VIDEO HUB blog

unmediated posted an article from dembot, which reads like a "where are they now?" VH1 special of online video...

TOP TEN REASONS WHY VIDEO PLATFORMS FAIL:

1. Insubstantial library of content
2. Poor bit rates
3. Lack of innovation (clone platform)
4. No share in content ownership rights
5. No exclusivity of content distribution
6. Lack of spark/spirit for a centralized community
7. Need for users to d/l proprietary software
8. Awkward interface design
9. Overly excessive emphasis on rights protection
10. Lack of technological foresight & audience expectations

The rest of the article is worth reading too.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

David Pogue wrote a blog entry this week entitled Asking the Crowd to Spread the News in which he muses about all the useful and more pro-active things that Web 2.0 applications could be used for beyond just entertainment (YouTube) and buying 'collectors items' (eBay), etc. Its further endorsement that the time is now for the Hub and other projects like it:

A Web 2.0 site doesn’t really take off until the public anoints a de facto “main” one in a category, at which it becomes self-fulfilling. For example, there are other auction sites, but most people still go to eBay; there are other video sites, but YouTube is the big kahuna. And how that anointing happens is a mysterious thing, having to do with buzz, timing and software design.

But the bottom line is that Web 2.0 is still in its infancy. There are so many other ways that we could save time, money, hassle — if only we had the right information from other people like us.

Get started, entrepreneurs. You’re living in an exciting time.

Posted by Matisse Bustos at 04:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Our good friend Ethan has done it again, drawing the connection between a recent viral meme, anti-censorship, and human rights in an article on World Changing.

A 16 digit number used as a key to decrypt HD-DVDs became the center of an online revolt against internet censorship yesterday, when it was posted on several blogs, and attempts to stop its proliferation only led to increased popularity.

My interest in the situation has less to do with DVD hacking and more to do with the question of how sensitive information can spread on the Internet. The spread of the number is something of a perfect storm. Many of the techno-libertarians who populate sites like Digg have no great sympathy for digital rights management or the DMCA. The clandestine information - a 16 digit number - is really small, and can be spread through numerous different methods. (As cryptographers have observed, it’s much easier to stop the spread of the video files, which are gigabytes in size, that targeting less that a kilobyte of information…)

Guess video will still be a problem for the foreseeable future.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps momentum is building for projects like the Hub. This article from The Age highlights how people in the Philippines are using YouTube to try and get attention about alleged government complicity with a rash of murders of political activists.

From Slashdot:

"One factor driving the move of political statements to YouTube, and away from old-style street protest, is that on the Internet the chances of being personally associated with a protest are lower. Mounting your political message online is also safer in countries where taking part in a protest can result in your death or injury at the hands of your country's army. We've seen how street protests and online polls alike are being shunted aside and ignored. What is the future for the common person who yearns to be heard?"

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently reconnected with Dan McQuillan, the web manager for Amnesty International. We were both on a panel on human rights at the NetSquared conference last year. Anyway, Dan has a blog called, internetartizans that has a whole bunch of cool stuff human rights and internet technology. It's definitely worth checking out.

This post is particularly interesting since he covers a few ways in which people at existing social networking sites like MySpace, and Facebook are protecting themselves from search engine tracking, "adveillance" to use his term.

Track me not is a Firefox extension that obfuscates your search queries to make it harder for Google or Yahoo to profile you, but I'm totally gonna use Fake Your Space (it appears to be down), which "allows unpopular people on MySpace, Facebook and Consumating to buy hot friends. For just $.99 per month, you can buy a good-looking friend who will leave 2 comments on your profile every week".

As someone with no friends on any of the aforementioned sites, $.99 a month sounds very reasonable for even average looking friends.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

... good thing we're not squeamish.

Katrin Verclas of NTEN and MobileActive fame writes on the NTEN blog:

• Mobile phones should be used as part of an integrated campaign. As sexy as mobile marketing and campaigning is, it can’t yet stand by itself.
• Texting campaigns, especially with short codes on a professionally run platform, are still expensive and will not turn into ‘profit centers’ any time soon.

