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IBC and some of the trends to take notice of.
IBC is a big show. There are a lot of things to see. Some of those are fun and innovative whilst others are less interesting. I’ve noticed that there are quite a few companies showing mobile and IPTV solutions. Many of them are multiplatform, web tv, mobile and other. they work on a variety of codecs.
Anothr aspect is the virtual studio and automated processes. We see many remote camera rigs, remote jibs, remote 3d modeling cameras and to some extent virtual modelling and sets before any of the shooting is ever done. In reality it’s abou he one man operation. One camera operator to program, one person to control multiple camers and more. It’s also about high definition and 3d.
There were quite a few examples and solutions attempting to allow for 3D productions, from two small cameras fitted on a rig to allow for shooting as if it was two eyes to more expensive rigs where you’d see two cameras, one pointing down and shooting through a mirror with another shooting straight forward. Of course there are also the monitors that can play in 3D. Several stands had demonstrations and implementations of this technology.
After this we have the importance of asset managment. Many companies were working at offering solutions for newsrooms, video archives and more. That’s because of the amount of content that content aggregators are now having to contend with. It’s an interesting time. i learned quite a bit on this topic.
There are many more details to be discussed but those are some of the key points I have noticed at this particular IBC. More articles will come soon.
Travian, an online game
Travian is one of those games you would have loved to play after reading a few Asterix comics. There are three civilisations you can be, Gaul, Roman or Teuton. Each player starts off with one village and expands from there.
There are four types of resources. These are wood, clay, iron and wheat. As your village begins you need to decide on what resources you want to grow. Click on the land type and you will see a display with the amount of time it will take for the order to be completed. The next step is to look at your town. Build a granery, a cranny, a warehouse and other buildings that make a village what it is. Overtime as your buildings improve so the town is large enough for more buildings. These are stables, palaces, residences for kings and more.
Getting your village to expand is just one step. The next step is to make sure that you’re safe. Around you are many other villages and some of these players have been playing for a number of months. As a result they have amassed many resources and alliances. They will attack and pillage you therefore you must defend your land with troops. As you expand and form alliances so the game becomes more interesting. At this point you are competing not just as a village but as alliances to see which can be the most prestigious.
It’s a fun game, reminiscient of such games as Civilization amongst others. If you need a two minute break whilst working on a long project then this may be the game for you. I’ve enjoyed it and so may you.
Why a 20% drop is not necessarily a bad thing for myspace
According to recent articles myspace is losing user share in relation Facebook but this is not necessarily a bad thing. When you think of facebook you know that it’s a glorified phonebook therefore everyone “needs” to use it to remain in the loop. In contrast Myspace is a specialised music sharing site for artists and creators of music to come together and collaborate as members of the same art form.
As a result of many users leaving myspace for other social networking websites so Myspace will have far less noise, in other words extra chatter that does not contribute to the appreciation of music. I for one have found myself using Myspace slightly more due to certain bands using the website.
There are a hardcore group of people that are part of many social networks at once and they are able to cope with the demands. Most people spend twenty minutes in front of facebook getting up to date with their friends before disappearing. “MySpace’s lead in terms of “attention” is almost embarrassing: it scores 10.79% against Facebook’s 1.67%.” source. People look at more content on Myspace than Facebook and user involvement is what counts to advertisers.
Myspace is good for the sharing of music you create without people having to install extra api whilst Facebook is personalised by adding api and hoping that your friends install the same. Both will co-exist happily for another few months whilst waiting for the next site of interest.
Who Killed Twitter – My Opinion
Two authors wrote books. In these books they speak about whether Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk killed twitter. The answer is neither. If Twitter was alive and healthy it would never have been sold to an individual for four times its value, because its growth potential would have made this absurd.
Twitter died by 2007, with the advent of hashtags. That’s when twitter went from being a community of friends to being a community of strangers trying to get a million followers, and using hashtags to jump into conversations that they were not devoted to. At the first tuttle meetups and tweetups everyone knew everyone else from twitter. No one was a stranger to anyone else.
It’s when I went to a tweetup and I heard someone say “i’m not really a twitter user, I just came to the tweetup because it’s being hyped up.” That’s when twitter declined even more.
If we fast forward by a little more than a decade I believe that the pandemic killed Twitter, and Social Media. I believe this because before the pandemic normal people were on Facebook, and possibly Reddit and other social networks but they were not on Twitter. To a large extent they weren’t on FB either.
During the pandemic social media became more unpleasant. Trolling became more common. Trolling is the reason I dumped facebook for two to three years. Amplified loneliness is why I dumped Instagram and never returned.
