RAAAcast Introduction to Videoblogging Month – Vlomo08 Day 2

This is a quick video to show you how to easily watch all the amazing personal videos and video art being made every day for VloMo08 – Videoblogging Month – November 2008

Have I missed anything? Anything I haven’t made clear? Anything you’d add? Tell me in the comments.

Watch it all at:
http://mefeedia.com/channels/vlomo08

And play in Vimeo at:
http://vimeo.com/groups/vlomo

My videoblog:
https://rupert.how

Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)

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Indecision – an interactive hyper-videoblog story

RAAAAAAAAAA!

I finally did what I’ve been meaning to do for about 2 1/2 years. I made a hyper-videoblog post.

You can only see it on YouTube – here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtQg_LCq_T8&fmt=18

The thing that finally spurred me on was YouTube’s new Annotations feature. All this time, I’ve been waiting and hoping that they would introduce something like this.

But at the moment, they only allow you to use it on their site – no embedded players yet.

There are six different parts to it – what path you take is up to you. Click the options at the end of each clip to choose what I do.

I really was feeling indecisive about what to do with my evening – and it proved the perfect subject. I made it up as I went along, and it took 30 mins to shoot and 90 mins to get the clips onto the Mac, onto YouTube and Annotated with links.

I’ve always thought that for my hypervideo dreams to become reality, hyperlinked video would need to be a) easy to use, b) easy to create and c) within a setting that people are already comfortable with.

I’ve been working on much more complex hypervideo stories, and if this quick slapdash bit of fun seems to work, I’ll start putting some together properly. Let me know what you think.

It’s been a good week for me with my old nemesis YouTube. Tumblr saw my High Quality YouTube Embed Generator (thanks to Wreck and Salvage) and implemented it as standard on all Tumblr YouTube embedded players. So I helped make the world a prettier place.

The future is now! Even if this particular part of the future looks a bit like a Choose Your Own Adventure Book from 1982.

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Seesmic – Video Conversations

Not the most interesting post for some of you, as it’s about the features on a new video sharing site that only a limited number of people have access to. Sorry. Tomorrow might be better 🙂

I’ve been playing with Seesmic for the first time today.

(I got an invite after emailing the guy in charge a few weeks ago)

In my intro to the NaVloPoMo group about how we’d cope with trying to post video every day in November, I said that I thought any online video counted, no matter how it was recorded or published… so I’m going to follow my own advice and just publish the video conversation I’ve had on Seesmic today.

I’ve linked to the public versions of the videos, below. i.e. You can still see them, even if you don’t have a Seesmic account. But if you don’t have a Seesmic account, you just can’t get involved, reply or go anywhere else in Seesmic from these links. So you have to click on each link in turn. Which is a drag, but I guess it’ll open out before long.

The thing is, you can see how a video conversation can develop easily with this tool.

These links open in new window/tabs:

This is my original post, called “My first proper Seesmic: get mobile, Seesmic”

And below are the following short replies, all within a short time of each other, which develop into a conversation of sorts, where people are referencing each other’s replies. They’re quite quick, and you can see how this could get a) addictive and b) interesting, particularly if these people can use video to talk and show things beyond the confines of their desk.

Christian’s reply

Clint’s reply

Deek’s reply

Mike’s reply

Mike’s follow up saying that half the above video was lost

My reply to all of them

Adam’s reply

My reply to Adam and Mike

Nik’s reply

My reply to Nik

If you can’t be bothered to watch them all, my point in my video is that they’ve limited it so that you pretty much HAVE to use your webcam to record – trying to use anything else is a pain. And yet it would be SO EASY (and free) for them to change this – so that you could film outside with your regular camera and then just upload the file direct to Seesmic. At the moment, if you film something with your camera, you have to convert it to a Flash flv file before uploading, which is silly. It seems obvious to me that conversations could be more interesting if they were inspired by and conducted in more varied and interesting environments than just people’s desks/offices.

Hardly rocket science. But quite fun. And there’s a shortage of good tools to create video conversations. Damn, I hate that word. Why can’t I stop using it?

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Futuristic Shopping

Video thumbnail. Click to play
Click to Play

Don’t tell me I don’t know how to have fun on a Friday night. After 12 hours of editing in my pajamas, what I really wanted to do was get dressed and take my bad skin and hair out into a brightly lit depersonalized future retail experience. Utopian or Dystopian? You decide.

Formats available: MPEG4 Video (.mp4)

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