Dembot

The Year The Election was Won Online?

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:42:00 -0400

Will the internet have an effect on the US presidential election of 2008?

The 2004 election saw a major change with the internet involved. For the first time ever, micro-donations made a difference and got noticed. The conversation online was rampant. People were screaming. I was so overly optimistic, I spent most of my time looking out to the rest of the world online knowing that people around the Earth who could not vote, could still influence voters.

But unfortunately, it wasnt JibJab, blogs, Howard Dean or anyone else online that decided the election in 2004, it was the TV commercials in rural America that played the greatest influence. And all that was required to win the most TV commercials was winning the most money.

The people who actually went out to vote were the people in small towns who didint know what a blog was and mostly didnt spend time online - they were not connected.

At the time, a survey estimated that 44% of US households were well connected whereas today, four years later, the number has grown only 13% to 57% [via]. The majority of these people are in the smaller towns.

While playing a large role, I’m inclined to believe that Sillicon Valley did not elect Obama, but that Obama truly represents the goodness and change that we all need so much after eight full years of intense damage by the worst president in the history of the world. The primary election was likely won by Democrats in all walks of life, but this has little to do with the greater Republican fight.

Now its time to win the election and it’s the people in the small towns that matter the most.

For the last several elections, an overwhelming majority of all cities in the US with a population over 500,000 voted Democrat and almost all that were under 500,000 voted Republican [via].

The 2008 Election will be different but will it be different enough? Broadband pentration has slowed in reaching the smaller towns. Perhaps the youngest of the generations in the small towns are connecting, but perhaps they are too young to vote, and those that are older enough, may not actually make it out to the polls.

In otherwords, just because it seems obvious that the Democrats should win, it’s not going to be easy.

Image Fulgurator

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:36:00 -0400

Image Fulgurator

Superstorm entering Manhattan now. Thick rain and darkness. (via Twitter)

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:01:28 -0400

Superstorm entering Manhattan now. Thick rain and darkness. (via Twitter): posted a message on Twitter “Superstorm entering Manhattan now. Thick rain and darkness.” 11:23 am - Comment looks like a good one andrew - http://sirocco.accuweather.com… - mike “glemak” dunn

TubeMogul Top 40

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:28:00 -0400

TubeMogul is a new kind of platform that we at Rocketboom are calling a “Blaster”. You can upload a master video file to the service, add a set of metadata (i.e. title, description and tags) and then TubeMogul does the heavy lifting of blasting/redistributing the master file to multiple video hosts, like YouTube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Yahoo, etc. This kind of tool has become indispensable for us.

Today, TubeMogul released their top 40 clients and Rocketboom ranks in at #13 ahead of Warner Bros, Fox, PBS and Sony Pictures.

For most on the list, YouTube is where the numbers count and in many ways, it’s likely there is a direct correlation between popularity on YouTube and popularity on Tube Mogul. Interestingly enough, the majority of our flash d/l come from Blip.tv which is not included in these numbers so it’s likely we would be much higher in the list (e.g. we have a higher view count on Blip than YouTube which is likely abnormal for most of the others on the list). Also, of course, this does not account for all of the videos we serve ourselves which is the great majority.

Rank/User

1Next New Networks
2Chris Pirillo
3Howcast
4For Your Imagination
5Tornante
6WatchMojo.com
7iJustine
8Nalts
9MyDamnChannel
10Ford Models
11CBS Interactive
12HBO
13Rocketboom
14FUNimation Productions
15National Lampoon
16Big Pictures
17Sub Pop Records
18Rhett and Link
19PopCrunch Media
20PBS
21Independent Comedy TV
22Billboard.com
23The Movie Preview Critic
24IPC Media
25Hayden Black / Evil Global Corp
26Century Media Records
27Tango Media
28DailyIdea.TV
29Effinfunny.com
30Newsbusters.org
31Katr Pictures
32Young Hollywood
33Warner Bros
34Fox
35Vlaze Media Networks
36Gagfilms
37Click for Lessons
38EMI
39Nike
40Sony Pictures

Square Wheels

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:14:57 -0400

Square Wheels

Tumblr Creator Speaks (Video Interview)

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:04:00 -0400

Sarah Austin of Pop17 interviews David Karp, the 21 year old founder of Tumblr, a breakthrough blogging platform that allows users to easily reblog multimedia content.

