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Read/WriteWeb: Amazon Web Services Success Stories.

Scoble wants to teach Mark Cuban how to hook up his PC to his HDTV. People are hungry for HD and there just aren’t enough people offering it yet. I hear that Rocketboom’s downloads have gone through the roof since they started offering a seperate HD feed. It might not be trivial to hook your PC to your HD but people are doing it.

Linux Devices: “Motorola is shipping the first model in its Scpl (”scalpel”) line of Linux-based phones set to replace the ubiquitous Razr”. That’s my phone! As long as the interface for texting isn’t so rubbish then this is pretty cool. Love the phone’s physical design, hate everything else about it. I want to throw it against the wall on a daily basis.

If you’re wondering what all this videoblogging stuff is all about then check out this little report by Chuck Cirino of Weird America at the Vloggies. Even though this happened a while back I only just saw this footage now. Sure looked like fun.

Washington Post: “No single programming department can outstrip the creativity of the entire Internet. When carriers limit the choice of programming to whatever sites or services can strike the best deal with carriers — wriggling past the usual palace guard of marketing reps and lawyers — they weaken the entire appeal of phone video”.

Mike Arrington: “Let’s just declare TV Dead and Move On”.

Intelligent users are generating content

Today I’m linking to Dave Winer’s 10 minute podcast entitled How to Make Money on the Internet. He’s written about this subject several times before and each time I’ve found his ideas helpful in understanding the changes we’re seeing in society as well as in business as the web grows in importance in our world.

I felt it was particulary relevant to my recent posts exploring the disintermediation of film making [2nd heading down]. If disintermediation in this space is to happen at all, instead of being brought about by people making films funded by eyeballs and advertising, maybe it will be caused by people making films to sell products.

Dave’s vision is that entrepreuners will be able to make products that users actually want and they’ll do this by paying close attention to all this user generated content. Until recently the users have been treated like an audience. Funnily enough, it’s actually the users, formely treated as the audience, that hold the intelligence.

Is this still film making? And who are the middlemen that get disintermediated here? Who’s making films, the users or the entrepreneurs? Hold on but the users are the entrepreuners, so it kind of seems like everyone’s making films. In fact it’s looking like everyone’s going to have to use their personal media platforms (blogging/podcasts/videoblogging) just in order to get anything done properly. Hmm.

New York Times: “Seeking Executive to Tame Digital Future”.

101 things you don’t want your system administrator to say.

BBC News: “Some 43% of Britons who watch video from the internet or on a mobile device at least once a week said they watched less normal TV as a result”. I know I watch a whole lot less TV than I did 12 months ago.

Business Week: “Anshe Chung, the virtual land baroness […] has apparently become the first millionaire in Second Life“.

Interesting video of Andrew Baron talking about using Podzinger to make Rocketboom fully searchable. It works by automatically transcribing the audio and then re-rendering the video in flash so that you can link straight to a particular spot in a video file. He also talks about using the online community to create subtitles for foreign viewers. Great idea but not so good if you have a small audience.

BBC News: “Galacticast, a weekly sci-fi comedy shot in a Montreal apartment, is one of the few with enough talent and imagination to be truly funny and watchable”. One of my personal favorites.

BBC News: “Internet video is coming of age, with the best amateur film-makers attracting millions of online viewers”.

Aniboom is a website that is devoted to animated short films.

I’ve just come back from having Thanksgiving lunch with some old friends. Heaps of amazing organic food and plenty of ice cream and pie. Sundays are most definitely for roast dinners

Playing Connect-4 with a five year old can be a bit challenging. I realised that at that age things like forward planning and strategy aren’t all that important. What was far more fun (I thought so too) was racing to see who could fill the game up with all the pieces first. It’s always fun when you figure out a way of using an object which wasn’t intended.

Another great autumnal game when you’re 5: puddle jumping.

Ben takes a photo of himself everyday. Sheer genius.

I’m looking for online (as in on the web) video editing applications. Does this even exist? If you know of any then let me know.

Update: Looks like I found a company that does something vaguely related to what I was looking for. Cuts allows you to remix video by creating cutlists that you can share over the internet. In an interview on the Scoble Show a while back, Evan Kraus explains that although currently you need a thin client, when they launch early next year there will be lots of APIs and he hints at it working in the browser. A tool for disintermediation.

Video of a conversation with Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google at this years Web 2.0 conference. If you have time it’s a really interesting interview. He’s a pretty smart guy. Some quotes:

“As the internet phenomena occurs and all of us are a part of that, it’s beguining to affect industries that really don’t know what to do about it and it’s worth reminding yourself that it’s a mistake to bet against the internet. Don’t bet against the internet.”

“The era of huge, massive servers, which Google and many other companies are now building in these massive server farms are fundamentally going to be more reliable than the things they replace and that shift, which is a very user centric shift, means that the users can get back to whatever they were doing rather than debugging their software. It’s fundamentally better to keep your money in a bank than to keep it in your pocket.”

