Youtube live is a dissapointment, and it hasn’t even started.

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

In an age where mobile video streaming is cheap in comparison to the past it’s a shame that youtube do not showcase this technology and have three hundred people streaming from one city for example. Why is it that they chose to cover live music events instead.

Of course music is cheap to cover, excluding rights issues. Get three or four cameras in a room to cover the action on stage, two or three more cameras backstage and you’ve got a program, That’s not all though. It’s something you can rehearse. The singers do their sound checks, the vision mixers and directors know the music, know the cues. Everything can be well orchestrated. The production will be flat and boring.

The BBC stopped top of the pops and now you’ve got Youtube doing live music programs. Of course it’s a different program, of course it’s a different technology, but of course it’s just one more step on the trip towards a different age of television.

I love new media and new technology but I wish they would do something more creative with their time. Look at Autumn watch for example. Camera crews went to beautiful landscapes to cover the wildlife. They even broadcast whilst scuba diving. They use the website as an addition and they’re doing some outdoor event. That’s what we need more of.

In an age where everyone walks around with a video camera, whether flip, mobile phone or other so the broadcaster, especially when it comes to entitities like youtube, should reflect their user’s method of covering the world. They should get out of the studio and get twenty cameras in a city, and cover everything that’s going on in real life, nothing setup. Just capture life as it happens.

If that’s too boring then do some research, see of a live event that you could cover, whether it’s a car show where you’ve got lot’s of drifting, a festival where you’ve got hundreds of things happening at once or a ski resort where you’ve got snowboarders, skiers and other activities taking place.

You could have cameras at the telesièges, at the teleski, you could have some at the summit and some on the other side of the valley filming as people ski down. You could have dynamic cameras.

Just get out of that studio and give us something that’s not an advert for someone’s latest single. That’s just dull.

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Self Driving Cars and ethics

Byrichard

In recent months we have seen articles about self driving cars and ethics. The question the research asks is whether to kill, a group of people, the driver of the car or others. The question is perfectly logical if you have never driven a car. If you have never driven a car then you believe that accidents may be unavoidable.

So these guys posed these kinds of ethical dilemmas to several hundred workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find out what they thought. The participants were given scenarios in which one or more pedestrians could be saved if a car were to swerve into a barrier, killing its occupant or a pedestrian.

source

When you learn to drive in Switzerland you need to spend a number of hours being made aware of the dangers of the road. During these lessons you learn about where to look, about how to gauge people’s age, attention and intention. You are trained to look at their eyes and their body language, to anticipate their actions.

Road awareness also progresses to road conditions. Is it raining, is it snowing, are you in the middle of a drought and other such questions. The reason these questions are asked is that the stopping distance, risk of skidding and other dangers increase.

We also find that their are zones where cars are meant to be particularly attentive and may be asked to drive slower. Schools, pedestrian zones and other areas expect drivers to slow down and be able to stop instantly in case there is the need.

In light of everything that we are expected to consider as human drivers it makes sense to provide autonomous cars with the same knowledge and intelligence. If there has been a drought for six months and rain is falling then the car’s software should anticipate the longer stopping distances and the chance of skidding. The car should slow down.

When they decide on the ethics of self driving cars they should spend time writing code that is friendly and safe to cyclists using the roads. The software should be written to slow down and wait for a safe place to overtake. The software should be written to overtake from a safe distance. The same is true of cars near horses and other animals. You don’t want self driving cars to scare animals.

As a driver it is expected of me to anticipate all dangers and threats to life. It is for me to decide to drive at or below the speed limit. It is for me to assess the risk of someone crossing the road, of someone turning left on a roundabout and more. If I was to make a mistake that would cost someone their life then it would be my fault, according to insurance because i had failed to adapt to the situation. Self driving cars should be programmed to anticipate all problems and issues and be held to the same standard as humans.

These problems cannot be ignored, say the team: “As we are about to endow millions of vehicles with autonomy, taking algorithmic morality seriously has never been more urgent.”

