Apple Phone Show no. 22 is a particularly good episode. Andy Ihnatko and Scott Bourne discuss how to use the iPhone in real-life situations. It’s a precursor of things to come in the near future.
I’ve decided to try Twitter tracking which works by you selecting which words you want to follow. The messages are then sent straight to your phone and you follow any conversations on the topic.
A few months ago I filmed the Silent Disco in Paddington station, one of London’s main train stations. As a result of the coverage of the event many people were happy to see it. With the footage I have recently filmed of the events that took place on the 6th of October I am once again getting a lot of that appreciation through facebook comments.
It feels good and I need to find more events to cover that will get this type of response.
update:–
I’m also really looking forward to watching the trends on tubemogul as I see whether it will increase over a period of hours or a period of days. It’s always fun to watch how many views you get over a period of weeks and months.
Having a website is essential in today’s media landscape for one simple reason. You don’t exist until I can hyperlink to a website containing examples of your work and describing what you do. This is particularly true in today’s new media landscape. For the minimalist among you a facebook or myspace page is the bare minimum. For those of you that take your work seriously though a website is more efficient.
There are a number of reasons for which having a website is essential. The first of these is visibility. If you’re going to an event and you take hundreds of pictures then no one will notice them unless you share them publicly. You don’t need to be published to get your big break. That’s the point of viral marketing. Produce some content. Make it public and then mention it in a few places. If it’s good then others will advertise that work to friends from now on. You are now visible. That’s in an ideal situation.
Yesterday when I went to the protest (which event? Describe it in a few words and link to it) I met two friends, one is a well established photographer whilst the other, is, as yet a relatively anonymous face in the crowd. With the established friend it was easy for me to link to his work because he has a high quality site. It’s something concrete, easy to see and assess. For the second person there is not much I can do to demonstrate their worth except mention their name but is of limited value, without a link. Why? Because there is no action to follow a “plug”.
The plug is a term used to describe how one person promotes their work through another person’s content, whether it be in website form, podcast or other. As you are talked about more frequently, your visibility increases and, with it, people’s interest in what you do. John C Dvorak of Dvorak.org/blog is the best example. Anytime he can, he will mention his website and, although for the first ten times you may not react, you will go to the website, eventually. He’s got another reader.
Whilst you’re surrounded by new media people everyone has a blog, a website, possibly a podcast and more. Leave this group, though, and most people are “invisible”, except, for young people, facebook. Most of them are shown in their bikini, at drunken parties or in other situations that would not reflect well within more traditional work environments. That’s why facebook should be kept private and personal, confined to a group of friends.
When you apply for a job online, you’ are one of a thousand applicants. It must be a nightmare reading all those applications. I am taking as an example the work I did for blogwise, a human moderated database of websites. Each day several hundred people would apply for their blog to get through. As you look at the first ten your mind is clear and you’re interested. After several dozen you’re tired and by the time you reach several hundred you skim through. The same happens when you’re applying for work – boredom sets in.
When you think about how much time people spend looking for content and entertainment on the web you begin to understand why and how important it is to have something to show. When I worked on my dissertation I looked online and found an interview of Jacques Yves Cousteau a matter of minutes after he won his Oscar for Le Monde Du silence. I needed, for a documentary, a soundbyte of Rupert Murdoch speaking about Myspace – and after several months of searching we found the key clip.
That’s also how a documentary maker found my content for use in a documentary that will be on ARTE television in Spring 2008. The point is simple. In the past when you created content and you wanted people to notice you the best method for visibility was to be mentioned in physical examples, whether magazines, DVD or on the air.
Today we’re all part of the same media landscape. What this means is that there is unlimited time for content to be shown. But how do you stand out, to get noticed?
If there’s an event taking place and you have the time to cover it, then do it – and find where people are actively talking about it. That’s a great way to promote your work. If people see your latest video and want to find out more about you, they can go to your website, if you have one, to see further examples of your work. They read your blog to see your thoughts, they follow your twitter stream to see whether you’re a party animal, they check your linkedin profile to see who you know that they may know and, as a result, they get a better idea of what kind of person you are. You’ve just increased your chances of being noticed – and hired.
