SOMEWHAT FRANK

WE LIVE IN PUBLIC & How The Web Affects Society

We Live In Public Film Screening at SXSW from Frank Gruber on Vimeo.

Have you recently updated your Twitter or Facebook status, posted a photo on Flickr or posted a video on YouTube or Vimeo? I have. This kind of lifestreaming online behavior has become mainstream as the Web 2.0 movement empowered anyone to become an online content creator, trading privacy for a little taste of online fame and a connection with people. 

While I was down in Austin, Texas for South By Southwest (SXSW), I got a chance to see the film screening of WE LIVE IN PUBLIC which took home the Grand Jury Prize at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The film focuses on the adventures of early dot-comer Josh Harris as he experiments to predict the effects of the Web on society. Ondi Timoner directed the film which documents what happens when the Web takes a stronger hold of our everyday life. The movie takes place mostly in New York and includes appearances by Jason Calacanis, Julia Allison and Meghan Asha (who appears on SOMEWHAT FRANK videos here and here). WE LIVE IN PUBLIC is a must see as we all become more tied to our devices and the Web.

Check out episode 73 on SOMEWHAT FRANK adventures in personal technology as I recorded a couple of short clips from the Q&A session with Director Ondi Timoner after the film and even got to meet her afterward. Also be sure to see the film WE LIVE IN PUBLIC when it is released as it really makes you think how we all live our lives and share so much online. Oh and you can follow Director Ondi Timoner on Twitter too.

Photo of Director Ondi Timoner and I by Jen Consalvo.

SnagFilms Launches Hub For Indie Films But Does It Really Let You Snag Films?

Independent filmmakers just got a new place to flock online as Washington, DC-based startup SnagFilms launched today. The startup looks to "change" the way independent film is distributed. Snag Films was founded by Ted Leonsis and was created to address the bottleneck in distribution for quality documentaries that has left many great films unable to reach their potential audience or to provide a viable financial return. Ted announced the launch and his reasoning behind the site on his blog today.

BeFunky To Cartoonize Yourself

BeFunky, a startup which was founded as a spin off of the more manually artist driven IamCartoon project, offers a few fun little applications to allow users to easily create and customize photos as cartoons and create personal avatars. BeFunky recently showed its stuff at TechCrunch40.

AniBOOM: Animation Community & Toolkit

AniBOOM is an animation community that partners with animators around the world to help distribute their original content. AniBoom offers an array of animation tools for animators to  create, watch and share a wide range of animated video shorts and series. Novice animators with great ideas can even try and turn them into reality by leveraging the community.

Fonts Dance In Adobe Flash Video

Have you ever seen fonts dance like this? To the sound of Obadiah Parker's covering Outkast's "Hey Ya!", Brian Shaler leveraged Adobe Flash typography animation technology to create this video that make fonts dance.

Funny or Die: Will Ferrell's Video Startup

Looking for comedy on YouTube? If so, you might want to check out Funny or Die. The site launched a few months ago but has been attracting some attention as it offers up community-vetted viral comedy videos produced by some popular comedians. You may have already seen The Landlord (shown below) is short sketch that stars Will Ferrell. Interestingly, Gary Sanchez Productions co-owned by Adam McKay and Will Ferrell, took the idea of Michael Kvamme and created Funny or Die.

The idea behind the site is simple, Funny or Die enables its users to upload funny videos and then the community can vote on the videos and decide whether they are funny or die by being sent to the crypt. According to the site there are a few additional levels which are explained as follows:

    Immortal: This video shall live forever like Thor or The Fonz. 
    Walking Tall:  In great shape.
    Kinda Cute: Worth a chuckle or perhaps a guffaw.
    Uh-Oh: Not doing so good.
    The Crypt: This video flat lined.   

For an Immortal video and if you cannot get enough Will Ferrell you might want to also check out, Third Date (shown below) or Will Ferrell as George Bush. Jimmy Fallon also has joined in and produced a spoof of Internet famous lonelygirl15, called lonelyfallon32. Bill Murray will also be making an appearance soon.

Bottom-line: Funny or Die is a great place to upload and vote on funny videos and laugh a little bit.

18Seconds.org Spotlights Energy Savings

18Seconds.org is campaign Yahoo recently launched in conjunction with Lawrence Bender, Oscar-winning producer of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth,"  devoted to informing the world about the energy savings associated with switching from a normal light bulb to a compact fluorescent lamp. The campaign is based on the idea that is only takes 18 seconds to change a regular light bulb to an energy saving compact fluorescent light bulb. Lawrence Bender authored a guest post on the Yahoo! corporate blog which stated:

"If every American swapped just one bulb, it would save more than $8 billion in energy costs, prevent the burning of 30 billion pounds of coal, and keep the equivalent of two million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere."