• Mobile phones are a great way to strengthen ties with your existing supporters and get immediate responses for urgent actions. For now these are the two most promising uses for mobile phones in campaigns, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ll see this broaden as mobile marketing takes off.
• Remember that most people still use their cell phone for calling. I know of commercial campaign that let people sign up by sending a text to an sms short code or by simply calling a number. Most people called the toll-free number. Similarly, campaigns asking people to call to take some sort of action have shown promise.
• Mobile messaging needs to have a clear call to action or valuable content. But what makes content valuable? Well after giving it some thought, I’d like to get the headlines from the NTEN blog, asthma and smog alerts from the American Lung Association, and traffic alerts from my town on my mobile phone, to name a few.
• Be creative. I am fascinated by SMS graffiti and public sms displays, and I’ve written about it over at MobileActive.org. Playing is ok - this is an emerging field where innovation is possible and much needed!
• Evaluate your work. If you are running a campaign or considering one, be in touch, share your results, and do not be shy to experiment. We are constantly on the lookout for good data to share (even anonymously).

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Veoh, one of the video sharing sites we looked at early on, has relaunch with a new slicker interface as well as some cool transcoding and syndication features, including automatic cross-posting to YouTube, Google, and MySpace.

Here are a couple of reviews from TechCrunch and LostRemote.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

While researching possible options for video filtering technology for the Hub, we came across some stuff about Audible Magic, a company that was developing a way to filter for copyrighted material. It appears that MySpace is going to use this technology for their videos.

It will be interesting to see how well it works. In the mean time check out the article on TechCrunch, and the ensuing discussion.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 06:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The 3GSM World Congress is happening in Barcelona this week, and the BBC is covering it.

They've also put together a list of some companies to keep track of in the coming year. Not surprisingly, there are a number of companies offering services for user generate content producers.

UK based, YoSpace has created See Me TV - sort of like a YouTube for mobile phones, but creators get paid each time their content is viewed.

Tocmag allows users to create "magazines" that can be downloaded to mobile phones. I haven't been able to see anything since my Treo 650 doesn't seem to be able to render the wml properly, but if anyone gets a chance to check it out, let me know how it is.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's another article I came across from the Unmediated feed. Drupal is a leading contender as the platform for development of the hub, this article from newassignment.net talks about how Drupal is being used by sites like Ourmedia, and the Onion.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a somewhat timely turn of events relative to my last post about Google Video, Google has just announced that Google Video will become a search engine for video content posted anywhere online. Users now get search results from YouTube in addition to Google Video.

Here's a full article from Arstechnica.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Re-Remediated (again) from unmediated, who got it from JD at Social Media.

Our friend from blip.tv, Mike Hudack, wrote an article a with some handy guidlines at Video Vertigo:.

• Aggregators should always identify the individual show, videoblog or video podcast in their index, and include a link to the appropriate site for that show. When possible, the link should be to the show's own Web site, when that's impossible the link should be to the show's presence on a service provider's Web site.

• Aggregators should always conduct video playback in the video's original player, rather than the aggregator's player. ...

• In one way or another the aggregator should make clear that the video content they're displaying is aggregated, and not originally uploaded to the aggregator's Web site.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Despite some other things that Google has done in the past, they are still make a lot of useful tools. The latest one I came across might be really good for allowing people to discuss videos posted to the hub.

The Google Video "Permalink" allows you to create a link to a specific point in the video. The article in Make you go hmm provides some good examples on how it works.

Using the "Outlawed" piece on Google video I've linked to 7minutes, 2 seconds into the video where Binyam is quoted about why he chose to go to Britain rather than the US.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 04:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There was an interesting article in today's New York Times about how important cellphones are in Iraq, not just for communication, but as a tool for self expression. Iraqis use their cellphones to pass around viral videos that poke fun at the Iraqi government, the US military, and energy shortages among other things.