Today was the Global Action day for Burma. The event was centered around a march from the Tate Britain, via the Houses of Parliament before arriving at Trafalgar Square at which point several speeches were made.
You can recognise those who were part of the protest for the red ribbons they wore and the t-shirts.
I met two friends who were taking photographs, Danfung Dennis and Crina Boros. Danfung has had quite a few interesting assignments. Crina was doing an MA whilst I was completing my final year of studies.
There was a time when you would wake up and it’s only half an hour later that the world around you would be clearly visible. In today’s web 2.0 world you wake up and twenty other people are wishing each other good morning. Many are celebrating that it’ Friday and others have pathetic status messages about 40 days of celibacy, about being overworked and all those other messages.
Of course everyone has the right to their feelings and to their own experiences but as certain individuals spend more and more time online they notice these status messages and trends and get really tired. Look at the level of media saturation about the McCann story. I muted a podcast for mentioning the story. Careless parents lost their daughter, end of story. It’s not worth as much airtime as it’s been given.
Then there’s the “back from the dead media coverage” that gets just as tiring. If a royal driving a car doesn’t wear her seat belt and dies as a result of a crash then she should not be idolised in the way people have done. It should have been an opportunity to promote the use of seatbelts to avoid repeat deaths in such a manner.
Then there’s the enthusiast’s oversaturation of the media. In particular I’m thinking of the Iphone. Of course it’s a beautiful new interface, of course it’s ushered in the fully screen tactile device but for anyone outside the US the media saturation has become too much. If you’re an active consumer of new media news then there’s a good chance you would have read several thousand articles boasting about how great it was. As a result a lot of people got media burn out from the story. It’s only as a result of getting an ipod touch that I can tolerate those stories once more.
The 30 minute news round up in the evening preceeded by the daily newspaper has been followed by an era of instant access to news stories once they have been written. What this means is that for ardent consumers of new media it is easy to reach a burn out/saturation point. we, as new media consumers must be careful not to read about single topics so much that we are unable to hear about specific topics anymore.
Whilst listening to Macbreak weekly I heard about Editgrid, a web based spreadsheet that resembles many others with a difference. It’s optimised for the Iphone if you go to iphone.editgrid.com. It’s an interesting implementation which can as easily be edited online as offline. This is great for those that may need quick access to a spreadsheet without the weight of a laptop at the same time.
It’s a simple to use application which doesn’t take a long time to sign up to and gives you flexibility.
There is one major disadvantage. It’s hard to select a cell to add data and inputing date by hunt and peck is very slow. I’d therefore recommend using it as a tool for referencing rather than data entry.
See if your views differ from mine.
In today’s Twittervox episode we had Nik Butler talking about his idea of the flatlister. The concept is based around the idea that when someone is promoting themselves and building their own persona they are a flat lister. In other words they are in charge of their own persona and their own reputation. This carries on from a topic that was discussed by Jeff Pulver when he asked whether we prefer to use our real name or a nickname.
There is one school of thought that believes that you should turn yourself into a brand whilst another school of thought believes that you should create a nickname as your brand can be sold off should it become successful enough. That’s just scraping the surface though and here is a short description of how others and I are attempting to use new media and social networking to promote our skills.
A few months ago I got a message from a documentary producer asking whether I had more footage of an event they were interested in. They had seen a short edit either on youtube or my site and thought that this would be of value to their project. I said that I had more footage and so over a period of time I sent over the material which they looked through. They decided to use my footage and as a result their documentary will be broadcast sometime in Springtime of 2008 on Arte. That’s great news for me and I’m really happy. There’s going to be a screening of the documentaries and I’m going to do my best to get there to meet these people in person. Any opportunity should be taken to meet new people.