Make pictures, not war. (via pop17)

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:55:42 -0400

Make pictures, not war. (via pop17)

The Petaflop Roadrunner Supercomputer is now the fastest...

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 23:33:38 -0400

The Petaflop Roadrunner Supercomputer is now the fastest computer in the world beating BlueGene by more than twice the speed. You may think this is fast, but just wait till you see this puppy inside of a thumb drive in 15 years. The New York Times

rocketboom:Serious Bu$iness Dance Party Presented by...

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:27:47 -0400

rocketboom:

Serious Bu$iness Dance Party Presented by Rocketboom and Blip.tv
FREE DISCO / OPEN BAR
> 9pm ‘till late
> Savalas, 285 Bedford Ave (map), Williamsburg

* Open bar sponsored by Rocketboom & blip.tv as part of NY Internet Week

* MP3s & more info: http://fffff.at/serious-business

* RSVP on the Facebook event

Voeh Blocks International Users

Sat, 31 May 2008 14:52:00 -0400

I just found a breaking news story that has not yet made the Techmeme, or Google news rounds: Veoh turns off international service. The company which has received over $25M in financing is apparently, as of today, blocking out many international countries. I found this info via Wikirage where I noticed the wikipage for Veoh has been under constant edits today. A look at Google blogs shows many accounts from enraged bloggers who have been blocked out without notice.

Initial reports suggest Veoh is no longer available in United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Indonesia, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Luxembourg, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Guam, Jamaica, Barbados, El Salvador, Hungary, Malta, Slovenia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Colombia, Cyprus, Romania, the Cayman Islands, Guadeloupe, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Panama, Czech Republic, Turkey, Croatia, Lithuania and Egypt, amongst other countries.

Whatever the reason, if intentional, its a sad setback for the freedom of digital borders when people of other countries are considered not valuable or relevant enough to have the option to participate and share on the new global stage.

*update: user posted notes/quotes from Veoh:

#1: “Unfortunately Veoh has ended service in your country due to a low concentration of users. Veoh is maintaining service in countries when we have the highest concentration of viewers.”

#2: “Veoh is maintaining markets when we have the highest concentration of viewers.”

Displacements

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:56:00 -0400

Displacements is an immersive film installation.

“An archetypal Americana living room was installed in an exhibition space. Then two performers were filmed in the space using a 16mm motion picture camera on a slowly rotating turntable in the room’s center. After filming, the camera was replaced with a film loop projector and the entire contents of the room were spray-painted white. The reason was to make a projection screen the right shape for projecting everything back onto itself. The result was that everything appears strikingly 3D, except for the people, who of course weren’t spray-paint white, and consequently appeared very ghostlike and unreal.”

Displacements - Michael Naimark from today and tomorrow on Vimeo.

The Real Reason Why friendfeed is Working

Sat, 24 May 2008 17:52:00 -0400

The first time I heard about friendfeed was in mid 2007 but I just passed it over and didn’t think much about it. In the fall of 2007, Jason Shellen stopped by my office in NYC and was talking about it. That day I had an epiphany that Friendfeed would be the next big thing.

I later outlined this in Austin during SXSW this year. People saw the conference as Twitter’s major launch, but in fact, Twitter had launched out of SXSW a whole year earlier (nothing had changed with Twitter over that year other than an effort to remain stable). This year, people simply used it because they already knew what to do with it. Unbeknownst to most, it was actually Friendfeed that launched out of SXSW this year because the earliest adopters were already on to it. Like a meme, or a hit song, Friendfeed has the intrinsic qualities needed to formulaically make it.