Here's how cellphones are being used in a Human Rights context:

For human rights workers in Iraq, cellphones play a darker role. Omar al-Jabouri, who heads the human rights office for the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, said he often received pictures of men tortured or killed by death squads, many of them taken with the cellphones of witnesses or the victims’ relatives. At bombings, Iraqis are often seen recording the carnage in pictures or short videos.

Cellphone technology seems to be relatively affordable:

The prices the phones command are rather high for Iraq, of course. But with a booming aftermarket in cellphones, people can sell their old ones for nearly the original price and move up to a fancier model. Service is relatively cheap, with most people relying on $10 and $20 prepaid cards rather than the more expensive monthly plans.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week, Bryan and I had a call with Erik Sundelof, a fellow of the Reuters Digital Vision Program at Stanford University in California. Erik had set up a test page for WITNESS on his inTheFieldOnline.net site. After a short registration process,users can send images, video and text straight from a cell phone. It was quite impressive although it was still a test site. Thefact that certain parts of the interface were not in English made things a tad confusing for non-swedish speaking folks. Erik had to cut the call short as "CNN" was on the line.

Anyways, here's an article about Erik's other project. Presumably this is what CNN was calling about....

Cell phones: A new tool in the war-zone blogosphere
Empowering technology also raises safety, credibility issues
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/internet/08/01/newblogs/index.html

Although the immediacy of being able to send media through a cellphone is extremely attractive, it is currently one of the least secure ways to send information. Especially if you are registered in a system that stores your number. A group of ITP students (Freeformed.org) who are also working on a mobile uplaod project had the interesting idea of using a 'phone relay'. If you want to remain anonymous, you send your media to a relay which would then resend it without storing any of your data. Now if we can set up local relays...that would solve the long distance calls. Apparently it cost Bryan 30$ to send a video from his phone....

As for our test page. If any of you folks are travelling, we would love to get some test results from people abroad. Check out our test page at: http://www.inthefieldonline.net/witness/

Continue reading "Reporting from the Field" »

Posted by Tina Gongsakdi at 04:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking around to see what sort of things exist to help keep mobile uploading of video secure, I ran across this article from OhGizmo about a GSM phone that uses 1024 bit Diffie-Helman encryption. I don't know anything about encryption protocol, but it sure sounds impressive. While this phone doesn't protect the user's identity it is a step in the right direction as it protects data from being intercepted during transmission.

Here's a phone from Italy that attempts to hide the caller's identity through a combination of anonymous sim cards and changing the phones unique ID number (IMEI) each time a new sim card is used.

Posted by Bryan Nunez at 01:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Afew weeks back, Gareth Benest of One World TV visited our digs here in Brooklyn. We spent sometime discussing our plans which to any sane person would sound like we were pretty much developing the exact same project and talking to all the same people. It really didn't come as a complete surprise to either one of us. "My Space and a activist style You-Tube mash-up" is apparently not a unique idea. Of course the details like subject matter, review guidelines and policies, and community differ, but the essential functionality is the same.

I can name six other organizations off the top of my head who are also doing something similar between now and EOY 07 all within different phases of planning, prototyping, and in beta. It seems that non profits like ourselves (who can least afford to throw money down the river) should be able to pool our resources to build one comprehensive backend that can be skinned and customized using modules that can be developed, shared and added as needed. (All opensource ofcourse) Is this a pipe dream?

We left the meeting with promises to start by atleast sharing knowledge. Then perhaps we'll compare specs and see if we can indeed do something together.

On that note, a report by Maxigas of Transmission.cc that took place in Rome (Forte Prenestino), June 7-10 came out today. One of the main initiatives was to try to cut out duplication of efforts by organizations using different Video CMS's and develop some way of enabling these CMS's to interface with each other.

Posted by Tina Gongsakdi at 04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)