Quite a few people that read the blog seem to be subscribed through the Google Reader. I might have to give it a try as I’ve heard many good things about it. I like the idea of reading things as a river of news.

I’ve got a head full of great ideas on how to use all these great web technologies that are emerging, a sea of APIs, everything there just waiting to be connected up in interesting ways. All this while listening to the new Beatles album…

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

Here comes the sun everybody!

D-Cinema Bond

Last night I went to the Odeon in Leicester Square to go and see the new James Bond film Casino Royal. I chose that cinema because I new that they had a d-cinema screen there. Now I’ve seen what the d-cinema screen at work looks like but never actually been to a big theatre with one. I knew that the trailers and adverts most probably weren’t going to be digital but as soon as the feature started it was obvious to me that film is dead. If you don’t believe me then watch the opening credits to Bond on a massive d-cinema screen. The colours are so incredibly vibrant and everything moving on the screen so incredibly crisp that you find yourself looking with your eyes wide open in amazement.

Google Video: “This short by Neill Blomkamp depicts a fictional world where extraterrestrials have become refugees in South Africa. Producers: Neill Blomkamp, Simon Hansen, Sharlto Copley, Shannon Worley”. Amazing what a few people can do these days. I’d love to know how long it took them, what tools they used, what workflows they were using, how they colaborated etc. Great short.

Another great short by Vancouver Film School graduate Ori Ben-Shabat. Lots of neeto vfx in this one.

More on the disintermediation of film making

Wired News: “You wouldn’t show a sitcom at a movie theater, right? […] You make movies for the big screen, sitcoms for TV, and something else entirely for the Internet. That’s the lesson of Lonelygirl15″.

A few days ago Penelope Trunk’s post Thinking about videoblogging? You should probably forget about it caused all sorts of discussion on the videoblogging mailing list. Anne from Loaded Pun explains why people on the videoblogging mailing list were annoyed and also ends with what I think the crucial question is: What are you hoping to get out of your vlog?

After reading my post on the disintermediation of film making, Penelope asked me via email whether I thought that the lonelygirl15 affair (check this article) on YouTube was what I was talking about and yes that is absolutely an example of disintermediation of film making. There is a guy, he has this idea for a web based show, he shoots it and puts it out there. Classic disintermediation. What was Mesh Flinders hoping to get out of his vlog? There’s no doubt about it, he was wanted to make money.

So to make money you have to have a product. What’s his product? He’s giving away the show for free to his audience, so it’s not that. He sells advertising space. That’s his product. It kind of feels like it’s the show, but actually it’s the advertising space. The more people watch his shows the more his product is worth. Seems simple doesn’t it: that’s how you make money in videoblogging.

The truth however is slightly different. In fact to see the truth you have to think a little differently. You see lonelygirl15, Rocketboom and ZeFrank are special cases. The thing they are selling, their product, happens to be the videoblog itself (well the advertising really). The vast majority of people in the world sell things we more easily associate with the word ‘product’ like software, food, televisions, holidays.

Blogging, podcasting and videoblogging are all personal media platforms. They are personal information processors that you can use in any endeavor you choose, from making a web based show to raising money for charity to making people aware of a particular issue, to building a business and more generally for selling products of any kind. Use them for communicating, for publicity, for feedback, for gererating new ideas. You’re in control.

You think Adam Curry just has a hit podcast called Daily Source Code? Wrong. The Daily Source Code is his media platform for building his business called Podshow. He also sells advertising so it’s a little confusing. Wait until people start using these mediums to sell products, build companies or to run political campains. That’s when things will really get exciting. That’s what I saw at Podcastcon UK last weekend: normal people who run normal businesses using the mediums in new and interesting ways.

Film making won’t disintermediate with people in the film/entertainment industry alone. There aren’t enough people and there isn’t enough money to be made. It will disintermediate when every person in every industry can use it to build their business. Sure you’ll need some talent, but you need talent to be a good at anything in life.

In the mailing group the title that linked to Penelope’s post was “Disturbing opinions”. I would disagree entirely. I think her piece was a fantastic conversation starter. It got everyone thinking. No doubt some people will think I’m talking a lot of crap, but then we’re all learning as we go along.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Wikipedia: “First and foremost, turkey is usually the featured item on any Thanksgiving feast table (so much so that Thanksgiving is sometimes referred to as “Turkey Day”). Stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, Indian corn, other fall vegetables, and pumpkin pie are commonly associated with Thanksgiving dinner”.

Just reading the Wikipedia link above I’m getting really hungry. It’s not such a big holiday here in the UK but where I grew up there were many america expat families all around and so I’ve been to many a Thanksgiving dinner in my time. All good memories.

This year I’d like to say thanks to all my wonderful friends who put up with all my ranting about podcasts, videoblogging and all things web and I’d also like to thank all the people I’ve had contact with through the medium of the web, my life is so much more interesting because of you!

