The point is: Web 2.0 is BIG
A few days ago there was a speaker from Media Studio
talking about user created content.
I suppose the point of the entire talk was web 2.0 is
big. That was the point of another talk, but I guess
the point needs to be pressed. Web 2.0 is pretty
new. (It won man of the year).
Media Studio is a company that specializes in Web 2.0
and it’s applications. They allow users to submit
images and videos which they host.
And especially videos. With the advent of streaming,
videos have become very popular while copyrights have
not! People really enjoy posting various videos and
even distributing other people’s videos across the
net.
Images are very popular too, though. Media Studio
posts pictures taken with their cells on their site.
They can skin their product to fit their various
consumers’ needs. Like Much Music. It’s a BIG thing.
Some of the restrictions are interesting. Videos
have to be approved, and while I didn’t think of that
at first, it makes alotta sense. More interestingly,
Much wanted the ability to edit comments. It sort of
goes against the grain of Web 2, but like the speaker
said, if people added addresses and such, it’d be
trouble.
It’s interesting to note that these things are shown
in concerts and at games. Just posting images people
send in. Being something of a shut-in, it didn’t
really occur to me that this was done. Doesn’t
surprise me, but it’s something to remember.
Also interesting are the popularity of widgets. Small
programs to do one thing rather than a “catch-all”
program. I gotta admit … I like catch all programs
myself. Of course I am a rather eclectic thinker.
Much Music – uses Media Studio’s tech
Having users create content
is not really new ….. but now it’s more direct. And faster.
I …. can’t actually think of any more links. I was pretty dead tired with this talk, sad to say. And nobody seems interestedd in taking pictures of these parties (interesting and successful though they may be).
Cell Phones are a New and Exciting Product
So, this week at IMM we got a lecture about Cell Phones. Now, don’t get me wrong. I thought the speaker did a good job in presenting the industry and the technology. But …. He seemed to be a little disappointed that we weren’t blown away by what Cell Phones can do.
I dunno. Maybe it’s presumptuous to speak for everyone, but ….. Cell Phones have been around for a while. A lot of the technology that he seemed to want an impressed reaction to has been presented to us …. Or at least known to me …. For a while now. I mean, GPS is an exciting technology, but we can’t react to it like we haven’t heard about it before. Amazing thought it may be.
HOWEVER, even saying that, he did show us some new things. Like telling us how one person used the GPS system to create a virtual tour guide. Reacting to the positions of the user to where the system knows interesting buildings are. That’s pretty cool. Maybe if it displayed some video it’s be better. After all, people have show attention spans. I hear cell phones can get TV now (even though the presentation said flvs are too big for the processor) so maybe that’s possible.
He presented some JAVA games. However, I’ve known about them for a LONG while now. I actually have a whole SLEW of Megaman related java games over at my site. Just a list of them, though. I was pretty amazed when I first heard of them. They actually took the games Megaman 1 – 5 and put them on a cell phone! And, while some of them have smaller, crappier, graphics, the ones made for higher-en phones have NES-level graphics. Sadly, this is more for the Japanese market. They’re MUCH more into Cell phone games then we are. Mainly because, I hear, they do a lot of waiting.
But, while all this comes as a bit of old news, I did learn about WML. “Wireless Mark-up Language”. Basically, HTML, but with cell-phone specific events. Like the press of a button. Or something. It seems like a cool thing to do. And I have little choice but to do it for the upcoming project (HAH HAH!)
Flash Lite was the most interesting part of the presentation. Even better than many of the examples. Hell, it’s just the times when it comes to examples. In this day and age, I just figured some technologies (like customisable wallpapers on cell-phones) were around just because they’re on our computer so much. But Flash Lite was interesting.
So, to sum up, Flash Lite is Flash, but with less features since Cell Phones haven’t caught up with Laptops yet. Maybe they need more “Pentium Processors” to catch up. Or more “Linux”. Hah hah hah.
Seriously, it’d be fun to get to play around with it, especially since nobody’s done much with it. One thing I’ve learned in my years doing a MM fan-page is this: get ahead of the curve. Find something nobody else is doing …. And then do it! If someone else did it, don’t bother. Unless you can do it much better. So it makes sense to learn Flash Lite, even if most phones are behind the curve on this. They’ll catch up.
I was surprised to know the Jaguar used Flash Lite though. MP3’s on Cell Phones, Flash on Cell Phones, GPS being used to track people’s movements … none of this surprised me. But a car using the technology? That I did not see coming.
My Article on Megaman Cell Phone Games
And my computer once again dies at the most inopportune time….