Those are some pretty eye opening numbers. At the same time it is inspiring to hear that everyone can pitch in to help save energy and ultimately the planet. The 18Seconds.org web site offers a mashup which places the current compact florescent lamp purchase numbers by geographic location on a Yahoo map. Currently, Arkansas is the leading energy saving state and Bellingham, Washington is the leading energy saving city in the United States. For additional information about 18Seconds.org, check out the video below.

Google vs. Microsoft, Hollywood Disrupted, OpenID Explained, BitTorrent Video Store and the Feed Reader Market

Photo of the week: With the 79th Academy Awards tonight I felt this photo title Over Hollywood Sign by Jorge Mir offered a good point of perspective.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.25.07

Hollywood Disrupted By Social Media?
An opinion piece in the LA Times, titled “The Movie Magic is Gone”, explains how Hollywood is losing its place as the epicenter of cultural products and how movies are losing their relevance as the "barometers of the American psyche". Personally, social media has definitely pulled me away from more and more television and movies the last couple of years.

BitTorrent.com Launches Video Store
BitTorrent Inc, the popular peer-to-peer file sharing software, has released the final details of their long awaited video store. The store itself will go live this Monday, and will offer movie rentals at $2.99 - $3.99, and “download to own” TV shows.

It’s G-Day: Google Launches Apps Premier
Google has Microsoft squarely in its cross-hairs as it launched Google Apps Premier, its subscription package of premium, hosted business applications in direct competition with Microsoft. It does not surprise me. Interestingly, this past week I also heard a radio advertisement for "Breakfast with Google," an event setup to showcase Google @ Work for government organizations.

How does OpenID work?
Good question, this video post offers some perspective on just how OpenID works as explained by Simon Willison. Also Digg announced this past week that they are going OpenID.

How Many Founders Does A Startup Need?
Brad Feld looked at number of founders in successful Internet businesses. The average is 2.09 founders and Brad discusses this number and gives his input.

Netvibes2Go, Pretty Good Actually
GigaOm takes a look at Netvibes mobile experience and reports back on it. Basically, Netvibes setup is easy: create a tab in Netvibes called “Mobile,” and drop in some of these modules.

The State of the Web-based RSS Reader Market
FeedBurner released a great look into the feed market and Read/Write Web took it a step-further by examining the web-based feed reader market. The article also pulls in some numbers from another feed-based business called Pheedo.

Next Net: 25 startups to watch
Business 2.0 has once again listed 25 startups to watch in 2007. Here are last years 25 hottest startups.

Stop Motion Style Used In Web 2.0 Video

The stop motion film style is an animation technique made popular by in the original 1933 version of King Kong and claymation classics Gumby and Wallace and Gromit. The technique makes static objects appear to move by making items move very small amounts between individual frames, producing the effect of motion when the film is played back, as in conventional drawn and painted animation.  The one minute video below was described as "web 2.0 stop motion style" on the web 2.0 page of FunMansion.com where I found it posted. I don't agree with the naming or definition of this video as it really doesn't cover anything related to web 2.0 but I do think it is an entertaining piece of video due to its animation style.

Gates & Jobs Duke It Out In Apple iWorld

The "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials produced by Apple which consist of a war of words between two actors playing the roles of a Mac and a PC have created quite the buzz. With the release of Vista the most recent commercial describes the user "Allow/Cancel" prompts that might frequently bombard a Vista user. Current.tv decided to see what would happen if  one of these Mac commercials consisted of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Place your bets now, as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs square off and duke it out in the clean white virtual world of the Mac ads. Who do you think will win this "tech czar" duel?

 

Six Degrees to… Kevin Bacon's Charity?

We’ve all heard of the game “Six Degrees to Kevin Bacon.”  It’s simple: start with a celebrity, say, Selma Hayek and connect her through movies to Kevin Bacon.

• Salma Hayek in Fools Rush in with
• Matthew Perry on Friends with
• Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly with
• Ben Stiller in Something About Mary with
• Matt Dillion in Wild Things with
• Kevin Bacon

And there’s the concept.  Now take the game, and do some good with it through SixDegrees.org. 

Launched by none other than Kevin Bacon himself, in partnership with Network For Good, an AOL, Yahoo and Cisco Systems backed charitable organization, celebrities advocate their favorite charities and encourage others to do the same – and that includes non-Hollywood types.  It’s a great vehicle for awareness as well as fund-raising, as Bacon has promised to match the top six non-celebrity fund-raisers with a $10,000. Check out the video below for Kevin Bacon’s perspective on the charity.

Echoing the ever-growing role of the web as a social network, SixDegrees.org rallies us all around a great purpose that evolved out of a simple grassroots game. I never really considered myself a particularly huge Kevin Bacon fan, though Footloose rocked my world back in 1984, I have to say that I think a lot more highly of him now.

You can donate and add a badge to your web site, social network page or blog. Additionally, you join the Six Degrees AIM Pages Network or buy Six Degrees swag on eBay to show your support.

Special thanks to Kyle Bradbury for assisting with this article.

