Social Media
Why I’ll watch any old crap
I’m often in arguments with a friend, who we’ll call Rob S, no wait, R Shaw, about online video. My friend is a top video producer, he owns a very good video production company that produces High quality video content in HD, broadcast quality and so on. We’ve had many discussions about how best to translate some of his services to online video. But we always argue about this.
Rob’s natural reaction is to focus heavily on quality of production, beautiful filming with high quality equipment, expertly lit, awesome sound quality and high definition. I frustrate him by telling him I really don’t care about that, and he doesn’t understand me. (sob)
I realise the truth with online video is at this point in time, if I see something perfectly filmed that isn’t grainy, that isn’t pixelated, that isn’t washed out, blurry or with sound not fit for purpose then I immediately distrust it, jumping to the conclusion this must be evil corporate advertising designed to strip me of my well earned money by luring me into buying the Slambaster ubercoolitude 3000 from an online retailer.
But if I see a handheld mobile phone video of a dog chasing deer across a motorway I’ll watch it (almost) every time. I believe it to be real you see, not that reality is what I necessarily look for in video, in fact fiction is my preferred format on television, but I am distrustful of internet video.
I must point out I do not mean the quality of streamed tv or movie online video should be poor, no, I expect and wonder at just how good this is becoming with modern broadband connections. But use of video on websites I automatically look for a level of authenticity, of realism, or spontaneity that can only come from someone passionate pointing a cheap filming device at their subject and feeling proud enough of the quality of the CONTENT to share with the world. No pretence, no editing or endless manipulation of subtext, just interesting bit sized content I can digest quickly and move on.
I’m tempted to point to a song about a pterodactyl (although technically not video) but I’ll let you find that for yourself.
Like me, like me, like me. I’m an interesting person, no really I am
If you heard something on the news, say for example that Paris was dimming its street lights to save energy, would you shout that snippet of information out at a party, proclaim yourself a leading expert on energy conservation and request social and global coverage for your ability to listen and repeat?
Imagine the conversation:
You – “Paris is going to dim its street lights a night by 6%, saving ten billion tons of fossil fuels a year.”
Marginally interested fellow guest – “is that so?”
You – “Yes. You like me now, please like me. Tell all your friends about me and my wondrous knowledge. In fact tell everyone you know, or meet in the street about how clever I am, how interesting I am and just how much you damn well like me. Also, tell others my ground breaking Paris fact, but be sure to quote ME when you tell them this information, then maybe they’ll like me too.”
Marginally interested fellow guest (now trying to leave) – “rrrriiiiigggghhhht. Got to go, forgot I’m having a new wheely bin delivered today.”
You wouldn’t repeat a snippet of common knowledge, proclaim it as your own (despite it being all over all news sources across he globe) and expect everyone you meet to hail you as the bringer of knowledge, the sooth sayer of modern society. You wouldn’t do it at a party, so why do it online?
I often get asked “should I be using twitter and Facebook on my website and getting likes and stuff”. My answer is fairly simple, if you have something new to share, something unique to say, or something interesting to post that puts something in a different light that people WILL find interesting then, yes, by all means share it, and enable others to do so too. If you are going to regurgitate stuff you’ve heard elsewhere, changing the wording just enough so you think you can fool Google into believing its original content then do not bother. Shouting like me, like me, share me, share me on poorly recycled non news is a sin. Don’t waste your time, and ours, filling up the internet with copycat garbage in an attempt to make search engines think you’re a fountain of knowledge.
If you want to be a fountain of knowledge, then be one, be unique, say something interesting and let the public do the rest.
Web Video of the Media Circus in Birmingham
A short video put together by Gavin from Media Dog of the night of the Media Circus event we ran at Fazeley Studios back at the end of October this year:
Media Circus 2010 from Karl Binder on Vimeo.
Please feel free to share this with whoever! The website that spawned the event is still available at www.creativebirmingham.com . No doubt we’ll be doing something different again next year. Looking forward to 2011, get in touch if you’d like to be involved in any way.
Count total number of Drupal Nodes of a specific type
This little snippet below is handy for getting the total number of nodes on the site of a specific type. In this case I am using it to get the total number of nomination type nodes added to a website.
<?php
// for Drupal 6.x
$count = db_result(db_query(“SELECT COUNT(*) FROM {node} WHERE type = ‘nomination’”));
print(“<h3>Total Nominations: $count. Nominations close on 13th August.</h3>”);
?>
Sharing Drupal web pages on Facebook
Currently I’m using a couple of community based websites and am looking to add into the node creation flow in Drupal an option to share a node you have just created on Facebook. The process would be
Create node > Node (add) form
Submit
Share to Facebook (popup window)
View node
I’ve looked into downloading and writing modules for this but I don’t think it’s really necessary. The share widget module is good for offering sharing of nodes to multiple social media sites, so I’ll leave that on the node.tpl.php page so people can share nodes they read, but I want to add it as an option into the flow of creating content.
Facebook offers this page:
http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.creativebirmingham.com
Where the u variable is the page you’re sharing. So now I just need to add a user journey into the node creation flow to include a popup link to that page (maybe in a thickbox window) once the node if created. Should not take too long, I hope.
Flirting Club Trailer – Film made by auditioning on our itsourmovie.com website
The following trailer is for the finished movie made from the www.itsourmovie.com project. Due to be released in selected cinemas and on DVD shortly.
Itsourmovie.com 2 – New Website for online video
The first www.itsourmovie.com movie has been made now and is currently in the process of distribution. All the actors auditioned online and were voted for by the public. We’re currently cutting together a trailer for the movie which will be on the website shortly. In the meantime we’ve started preparing the site for it’s relaunch for itsourmovie.com 2. A new script, new auditions and a new movie to be made once again. So far this is my rough idea for the new website layout…
BINDER: Personal Blog
I’ve been meaning to get this setup for a while and finally this weekend I got cracking on it. I have setup now a personal blog for myself, something I can use independantly from the Adhere company blog. It’s available at:
In no way is this an exploration into ego or anything like that, I just thought it would be good to have somewhere to publish some pictures, drawings, music and ideas that was seperate from the more corporate environment of the company blog, not that there’s anything wrong with that of course.
It’s good to see on a similar note that some of the other members of the Adhere family have also got their own blogs, Chris for some time now but for some reason I’ve never mentioned it on here before. Chris Ivens has www.joltbox.co.uk that he mainly uses for development discussions about Drupal and other such open source software that he is contributing too. Jason now also has his own mental notepad online at www.thepottingshed.net.
With social media ever expanding and improving communication and collaboration its good to see so many people around us getting so actively involved with expanded media networks. It’s the way forward, certainly.
