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Video Uploads to Flickr April 9, 2008

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Upload Videos to Flickr

My First Video on Flickr fit the new requirements perfectly: less than 90 seconds, and less than 150MB. That’s fantastic, and the streaming in good, embed codes, tagging, fits right into my flickr photo/video stream, awesome.

The videos on Flickr are going to make YouTube obsolete, or rather, the MySpace to Flickr’s metaphorical Facebook. The content in each place is different. I don’t go to MySpace or YouTube expecting quality, art, or intellectual content of the least kind. However, I know some real life people on Facebook, and some really serious photographers on Flickr.

By creating a constraint like this, the “90-second short film” will gain a place on the internet. I wouldn’t doubt if the next set of consumer-level cameras have an option to limit video clips to 90 seconds to allow for easy Flickr uploading.

…and it is SO easy. The same exact experience as working with a photo - I haven’t tried geotagging, but I bet it works. Now if they can get Viddler-style deep tagging working just like Notes on photos, I’ll be a very happy man.

David is a total goofball, now you can see it at 30FPS. Thanks Flickr!

Drupal Easy January 23, 2008

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A while ago, Charlie and I were talking about how we could share our love of Drupal with the rest of the world. Our natural desires to create original content and extend the reach Cervo Systems helped us develop the idea for a website, a podcast and a community around making Drupal accessible to people with no knowledge of programming.

Welcome Drupal Easy to our family.

Today, I answered the first question on the site, about pathauto aliases and XML Sitemaps. I hope we keep getting some mid-level questions like this, but also some much simpler questions.

I have a screencast planned for the near future that compares Drupal against industry standards for security. This will hopefully be the sort of thing PHP haters and team leads will be able to use to understand that Drupal is awesome.

One day in the future, I’d also like to come up with a coherent set of lessons we can sell in a video book format.

I also have a Facebook page which currently has 8 random fans attached, and that’s actually how I got the first question.

I think this is going to be lots of fun, and maybe help us make a little cash once we get that part of it going. Who knows?

Facebook, the Devil, and Me (historic) November 30, 2007

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Think back to two years ago - had you heard of the Facebook? If you were in college, you most certainly had. When I returned home on a trip from Michigan for a fraternity convention, all of my friends asked “are you on facebook?” and seemed shocked that I was only on LiveJournal and MySpace… they were ALL on facebook, and they were all friends from the first time they’d met. It was the “real” Second Life. After lots of “no, I don’t have a school e-mail“, I found that Nathan had two school emails, so he let me use one. It was a great community back then, before the feed, before the apps, before the statuses, even before YouTube! ::gasp!:: “Was there life before YouTube?” It doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

Yes, I really used to terminate all of my LiveJournal posts with a line from Tron.

I have crossed over to the dark side.

Facebook me!

End of Line.

Flock and Facebook Screencast November 21, 2007

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The new Flock is out and better than ever, so I’m inspired yet again to screencast about it and show you more about this browser. In this edition we talk about how Flock has integrated your Facebook friends (and Flickr, MySpace, YouTube) right into the sidebar. You can keep the People bar open while you surf the web and make updates to your status, write messages, subscribe to media and share with your friends with just a simple drag-and-drop. This is the version of Flock you’ve been waiting for, trust me.

Download the Screencast (iPhone friendly!)

If you want to see anything else demonstrated, like if you want to teach your boss how to upload YouTube videos, I would be happy to create something custom for you. We do dedications!

PodCamp Orlando October 20, 2007

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Video thumbnail. Click to play
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Orlando has at least 4 healthy podcasting networks, as well as hundreds of travel shows, religious shows and whatever else you get from the regular podcast crowd. It’s high time that we get an event together.

We had a BarCamp in September with 170+ attendees, but there was only one podcast session, led by myself. I realized we could take some of the geekery out of it and turn it into a media convention, akin to the BlogOrlando unconference held by social media guru Josh Hallet - instead of focusing on techniques, we can talk about what it means to podcast and what this medium is doing for the world.

I’m really hoping to get a wide sample of the community, not just geeks - arts groups, university professionals as well as other institutions and corporations as well.