Related Articles:
Philanthrophy Through Technology
GoodSearch: Search To Benefit Charity
Google.org A 'For Profit' Auto Maker?
The One Million Masterpiece: Online Artwork Collaboration For The Records

ClickStar: Movie Debuts In Your Home

ClickStar, a startup co-founded by actor Morgan Freeman and backed by many Hollywood icons, is set to launch the first ever first run movie distribution site on the web in a few weeks (December 15, 2006) with release of, 10 Items of Less. ClickStar users will be able to purchase a movie for about $20 and watch it on the computer or a TV set with the help of a add-on device. Additionally, ClickStar will enable users to play a movie while it is still downloading. Lori McCreary, ClickStar co-founder, had this to say recently in a USAToday CEO Forum:

"ClickStar is a broadband entertainment service where you can get every movie that you can get on any other broadband entertainment service, but more. We've got first-run movies while they're still in theaters, like 10 Items or Less. You also have artist-created channels, so we're working with some of Hollywood's best-known personalities that have a deep-seated interest in a particular subject. For instance, Danny DeVito is a huge fan of documentaries, so Danny will be the voice of (the channel) Jersey Docs."

With everyone and their brother jumping into the online video market ClickStar's key differentiator will be in the strength of its content. Personally, I would pay to see a first run movie in the comfort of my living room  the day it is released but some are skeptical of the opportunity. Additionally, I think there should be an option to buy to own, similar to purchasing a download to burn a DVD as $20 is about the price of a DVD these days.

Would you use ClickStar to download to watch a just released movie?

Bottom-line: If ClickStar can offer first run movie titles at the click of a button I am pretty confident that they will be successful. However, its pricing and ownership details still need to be tweaked to the liking of the general public as some companies offer users the ability to download to own the movie content to burn to a DVD the day of DVD release.

Related Articles:
ClickStar ready for movie download retake
Q&A With ClickStar's Lori McCreary
A Start-up Fueled By Star Power

The RSS Blimp & Hollywood New Media Fun

What better way to to promote an RSS feed than going big with a blimp? If it works for Goodyear why not RSS? It makes ... sense. You probably are wondering what the heck I am talking about so please let me explain. I recently spotted (thanks to Eric Olson) an RSS blimp floating back and forth on the blog of Zach Braff, the star of Scrubs and the new movie of The Last Kiss. I digg the creativity - it takes RSS to new heights. 

Zach Braff is not the only one in Hollywood up to speed on the new media space. Kevin Smith directed and starred in Clerks 2 and leveraged MySpace to promote the movie. He even used it to place his first 10,000 new MySpace friends into the credits of the movie. In addition, Kevin released a podcast of the directors commentary so that moviegoers could download and listen to it while watching the movie in the theater.

Snakes on a plane, the recent online marketing dream, leveraged people in true web 2.0 fashion to contributed lines to the movie. What would Samuel L. Jackson have said about snakes on the plane without the Internets help? In addition, Snakes on a Plane created an online messaging site to help push the viral message, as I highlighted here.

Bottomline: It is great to see some of Hollywood ahead of the curve and using innovative ways to promote movies using new media technology.

Viacom & Disney Map Converse Online Video Content Strategies

Viacom, the parent company of a  number of first class brands like MTV and VH1, made several big moves this week which further emphasis its focus in distributing video online. The first move was a deal with Google to distribute video content via Google’s Adsense for Video product. The move enables anyone using that can insert Viacom video content into a web site to help in distributing it. The second deal, was the acquisition of Atom Entertainment, the online video and gaming entertainment site, for $200 million. This move appears to be further bolsters and diversifies Viacom’s stockpile of youthful online content assets like Neopets, iFilm and XFire. Additionally, there are rumors swirling around the web that Viacom is in a bidding war with News Corp for the social networking site, Bebo. Bebo recently surpassed MySpace in the UK in weekly visits (according to a Hitwise report).

With Disney's reported earnings skyrocketing 39 percent, it appears they are taking a different road than Viacom when it comes to distributing online video content. Robert Iger, chief executive at Disney recently declared Disney would not lock in with one of the content portals like Yahoo or Google to distribute its content assets. It might suggest that Disney is sticking to its guns and longtime premium content approach which consisted of physically locking video content up in a place called the “Disney Vault.”

Is Iger made it sounds like they may be thinking of transcending the "Disney Vault" into an on online destination portal and distributing their content themselves?

I do not know if that will work in today’s online world as barriers of entry  for an individual to produce and syndicate video content have been diminished by web 2.0 (visit YouTube to see the phenomenon in action). Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what happens as both Viacom and Disney look to take strategically separate video content routes.

Flickr Goes Down

What impeccable timing Flickr has. Not even a few hours after I compose an article praising Flickr do I come to find out in visiting the site that Flickr is down. Flickr posted (as shown below) the message, "Arrggh! Our Tubes Are Clogged!" Though I appreciate the humor, I am bummed about the temporary storage failure. I guess both humans and the web are not perfect.

Thankfully, photos are safe and have not been lost according to this recent Flickr Blog post.