basically, you can mail them your 8mm or Super 8 film that’s sitting in your closet collecting dust…
and they will transfer it onto video and upload it to Archive.org.
Read their About page.
This is a project about the 8mm film format. But
8mm is dead, you say? On the contrary! Not only is the format alive
with innovation by filmmakers around the world, but hours and hours of
Super 8 and regular 8mm film exist in attics and basements the world
over—as home movies, educational films, works of art—that is slowly
fading from the historical record.We’re here to preserve that record before these films are lost, and
to make those films available for viewing by the public and for use by
artists seeking new, compelling footage. Lost in Light is a project devoted to preserving, showcasing, and celebrating films created on the small-gauge 8mm film format.To that end, we provide free Super 8 and 8mm to video transfers to anyone who asks, in exchange for posting their video to the Lost in Light site and on the Internet Archive with their choice of Creative Commons licenses. In addition, Lost in Light
includes articles and features by members of the filmmaking and film
preservation communities, video tutorials for making 8mm films, as well
as creative work, all with the goal of preserving and championing this
important film format.
If you have a kick ass project like this one that needs funding…just go the HMWV page explaining how it works.
In this video, Ryanne and I announce the new videoblog:
Swajana.com
All videos are done by Ajay, Nive, Prasad, and Hitesh. Check out the videos they made of themselves.
It’s a collaboration between us (+Markus+Verdi) and this Indian team whom we met on our recent trip to India. Our friend, Freeman, who lives there, is the real mastermind behind the project.
The whole idea was to help these guys regularly post videos about their lives.
We’ve helped with the annoying things that a good videoblog needs:
We use a wiki, email list, and SpinXpress for the collaboration.
This is all part of our effort to help get stories told by people outside the Western world.
We were inspired after Verdi and I helped Steve Wyshywaniuk and Brian Conley get Aliveinbaghdad smoking earlier this fall. We helped them raise some money, built their new blog(Vlogsplosion!), edit, and helped set up a production cycle.
AIB went on to win a bunch of Vloggies in November.
I realized that the whole key was the personal connection that Brian had made with a couple guys in Baghdad when he visited Iraq last year. For lots of reasons, the Iraqis just didnt have it in them to make their own videoblog. So he had the brilliant idea to make a videoblog for them. The Iraqis just focus on recording video…the Americans take care of the rest.
So I encourage others to do the same thing. If you know someone who lives in a country that we hear little of, just help them. We are documenting some of our work here. Many times, people just need to know that someone cares and will watch.
Ultimately, people in developing countries won’t need us to do anything for them.
But for now, the audience for these videos will not be the Iraqis or the Indians, but us (westerners).
If we want to see life out of these countries, my experience shows that we got to help build the bridge.
So subscribe to the Swajana feed. A new video about life in India every Monday.
If you’d like to see a specific story, add it here.
We’re having an open house at Hat Factory tomorrow, Wednesday, January 2.
Here’s the info.
We’re trying to attract more people to come use Hat Factory, one of the new Coworking spaces in San Francisco. Check out this video to see what we got.
We’ve created a space where freelancers and independent contractors can break out of the cycle of working from home and in noisy coffee shops. Hat Factory offers a huge workspace, fast internet, full kitchen, bathroom, and private meeting room. You can either become an "Anchor" by paying $170 a month for a set of keys…or come by anytime for $10 a day.
