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Ridley Scott is exploring an idea discussed by Dziga Vertov several decades ago

Byrichard

Disclaimer: These are thoughts, rather than a well structured post.

Ridley Scott wants your user generated videos for a film “A Day on Earth” and whilst people are hyping this idea as something new the concept is an old one. Dziga Vertov had an idea that he would capture Life Unawares. Eventually he would end up with an experiment in six reels called “The Man with the Movie camera”. It’s aim was to show Soviet Russia as it was. It was an experiment in editing and in story telling.

Skipping ahead you also have the Cinéma Verité movement, where the camera and micro trottoir would go out into the street to interview people and find out their opinions on a variety of topics. I would be more specific but I haven’t watched the film in a long time. What I do remember is the Eclair camera with “crystal” sync sound. Technological innovation freed the camera operator and sound man to continue experimenting.

Today everyone has a video camera. Everyone has one on their phone as well as their photo camera. Life is constantly being documented in video form. 24hrs of video are uploaded a minute to youtube. video recording is an everyday part of life. I’m sure we will see a great diversity of moments, some births, some sailing, some rock climbing, some sporting event and more.I haven’t taken a look at how long they want the finished result to be.

Seesmicers have had fun with this idea already. We had hat days, we had other events, we would go out with the cameras and film. With Qik too we did this. There is nothing new about the process. There is only a far greater ease to share the material internationally and collaborate.

As a side note we still remember Pangea day, another event with the same line of thought, but where people presented finished products rather than moments.

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Canyoning and a new camera

Byrichard

On Saturday I went canyoning, or as you Americans would call it Canyoneering and the adventure was fun. You suit up in 30°C heat and walk for fifteen minutes through a mountain path before going down to the river and jumping from pool to pool. The natural cooling effect of the water is welcome. As you go down the river so you get opportunities to jump from a variety of heights, from 7 meters to 11 meters. Land the wrong way and your palms may hurt.

That’s not actually the point of this post. The point of this post is to speak about how much fun it is to spend your time going down a river in such a fun and relaxing manner. The drawback is that most cameras are not waterproof. The Nexus one mobile phone for example would be afraid. You may regret bringing it along.

That’s why I have a new photo camera. It’s the Olympus Stylus Tough 8010. It’s a small drop proof waterproof camera rated to 10 meters below the surface. That means I can jump from 11 meters with it in my clothing and it should survive for me to take pictures of the next people jumping down.

In a little over a week I’ll be playing with this camera during a rafting trip so I’ll upload the pictures at that point, if i don’t end up in the lake before then.

I’ll leave you with a test gallery of pictures taken with the new camera.

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624545521618″]

Instant translation with Google Chrome

Byrichard

One of the best features of google chrome at the moment is it’s instant translation function. The idea is simple. You surf to a page, it automaticaly detects the language and then presents the content in a language you understand.

With such a feature the advantage is that it opens up a whole new batch of knowledge and information. Surf to a Polish page about Kabanos, a Polish/eastern European speciality and the content is instantly available in English.

As a second example if you’re in Switzerland and surf to a swiss page the content may originaly be presented in English but the software will translate it. As a result there is no longer the need to hunt for that language switching part of the page.

The big picture insinuates that whatever the language you speak you will be able to read the content in many more pictures. As a result language will become transparent.

Byrichard

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624468965462″]

More of the Lake parade. This gallery will grow as I have time to process more of the images.

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Geneva Lake Parade – McDonald’s FIFA theme.

Byrichard

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624344703307″]

Every year I go to the lake parade and this year I tried something different. I decided to take photographs rather than video.

By the same opportunity I am testing Flickr gallery, a plugin that makes including your flickr images into wordpress a two step process.

zynga and maxis

Byrichard

Zynga and Maxis are from very different computer gamer times. Maxis came at a time when the game was the source of entertainment. You would build a farm, worry about pests and locusts, about fertilizing the fields and having enough income to build the next series of crop. Zynga on the other hand is a game that teaches you to behave like a machine rather than a human, where repetitive actions are the standard.

Simfarm, among other games was one of those games that you could play for weeks at a time. You would select a difficulty level and according to that difficulty level you would need to use knowledge you acquired through experience. If you put cows next to fields without a fence they would walk through and eat the crop. If you didn’t save enough money then if a crop failed your farm was toast.

With Zynga you can put pigs with crops, animals in barns and more. There is no intellectual aspect to this game unless you’re a garden designer. You plant the fields, you wait a while and then you harvest. This is great if life doesn’t get in the way. How many of you know what you will be doing in two hours, 8 hours or sixteen hours? i kind of do, but my life will not center around such a simple game.

What I liked about simfarm is that it was not mechanical. There was an aspect of game strategy. By obeying certain principles you could progress quite nicely in the game. Zynga has two ways for progression. The first is patience and the second is money. If you pay money then you can have everything immediately. If you spam your friends and they participate then you are rewarded. Do you really want to have to spam your friends to progress in a game? I don’t.

I don’t like this trend, that you encourage people to spend money for a mechanical rather than intellectual game and I think that game makers should take this into consideration. If Civilization V came to facebook then I would play it. I would pay an upfront payment and expect to have the full game.

And this reminds me of a recent documentary on the BBC called Coast. Do you, as a gamer, as a facebook user want games that are teaching you a different form of managment where right decisions bring profit or do you want penny arcade style games that require that mechanical put the coin in the slot type response?

I would like to leave you with an interesting TED talk to help you think about this topic. I watched it a week ago but it’s relevant to the question of time spent gaming and what we should expect to get out of it.

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Enjoying the freedom of portable apps.

Byrichard

Portable Apps is an interesting option for those of us who use work computers rather than our own. It is also a good solution for those of us who change desktop all the time but can’t play with our phones whilst at work.

A few days ago I wrote about Chrome as a PAF file and things have become more interesting as a result.

What I particularly enjoy are the extensions that you can install within the browser. Anyone who works in an office always faces the challenge of getting authorisation to install the simplest of applications. With google chrome and extensions you regain some of that freedom.

The browser allows you to install the extensions of your liking and use them. Some of these applications are the mobile phone version implemented in the desktop format. The best example of this is the yahoo messenger app. Very similar builds are running on the desktop and mobile phone.

The other features are google calendar, facebook and feedly extensions. There is choice. I have feedly running to let me know how many RSS items are left to read. With the google calendar application I can see how much time is left before my next meeting/time commitment. With facebook I can see how many pending messages are waiting for my action.

The advantage of this way of doing things is that you can cut down on the number of open tabs. It is an on demand interaction. It is only open for as long as you are doing something. That’s like mobile applications.

What we see here is a shift away from the traditional web browser where information is displayed according to a cascading style sheet and towards an application based system. The application is installed locally and the only information that you gather from the server is raw data. As a result even with slower connections you can participate, whether from a mobile phone or whilst travelling where roaming charges apply.

It’s an interesting space to keep an eye on. I like having the ability to customise my web surfing environment whatever the environment and platform. I wish that the app syncing would work for extensions, rather than for bookmarks and certain settings.