Tag: video

An Experiment (Seesmic and The Black Swan) [en]

I love reading, and I have a pile of interesting books waiting for me to dig through them. I’ve just picked up The Black Swan where I left it over a month ago.

One of my frustrations with reading, I realise, is the difficulty in sharing the interesting stuff I discover. Being an online person, I’m used to being able to share all the interesting stuff I find or think of very easily. Going from printed book to the web is not that simple.

I painstakingly typed up quotes in my tumblr but honestly, it’s not the best solution. Maybe somebody will offer me a pen-scanner one day (that would be fun!) but in the meantime, I’m a bit stuck without a good bridge between my dead-tree reading and my online community.

So, I just did an experiment with Seesmic. I read out quotes and commented some of the stuff I was reading. There are two videos because (as I just discovered!) Seesmic cuts you off at 10 minutes. In total, here are 16 minutes or so of me rambling on and reading quotes to you.

The Black Swan I

The Black Swan II

Sorry for those of you who can’t see the videos. For those of you who can, do let me know if you think this is a good idea or not.

Update: more videos…

The Black Swan III

The Black Swan IV

Seesmic Tips [en]

[fr] Quelques tuyaux à partager après quelques jours sur Seesmic. (Traduction intégrale, pour une fois.)

  • Allez directement sur http://www.seesmic.com/Seesmic.html pour éviter d'avoir à vous re-loguer à chaque fois.
  • N'essayez pas de tout suivre. Comme dans la vie, on ne peut pas tout suivre. Autant l'accepter tout de suite, sous peine de sombrer dans la folie.
  • Pour le moment, il n'y a aucun moyen simple de voir à quelle vidéo répond une autre vidéo, ou bien où sont les réponses à une vidéo donnée -- sauf en faisant manuellement le tour de la timeline publique à la recherche de vidéos du même nom. Mais ils bossent dessus.
  • La qualité vidéo est merdique, mais n'y prenez pas garde. C'est une Bonne Chose, en fait. Ça nous libère des soucis de qualité technique pour nous encourager à nous concentrer sur le contenu.
  • Pour éviter que la fin de vos vidéos soit coupée, attendez sagement que la bare de progression grise dans l'écran de prévisualisation ait atteint le bout de la barre (illustration). Parfois, il manque quelques secondes à la vidéo quand vous la prévisualisez, mais dans mon expérience, la vidéo finale est complète (pour autant que vous ayez attendu!).
  • N'annoncez pas toutes vos vidéos sur Twitter. Soyez sélectifs. Ou ouvrez un nouveau compte rien que pour ça.
  • Quand vous cliquez sur "follow xyz" à droite de la vidéo, ça donne l'impression qu'il ne se passe rien, mais en fait, la personne est effectivement rajoutée à vos amis.
  • Essayez de regarder la caméra, et pas votre image sur l'écran (plus facile à dire qu'à faire!)
  • La webcam reste active après que vous ayez fini l'enregistrement. C'est un bug Flash, pas de la faute à Seesmic (donc vous en faites pas, ça tourne pas!) Si ça vous dérange ou que vous avez besoin d'économiser vos batteries, rechargez simplement la page.
  • La timeline est parfois capricieuse, ou certaines entrées n'y apparaissent pas. Dans le doute, rechargez la page, ou visitez les pages individuelles des gens pour être sûr.
  • Si vous en avez marre de devoir subir les annonces de vidéos dans des langues étrangères qui vous échappent, cliquez sur la petite terre à côté de "Post a video" pour les filtrer.

    • Voilà, je crois que c'est tout!

A few tips after a few days using Seesmic.

