London

As the rate of creation of content increases so does the challenge of following what was done by whom and that’s where digitalshadowcaster (TM). The idea is interesting to content producers.  Thus, the life cycle of an object may “Cast” a “Digital Shadow” (DS) that captures real time key information events and actions.  A given DS allows for the ordered delivery of proprietary services managed over a predictable and transparent network of Object Based Representations in Object to Object (O2O) relationships derived form Actions and Events performed on the objects by agents with specified Roles. In plain English they’re going to make it so that a central server keeps track of the changes you apply to media files are tracked and easier to deal with. It would track events, rights managment, object search, stats, billing and more. The flow was described as Create, adapt, product, distribute. In other words this technology would be part of every step of the process and here’s an example of it’s implementation. If you’re a content producer and you’re making a documentary your budget isn’t high therefore it would make sense that you want well established people to help you. As a result of a personality liking what you are up to they may give you access to some footage or music. For this project it’s cheap but as your reputation grows so the managment of those rights and the relationship can change, both in billing and in terms of restrictions. It makes the use of media more flexible. With more content appearing so the tracking issues become more complicated, hence the need for a new system of tracking to keep everything in order.

Richard’s blog » Adobe and Digital Rights Managment. - Mar 0, 2008

[…] is related to the discussion about iDRM  that I followed a few months ago in London. It will be interesting to see how this changes the […]

Two nights ago I got an invite from a friend at Kendra inviting me to come to the Friday session of this event. The event was held at Queen Mary University in London. The first session of the morning was to tell us more about the Digital Media project. The talk was given by Leonardo Chiariglione. What I found interesting about this project and this movement is that it’s looking at the need for DRM as a good thing. It believes that there should be DRM but that media should be free to operate from one platform to another. At the moment we can have itunes, realplayer real and other devices and it’s confusing, even for those who live and breath the media. They want to create a uniform standard that can be played from all platforms on all devices whilst at the same time protecting the rights both of the user and of the media active. He spoke about a standard of theirs which is now at version 3.1. Version 3 was agreed 3 months ago and the meeting was to update the current one. The document is over 600 pages long… I’m not going to read it. At the same time iDRM was mentioned but that’s part of another post. Chillout® was also demonstrated.

Mark McGuinness - Jan 0, 2008

Hi Richard, good to meet you too. I think the site I meant was New Music Strategies, lots of food for thought about music, copyright and the online environment: http://newmusicstrategies.com/ You might also be interested in this page I put together about intellectual property: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/blog/books-and-links-intellectual-property/

Two nights ago whilst having a conversation about technology with Fooz on twitter I got a message from Jamie about the Likemind coffee morning in Central London that she thought might be of interest to me. I decided that I would go and it was worth the effort. From what I gather it’s held once a month. It’s a meeting that started around 0830 and continued till 1030 where a few people from various backgrounds in the media came to talk about a variety of topics. It ranged from Facebook and those that influence discussions to Qik, twitter and seesmic. Of course other topics were also discussed. I talked to Mark of Wishful Thinking who wrote the e-book Time Management for Creative People. He has some interesting ideas and his blog can be found here. Whilst talking to him he touched on a number of interestin topics of which i would like to find out more. One was copyright and music for example, recommending a blog or two I should read and from the conversation I am interested in seeing what he’s been writing about. If I’m not mistaken (and I did meet quite a few people) I also talked with Lauralynne about the challenges of finding work but also about twitter, a subject I know well. Arriving at almost 400 tweets she has a very different to the whole twitter thing. When talking to people many of them are not sure what it’s about yet and that’s why talking to her about it was good. I talked to her about how society is changing. Previously when you met people you would meet them in person, be friends with them for a few weeks or months and one of the two would move to another country or another city and so the link would be lost, hence the utility for something like facebook. It then progressed onto a conversation about twitter. I explained my view that twitter is not just about saying what you’re doing. Another person who was listening in asked us to define twitter. I defined it as a multiplatform chatroom that you can take with you. I talked about the key difference between IM and twitter. With instant messaging you chat with someone and you’re telling them about things as if you’re talking and you expect an answer. With twitter it’s about the day to day life. Through following your stream they’re going to come through a lot of noise depending on how often you tweet. That noise is what makes conversations easy when you meet twitter friends. You’ve got three topics ready because you know about the good and bad things currently going on in their life. It means you’re friends offline. Live in a city like London and you meet these people and a physical world friendship can occur. The motivation behind this point was the notion that technologies are helping to seperate people and I wanted to refute that argument with the points made above. If you go through some of my previous posts you can follow the progression of these ideas further. I heard Mark Iddon talk about his blog about multiplatform content and it sounds interesting although I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the site. Another person I came across was Damiano whose blog Nitmesh sounds interesting. It is described as : “A comment on the imploding chaos of the convergence that hopefully entertains, enlightens, educate, reminds and shares ideas that might stand out and make a remarkable difference”. Overall the meeting was good, productive. I arrived feeling both inspired and shattered. Normal, I got to sleep at 4am and got up at 630 because I enjoyed the thought of being able to have more conversations in person rather than via twitter or seesmic.

Gia - Jan 5, 2008

Oi! I sat across the table from you for the whole end of the evening! We ‘interacted’… sheesh. ;)

LOL. You tell him! :) - nah great writeup richard. Sorry never got to talk Gia. Maybe at a future one? Thanks! Phil

There should be another event at the beginning of February so that Kosso can join. I’ve also heard from Fred2baro that the French may have one simultaneously in Paris. Could be interesting.

