Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Random Social Networking: Is it for you?

If you are into meeting new people, there's a new site to check-out Fo.rtuito.us; it randomly introduces you to another member and gives you four days to interact with that member via anonymous email to see if you can become friends.

After four days, if both decide they would like to stay friends, they are added to your permanent friends list. You are then introduced to another person and the cycle continues.

Interesting concept... Another MySpace in the works... Maybe.

Worth keeping an eye on.

CNET offering All You Can Upload

CNET has launched a free service for photo storage that gives you a URL to email or post to another site like ebay or MySpace which require that images be stored on an external server.

There is no registration required. More info.

Check it out at AllYouCanUpload.com.

Entrepreneurship: Not everyone's cup-of-tea

Here's a wonderful blog by the founder of a startup Web 2.0 company called Riya that just went into public beta testing with their facial recognition and tagging website.

He talks about the late night working sessions and the behind the scene struggles that entrepreneurs face when starting a new venture.

If you are an entrepreneur, you can sympathize and if you are thinking of becoming one, you'll know what to expect ;-)

From one Virtual World to another

Now there is a way to tag your Second Life locations in Del.icio.us using the Open Source SLurlmarker. Connect your SL world to your real world via a deli.icio.us tag.

Here's the article: Bookmark SL Locations on del.icio.us

Bring Flickr Images into Second Life

For all you Second Life residents (you know who you are...), there is a way to bring your Flickr images into Second Life. Read all about it.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Pay-Per-Click Video Ads.

Google has once again found another way to promote advertising on the web using pay-per-click video ads. Now the advertisers only pay when the viewer clicks and watches the video. Is this another nail in the coffin for broadcast TV, we'll just have to wait and watch.

Just for laughs!

From the creators of Jib Jab, a new free service for sharing jokes called Joke Box. Now you can create and share jokes in any format (text, audio and video). One more way to put your mark on the world if you are a comedian.

Book Trailers

Here's an interesting concept to get "young" readers interested in books, create a trailer. This seems to be an approach being taken to promote some new books. Read all about it here in this Newsweek article "Trailers: Seen Any Good Books Lately?"

I think it's a pretty nifty idea, a twist on selling books before a movie. This gives another opportunity to small-time content creators to showcase their work by partnering with writers and book publishers.

The following video trailers were created by film students for three new Bantam Dell titles:
- The Thieves of Heaven
- Stuart
- Shadow Man

It's a good gig if you can get it.

3D Content Creation

One of the new trends due to rise in broadband availability and inexpensive (or free) Open Source tools is the creation and distribution of media content. Today, anyone with an idea, a reasonably equipped computer and a high-speed connection can produce and distribute their content over the internet, getting direct access to millions of potential consumers.

Here's a wonderful example of a new 3D film, "Elephants Dream" created using Blender3D, a free 3D program by Ton Roosendaal.

The movie "Elephants Dream" and all data on the DVDs and almost all of the contents on this website is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license. In short, this means you can freely reuse and distribute this content, also commercially, for as long you provide a proper attribution.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Introduction

The past few years have brought about a resurgence of new internet technologies. In the latest trend, entrepreneurs have designed new products and servides by merging two or more available technologies; this is a very exciting development. Through this blog I am attempting to comment and discuss some of these new technologies that interest the tech junkie in me.

My hope is to research and start a discussion that will educate me and also the viewers of these blogs, exposing us to new emerging technologies in media creation and distribution, and also other "cool" convergences that are changing the way we live, work and learn as result of these technologies.

I am well aware there are many blogs that cover new technologies, report on how people are using the internet to create cool things and start new businesses. This blogs' intention is not to be a news reporting site, rather a forum for commenting and discussing the possiblities of what these new tools and services allow us to do with them.