I’ve contacted a few people directly and created a PodCamp Orlando Facebook group to get us started.

We have a great local networking group here called Florida Creatives - we get together once a month for a Happy Hour downtown - and we have a wiki where a lot of the organization will be going down. I own the domain OrlandoPodcasters.com and PodCampOrlando.com - the community is mostly organized, we just need to make the event happen.

This group seems to have great support internationally. I’m excited to become a part of it.

Randi Zuckerberg’s Innovativity October 4, 2007

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I don’t often watch the ScobleShow, but I saw they interviewed the first sister of Facebook, Randi Zuckerberg (and it was only 5 minutes, Scoble is notoriously long-winded). It was calld Face to Facebook with Randi, cute. Here’s the deal: She called herself innovative like 5 times. Never reffered to a team or what the people who use Facebook do as innovative, but herself.

If I ever call myself innovative, I want someone to come back to this post and call me out on it. I’m having trouble putting it into words, but I don’t want to tell other people what to think of me. Randi is clearly trying to associate herself with the word “innovative” in the minds of the people watching this interview. It’s likely that in 3 years, I won’t remember what she said except for that word, and now neither will you…

How did Randi earn the right to innovate as the Digital Media Producer at Facebook? She made some videos that are only funny to silicon valley geek types, but I’ve never really found them that funny.

I’m going to look into Randi some more over the next couple of weeks and see if I can find something cool about her - I’m sure that after her appearance on Scoble she’s all over the place. If not, maybe I’ll just interview her. Stay tuned.

Jessica Clark almost gets Coworking October 3, 2007

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Jessica Clark recently wrote a web-only article for The American Prospect, “an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas” about our new friends at Independent’s Hall called Coworkers of the World, Unite! She gets all of the factual information correct:

Co-working goes hand-in-hand with the volatile startup lifestyle, offering a haven between gigs and a spot to generate new projects and connections. The trend started in the capital of what business writer Daniel Pink has dubbed the “free agent nation” — San Francisco. There, Chris Messina, 26, and Tara Hunt, 34, run Citizen Agency, a marketing and design firm that advises clients on how to develop brand communities, and Citizen Space, a co-working office.

Fine piece of journalism, really. I think this could help a newbie understand coworking. I disagree with the last 3 paragraphs. I left a comment, but it feels like I didn’t think it all the way through.

Am I too whiny? I felt like a kid defending his Ninja Turtles:

How can you say “for Hunt and others, these new ties are just as valid as the old connections of blood, proximity and race.” and then include these comments?

“no number of Facebook friendships will serve as a safety net if you go bankrupt”

“Incubate their startups so that they can cash in and move on to other projects.”

You have a theoretical knowledge of what all these buzzwords mean - social interaction, barcamp, coworking - but would you have written that if you knew what it was like? The bonds you make because of these common goals are far stronger than those you make with an everyday working relationship. To quote Chris Heuer from an unconference this week, “Business is personal again”. I won’t hire anyone I wouldn’t invite into my home, or go on a weekend camping trip with.

The people I’ve met because of my interest in coworking are getting invited to my wedding. I mean that.

She goes through several thousand words building up Coworking, BarCamp and other such geeky topics as new ways of holding a community together, and then accuses us of being hollow, shallow capitalists in the same breath.

Jessica, I charge you to go work at Indy Hall for a month and read your article to yourself; then we’ll talk.

Bug Labs, Chumby, Neuros, Netvibes, Facebook July 31, 2007

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Bug Labs, Chumby, Neuros, Netvibes, Facebook — what do they all have in common? Open platforms.

Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, BUG is intended to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.

(blank) is developing (blank), an open, modular, web services platform. (Insert name of company here)

I was saying today that a possible future step for Facebook will be to release the FBML interpereter as a platform you can install on your web server and integrate into your app. Now they have a dead-simple web services framework. Will they do it? Is it smart? Can they make money? Keep hold of their audience? Achieve “Web OS” status?

