Category: Social Networking

Dear telephone, meet the internet

Pheeder

“Pheeder is a whole new way of using your cellphone: it lets you communicate with all of your friends simultaneously, with a single phone call. To use it, you just call Pheeder, leave a message and hang up. Seconds later all of your friends, or anyone you want, receives the message at the very same instant. And if they want, they can send a reply to your message.”

New Video Comments WordPress Plugin

> Video Comments WordPress Plugin Version 1.2 Released” href=”http://itp.nyu.edu/research/?p=37″>ITP Research >> Video Comments WordPress Plugin Version 1.2 Released

Here are some new features you can expect:

1: A GUI interface inside the WP administrative screens for posting.

2: Revised comment display on the main post page. Now the timecode is hyperlinked and will bring up the plugin and seek the appropriate place in the video.

3: The ability to put a thumbnail or your own text in the post for launching the player.

4: A couple of random bug fixes.. GREAT!

Updated QuickTime Embedding Plugin

QuickTime Embedding Plugin

Due to overwhelming demand (1 person), I updated my QuickTime Embedding Plugin for WordPress to support Auto Play and Hiding the movie controller.

Just thought you might like to know.. ;-)

Oh yeah, John has been very hard at work on the next version of our Video Commenting Plugin. Prepare to be impressed (I am). It should be released over the weekend.

What is Participatory Media?

Clay asked me, what my working definition of Participatory Media is. Since I didn’t think he would like my riff on his jello and nails comment, I came up with this:

Broad definition:
A participatory medium is one which encourages audience participation in the creation, distribution and consumption of itself.

My specific spin:
A medium with similar properties to mass media (audio and video) with the addition of social interaction interwoven into the creation, distribution and consumption of it.

Even better might be how Wikipedia defines it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_Media

I suppose that after having taught a course called “Producing Participatory Media” a couple of times, a definition should just roll off of my tongue. Fortunately, the concept itself has changed and grown quite a bit since then (ahh, the sweet pace of change in this interwebbed world).

Perhaps one of my former students would be better at answering this question?

Click.TV video comments

> Blog Archive >> Click.tv Moves Video Ideas Forward” href=”http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/04/16/clicktv-moves-video-ideas-forward/”>TechCrunch >> Blog Archive >> Click.tv Moves Video Ideas Forward
Had an interesting experience at Vloggercon this past weekend. Although Josh pointed this out to me in the past, I was surprised to find a company pitching similar video commenting concepts that we have been working on.

So.. Perhaps my focus should now shift to getting start-up funding ;-) Any takers?

Video Comments, WordPress Plugin

> Video Comments, a WordPress Plugin” href=”http://itp.nyu.edu/research/vc”>ITP Research >> Video Comments, a WordPress Plugin

Keeping the conversation alive in media blogs

Video Blogging, Vlogging or what ever you want to call it was born into a tradition of self publishing on the internet and benefits greatly from the infrastructure developed for blogging. The tools to create media and now to distribute media online are accessible and affordable. Furthermore, video blogging is often considered participatory and socially interactive. Much of this is due to what blogs have done, enabled true two-way conversation through comments and loose networking through trackbacks.

Unfortunately, while video blogging benefits from these, it doesn’t really do much to improve or enhance this capability with video.

At ITP Research, myself and a couple of others have been working to change this or at least push commenting and trackbacks a bit further. We have created a Video Commenting plugin for WordPress that allows people to leave comments in-time with a video. This, we believe is one of the first steps to allowing conversation to happen around video and furthermore enable richer conversation with video.

Check it out, download it, modify it, use it… Video Comments, WordPress Plugin

From the site:
It’s really exciting to see the number of blogs that exist today, thousands of voices are talking about every possible topic. Blog syndication and commenting allows readers to subscribe, discuss and carry the conversation further, however, with the different forms of media becoming a normal part of many blogs there’s a need to keep this open communication open. Audio and video blogs are forming communities and to encourage conversation the viewers must be able to respond, so we developed a plug-in for WordPress called Video Comments.

Community Funding of Video Blogging

Have Money Will Vlog About

I like the concept.. A bit like turning video blogging into a sustainable “public medium”. Maybe.

Would like it even better if the creative output of this was Creative Commons licensed, perhaps Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License would be appropriate.

From the site:
Have Money Will Vlog? What’s the deal?
Many good projects need only action to be successful. With the distribution of the internet, a person with a good video project can be seen by thousands of people. But some ideas need money.
Money for equipment.
Money for travel.
Money for time.
Traditional artists can apply for grants to make their work. Have Money Will Vlog supports videobloggers trying to do the amazing. The power of the community can fund projects on a regular basis. You easily spend $10 or more everytime you go out to see a movie…so consider donating $10 a month to a videoblog project. If we have 100 people that give $10 a month, that’s $1000. Let’s energize creators.

ion – and iondb – v. nice!

People With Ideas ion 1.0 RC3 and iondb.com
Just had a short opportunity to try out the new ion and iondb. Haven’t had a chance to get some heavy usage but right off the bat the webstart is great! The db is fantastic as well, sharing what you are watching with others is one of the first steps to making video on the internet more social and community orientated. Keep going!

One of these days I will contribute a bit back to this project.