BBC News: “Police across England and Wales are to begin taking fingerprints while on patrol using mobile electronic devices. The hand-held gadgets - linked to a database of 6.5m prints - will enable officers to identify suspects within minutes“.

I’m pretty big on personal liberties and so I don’t like this sort of thing. Sure it might help them catch some criminals, and sure they might not be recording the finger print info yet, and sure it might very well be voluntary for the moment. Even if it remained voluntary, if it becomes widely used then due to social pressures, refusing to use the system would amount to admitting guilt. Not a good idea.

YouTube is memory lane

I was just listening to old school radio and the Scissor Sisters’s song ‘Take Your Mama’ was on. While I was bopping along to it I remembered that while I was working at the Creature Shop the Physical Department (I was in the Digital Department) had done all the puppets for the stage performance they did at the Brits in 2005. Looked it up on YouTube and they have the video! YouTube totally rocks. To think that even a year ago I probably wouldn’t have been able to do this and share the joy. Watch as the whole stage slowly comes alive, and you just got to love the melons. Classic Jim Henson.

You know, I think if Jim were alive today, I sure he would have gotten this thing we call the internets.

I’ve been busy culling my categories on the right side of the blog. The list is probably half as long as it was. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to aggregate bad categories into more general ones. In the end you just delete them. Still more work to do on this another day.

I’ll be going to see the new James Bond movie tomorrow night. I’m paying a little more money and going to see it on my first commercial d-cinema screen. Pretty excited.

Wired News: “Businesses in Second Life are in an uproar over a rogue software program that duplicates “in world” items. They should be. But the havoc sewn by Copybot promises to transform the virtual word into a bold experiment in protecting creative work without the blunt instrument of copyright law”.

The Intention Economy. An old piece that Doc Searls wrote a while back. Just for me to read later.

I tried to sign up for the BBC Backstage Christmas Bash but it looks like I was too slow. They filled the event in less than 35 hours. I think the waiting list might even be closed too. I hate missing the nerd event of the year.

Over the last few years I’ve been watching and learning what effects the web is having on business, on society, on people. As I learn, there are all these new words, ideas and technologies that are floating around in my head like podcasting, videoblogging, Web Services, Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Salesforce On-Demand Architecture, open source, virtualisation, vendor relationship management, gestures, and more. Everyday is like one of those tests where you have to find the odd one out from a set of shapes. As time goes on these various things accumulate in my head, some get thrown by the wayside, but for some unknown reason others clump together because they seem related in some way.

The one big idea that I keep coming back to is the Internet as the Great Disintermediator: the disintermediation of the aggregators and repackagers of the world. I keep wondering how this idea applies to film. How will film making become disintermediated? A few experiences over the weekend have helped me get closer to the answer to this question.

I was at Podcastcon UK over the weekend. I don’t have a podcast and I’m not a videoblogger but I find both of these activities so interesting that I thought I should go down there just to see what people were talking about and also to be in an environment where others understood this interest [most of my friends think I’m mad].

What’s funny was that the panel sessions that I thought I would find least interesting ended up being the best ones and the ones I was really looking forward to ended up being a bit of a disappointment. The Creative Podcasting session in the end became a session about advertising and the Citizen Journalism segment ended up being a discussion about nomenclature and old media techniques applied to podcasting.

It was the Business of Podcasting panel that surprised me the most. This was all about how people were using podcasting within the corporate space to expand and often to diversify their business. One example was Tom Hall from the Lonely Planet who explained how they were using podcasts to compliment their travel books with travel casts of various locations around the world as well as using user generated audio from travellers moving around the globe.

Last night after I posted about the Net Neutrality Open Source Documentary, I was pondering why it was that I had found that so powerful and why it was that the seemingly boring Business of Podcasting Panel had turned out, imho, to have been the most creative. It suddenly dawned upon me that the first question to answer shouldn’t be ‘how’, rather why should we disintermediate film making in the first place? If everybody could make films easily, why would they do it at all?

Making films is about telling a story. It’s about getting ideas from inside your head into someone else’s. Loosely speaking, the film landscape tends to have factual documentaries on one edge and fictional films at the other and there’s obviously lots of mixing in the middle. Now although there are plenty of people who create fantastic fictional film work, I would imagine that for most of the people on the planet, it would be far more useful if they could quickly, cheaply and easily use the medium of film to put across an idea in business.

It’s very hard with words alone to put across an idea that has been building in your head over many months, sometimes years to someone (perhaps a boss, or investor) who has not met the people you’ve met, not read the articles you have, not payed attention to the people you find influential. Making money by the disintermediation of the film making process is going to be made by giving people a way to make their profession easier. In the future CEO’s will be film makers.

Who knows, maybe there will come the day when you can walk around putting bits of media in your pocket as you roam and you then seamlessly use this accumulated media stuff to tell stories to your friends around the table down the pub in glorious 3D hologram. Fictional story telling is for fun, thank goodness.