Wiki Videoville - Musicvideo-arama!

A friend of mine at work sent me this and at first i wasn't sure what to make of it, a cursory glance left me thinking too many links and not enough 'stuff'. However on my return i dug deeper, to find a brilliant source of video content. As it's a Wiki site, it's open source allows any budding (or indeed 'budded) film maker to display their work together with a generous amount of contact info, website links etc.

Videoville lets you browse the library by a host of different meta data tags, including the obvious 'Director', 'Artist' and 'Video' but also 'Genres', 'Stylists' and even 'Cliches'. Within minutes i'd watched 2 great clips and followed a link to a cool website for up and coming directors in Brooklyn.... I'm not sure why, i don't live in Brooklyn, but it was easy so why not.

The video/sound quality is excellent (so far) and if it doesn't contain a clip, it will send you to the required site. Slightly odd is that the Quicktimes i found seem to be locked even with QT Pro, but yet the site gives info on how to capture them with freeware, not sure how that sits with some of the people involved, but i guess it'll happen anyway, so may as well make it good quality. There are some dead links, leading you to a list of a Bands songs, with no other info, but thats a small criticism.

All in all, very cool indeed. Go, try it, now.

iPod File Share is back, ding ding round 3!

Apple are not going to be happy, I on the other hand, plus millions of frustrated iPod users will be if this works like it says it does. It's called the miShare (someone needs to tell people that if you invent a product that works with Apple, the small case first letter thingy is not mandatory) and as the image shows, allows the harmonious connection of 2 iPods, enabling the users to swap tunes, as well as video, pics etc.

Engadget didn't have much info on the company behind it, but we do know that "The unit is actually running a lightweight Linux installation and is using open source tools to access the iPod as a mass storage device and open up the database files" Cool.

File selection is done by playlists, although how that works with Pics I'm not sure. Now all i need is the ability to get back in my computer.

Paul Rand's Free Advice

My dutch counter parts have discovered this great video of an interview with Graphic Designer Paul Rand, thats been jazzed up with some groovy animation. It's a great piece of video and worth watching, advice nuggets such as 'Don't try to be original, just try to be good' should be a mantra for any creative business.

Paul Rand by Imaginary forces

Flickr Book anyone?

I can't believe someone hasn't come up with this before.

You know the kind of person I'm talking about. They carry their mobile phone around in their hand, finger poised, quivering over the 'record' button, ready for any moment of hilarity that may come around the corner. I've come a cropper thanks to these Mobile-Michael Moore wannabes (mental note to stop doing 'air drums' when i'm drunk) and now it's only a matter of time before I'm able to watch myself in good Victorian Vision in the form of a Flick Book.

Silent Flicks offers the service of turning any video file into a flickbook, which is such an annoyingly simple idea (export as Targa, print, done), but good on em, especially as its probaby run out of some nerdy students bedroom.

They will also make a flickbook from your photos if you wish, and will except a range of graphics files. Someone should create an Ap for Facebook that lets you push photos from your album, that'd be cool or even via Flickr.....

Dark Knight's viral campaign picks up a gear

The oddly named website, whysoserious.com has been the home of Warner Brothers Batman; Dark Knight's viral campaign. So far it has included fake campaign posters for one of the characters (District Attorney Harvey Dent aka 'Two Face') which was later deface by graffti, allegedly by The Joker, as well as a Jack O'Lantern Pumpkin with a Batsmile cut out of it, slowly rotting. Some of the site has required interaction, but not quite to the extent that it does now.

The site has instigated a treasure hunt that appears to take in 21 cities across the US. By clicking on the small cuttings (pic 2) you are asked to solve a clue, which requires the user to physically go and hunt the answer down, which is in the form of a letter it would seem. The letters i assume will spell out some Joker based nugget of info.

It's not rocket science, but i like the way in which it needs people from all over the States to get involved and move away from their computer to help solve the riddle. WB started their viral campaign quite some time ago, so anticipation is high and growing, thanks to this kind of thinking.

"I CAN SEE MY AD FROM HERE!"

"Up, up in the air, like my beautiful advertising campaign......" It's not quite got the same ring to it, but Ad Air claim to have taken OOH (Out Of Home) advertising one step further by pasting enormous ground posters onto fields that are adjacent to airport runways. The advertisements are approximately 3 times the size of a standard football pitch (about 315x210m) so big then, and as everyone knows, once you've had to turn off your iPod you're pretty much dedicated to trying to spot where your Nan lives out of the window, so all in all, quite a nifty idea. Not cheap though, as the first spot that was launched in Dubai went for a tasty £80,000..... Check out Reuters report (PS: Watch out for the guys suit collars.... )

Augmented Sculpture... (or Tron Cubes as i like to call them)

Pablo Valbuena, an artist based in Madrid (i think) has constructed a sculpture that explores space, time and the relationship between the two.... apparently. All i can really say is to watch the video, it's quite hypnotic. I'm not bright enough to discuss whether it does what he thinks it does, but from a design/aesthetic point of view, i think it's wondefull. Check out his sight here, for more info.