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Playing with Amazon Web Services

Spent several hours this evening reading tutorials about and playing around with some of the Amazon web services: S3, EC2 and SQS. I found a great tutorial by Mitch Garnaat explaining how to use all three to build a massively scalable solution to video conversion. At very short notice you can deploy hundreds maybe even thousands of machines to number crunch, pay for what you use, then give them all back. No maintenance headache, no need for massive up front investment.

Mitch has written set of Python libraries called Boto that wrap up some of he Amazon functionality. The tutorials have some good examples and seem pretty straight forward to use. I came across some authentication issues which I hope to resolve in the next few days.

In around a year or two mobile devices that can take great video will be standard. What are all these millions of people going to want to do with their video? That’s the million dollar question.

Dave Winer on the Viacom vs Google business: “It’s a negotiation with users, not a war with Google. Forget Google. The users want something you aren’t providing. So provide it and stop arguing so much.”

That’s pretty much the bottom line.

The uglybooth

Today’s daily self portrait is another photobooth experiment, this time it’s the ugly booth. I did it using the Sony K810i phone, it has some pretty interesting warping features built in to the camera which lead to very amusing photos indeed. There’s something very amusing yet very wrong about seeing your face all distorted.

Ze Frank speaks out on ugly.

By the way if you haven’t been watching Ze Frank this past year, it’s not too late [this is the last week of the show]. Go ahead and watch from the beginning. What he has done this past year is truly remarkable. Not only are his shows great, what’s really outstanding is how he’s manage to engage his audience.

People send in all sorts of bits that he uses in the show, he runs bizarre competitions like dress up your vacuum cleaner or who can create the most ugly MySpace page. There is a massively active forum where members interact and collaborate on projects and there is even an apprenticeship.

The “Messages from the Sportsracers” episode a couple of days ago was extremely long and consisted entirely of clips sent in from people all around the world thanking him for the past year. I watched the whole thing and was really quite touched by it. Ze doesn’t care who you are or what you look like, he’s inspired people from all walks of life and from countries all over the globe to do really important things.

Ze Frank is a real life Ferris Beuler or Van Wilder: the people’s hero.

Remember it’s not about being cool, it’s about being more awesome.

The Beat Box Fame Game. Superb video.

Marshall Kirkpatrick on the Four Eyed Monsters: “The promotional model is one that many future independent film makers will likely study closely”.

An interesting IT Conversations podcast with Doug Kaye and Jeff Bezos about how Amazon Web Services can be used to create a massively scalable solution for digital audio and video manipulation. Outsource your infrastucture.

Amazon offers it’s own queueing service but I’m wondering whether it would be possible to setup a render farm on EC2 and S3 controled by a specialist render queue manager such as Rush. A pay as you go render farm, yes please.

Update: Greg Ercolano from Rush emailed me to suggest RenderRocket which is a virtual render farm. Very interesting, I’ll have to check it out.

Dave Winer: “There once was a time when we entertained each other. If you wanted music on a Saturday night you’d have to perform it yourself or listen to a neighbor. Before there was broadcast radio, music was personal. It will be personal again, and it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, because the joy of creating is something we should all share.”

MiniBar - the web meetup for Londonites

Friday night I was at the London MiniBar at Corbet Place, Old Truman Brewery. This was a chance to informally meet and chat with other people who are involved or interested in web related projects. With so much of the web related action seeming to be happening stateside it was really good to meet people who were London based.

The theme for this months meeting was “Online Video - What to do with all this user generated content?”. Michela Ledwidge did a presentation on Modfilms that aim to become a platform for storytellers to exchange film components and remix them into new works. I had a chat with her afterwards and the project is definitely one to keep an eye on.

John Wilson was live blogging the event, info about the other presentations in his post.

It was good hanging out with Toby Harris (*spark), Ali McClymont (superfineshag), Amit Kothari (QuotationsBook), Marton Dow (Rightscom), Deirdre Molloy (Chinwag) and Pete Tayor & Nana Aganovich (Aganovich).