  • Head for http://www.seesmic.com/Seesmic.html directly if you don’t want to be asked to log in each time.
  • Don’t try to listen to all the videos. Just like in life, you can’t follow everything. Accept it now or it’ll drive you crazy.
  • There is no way for the moment to easily find which video another video is replying to, or where the replies to a given video are — short of going through the public timeline and clicking on anything with a similar name. They’re working on it, though.
  • Don’t worry about the fact the video quality is bad. It’s a Good Thing. Forces you to concentrate on content rather than technical quality (a daunting prospect, when it comes to video).
  • Prevent Seesmic from chopping off the end of your video by making sure you wait for the grey progress bar in the preview screen (after recording) reach the end. The preview may be cut before the end, but in my experience, the final video isn’t.
  • Don’t Twitter all your videos. Be selective or set up a separate Twitter account.
  • Clicking on the “follow username” link on the right actually does make you follow that person, even though it seems nothing is happening.
  • Try to look at the camera, and not yourself on the screen (easier said than done).
  • Your webcam will remain active after recording a video. It’s a Flash bug, not Seesmic’s fault (don’t worry about your privacy, it’s not recording). If you need to save power or if it bothers you, just reload the page.
  • The timeline sometimes gets screwed up, or some posts don’t appear in it. Reload, or visit individual user pages.
  • If you’re sick of having your timeline “polluted” by foreign languages you don’t understand, click on the little earth icon (next to “Post a video”) and filter them out.

There, I think that’s it!

Seesmic Invite Lottery [en]

[fr] Pour les lecteurs de Climb to the Stars, 20 invitations Seesmic à utiliser dès maintenant. Premier arrivé, premier servi -- bonne chance!

For Climb to the Stars readers, here is a collection of 20 Seesmic invite codes. If you haven’t had the chance to receive one yet or if you’re too shy to ask, here’s your chance! First come, first served.

  • QNsZKlopct
  • CFAwTRQkO
  • ZATz7D8XlW
  • 5sNU0U5qv9
  • seV4suRvPx
  • 6IfJCNszGt
  • tNqo6cIYZh
  • H3oeyWkQZE
  • Jtv2MTfX9N
  • pQzdnE0IRj
  • ZArOcvfyS4
  • 6uSbxVqVAj
  • gojraQB7Hf
  • YAPHMTsapy
  • 62KufO31fG
  • vJN7OqBBYQ
  • zyFJF4TB5Z
  • SOFPpl5bJW
  • JDAtaIeq7L
  • E8wvO4LgSb

Update, 12:30: wow, gone already! here are 5 more (but I’m seeing the end of my stash soon)

  • fvJApxktS4
  • YvohS2ejmR
  • 8s2NgisH4h
  • 9pNeDQhknd
  • B0vce37ECV

Seesmic Addiction [en]

After the initial doubts, addiction:

I’ve lost count of the number of videos I recorded. I’m drowning in them. I’m afraid you can’t easily track them down if you’re not the lucky holder of a Seesmic account (it’s still closed, though they’re working on opening it — there are 15’000 people on the waiting list for invites).

I did a short piece on WoWiPAD. I talked about upcoming posts here on CTTS. I spoke against conversation threading. I participated to the collective dissing of the expression “social graph”.

I left a nice message for Loïc, in French, to tell him I liked his service (I usually complain about his stuff more than praise it, so it’s worth noting).

Physical, Digital, Categories, Tags, Experts… [en]

[fr] Le numérique révolutionne la façon dont nous organisons l'information. "Une place pour chaque chose, et chaque chose à sa place" vaut pour les objects physiques. Cette excellente petite vidéo démontre ces changements. C'est en anglais, mais il n'y a rien à écouter (sauf de la musique) -- il suffit de lire.

If you’re still a bit in a fuzz about how exactly the internet is revolutionizing the way we store and retrieve information, this great little video should help. It’s pretty fast-paced (watch it twice if necessary) and the music is very nice.

Thanks to Euan Semple for pointing it out.

Seesmic Doubts [en]

[fr] Le texte et la vidéo sont fondamentalement différents. Je ne pense pas qu'il soit possible de "recréer" un dynamique comme celle de Twitter avec du contenu vidéo.

So, now that I’ve discovered what Loïc‘s startup, Seesmic, is about (thanks to Ben twittering his tests), here is my initial reaction to reading about it on Techcrunch.

