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FLYER THE ESSENCE OF E MOUNTAIN BIKING
Mountain biking is a sport that is growing in popularity. We see that technology is keeping up with the riders. Between suspension, specialist tires and safety equipment the sport has had the freedom to become more adventurous. Bigger jumps, more travel, stronger components all allow the sport to become more extreme.
Usually there are three ways to get to the top of a mountain. The first option is to ride up but with a mountain bike that can be tiring. I have an area where I can mountain bike near home but it’s a 12.7km ride up with a 10 percent grade. It takes two hours to get to the base. I could of course take the car up and cycle around at the top but this requires removing the front wheel and putting the seats down. Another option is to head to specialist resorts where the remontée mécanique are equipped to take bikes to the top of the slope. The third option is to walk up and push the bike.
In this video we see a fourth option. An electric mountain bike. I like the idea of mountain biking this way. I like the notion that the mountain bike will assist with getting up the hill more efficiently. Several times I have cycled up a 10% gradiant for a distance of 12.7 kilometres. With the mountain bike I use it takes 2 hours of almost non stop pedalling. It leaves me with little energy to enjoy going off road at the top. With a flyer I’d let the bike get me to the fun part and then use my own power to play up there.
I won’t buy one of these bikes but the video is interesting to watch.
Cascada
Automotive Narrowcasting
Thanks to cheaper cameras, cheaper editing systems and cheaper means of distributing video content automotive narrowcasting has become an entertaining way to cover the subject. Everyone knows about Top gear, the flag ship of automative journalism and mischief but there are dozens if not hundreds of lower budget and fun alternatives. One of these alternatives is by Motor Trend, an automotive magazine that provides written reviews of new cars and other automotive news. Their about page ignores their video activity and yet this is the part that I enjoy.
When I watched this specific episode it reminded me of articles from Popular mechanics because it is about reviving an old vehicle that has been dormant in a garage/barn for many years. They show us the steps that were carried out in order to make it road worthy and then they throw in a road trip and fooling around for good measure.
Some of these projects are light hearted and fun. The idea for the PreRangerRoverLandeRunner is amusing. “…they combine an old Range Rover with a Ford Ranger to build an overlanding prerunner that can also play in the mud and rockcrawl with the help of Maxxis’ Bighorn MT-762s.  The build process uses the eyechrometer and by the end of the video their machine is broken.Â
The stats for this channel are impressive. They have 50 channels and twenty four thousand videos. The average views per video is fifty five thousand two hundred views although globally they have one billion three hundred thousand views overall. Those figures are no longer about narrow casting.
Network statistics
- 50 channels
- 24,792 videos
- 1,369,423,239 views
- 5,235,424 subscribers
What I like so much about niche content and narrow casting via youtube is that the barrier to entry is low in terms of cost and sustainability can be achieved relatively quickly. There is little need for pitching and getting funds.
In the video above they make it clear that this is a side project that they are working on over two weekends. They are doing this in their free time, in between articles. This is a side project video that has been viewed six million times.
Printed Media are said to be suffering as people move towards the world wide web for news and information. From what I observe the world wide web is great because it provides a place for writers to write articles, radio shows or podcasts and scenarios for videos. As people with skills or passions unite with video producers so new markets can be tapped. The beauty of websites such as Youtube and Vimeo is that they share that revenue with content creators. Websites such as facebook still want to pay to distribute content and be seen. They have not shifted to the new model.
Why I am happy that youtube is being sued
I am happy that youtube is being sued because out of the hundreds of video sharing websites out there it is the most devious. It has taken hundreds of hours of content produced at great expense by teams of professionals and offered them in poor quality for nothing on their site. To make it worse it’s made them billions of dollars.
How can the mega corporations, through the intermediary of the RIAA give so much trouble to those who share music let allow youtube to thrive. It doesn’t make sense.
What about all those video sharing websites that went about making content and distributing it the right way? What about those who decided that they would provide a service at no cost to themselves. I’m speaking of those guilty of unlawful distribution of video material.
It’s a website about deception, look at lonelygirl, look at the coke and mentos adverts. Look at the ball in groin laughter. It’s all a form of sadistic pleasure. Why would you want to be manipulated in such a way.
On the positive side it was fun to see the world cup celebrations and I uploaded some video of my own in response to other people’s content.
When it’s used as a video version of flickr it’s an excellent website because it’s an audiovisual window onto the world where a vast wealth of video content may be accessed. Good snowboarding, post it, good party, post it, personal work you’re proud of, post it.
Everyone of us is a content producer and distributor and everyone of us is challenging himself to create something that other people will enjoy. Geocities was about websies, the original sixdegrees was inspired by the film to show that everyone is related throough less than six people to everyone else. Blogging allowed people to reount their lives to anonymous audiences, flickr allowed the sharing of instants and video sharing websites allowed for the sharing of moments.
Is it voyeuristic to look at online videos and photographs made by friends and random strangers and is it exhibitionist of them to show that content? Is it wrong to look at it?
I would participate in this more actively were it not for the droit d’image. I don’t want others posting pictures of me without my consent and I won’t post pictures of others without their consent.
Doesn’t mean I won’t keep looking. It’s fun to constantly refresh the most recent pictures on flickr and see all the events that have been taking place around the world.
Flying a Toy Plane 22 Miles
James May is interesting. People like me know him from Top Gear and Grand Tour with Clarkson and Hammond but his side projects are interesting. Instead of farming like Clarkson, or driving cars with his daughter Clarkson plays with grown up toys. When I say toys I don’t mean adult cars, planes and more. I mean actual toys. In the video below James May sets himself the project of building a model plane that can fly 22 miles.
The video shows footage of him as a child playing with a model plane, and then as an adult playing with a slightly bigger model plane, then a prototype and then the finished project. In the episode I watched he built and played with a model plane but in others he tries to build other things and succeeds.
What I like about Naked Science, produced by Pioneer TV, is that they produce proper documentaries, rather than breathless crap like so many others do. This is television production quality content, rather than youtube content. I recently noticed that youtube content creactors use the same sound effects, the same music, the same editing, the same chaotic jumble, that makes their content tiring to watch.
In contrast when you watch James May play with model airplanes you get a well produced, well edited, well paced documentary that is interesting to watch. This is a fifty three minute video where you don’t stare at your phone, or get distracted. You watch it from the start to the end without being distracted, or fatigued.
There was a time when I would watch every documentary in the morning, and then do something else on satellite TV. I don’t do this anymore. Too many programs are designed to distract people from adverts so they’re constantly repeating themselves.
I loved watching Mythbusters but that was the decline of Discovery Channel Documentary making.
What makes James May’s Naked Science shows stand out is that they are watchable by a “dinosaur” like me. When a documentary is well paced, and edited to be watched without commercial breaks it becomes engaging. YouTubers should strive to make content that is equal to television rather than scrape the barrel of throwaway culture.
And Finally
The premise of my post is simple. We live under the illusion that content has to be sensationalist to be worth watching, and we live under the illusion that youtube content needs to be sensationalist to stand out but that notion is wrong. Television quality content should be edited and produced to be shared on YouTube. In this day and age the notion that something has to be two minutes is wrong. The notion that something has to be in “YouTube style” to be noticed on YouTube is wrong. In my eyes we should produce long form content that is well produuced, for YouTube and social media.
YouTube is big enough for content that appeals to my generation and others to be produced and thrived. Algorithms should take this onboard. I want YouTube’s algorithms to provide me with content that is relevant to my age group and interests. I want more content recommendations such as the video above.