Friendfeed essentially renders Twitter obsolete. Steve Gillmor is wrong. The only need for Twitter is for legacy purposes. The same audience that made Twitter is slowly migrating over to Friendfeed because Friendfeed has what Twitter has, but its better and there is a lot more.

So “Why Friendfeed and why Friendfeed when it feels so raw?”, you might ask. Friendfeed is following the same formulaic model that made Twitter popular, but its doing it better and quicker.

I have a couple of insights to offer about this evolution and Freindfeed in particular that I have not seen articulated yet, surpisingly.

Ever wonder why you have to go to Tweetscan or Summize to search in Twitter? Or why so many people use Twhirl to do Twitter locally? And why Twitter never developed the search, the conversation, or even any of these 100’s of twitter applications and businesses?

Twitter was smart to allow all of these companies to tweet away with their plugin products and not pull an Apple-like infringement case against them. The fact that there is a Twhirl means that there are people and business interests that are out there for Twitter. They are hyping it, trying to raise money for their projects, actively thinking and developing ideas around growing their Twitter-related assets. They are out talking about it. Just by allowing it to happen, Twitter currently has factories upon factories of people all over the world working for them.

It’s a miracle that Twitter made it this far. I believe the reason why is because of the good will and brilliant nature of the people involved initially, and then the good will and excitement of the first adopters. Twitter had two big competitors up until now, Pownce and Jiaku and both had a lot of resources to reckon with. Even with Google involved, these two classic rivals are now flat. Interestingly enough in context of the following paragraph, these other systems were not working because they were not simple enough.

Time has passed now and everyone that gets Twitter and has become addicted to it, needs more. But its way too spread out now. Over 80% of all of Twitter’s traffic comes from API usage meaning it’s happening without people ever even going to twitter.com, because they need to be somewhere else. I dont even know where some of my tweets live anymore. Tweetscan will show me a Twitter that someone already deleted because it keeps cache. My email alerts refuse to tell me what the message is so I have to login to Twitter from my phone to see. It drives me crazy that I cant @someone without also quoting them, and linking to them. Even the tinyurl is a pain because I have to go over there to get it or Twitter may or may not do it for me, depending on how much space I have left. There are no pictures or videos or anything else.

Enter Friendfeed, well positioned and taking up Twitter’s evolution. It’s got the good will of the people involved in the company, the same first adopters that Twitter had, and I mean *the same actual people*, it has the features that we want, and on top of all that, it actually works and is reliable. True, it has not seen scale, but Twitter has always been down even when it was small.

FFapps.com shows a short list of applications that have spawned up around Friendfeed from just a few developers. Ill tell you what, now is the time to jump in with an application to leverage the audience if you are into this feeder fish application phenomenon. Think Facebook apps. Twitter apps. Friendfeed apps.

It’s almost as if Friendfeed is intentionally raw, waiting for some young interface designer chap to present the data in a more compelling way. All you need to do is do it right, do it best and do it now and and you will likely win over the hearts and minds of the authoritative and savvy first adopters. FF created an API so anyone could do with FF what they could do with Twitter. Friendfeed will be smart to allow 3rd party applications to help build up the hype, but they will need to do what Twitter has not yet done and that is continue to innovate themselves. Else, the young chap who is following in FF footsteps, even if just by design, will overtake FF too. The problem that Twitter has now is that FF is in fact a good interface and that becomes apparent the more you use it. The look-and-feel? Not so much. And not so much of a problem to fix.

Time is of the essence. Twitter has a chance to step up to the plate but they must first satisfy everyone’s basic needs of providing a stable application. Friend Feed is not only ahead in that department, they are way ahead.

To everyone who is not a developer but simply wants to get in on the social, this is the number one best time to jump in with an account and become an active participant. The first adopters of a new platform tend to have the greatest advantages when the system becomes larger and even more important. [my friendfeed account is here]

Weezer - Pork and Beans

Fri, 23 May 2008 12:58:00 -0400

All star video including Evolution of Dance Guy, Daft Hands and Bodies, GI Joe, Tay Zonday, Liamkylesullivan, Chris Croker, Coke and Mentos guys, Miss Teen USA, Karate Guy and quite a few more.