The MiniBar is rapidly gathering momentum, I’ll certainly be there next month.

Arin Crumley’s latest videoblog “The Collective Experience” made at the Sundance Film festival looks at whether going to the cinema is dying out. Arin is a natural born storyteller.

Time Magazine: “For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”

BBC Nottingham: “Pizza delivery man Paul Knight has been taking the internet by storm from his kitchen in Annesley, having recently won an award for Vlogging in America.”

Just found the New Mediacrasy audio podcast. I’ve looking for a purely audio podcast about videoblogging for a while so that I can listen to the goings on in this space while I’m on the move. Kind of hard to find the feed from their site but it’s here in case you want to subscribe through a podcatcher. I’m off for a walk on Hampstead Heath to have a listen.

Really awesome line rider: Jagged Peak Adventure.

Mashable: “As of tomorrow, you can register your own .tv domain on ChannelMe, but soon they’ll add tools for users to develop that site into a personal TV channel”.

Copyright issues aside, media mashups are just funny: The Big Lebowski - the F#$%@*G Short Version [Language not work safe].

TechCrunch: “AppStore will be the one-stop shopping place for on-demand software, starting in Q1 of 2007. Developers and partners will be able to sell their programs directly through the AppStore and Salesforce will make a referral fee, based on the performance of the product”. Ooh an iTunes for web services. Nice.

Jason Calacanis links to a report looking at a new breed of people turning up in organisations: the out there people. Jason adds some of his thoughts to the discussion. Interesting reading and good food for thought.

I’ve just listening to Richard Bacon on XFM. He’s asking his listeners to upload interesing video they make to YouTube and put the word ‘BacoFilm‘ somewhere in the title so that with a simple search they will all show up. At some stage in the future he will choose the best one who will win some award. Interesting to see MSM using these new technologies in their programming. If you’re a videoblogger might be a good way to get your name out to the wider population.

Steve Rubel: “The rapid pace of change will not only turn TV into an open content platform, but it will radically shift how advertising dollars are allocated and how the entire ad industry operates.”

Susan Buice: “I just want to make something that resonates because when I see something that resonates with me I feel connected. Feeling connected to the world and to other human experiences is what makes me feel alive and happy. When I don’t feel connected I feel like a meaningless blob of flesh and I want to die.”

I picked this quote from Susan Buice because it made my laugh. It’s part of an interview she did with Arin Crumbley with whom she runs Four Eyed Monsters. Go read the interview and pay attention to these guys because they are doing interesting things. Arin is responsible for the Open Source Documentary about Net Neutrality that I wrote about a while back. That piece of work and a few other things that were happening to me at the time all converged together helping me to form new ideas about film making, documentary making and more generally how the web is turning things on their head. Ultimately it lead to my mini-essay on the disintermediation of film making. Now while I think and talk about these things Arin and Susan are out there actually doing cool stuff. I think you should pay them some attention and others do to.

Andrew Baron: “I am very optimistic for TiVo’s future as far as his vision for seamlessly merging i.p. and broadcast content”.

The ProgrammableWeb is a site that keps track of all the web APIs that are sprouting up all over the place. There’s a blog where they review them as they appear, a mashup section for the best use of them, a mashup matrix, a place to share stuff and a place to learn about how the web is becoming a platform. Really Great Resource.

David Tames: “The qualitative difference in today’s media technology landscape is that innovation is becoming the domain of end-users and is being guided by human needs, creative expression, social activities, and intellectual pursuits; rather than sales goals, quarterly profits, corporate research agendas, and marketing initiatives.”

David Tames’ essay from which the above quote is taken is a good read. He touches on many of the most interestring topics of the day such as walled-gardens, the changing role of the audience, the web’s effect on community and the theory of the long tail all from the perspective of a film maker.

What I’m finding most interesting in all my readings and podcast listening recently is that people of all sorts of different backgrounds and proffesions from all over the world are starting to form ideas and views about the web that are very similar. How interesting the world becomes when people start to have conversations, and to think that only 6 years ago I thought that the web was a glorified sales catalogue.

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”.