Thursday, February 28, 2008

Building with dirt - the facebook story

The resion facebook was such a success is in large part due to snobbery and hiracey – technology and UI all play there part but the are good ideas implemented in good ways with fantastical ideas by the bucket full (look back on the scobleshow to see this).

The resion for one company to dominate over all others usherly have a strong social part in it success. Facebook started in a elite institution and was only available in that institution – this created a feeling of exclusivity and value. It expanded then by riding this wave of statues down the social hiracky, one level at a time in till it reached the bottom and was opened up free for all. Each level in tern felt they had been allowed access to a higher statues club all the way down the line. Form a few thousand to a few million in a sign up cascade. Success built on hiracky and snobbery – it’s a dirty network – though very successful.

Food for thought and with food comes energy and energy action – can we build a clean network? There is a challenge for you all.

Small video producers need P2P

Its scary to think how much cash the big video sharing sights are burning through giving away free bandwidth, the is a good wright up on getmiro blog about the costs here.

We have streamed more than 500,000 videos over the last year on these "free" hosting sights, at a cost of $10,000's or more to the venture capitalist who fund them - they have probably received $100's back in advertisements, I don't think this can go on for much longer.

As the Getmiro piece highlights the sulution is p2p for small alt-media makers.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

CouchSurfing is an intresting social network

Met a whole gaggal of CouchSurfers at lift08 confrence in Geneva Switzerland, a nice bunch they were. One of them Yann sent me a reference to the web sight CouchSurfers.com which I joined, have been very impressed as its a physical network not a virtual one. Actuerly the more I look at it the more it looks like the network that we need for the VisionOnTV project.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The big free video hosting sights are starting to drop away.

From: Stage6 <DivX_Stage6@divx-newsletters.com>
Date: Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 5:15 PM
Subject: Stage6 to Shut Down on February 28
To:

I'm Tom (aka Spinner), a Stage6 user and an employee of DivX, Inc.,
the company behind the service. I'm writing this message today to
inform you that we plan to shut down Stage6 on February 28, 2008.
Upload functionality has already been turned off, and you'll be able
to view and download videos until Thursday.

I know this news will come as a shock and disappointment to many
Stage6 users, and I'd like to take a few moments to explain the
reasons behind our decision.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and
viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Stage6 began as an
experiment, and we always knew there was a chance that it might not
succeed.

In many ways, though, the service did succeed, beyond even our own
initial expectations. Stage6 became very popular very quickly. We
helped gain exposure for some talented filmmakers who brought great
videos to the attention of an engaged community. We helped prove that
it's possible to distribute true high definition video on the
Internet. And we helped broaden the Internet video experience by
offering content that is compatible with DVD players, mobile devices
and other products beyond the PC.

So why are we shutting the service down? Well, the short answer is
that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise
that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we
are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other
details involved, but at the end of the day it's really as simple as
that.

Now, why didn't we think of that before we decided to create Stage6
in the first place, you may ask? That's a good question. When we first
created Stage6, there was a clear need for a service that would offer
a true high-quality video experience online because other video
destinations on the Internet simply weren't providing that to users. A
gap existed, and Stage6 arrived to fill it.

As Stage6 grew quickly and dramatically (accompanied by an explosion
of other sites delivering high-quality video), it became clear that
operating the service as a part of the larger DivX business no longer
made sense. We couldn't continue to run Stage6 and focus on our
broader strategy to make it possible for anyone to enjoy high-quality
video on any device. So, in July of last year we announced that we
were kicking off an effort to explore strategic alternatives for
Stage6, which is a fancy way of saying we decided we would either have
to sell it, spin it out into a private company or shut it down.

I won't (and can't, really) go into too much detail on those first
two options other than to say that we tried really hard to find a way
to keep Stage6 alive, either as its own private entity or by selling
it to another company. Ultimately neither of those two scenarios was
possible, and we made the hard decision to turn the lights off and
cease operation of the service.

So that's where we are today. After February 28, Stage6 will cease to
exist as an online destination. But the larger DivX universe will
continue to thrive. Every day new DivX Certified devices arrive on the
market making it easy to move video beyond the PC. Products powered by
DivX Connected, our new initiative that lets users stream video,
photos, music and Internet services from the PC to the TV, are hitting
retail outlets. We remain committed to empowering content creators to
deliver high-quality video to a wide audience, and we'll continue to
offer services that will make it easy to find videos online in the
DivX format.

It's been a wild ride, and none of it would have been possible
without the support of our users. Thank you for making Stage6
everything that it was.