In today’s media and cultural landscape any job that’s advertised is seen by thousands of eyes. What that means is that you’ve got a lot of competition and sending your CV is not enough. One job I recently applied to had over a thousand people apply to it. With such great numbers of people applying there’s little chance of finding work through as passive a method as sending an e-mail and electronic cv to find work. One person in Geneva said that you’ve got to stand out, after all those sorting through applications have a pile of several hundred cv on their desks to sort through.
I’ve been using Linkedin recently, adding all those people whom I have had contact with to see whether there are any of their contacts that could help me find people whom have a need for my expertise. Jemima Kiss recently made a comment about Linkedin asking why people don’t put their full CV on the website. As a result of that comment I added a few of the more interesting experiences I have had.
When you’re at Podcamp every single person has a website. Everyone is their own brand. If you listen to them introduce themselves they will all say who they are and what their website is. Some will even wear the T-shirts that promote either their site or that of the software they use as work tools.
They also have twitter accounts. Twitter is one of those tools that’s great for entrepreneur and freelancers because it makes it so much easier to judge the quality of character of those you are working with. You get an idea of their lifestyle, of their work ethic and more. if you’re awake by 7 or 8am then that shows through. If they’re working on one large project or several smallers ones you see it as well. In brief you know when is the best time to contact them for working on current or new projects.
We are now living in an era where everyone has access to the same information around the globe and as a result we have a great deal of competition. It is up to us, as individuals, with the tools we have available to demonstrate that we have the required know how.
How do you use the tools currently available to us and do other people in your circle of friends also use them? Has it changed your way of working? I’m looking forward to Nik Bulter’s Flatlister article and your feedback.
Travel with an i pod touch is great because of what it can do. I was able to test the usability of the device on two flights between Geneva and London and found the experience to be good. Whilst I was travelling on the tube I prefered to keep it hidden so I listened to podcasts but once I got to the airport I changed tact. It’s at this point that I started to watch video programs. I watched NBC’s Meet the Press and it’s a nice clear easy to view image. I also watched Futurama and it’s good as well.
I had no problems with glare or reflections whilst watching it in the terminal and once onboard the aircraft it was good to use as well. One thing I did notice was how fast the device notices wifi networks. Within just a few seconds I had nine wifi networks but the only free access one was for printers so I preffered using the laptop.
In Switzerland I connected to the home WIFI and took advantage to surf to a number of websites of which Facebook was one. The user interface is really nice, optimised for the device’s screen with tabs context sensitive to the type of activity. On the way back from Switzerland I listened to podcasts, rather than watched and one of those was Macbreak Weekly. One of the special features of that podcast are the chapters that are added. The i pod touch is great at displaying a menu for each chapter as well as the running time for each therefore if you zone out for a few minutes you can return to the bit of conversation you want to follow. In other situations you have the ability to jump straight to the chapter heading of interest to you. It could save you time if you’re in a rush.
On board the plane I noticed that there were some contact details I wanted to save from a magazine so I tested the user interface for the contact book and am quite happy. Inputing all the details was quick and easy, with a slightly different layout when inputing phone numbers, e-mail addresses or normal text, for example notes.
So far I’m happy with the device and have used it in a number of different situations without finding any major problems. I’ve working at learning to touch type on the device but there is improvement still to be made. It’s still a great toy to have for video content and web surfing whilst on the move.
Joost recently went out of private beta and anyone can join. It hasen’t changed much in the last few months in terms of look and interface and there are quite a few programs giving error messages.
I’m already looking forward to what will come after Joost.
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(Facebook as of this morning)
Reliability is the single most important thing for a website. If, as they suggest, facebook is down for a few hours then that is demonstrating one of the key reasons why my web presence is spread across so many different sites on the World Wide Web. The Internet (network of networks) was built for redundancy therefore any form of downtime is unacceptable.
In other news I’m back in London with the need to do more looking for work. Whilst in Switzerland I listened to a group of people working within the industry give advice to another person and in so doing there are a few recommediations I should make sure to apply them to my own efforts.