The idea that Jack Dorsey or Elon Musk killed twitter is erroneous. Marketers did. Public relations firms did. People who took a utilitarian view of social media killed Twitter.
Twitter was fantastic, when it was a network of friends chatting with friends. It stopped being that in 2007-2008. I still used it but my ROI had declined dramatically.
Is this due to moving from London to Switzerland? I don’t think so. I just think that Twitter was best, when it had value to small communities, rather than marketers, public relations people and other groups with a utilitarian agenda.
Articles like this one are never written by people who live and breath social media. They are written by outsiders looking in. We could read them, but because of my perspective they have no value. By perspective I mean my attitude towards social networks and social media.
And Finally
Twitter wasn’t killed by Dorsey or Musk. It was killed by the people who took a utilitarian approach to social media. They turned Twitter from a tool for communities to have conversations, and build projects together to a place where marketers and public relations firms could hijack conversations, and make it about following celebraties, rather than conversations.
When Twitter pivoted from being a social network to social media, it became less interesting. I deleted my first twitter account by 2008 or so, and only returned because Swiss television interviewed me about the social network.
When Musk bought Twitter it was already worthless.
The End of an Era
There was a time when Twitter was Twitter, Facebook was Facebook, Instagram was Instagram and Whatsapp was whatsapp. Over time they have all been bought or rebranded, and the things that made them so fantastic were destroyed. Society saw social media as an addiction. This attitude destroyed social networks.
A trip to the apple store
Playing with technology is fun especially when you could fit it into your shirt pocket. The ipod s one such device. it fits easily into the pocket and can play video, allow for the viewing of photos and more. I also like the user interface, whether the fact the screen is split into text on the left and images on the right or the ability to search through songs and such.
Two of it’s disadvantages are the small click wheel. Whilst easy to get used to it may leave some people with broader fingers slightly frustrated. Another flaw is that when video is dark there’s no image. It’s only good for normally lit subjects. That’s a shame since you’re always in the mood for Film noire on the tube.
The ipod classic has a newer user interface than the ipod I’m using at the moment and the search option is there. The most interesting feature is still the size of the hard drive in relation to the device.
I’d like to get a nano because it’s so small that for a night out it’s more appropriate than the classic but the classic is interesting when you’re in need of a data backup of your laptop for example. My laptop drive is the same as the larger classic so theoretically it’d be a good alternative. Of course small drives are more fragile so less dependable over time.
Using an Xtorm Solar Charger
While in Spain for three weeks I was playing with the Xtorm solar Charger. I found that it worked well for the charging of tablets and e-book readers but not mobile phones.
For years I have wanted to play with solar power. I have wanted to buy a solar panel that I could fix to my bag or that I could use to charge devices. I often looked at the price and weight and changed my mind. I don’t want something that adds kilos to my load, especially if I am climbing.
With a small device like the one pictured above you can carry it with you and use it to charge devices. When you drive to the hike or climb, or when you stop for lunch or a drink you can take out this device and start charging your phone, gps, led lights or other devices.
if you want to charge devices to 100 percent then I would recommend charging ipads, ebooks, gps watches and other devices with this device. I found that it’s great for providing a phone with a top up charge but that because of my mobile use patterns it will only provide one full charge per day.
When we hear people speak about solar power we always hear about “How do we store the power we generate so that we can use it when we need it?” and I found a way. When I woke up in the morning I would put the solar charger near a window or outside if there was no chance of rain to charge up to over 75 percent. When it reached this charge I connected the solar charger to a 10,000mah external battery.
It is by using this technique that I have been able to keep my external battery fully charged with no need to plug it in to mains power. In effect it means that I can charge the ipad, the phone or the e-book reader without using mains power.
Strengths
It has a 6000mah battery and can charge two devices at once.
Weaknesses
If I was designing such a device I would ensure that the battery could charge within an 8-12hr window rather than 15. I found that to recharge the internal battery fully it would take two days.
This type of device needs to be rugged. It has to be rain resistant and transport resistant. I want to be able to leave it exposed to the sun without having to worry about the risk of rain. I would also like it to feel solid enough to be fixed to a bag when hiking or climbing. In it’s current configuration I would leave it near the bag when sitting for lunch or when at a climbing wall. I would not fix it to my bag during a via ferrata.
Conclusion
I’m happy with this solar charger. I have found the ideal use case for it and I look forward to experimenting with it over the summer. I think it would benefit from having a battery half the size that could be fully charged in half the time. It now tempts me to get a second larger solar panel to keep the laptop charged over the summer months.