Welcome to the tweekend

Byrichard
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The tweekend is a weekend spent reading twitter posts by all those you are following. I found out about this word earlier today because i am following twitionary, an amusing dictionary that takes twitter terminology and brings it into every day parlance. No self respecting twitterholic should live without it.

Kidding aside another twittervox took place with Loudmouthman, Documentally and the ever present PhilCampbell. We discussed why it is that whilst in America everyone Loudmouthman met had twitter at podcamp whilst n the UK the opposite was true. We also took a look at why Documentally created twitterposer, a spoof of twitterposter.

If you’d like to view the show then drop by the Tweekend episode now.

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The old Geneva

Byrichard

Here are some old images of Geneva in Switzerland taken over a century ago. You can see how the land used to look and how it looks now. You can see some of the old streets and the contours. Now it’s a mass of buildings and the relief is hidden.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Geneva many years ago"]Geneva many years ago[/caption]

Then

Then

and Now

Such a contrast between the two.

And the gare de Cornavin

Gare de Cornavin
Then

And to see how it is now


For more images of the set.

Google’s shift from narrow casting to broadcasting.

Byrichard

Earlier this week Google decided that it would shift from subsidising narrowcasting content makers to favouring “broadcasters”. This was demonstrated with their shift towards rewarding content creators with higher requirements. In order to be a youtube partner, you need people to have viewed 4000hrs worth of content and have over 1000 subscribers.


A few years ago when you browsed Youtube you would easily browse through hundreds of videos before finding content worth watching. You would then browse and find more content. It was organic. 


In recent months I have noticed a shift towards the sensationalist and tabloid. Most headlines are now clickbait. As an experiment log out of Google and look at the top youtube content. 



Instead of seeing 16-30 videos you see ten videos. The content that they want you to see has been whittled down. This means that unless you have a big audience, clickbait titles and are already authoritative you will be invisible. The amateur aspect of Youtube is gone. It is being replaced by the authoritarianism of mass appeal. 


The Upside


There are hundreds of thousands of content creators that had accepted to have adverts as pre-roll, as banners or at the end of the videos. Google and Youtube no longer take advantage of the long tail.  Most of us create content that is seen a few hundred times and the revenue is minimal. Marketers still paid youtube for the visibility and youtube still made money off our backs. We were never going to see that money. It would have taken years for us to earn enough for an electronic transfer to be made. Youtube was the clear winner until they decided to stop making free money from us


The second upside is that we’re going to be able to browse videos and find acceptable content more easily until recently we were forced to watch from 5 seconds to two minutes of advert before watching five seconds and clicking away. Without adverts, we will see the video is mediocre and move on sooner. 


The opportunity


When youtube was young it provided a unique opportunity because it gave us “unlimited” space and bandwidth for the sharing videos. Neither of these is scarce anymore. The barriers to sharing videos on our websites have decreased. HTML5 and above, h.265 and H.264 make it lighter for us to upload and share video content from our own websites.


Conclusion


Youtube was a great place for browsing and finding interesting content to watch but as algorithms and populism took over the website so the ease with which we could find random interesting content has decreased. From 30 videos to choose
from we have gone to five per theme. Everything is so curated that we watch what the crowd watches. 

Glocals and twitter

Byrichard

Glocals is a local website to find out what events are going on where for the international community in Geneva. It regroups events in a number of cities making easier to meet like minded people.

The reason for which I mention this social network is the low input high yield results from the site. In brief you see an event, you turn up, you meet some strangers and through conversation they become acquaintances.

This is contrary to the way I have approached social interactions on the web. I have spent years now building trust, building relations with people in a virtual environment. As a result of this it requires constant attention, constant interest.

I am thinking of twitter when speaking about this topic. 70,000 tweets have given me very little return on the time I have invested. In effect twitter is not only a waste of time but just the wrong social network for Switzerland.

There are a wealth of people to be met through the Glocals site, some work in the UN system, others for global companies and yet more for other settings. People who have been in Geneva for just a few hours or days meet up with people who have been here for years.

There’s also the gender balance. Going to many twitter events you’re surrounded by men, by workaholics, by self proclaimed entrepreneurs. They are focused on work, and profit rather than friendship.

In contrast Glocals is a nice mix of men and woman, physically active people who go canyoning, sailing, running and more. It’s a well travelled international crowd.

The most interesting aspet of my experiences over the past two weeks is that just because a site is talked about extensively does not mean that this is the site you should give most of your time to. There is a good chance that there is a tiny site with only a few thousand users that will reward you by turning up to events. No need for all that virtual conversing. Turn up, chat face to face and you will have gained new opportunities. The result is a more satisfied end of weekend. I will continue particpating in these face to face meetups and twitter will be a secondary network.

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Twittervision

Byrichard

Twitter is a global short messaging system that allows people to post what they are doing 140 characters at a time. For the moment it is a relatively new phenomenon therefore it’s not too hard to keep track of the conversations going on.

They are also geo logged. As you’re watching people’s messages you can see China say that they’re getting ready for the night ahead whilst in Europe people are going out to lunch. In the US people are complaining about having to wake up early in order to catch their planes, go for walks or in certain cases go to bed.

It’s amusing and it’s reminiscent of ten years ago when I spent 13hrs in a chatroom at a time when spending ten minutes online was expensive. it’s cyclical. One thing is popular, then is replaced by something else before becoming popular again.

One difference this time is the technology used. Google maps show where in the world people are tweeting from whilst the twitter site simply shows what people have written. It’s amusing to watch the world and what people are doing in it.

VR Shinecon Virtual Reality Glasses

Byrichard

The VR Shinecon Virtual Reality glasses provide a low cost opportunity for people to experience Virtual Reality content and immersive videos with their existing phone rather than investing hundreds in a new phone and VR headset. it can fit phones from 4 to 6 inches easily.

The front panel opens to accommodate a diversity of phones and sizes. You can open the front panel, place your phone and centre it, and then close it. Before you close the front panel make sure to launch the VR app or content that you want to experience. Jaunt VR is one app that is easy and intuitive to use.

Once the front panel is closed and you put on the VR headset you can adjust focus  to suit your eyesight. This control is on the right and left side of the goggles.The inter-ocular distance can be adjuste to suit the spacing between your eyes via the wheel at the top of the headset. The straps are velcro so adjusting the headset to your head size is also intuitive.

The phone compartment has two openings on either side. This opening allows for headphones to be plugged in to the VR headset as well as a USB cable to charge the phone if you are using this device for an extended period of time. With the Samsung Gear headset the USB port is taken up by the external controls. This means that although you can use your phone with the headset on you lose the ability to recharge the phone.

Good for demos

If you are demonstrating VR content to clients then you have two options. The first option is to have more mobile phones than VR headsets. This allows for one or two backup phones to charge whilst the others are being used to view VR content. The other option is to recharge the phone while people are enjoying the VR experience or even to try the VR experience with their own phone. Imagine the effect that this would have on potential VR enthusiasts. When they see that there is almost no barrier to entry it will encourage them to join in the experience.

summary

The positive aspects of this headset are that it can accept most phones, you can adjust focus and interocular distance intuitively and strap adjustments are easy. It works well with youtube and the JauntVR app.

The negative aspects of this headset are that light leaks in so the immersive experience is diminished there is a slight learning curve as you learn to adjust the headset to your requirements. You can only control apps that allow you to look at something specific to start playing content.

I would recommend this headset for people getting in to VR who want to enjoy immersive content without spending too much money on features that they do not yet require.

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