Self driving cars should in no circumstance cause death. They should never face the decision. If they face the decision then the programmers have not spent enough time consulting with drivers, emergency services and road safety professionals. Death should be eliminated from the equation.

I enjoy Google Buzz

Byrichard

Whilst everyone makes fun of Google Buzz and continues living their daily life between google buzz and facebook I have jumped into google buzz with a passion and found it to be nice. It’s a social aggregator of content from a number of google services where you can discuss the content with a close network of friends.

The strength of this social network is that it is plugged right into google mail. As a result you are guaranteed to log into this site for the whole day. When you have some free time you can go through the threads of conversation and comment on those of interest. Once this is done you can go back to the mail client.

As the day progresses so will the number of people commenting on posts. You will see these comments in gmail and answer straight from there.  It means you don’t have to wait for a notification, click on the link, scroll to the bottom of the page and finally comment. Here you just type the comment and then use the keyboard to progress onto the next thread with a comment.

The J and K keys can be used to go backwards and forwards between e-mails in Gmail. They can also jog from one item to another in Google buzz. The result is a very quick, natural way of conversing with the least amount of resistance.

The biggest drawback at the moment is the lack of users who find any use for such a site. It’s hard enough getting interactions from Facebook so you can wait a few months before Google Buzz reaches critical mass. I will be there in the meantime enjoying conversation with others, who like me are early adopters.

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Swimming competitions and your viewing future

Byrichard

The media is in a time of convergence and that’s what some people find fascinating. i’m listening to a number of podcasts about technology, the media and computing in order to keep informed on developments.

Today I will be working once again with footage that has been shot in another country. What makes this particularly interesting is that the footage is coming from Hungary whilst I will be in Switzerland. I will see the races take place, then I will cut the video, add some text and upload it to a website. This is similar to what you’d expect to find on a variety of websites.

Once the event has been finished for a week or two I may take one or two of the edits and upload them as part of my showreel.

Via Ferrata at La Chapelle D’abondance

Byrichard

La chapelle D’abondance is a nice via ferrata split into three parts. The first part is not so hard, the second part is harder and the last part is meant to be very hard. The walk from the parking to the first section is short at around 15 minutes. The via ferrata itself took about 2hrs going with people whom had not yet practiced this sport.

We did experience rain on this visit to the via ferrata so some of the rocks were slippy, as were the cables. This did not present such difficulties though. Here are some images from the trip.

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157626727945869″]

3 Comments

  1. I just tweeted you a cryptic comment after reading this post and realized I should just leave a comment on your site. What you are asking of youtube live and other video venues is right on the money! But the disconnect, I think, is in how do these companies/networks make money. A comfortable and proven model (old school) is to affiliate with a star or entertainer. On the flip side, YouTube has grown by allowing everyday people to share real life. But as you probably know it’s still confusing how these things will lead to profit. I have not seen the program you’re talking about but I do recognize the trend. It’s a traditional media model…too bad.

    I have more to say, Richard, but it is 1:30AM, I’m tired and my brain is not working as well as it should. I am fascinated by this topic and wonder the same things you are asking. Hope we can chat about this another time.

    Reply

  3. Sukhjit: For the past three or four days I have been watching hours of documentaries. They have nothing about celebrity, nothing about real market value. They simple provide information about subjects that interest a certain portion of the population.
    There’s an interesting series called Evolve and two subjects were “Skin” and the second was “Gugts”. These are topics that may not be interesting because there is a low chance that people would buy them. At the same time it’ like video encyclopedias.
    Rather than look at this information on a page you actually see it. Much as with David attenborough’s Life on Earth Series from the 70s

    I really think there’s more to television than mindless entertainment for the masses. I also think that music, games shows and other programs are not the only form of entertainment. In fact that’s why I never watched the five channels available in England.

    Frieda: There’ a lot that can be done when you’ve got unlimited airtime, as is the case on the web. They might as well take advantage of that and produce some original content.

    Reply

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