Yes, it seems my computer is always plagued with misfortune. All I did was move my speaker and now my monitor dies! Hell, I’d be adamant about moving ….. if it weren’t for the fact that the tech guys say they switched out my physical computer three times already! What’s up with that?
Well, my notes on this last presentation were ON said computer and went unsaved, so ….. yeah. Hell, I thought it’d be a big time-saver, just typing my notes straight away on the comp. BAH! So. From memory now.
So, this presentation was on Web 2.0. Web 1.0 was, basically, authoritative content only. The idea being that new media tends to emulate what came immediately before it (TV were early radio dramas, movies being more like TV serials, etc.). Web 2.0 tends to focus on user-created content.
The dude talked a lot about blogs and YouTube. Those to get one paragraph in this little entry because everyone already knows what I’m talking about.
But he did introduce the importance of tags and the idea that people are innately attuned to pick up on what words are important. An example he gave being the word “Katrina” being used as a tag word within hours of hurricane Katrina being big news. However, it seems to me like tags may go the way of keywords eventually. They seem to serve the same purpose. I think eventually it might end up working exactly like keywords.
Vlogging was mentioned as something newer though. As was …. “audio-blogging”, whatever the real word for that is. From memory, remember? Anyhow, there’s that too out there.
He talked a lot about this site called “Second Life” which seems really cool though. You get to make your own little avatar and buy land. It seems neat, but buying simulated land seems a bit backwards. Or maybe it doesn’t. But it’s a very neat idea and skirts the entire concept of cyberspace. Like all those old TV shows where the character goes inside the TV – that’s what it looks like to me. Reminds me of the World of Warcraft ….. except I don’t play that game (but my Dad does …. Ironic, no?).
Although his lecture went on for a bit longer, I think the basic gist of it is this: user-created content is the future. Of course that does sort of create an odd bit of circular logic, doesn’t it?
I mean ….. sites like You Tube and MySpace (woops! I mean WordPress!) are considered prime examples of Web2.0. Because they are the pinnacle of user-created content. HOWEVER, each one has it’s own sense of suthoritative content that makes it a success. And I can’t help but think it’s not as new as It seems.
People on YouTube often “spam” it to get their own personal spaces featured more. I use You Tube mainly to watch amine …. And I often see spoofing going on (where people put their music videos of, say, Naruto, under “Naruto 119” when it is NOT episode 119 of Naruto). Also, even though MySpace ITSELF is non-authoritative it’s blogs ARE. Because you’re just reading my rants and ravings.
So, if I have a Deviant Art account, how is that different from a personal Webpage? And if I have a blog, how is that different from a personal web space with a comments feature? I guess the idea is that I make the NEXT Myspace or something. I mean blogs in and of themselves are authoritative.
Wikipedia annoys me a bit too, now that we’re on the Web 2.0 subject. Man, I wrote my own bit of info on a game called “Rockman Strategy” ….. I’m the ONLY guy who tracked down the game out of my OWN curiosity …. and I took the game apart to get all the (important) graphics ….. I’m the very first to have any real information about it in the entire world …. And the Wikipedia kids rip me off. Constantly. The admins at Wikipedia sided with me, and that’s to the credit of the site, but the kids that like to add it it make it seem like a prime example of the potential abuse of the whole Web 2.0 movement. You might write something and get ripped off …. Nobody can prove your intellectual property is yours. Well, that’s where Archive.org comes in handy, eh?
Still, Wikis are still a good example of Web 2.0, even though they annoy.
I suppose I have a hard time differentiating Web 2.0 from sites like Geocities. Geocities has a site builder that lets users create their own site. So did Homesite. And a few others. So how is that NOT Web 2.0?? Granted, Second Life is MUCH better and, really … amazing. But Geocities lets you create your own content. Maybe that’s early Web 2.0?
I guess what would come in more handy would be online programs like Geocities web builder. Only not crappy like Geocities web builder. And that, I guess, is the appeal of blogs and you tube and Wikipedia. No HTML worries, no design worries …. It’s really done all for you already. All you do is pump words into it. Or videos. Whatever.
So, Web 2.0. Wave of the future!
Links:
“Why did it have to be the middle screen that was broken”?
Okay, so this week there was a “trip” to the Visual Design Institute here at
Sheridan. They did some pretty cool stuff, but they didn’t seem too enthused about it.
Well, the motion capture room was almost interesting. But it had monitors and all strewn about. The suit looked alright, but I kinda would have liked to see it in action more than just seeing it on a dummy.