Last night I had the good fortune of attending the social media dinner at the Coach and horse in London. It was yet another opportunity to meet people like Lloyd, Sizemore, Phil Campbell, Deek, Rupert Howe, Jess and many other seesmic participants. It was also my opportunity to meet some new people. I met Vinvin and Johann from Seesmic for example. They’re part of the Seesmic team in San Francisco. Loic Lemeur arrived a little later so it was great to meet him to. It’s not everyday (well actually it’s almost everyday) that you meet CEOs of startups. It was also Phil Campbell’s birthday so that added a little something to the party. He presented a new method by which to use eesmic which looks interesting although at this moment in time it is more proof of concept and I’ll wait until it’s developed further before discussing it in depth. I was able to try out the Nokia N95 layout and user interface for seesmic on that night. Loic lent me his phone and I was able to record and post one seesmic post. So far I still think it’s a little slow so i prefer to use the web interface. I got to meet the charming Kittenfluff (unless it’s an imposter as is alleged in a seesmic video from the early hours of this morning;-)) and had a nice time chatting with her and playing around with two laptops, two seesmic accounts and a little seesmic camera ping-pong. I also got an exclusive interview about some mysterious january flies and why the London light is the paper of choice to use as a fly swatter There’s a great picture of me taken by Thayer Take note that There’s seesmicAIR and Seesmic being used in this shot. Two speeches were made, one by Loic Lemeur and the other by Gapingvoid (Pardon the poor sound quality.) There’s one of Sizemore’s videos too. Fooz, Giagia, Jason Jarrett and two or three others were present but I did not get to interact with them as personally for this event. This is a fun group of people are fun to interact with and I’m happy I went to the event. i hope to have many more to look forward to.

Blog Wars is a documentary taking a look at how bloggers influenced the political debate in the state of Connecticut. It’s 58 minutes long and covers some interesting points but that’s not what I’m going to write about. For me what was interesting was seeing who was present. For a start I didn’t expect for the venue to be full. I expected to see only a few people but that wasn’t the case. Most of them didn’t look like bloggers. Their phones weren’t out to tweet and their laptops weren’t in site. From the questions I think this assessment is correct. I’m going to use my twitter notes in order to bring out some of the points I thought could be of interest. My first comment was about people sounding passive rather than active about blogging. In other words they are looking at the process of blogging as readers rather than producers of content. This is interesting since the cost is low for blogging. One of those involved in the production of this documentary did tell me at the end of the session that he loved reading blogs but that it was far too time consuming for him to write anything. A second point that was made is that of deep linking. Someone in the crowd brought up the comment that whilst in Mainstream media all the information must be prepared in advanced and accurate with blogs we get a person’s opinion and due to the ability to link to those documents or sources it is up to the blog reader to look at issues in more depth should he desire this. Some attention was placed on the forged document about Bush’s record but not much of note was mentioned. A question about the difference between British and US blogging was brought up and it was brought up that US blogging is far more fun and exciting than that of England because of the debates. There was also a comment about how the tabloid press in England can already dissent against those in influential positions. As an aside to this attention was brought to how blogs are helping to chart Brown’s deciline from public favour. Some time was taken to see just how influential blogging can be and there was a feeling that had the Swift Boat story in the US been taken more seriously and had the issue of forged documentaries been followed up the impact would have been far greater. One of the problems with bloggers was that one woman doctored an image which meant a loss of credibility for one of the candidates. I was amused by one person’s comment about how blogging is live and instant when I’ve already seen the efforts made by twitter users during the New Hampshire and other primary votes in which Barak Obama got a clear lead. Anyone remember Obama girl… some blogs showed why he progressed in the polls. (Look these details up. This is simply a summary and commentary). The point is that Twitter may play an important role over the next few months so people should keep an eye on this new method of disseminating information. Overall the conversation was interesting and it felt good to have experience of the topic discussed. I’ll look forward to more of these events.

This week should see me dropping by the Frontline Club in London for the first time in weeks. I want to see Blog Wars which could be quite interesting. “Blog Wars provides a sharp and funny look at the explosion of political blogs, which have become the loudspeakers for a new generation of activists speaking out and picking fights across the political spectrum” I’m looking forward to yet another Seesmic meetup and I’ve heard that some interesting people should be present although I haven’t seen this written on paper yet. The usual London suspects should be there so that should be a really good evening. That will be on the 17th and more details are to follow. I’m not sure whether there’s another Social Media Cafe but if there is then there’s a very good chance I’ll be present. I’ll keep you informed.

It’s taken no more than a few days from the time I first saw Fred2baro on seesmic to our first meeting with Deek in London for the first Seesmeetup… so called. In fact it was both Sizemore that had the first meeting although more private in nature. One of the questions that one of Fred2baro’s relatives asked was why would you want to be part of Seesmic? Aren’t people pretend and fake? Aren’t you uncomfortable with this? My answer was the following: When you go to a bar or you meet people face to face rather than via twitter or Seesmic you’re quite often in a bar under the influence of a drink or two. As a result you’re not as genuine as you’d be if you met in another place. In other words Seesmic and twitter are a way of getting to know people before you meet them in the physical world. What this means is that you can generate some great friendships, some strong ones. It’s also a new contemporary method of networking than the bar. We’ve got too many distractions at home. Whether it’s from the computer, the phone or the television to feel the absolute need to go out to bars where we’d sit and be bored anyway. The point is the following. To me the social media, especially twitter and seesmic are a great way of creating new friendships in the physical world where limitations of time and travel distances are cancelled out. If’ we’re part of an international society why not meet people online and bring it to the physical world rather than the other way around. How many times have you been sad to see a friendship disintegrate because of distance? I have, many times. Time to enjoy these new toys.