--Tom

New VisionOnTV promo card

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Company Structure


We got our company structure through from the attorney , am reading it now... exciting to be moving on... 3 main options, which to chose.

The social nature of VisionOnTV

Going to LIFT helped to get my mind in gear agen, I think a lot of the slowness of the project has been that people have seen it as technical, were actually it’s a social project which manifests using technology. This has been a constant soughes of friction, I have been explaining the social nature of the project and all they have been doing is taking the technical parts and trying to bodge them into there existing social view points. I constantly couldn’t understand how people didn’t get what I was trying to communicate, this was because they simply weren’t listening to what I was talking about.

“The core of the project has remand the same” I have constantly had to say while people look at me blank eyed and ask technical details as if they were the answers that they needed to understand.

* the web being digital has a fundamental different economy to bricks and mortar society

* human beings are inherently social, and the universal currency is the smile of friendship and the words of communication.

* thus much new value – the digital domain – escapes from the constraints of our current economic determinism.

*historically the web 1 seceded over all the old copurate internets because of the different economic model - digital domain - it allowed data to be free it was p2p as in people2people.

* corporations attempted to CLOSE this with the comeshilastion of the internet during the first bubble with mega portals and client server relationships. These attempts failed with the current death of DRM after billions of $ were spent on them.

* so called web2 “social networks” based on p2p value rapidly replaced these decaying portals, but these two are starting to fail as there closed arcetecter is still based on client server relationships, just better hidden from view.

* so called web2 is a re-manifestation of the original web which swept away the closed corporate data structers.

* corporations in a last ditch attempt are brining in governments and legislation to try and save there value, as much as they succeed they damage the societies they are a part of – save the internet campaign, DATA just won’t to be free, just as human beings do to talk and smile.

I hope the above helps to illustrate the technologies we are using RSS, torrents, p2p thinking, H264 are just the technologies that embody this social aspiration and that the values in such tec are fundamentally social. When am talking about VisionOnTV am talking about a social project that is embodied by some shifting technologies. If you don’t see the social side you will miss the value and effectiveness of the project.

Read back on the blog for some insights into the social nature/assumptions on the VisionOnTV project.

Monday, February 18, 2008

Technology and our society

Some thoughts upon our new Internet TV channel, VisionOnTV

Technology has a fundamental shaping influence on our society – with the new digital commons and the impending death of DRM our current corporate structures are in crisis. How do you sell commodities in a world were information just wants to be free and information is the most desirable commodity. How is a society based on people paying for items mass-produced and mass consumed going to pay its way when such items are affectively free?

The current online boom in advertising is but a stop gap – it is based on the belief that people will pay for the products somewhere down the line. When most “goods” are digital this is looking increasingly unlikely – people may choose to support a product or organisation – but they no longer are bound by the cash transaction to access the commodity.

Films, video and computer games are all just data

We are moving into a new society in the developed world, were the goods that people desire are increasingly virtual – thus fundamentally free of cost – of course people will still expect to have the practical things of life, including cars and houses, jet planes and restaurants – but these are not value added items – they are largely fixed on how much economic growth can happen. The huge growth in the last 20 years has been in services and the biggest jump over the last decade has been online in the virtual economy.

However this virtual economy has a very different manifestation than the old physical economy. Can this technological change lead to a corresponding positive social change?

Drupal

Am looking at Drupal - it works in a real liner and highly regermented way...

I just wondering if it can be adapted...

Software for the 19th century...

Germans.

Any Drupal programs out there like to comment? The sought of fluffy development I wont isn't nesserseraly the best way to go about it...

Friday, February 15, 2008

OfflineTV - Yann Mauchamp

Talks about cauchsurfing at LIFT08

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Intro video for Vision On TV


Saturday, February 09, 2008

Scoble, the political impact of web2

Part 2 of a interview with Scoble at LIF08 about money/tec and politics.  

Friday, February 08, 2008

Robert Scoble, the political impact of tec

Part 1 of a interview with Robert Scoble the geek blogger at LIF08 about tec and politics.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Online communities and there impacts...

Pedro Custodio did a great workshop, an Online Communities Clinic. Good material, really solid foundation for thinking about and planning user interactions for online communities. Good info here http://remarkk.com/2008/02/06/lift-workshop-online-communities-clinic-pedro-custodio/

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Lift Conference- Geneva 2008

Challenges and opportunities of technology in society - Three full days of workshops, talks, social activities and discussions to get a look at the most important technological trends and meet the people behind them.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008