I’m online from 10-15hrs a day on average and as a result I’m used to having everything available within a short amount of time. I also had access to a PVR with a hard disk upgrade for quite a long time. As a result of both these developments anything that is not available to me when I want to watch it goes unnoticed. That’s because “It’s an on-demand world” as was concluded in one edit I worked on for a client about the future of broadcasting.
England is a CCTV nation with more cameras per capita than any other nation. As a result there is great interest from people like Christian of documentally.com and Our Man Inside and John Perivolaris. Both of them are working on CCTV related pieces.
At Parliament Square Christian demonstrated his great ability to talk with anyone he meets. Two characters we met whilst at Parliament square were the London Town crier and John Bull from Birmingham.
There was a time when you would wake up and it’s only half an hour later that the world around you would be clearly visible. In today’s web 2.0 world you wake up and twenty other people are wishing each other good morning. Many are celebrating that it’ Friday and others have pathetic status messages about 40 days of celibacy, about being overworked and all those other messages. Of course everyone has the right to their feelings and to their own experiences but as certain individuals spend more and more time online they notice these status messages and trends and get really tired.
Since I had some free time I went over to the Old Theatre of the London school of economics and what we found out from that conversation is that people don’t trust television. According to one of the chairs this was at a ratio of 4:3. This is an interesting situation since the question of trust is one that as academics we all worry about. Any student, whether a primary school child, an undergrad or a grad knows one thing.
A few days ago I went to listen to John Fisher Burns, longest serving Western Journalist in Iraq at the frontline club in London. The talk was both informative and interesting. I enjoyed being surrounded by people who knew from personal experience what the situation is in that country. if you’d like to see what the conversaton was about then follow this link and follow the conversation of the evening.
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.
A tall slender woman was sitting on a chair by the podium where her husband was delivering a presentation to a hall filled with people. Each group of four people had a white board in front and on this board was the name of the deleguation. Canada, USA, France, Lithuania and more. In the balconies NGO names could be spotted. The location is the general assembly hall in Geneva and the occasion is Abdullah Il bin an Hussein the second of Jordan speaking to all these deleguations.
Whilst listening to a conversation between several podcasters in their debriefing they were asking the question of how to involve a different demographic in the process of podcasting. This is an interesting question. As one participant pointed out the demographic seems to be for white males over 30 years of age to create content whilst younger people seem not to be active. If that last statement is true then I am an anomaly to the rule since I have over four years even to reach that age.
There are many podcamps but Podcampuk was my podcamp. This was an event which was similar to just one previous experience. It was an event where everyone you talked to had at least one website and others may have had several. They also used twitter and prepared radio programs. What is great about the podcast UK crowd is that they’re a creative entrepreneurial group. Rather than take a 9 to 5 job some work as freelancers.
From friendships and the people we meet so our knowledge of authors increases. It is through English literature classes that I learned to appreciate Milan Kundera. I read all his books over a period of years. Following a conversation with an Albanian friend I heard of Ismail Kadare. He originally wrote in Albanian and French, living in Paris for many years.
The two books I have read so far are Spiritus and Les Tambours de L’automne.