BUG is supposed to have Wi-Fi, a GPS, a screen, USB, and the processor. Dave Winer had the first mention I saw of the device. He was one of the guys pushing the open-source podcast device a while back, so I’ll bet he’s pretty excited about this.

More thoughts on this later, for now I have to get back to work.

If Digg is Mob Mentality, Pownce is a Clique June 30, 2007

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I recently posted a comment on Mashable I’d like to share with you, my subscribers. The post was Rise of the Rose Bashers? and it pointed out people who have never used Kevin Rose & company’s new IM/filesharing service, Pownce.

At the moment, one of the most popular stories on Digg is entitled: “Kevin Rose & Pownce Get Pwned by Uncov“, in which potshots are taken at Rose and Pownce. Further insults are piled on by the Diggers.

The digg audience is almost entirely made up of followers, not leaders. That’s actually the business model for the whole damned site! It’s not a big surprise to me that a service that allows for individuality and groups and privacy would not appeal to the “me too” crowd. Digg users don’t like being told they can’t do something - they’re spoiled in that way. That’s why the HD-DVD code was such a big deal, and the comments changes too. If one person has a contrary idea and they can be persuaded, the Diggers will glom on so they can be “cool”. This is how pop/anti-pop culture works.

If this doesn’t apply to you personally, great. Generalities are not ultimatums. There is a sliding scale, I’ll be the first person to admit to that.

Pownce (without having used it) seems like a “friends only” type of service - it will end up having a completely different audience because the service is fundamentally different. You’re not sharing with the world, but custom groups. This is Facebook vs. MySpace. One is for friends, one is for the public. The type of audience you see on these sites is very different. A service that gave you the best of both worlds was LiveJournal, with friends only, private and public posts, as well as custom groups. This is just that idea with a focus on IM and file sharing.

I think Digg has proven over its 3? years of existence that it’s not going anywhere - actually, I wish they’d exapnd the service to include geographic categories - like countries, states, metropolitan areas - Outside.in is currently my choice for that kind of stuff, and Ma.gnolia could be if we could get some people using the service. I think that’s the big thing with any of these Web 2.0 ideas - if nobody participates, it doesn’t matter how good your service is. I’m working on a social networking site, and I’m planning to make my own local content offering, so I now see that you not only need to convince one group of users but that group ans several of their friends. This is the real trick. How do we do that?

Florida Creatives Happy Hour 6/18 June 15, 2007

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Third week of the month, the two events we host come around, and I blog/email/post the hell out of it! First of all is likemind.orl at Lake Eola Panera Bread, that happened already this morning, but it happens every month. Alex Rudloff and Ryan Price (that’s me) host this event for… well… anyone in Orlando! The likemind.us fellas in New York got a very nice company named Anomaly to send us some coffee/bagel money, so come for free coffee and good conversation.

Now, for the big news - Florida Creatives Happy Hour is turning 7 months old! Officially our baby is 27 weeks along in its development (but been drinking since day 1? ouch!). I’m really hoping we will be able to get some presence in the local schools once the next year gets started, so I’d like to have a short directed discussion about that, maybe record it, when we feel like we’ve got “quorum” (enough people to make decisions). John Rife is supposed to be returning from his trip this week, so I’m sure he’ll have stories to share. I’ve also spent the last 2 months on a big recruiting push, and just sent a couple of fresh emails today to local illustrators/podcasters. Not to mention the social networking groups and doing lots of outreach there too. If you’re on Upcoming (meaning you have a Yahoo ID), Facebook, VIRB or MySpace, join the groups. Don’t forget the mailing list.

Event Page & RSVP
Monday, June 18, 2007
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
crooked bayou
50 E Central Blvd # D
Orlando, Florida 32801

If you’ve never been to a happy hour, all you need to know is BE YOURSELF. We have a very casual atmosphere at Florida Creatives, and we are mostly made up of people who want to make some friends who are passionate about the same things they are. In addition to likeminded friends, we are most of us interested in learning about other disciplines, so we are here to learn as well. Last but not least, there are some of us who want to see this community thrive, and what we can accomplish by getting organized. Admission is free, business cards are plentiful, discussion is honest and friendly. Check us out.