The Horror of Herculaneum
Years ago I walked around Herculaneum and was impressed by how well preserved it was. I could see wood, plaster and more. You could see how the rooms looked. It is much smaller than Pompei but it is still worth visiting
Physical video gaming is coming of age thanks to the HTC Vive and related Games. Cosmic Trip is one of these games. You can use both controllers to prepare machines that will prepare robots for mining and defence. These two sets of robots are autonomous. The more resources you mine and the more robots you have. These robots are attacked on a regular basis so defence is important. The laser robots provide some assistance. You can attack the enemy bots by throwing disks at them as if you were throwing frisbees. Most people should find this instinctive.
In the last 17 hours more than half a million people watched the video on how to play this game. The game is still in development and building up hype for when it is released properly. The creator of the video above now has eleven million subscribers on youtube. When he produces a video eleven million people are notified that there is a new video to watch.
Out of those 11 million subscribers on youtube only 1.6 million follow on twitter and a quarter of a million on Facebook. Within the next year or two I would like to see social networks such as Youtube and others expand and become niche communities where people can find content of interest without using Facebook or Twitter. I found Jack Septiceye content when I was searching for VR demos. I use youtube rather than Twitter and Facebook because I don’t want content creators and sharers to tell me how to feel or why the content is of value. I want to make that decision for myself. Youtube and social networks that allow us to browse and discover content based on niche interests are going to become increasingly important.
The creators of the game have just two thousand eight hundred followers on Twitter and approaching one thousand on Facebook. When youtube personalities make videos about products they provide companies with a lot of extra visibility. You reach game players, people who want to see what new technology such as the HTC Vive can do and people who like to watch gameplay videos without necessarily being game players themselves.
Twitter and Facebook have focused on broadcasting rather than niche audiences. As a result of this strategy they have lost their stickiness. This leads to people spending less and less time on their social networks. This opens up opportunities for Youtube and other content aggregation sites. The more content you watch on Youtube the more recommendations you will get based on your taste. This cuts out the middle man, in this case Facebook and Twitter. We reduce the signal to noise ratio. We increase the user’s Return on Investment.
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.
I have walked more than once along the Via Appia but I don’t remember seeing this mosaic. It shows a gladiator with a trident. The name of a gladiator equipped in this manner is Retiarius. Next time you are on the Appian Way consider visiting this Roman Villa, along with the various catacombs.
Now that I know that I can treat Netflix as an international film festival I do. Last night I watched the first episode of Crash Landing on You. A South Korean film about a woman CEO who goes for a parapente flight, gets caught in a storm, and dropped in North Korea.
The premise of this television show is interesting because it’s based on a true incident with a South Korean celebrity, but also because this is something we think about much less, especially in Europe, since most borders ceased to be watched.
In my own lifetime borders between France, Switzerland and other countries have been closed down for the most part. We can walk between countries without ever showing our passports. I often drive from Switzerland to Spain without showing a passport. It’s nice. Europe is a village.
That’s where Crash Landing on You is so interesting. It shows us a completely different culture, one where borders still exist. If you’re in the US or other countries, where borders still hold importance then the cultural interest is diminished.
I watch the content in Korean, with English subtitles that are sometimes displayed too briefly in some cases. They need to rethink the reading time of subtitles.
It’s great that Netflix actively encourages people to search for content by original language, but also that if we choose to watch Korean, French, or other language content, that it shows associated content. It’s a way of making Netflix more international, more multicultural, and more inclusive.
Until I found this feature I felt that Netflix was to US centric and that the content on offer was of no interest to me, for the most part.
Now that view has changed, as I have a wealth of new content to watch.