I started Twittervlog 10 years ago

I started Twittervlog on March 29 2007 with this post:

The shocking innovation here was not just that I was sitting on the loo,
but that I could record a video on my phone and post it from my phone straight to Twitter.

(Instead of downloading it from phone to computer, converting it, uploading it, and copying the link into Twitter.)

And I know it’s hard to remember – but in March 2007, that was super futuristic.

Twitter was newish and had only around 100k users.
The first iPhone wasn’t released until 3 months later – June 2007; and it couldn’t record video for another 2 years until the 3Gs was released in June 2009.
YouTube didn’t connect to Twitter until March 2009.  Crazy.

This first video describes the workflow:

  1. Record a video on my phone.
  2. Email from the phone via wifi to my Blip.tv video hosting account.
  3. Twitterfeed.com picks up my Blip.tv RSS feed and posts to my Twitter account.

There were 3 great things that allowed this – all now defunct:

  • The Nokia N93, which recorded 320×240 video, had a great design with pistol grip, email and wifi.
  • Blip.tv, which hosted videos for vloggers, had a user-specific email address you could send files to and an RSS feed of your latest posts.
  • Twitterfeed.com (by Mario) which took any RSS feed and posted it to Twitter to @twittervlog

I then added in a couple of other things:

  • The built in video editor in the N93 (totally amazing back then) – I also created black & white lofi titles which I copied to the phone and added to the start and end of my videos.
  • A blog at twittervlog.blogspot.com (later rupert.how) which Blip.tv automatically posted to – Blip had so many great features, way ahead of YouTube.

I thought it’d be a brief experiment, but I got hooked on being able to post video so easily from my phone – so it took off, and replaced my old fatgirlinohio.org and workingformydad.com videoblogs.

There’s a wiggly path from this video of me sitting on the toilet describing that 3 step workflow, to the job I’ve had since 2010 as a workflow consultant for people like the BBC.

I was all about the lofi 320×240 straight-to-web 30 second video thing.  I rolled my eyes at people wasting time and bandwidth shooting HD, and predicted the death of TV.  Now I help TV people who are shooting thousands of hours of 8K (16 times as big as HD) and shoot nothing of my own.

I disrupted myself!

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360 video: Talking to Jonathan Dimbleby during our 50km overnight walk

I’m talking to Jonathan Dimbleby at 1.15am during our 50k overnight walk for Dimbleby Cancer Care.

Jonathan was amazingly speedy – he started 40 minutes after me, and finished an hour before! This is the moment his group sped past us, so I turned on my 360 camera as he swept us along – before he disappeared off into the distance.
Get a sense of what it was like to walk with us at 2am in this 360º video where you can look all around.
If you’re watching on a computer, click and drag in the video to look around!

If using the Facebook mobile app, move your phone or tablet all around, up and down!
(the only thing it won’t work on is Apple’s Safari web browser on Mac or iOS – another browser like Firefox/Chrome, or use the Facebook app.)

On Friday June 10th, Kate and I did an OVERNIGHT walk of 50km (that’s 30 miles) all around London, for Dimbleby Cancer Care – leaving at 9pm and arriving back around 8.30am – and we’ve raised 5x our £500 target so far at http://justgiving.com/RuAndKate because of our incredibly lovely friends.

Dimbleby Cancer Care work with the NHS at Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals to provide support to people with cancer, their families and carers. They are amazing. They were originally set up after Richard Dimbleby died aged 52 in 1965, the first public figure to speak openly about having cancer, which was a huge thing at the time. Read more at http://dimblebycancercare.org

The walking was the fun bit; the hard bit was done by you all giving up so much of your own money to support DCC. We aimed for £500, and so far you’ve given £2581, which has been coming in all night, so YOU ARE ALL THE BEST (and whenever we checked, it was like rocket fuel for us to keep feeling happy and power on ignoring the soreness and fatigue)

I also posted a photo story of Kate and my walk here:
http://photostory.topicshow.com/ViewPhotoStory.aspx?cid=1733132

–
Our page: http://justgiving.com/RuAndKate
Jonathan’s: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/JDWalk50

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VR 360º Video: A 2 Day Walk along the South Downs Way (in 15 minutes)

Last week we walked a 25 mile loop around the South Downs Way over 2 days, staying overnight at an old inn. This is a 15 minute collection of moments I filmed on the Theta so that you can walk it with us!

It was wild and windy, and there were lots of pubs and cliffs and sheep. The South Downs Way is an ancient path in the south coast of England. Bill Bryson described this part of it as “one of the great walks of England… On a sunny day like this one, it is a world of simple, bright elements; green land, white cliffs, deep blue sea, matching sky.”

I shot and cut this on holiday last week, and now I’m busy at work this week – so although I want to cut it down and add titles, I thought I’d post it here now as a first draft.

I’d be interested to know how it works for you in VR as a longer video, with time to look around and see the sights.

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360º – Kate and Kelly Oliver

Kate made this 360º video with Kelly Oliver when she came to sing at the Bristol Folk House last Friday (26 Feb 2016). Kelly singing her song The Other Woman and having a chat.

Shot with our 360º Ricoh Theta S

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360º Vlog – Singing in Brandon Hill Park!

with Kate Dimbleby

360º video – click and drag to move around 360 degrees and up/down, or in the YouTube app, move your phone around.

(if you can’t see it in Safari, try Firefox/Chrome or the FB app)

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360º vlog – Saturday afternoon hike with Amy

360º video – click and drag to move around.

Shot on a Ricoh Theta S in Bristol – under the flyover, in Leigh Woods, on Clifton Suspension Bridge and in Coffee #1.

#SlowVlog

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40

I was 40 last weekend.

It made me want to make something for you.

Here’s our Sunday.

startscreen

Update from January 2022: This was made in Korsakow – I now make my own interactive video software called Stornaway.io and used it to make another interactive birthday movie called Life Moves Pretty Fast, which was slightly inspired by this…

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