I’m not certain a “video-based Twitter” is a viable concept: the huge difference between video and text is that the latter is scannable, and that’s precisely what allows the presence/flow dimension in Twitter. You can “keep an eye” on a stream of text, but can you “keep an eye” on a stream of videos? Also, it takes much less time to keep up with a stream of text than with a stream of videos.

Me, commenting on Techcrunch

Now, not to say that Seesmic is doomed (that would be a bit pretentious of me) — and I haven’t checked it out directly — but I do want to go on record saying that the dynamics created by Twitter and other flow/presence apps with text cannot simply be transferred to other media.

If it turns out I’m right, I’ll be able to say “I told you so” — and if I’m wrong, nobody will care. 🙂

Supernova 2007 — John Kneuer [en]

[fr] A la conférence Supernova en train d'essayer (et d'échouer) de prendre des notes. Blabla politico-gouvernemental.

Random, scattered notes. Not necessarily understandable. Might contain outright mistakes — I don’t always understand everything. No who-said-what either, sorry.

Announcing the next speaker, John Kneuer. Some stuff about government and Washington and some acronyms I’m not familiar with (FTC etc.)

Supernova First Day 39

DTV transition. Everything will be digital. Interesting and important from a broadcasting perspective. Consumer demand. Really significant changes in the market. Spectrum, transmission of that spectrum.

steph-note: sorry, this is gobbledygook for me…

Single-cell tower, four tower-system. Technology one generation beyond incumbents. Access layer. Open access to the wireless network: problem is, government sets terms and conditions for access. steph-note: too many four-syllable words for me here.

Pro-consumer benefit of open access. Significant… steph-note: something. Market forces are going to provide an open network… Opportunity forgone… people in this room… global reputation of the Bay Area… innovation… shattering the business models… overcoming… large incumbents…

Questions:

David Weinberger: basically, the US markets are closed. steph-note: not understanding what this is about, but filming part of the response. Video below contains another question and answer, and a point made by Doc Searls and a very incomplete response (ran out of memory card space — maybe I need a real video camera)

Feel free to add tags and comments to the video. I hope the audio is understandable.

Update, Tuesday 26th: David Isenberg has a transcript of the video.

Update, Friday 21st

Check out:

Update, Saturday 22nd

The video was broken, sorry. It now works.

Broadcasting Supernova Live [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Supernova à San Francisco, et on m'a recrutée pour retransmettre en direct une des sessions.

If you’re not at Supernova but would have liked to, you can follow the sessions live online. I’m broadcasting one (finally, after solving a bunch of logistical and technical problems).

The three other sessions are being broadcasted too but I’m not sure at what address. Add them in the comments if you have them and I’ll update this post.

Multilingual Interviews [en]

[fr] Deux interviews que j'ai donnés récemment au sujet de la conférence que je donne à Copenhague sur le multilinguisme sur internet la semaine prochaine.

I was interviewed twice during the last week about the multilingual stuff I’m going to be talking about this week at reboot9:

Enjoy, and hope to see you at reboot!

Video: BBC Interview (Teenagers, Facebook) [en]

[fr] Une interview que je viens de donner à la BBC sur les parents qui jouent aux détectives privés pour "surveiller" leurs adolescents sur internet. Dialogue, dialogue!

I was contacted this morning (thanks, Suw!) to appear in a short interview on the BBC News, about how parents are increasingly signing up to social networking sites like Friendster to “stalk” their kids online.

Here’s the little video segment of my interview:

(Thanks to Euan for the video, and to the BBC folks for sending me a copy too — though it arrived later and I used Euan’s here.)

For those of you interested in the whole “online predator issue is overblown” thing, I urge you to read Just The Facts About Online Youth Victimization by danah boyd, and in particular what David Finkelhor has to say at the beginning of his presentation (numbers! numbers!) about how the general ideas the public has about online predators have little to do with reality.

And talking of videos, episode 6 of Fresh Lime Soda (video!) is online at viddler.com.