The cop training thing was alright. I can see how something like the skid mark “game” might have been difficult to code. Especially dynamically. Ironically, were it not for this course it would not have impressed me. Hah hah. Guess I appreciate coding now.
The anatomy lessons were pretty cool. I like how you can turn it all around and take away those layers. I can see, basically, the “visible” tag, but I can’t help but wonder at how they got a 3-D environment in there.
The use of XML to do fancy stuff seems interesting. The client wants that for the client project, so I guess IO’ll have to learn that sooner rather than later.
Finally, the most impressive part – that interactive move. It was pretty cool …. But not something I haven’t seen before. There’s been lots of video games like that. I mean, the graphics are MUCH better and the use of tablets are pretty cool …. But the main idea itself isn’t really innovative. Although the three camera projection system is nice ….. maybe that’s the main idea presented there and NOT the branching video. That was kind of frustrating …. The minute they presented a problem, you had seconds to act without much time for thought. They ought to fix that middle screen too …. It totally threw off the presentation.
BTW …. It’s probably a “research” place because it helps OTHER PEOPLE research things (like anatomy, cop training, etc, etc, etc)
Link 5 username: bk password: int3rna1r3v13w (must be confirmed several times)
GestureTech trip
Yesterday I went on a trip to Gesturetech. It was pretty fun.
The interactive floor was pretty neat. Seeing the different ways it could be interacted with…. although I think it might have been better with OLED technology because your shadow often blocks the projector and sometimes to inadvertantly triggers effects unintentionally. I kinda think they should do things with exploding plants when you styep on them, fire burning away a picture to reveal another picture or a Godzilla type one where you cans tep on and destroy a city ….. all my ideas involve destruction.
There was a hand-pointing one with sensors. I tried to put together a whale using it. Kinda frustrating to use at first because you have to get into position *just right* for it to work. The mouse kept on jittering too …. either my hand jitters more than my eye sees or there’s a calibration problem there.
There were “touch screens” on glass ….. which were really neat. Like on Star Trek. I’d say these actually worked the best out of everything we saw, mostly because they aren’t too different from what we already have. That sort of technology is really nice …. good for store displays I think.
The best one out of them all was the interactive video game. Seeing yourself in that game and able to interact with objects is really, really fun and I think it’s bound to be a hit. Granted …. it’s a little wierd to control things on the screen using my body and not a joystick ….. but I really dig the technology.
The final interesting point was that cell phones will begin to have this technology. That you can hook up your cell to a TV and play an interactive game. I probably would never have thoght of that, but it’s a great use of the technology.
InterAccess Presentation. “Gee Whiz!”
The presentation from InterAccess opened up many interesting points. Although it seemed the presenter got kind of offended at my “how many of these have practical applications” question.
The motion capturing camera sticks in my mind most immediately. It had a really creepy sort of effect when it layed all of that person’s motions all at once on the screen. I can sort of see how that might come in handy with filmmaking and all too.
The “Helpless Robot” seemed pretty annoying to have to work with. So whiny. Like a robot Lisa Simpson. It’s interesting that a robot can be made to whine and complain. More that it can track what’s being done. Although, just by looking at it, I kinda wanted to see it express some gratitude instead of just complaining about speed and such.
The “computer council” was interesting. The word associations make me think of artificial intelligence and that maybe we’re not so far away from issuing verbal commands to a computer. The fact that they’d all, eventually,. Homogenize was kind of creepy and I wonder where the words they start saying come from. It reminds me of the newer Dune books where the robot evermind Omnius let two versions of himself run so he could interact with them instead of synchronizing them like he usually did.
The building-mural was fun and I can see that being a very useful tool for city events like Christmas or New Years. With that OLED stuff, it might be kinda cool to see a smaller version to project a scene outside of your window. It kind of reminds me of that cheesy movie “hackers” where the hackers used the buildings in the exact same way …. Only they lacked colors. This sort of thing could give a lot of life to a city.
Finally, the motion-controlled fish were pretty interesting. The information was pretty sketchy, but it looked like the fish could interact with you on your own level! Which was pretty neat. I kind of wonder where this sort of technology will go though. So far it looks like a “gee-whiz” sort of invention … although some animal-enthusiasts may really like fish being able to interact with the world like that. Maybe it could be combined with that pointing technology so people could drive their cars just by pointing to where they wanna go.
So, all in all it was a good presentation. Some of the videos were a little …. Tiny on the big screen, but I can’t fault the presenter for that. Everything was interesting.
Interesting links on gesturetech.:
Hello world!
Welp, this is my first blog entry. Everything here looks rather dull so I’ll probably change it later.
Until then …..
“Hello world!”
Shadowman024 