As of now, the video only has about 9507 views and only 333 subscribers. Ill update this post each day with the number count climb. This one will obviously be quite big.

Update #1:Close to 9pm ET on the same day. The Weezer video gained extra momentum from being featured on the home page of YouTube, but unfortunately, fell shy of the most viewed today do to sports fans of the Manchester United v Chelsea Penalties Champions League Final:

Wisdom of the Crowd vs. Curator

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:06:00 -0400

I got a chance to ask Drew Curtis of Fark a ton of questions. I’ll try to get more of the interview up soon. This one part struck me as really interesting. I asked about how he curates for Fark - he almost entirely ignores his audience.

At first the idea might seem counterintuitive, especially if you use sites like Digg, but there is something to be said for the curator. Extremes and balances make for many fine options.

Jake & Amir at NYC Video Meetup

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:01:00 -0400

I’m very happy to announce that this month’s NYC video meet-up will host special guests, Jake and Amir:

http://www.jakeandamir.com

The dynamic duo will speak about their production process, technical flow, business and the history of how they got started.

From Wired: “The Setup: Real-life CollegeHumor.com employees Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenfeld turn the cameras toward their desks, chronicling their sidesplittingly dysfunctional, partially fictional work relationship. Human’s Take: “Consistently funny,” Scheer says. “It just goes to show, you don’t need a big budget to make hilarious shorts.” I’ve also written about them here.

Everyone that attends the meet-up is invited to give a 2min introduction, then we will hear from the special guests for one hour, chat for about 15minutes afterwards and then migrate over to a bar on Spring Street.

To attend, please sign up on the website at: http://videoblog.meetup.com/8/

Tron Guy at ROFLcon on Rocketboom

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:51:48 -0400

Jay Maynard the Tron Guy at the ROFLcon conference, MIT. The classic tron costume page that led everyone awry. Where The Hell Is Matt? Special music thanks to podington bear, ham radio by rtpalovich, Tron on ebay, Tron Arcade, Tron Trailer (redux), Tron (imdb)

Podshow < Mevio

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:51:00 -0400

Podshow changes it’s name to Mevio, not Meivo.

I’ve always been disenchanted with this network and have said enough already so I’m not going to bring up the three outstanding cease and desist letters Ive sent to the company asking them to stop redistributing Rocketboom (especially as they do it with ads) but I would like to throw in a word of support for two awesome shows which in my opinion are the only reason why the network is even relevant, Dawn and Drew and GeekBreif.

Do you listen to Dawn and Drew? I consider them to be the first to successfully embrace the new medium of Podcasting. I’m not suggesting they were the first podcasters of course but I consider them the first *people* I came across, uninhibited by technology, money, and locale to captivate an audience online. If you didn’t experience it at the time, it would be difficult to understand that what they did was radical. A young liberal-minded, extremely fowl mouthed couple out on a farm in the middle of nowhere America, demonstrated the boundaries and implications of the anyone-can-take-hold-of-the-radio message with every word they spoke. Everyday they consistently released a new episode, you could just see everyone in gray pants at the National Association of Broadcasters convention fade before your eyes - still yet unbeknownst to most of them.

TRUST

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:26:20 -0400

TRUST

Rocketboom Production Process Explained

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:50:00 -0400

This Tuesday the free NYC Videoblogging Meetup (which I just noticed is the largest videoblogging Meetup in the world (not sure if that statement is deserving of any clout but whateva)) will be held at the *new* Rocketboom office/studio in Soho.

We’re giving away our production process in a 2 hour overview. From coming up with ideas, to researching, writing, shooting, editing, and publishing, our crew will explain how we put together our daily episodes. Everything from methods, to software to workflow and procedures will be discussed.

Must RSVP on the meet-up site to attend (we are getting close to capacity so you might want to do that soon to assure attendance).

Video of Twitter Madness

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:19:00 -0400