What’s Innate?

Recently I attended the launch party for a new content distribution and sharing website PikSpot at No Regrets restaurant and bar. Me and several other of my friends dropped by because we’d heard on one of our favourite podcasts, TWIT, that the founder Leo Leporte would be in town for the launch. We thought it would be fun to check out. They gave everyone who attended private beta access so I’ve had some time to use the site for a while.

Overview
PikSpot is a web 2.0 like site that is made for content distribution. That content may be video, pictures, podcasts or blog posts. The content is broken up into groups from content providers and act like channels. The largest group and the driving force behind the content site is “Undo TV” which is a network of now former employees of TechTV in the US who were all fired when the network TV channel was bought by Viacom and turned into “G4 TechTV”. Undo TV is founded by Leo Leporte and Chris Prillo Many of them have gone on to work on highly successful web projects such as Twit, Digg, Revision3, to name a few. Undo TV seeks to bring back that chemistry filled group so that they can continue to produce great content on their own without the assistance of a major cable TV network. There is also a “YouLaf” group which is dedicated to funny user generated content. The goal with these channel-like groups is for users who are interested in the content to come together and form an online community full of discussion and debate. Each group would be its kind of own mini social network. Now its important to note that any user can submit content, not just these network like groups such as undoTV and Wikinomics, its much like youtube or flickr allowing anyone to upload.

Stand Out Features
The big stand out feature on PikSpot that I’ve never seen any where else is the abillity to post comments in a forum via webcam video clip. It makes the process really simple to capture a video of yourself responding to a comment or piece of content. I really enjoyed using this feature and was really excited when the founder, Scott Waddell demonstrated it at the launch. Users can also vote for their favourite pieces of content by giving it “kudos” much like digg.com’s concept of “digging” stories. This allows stand out content that is of interest to the community to really rise to the top.

Downfalls
Overall at the launch I was impressed with the concept because it brought all kinds of different sources like youtube and flickr to one place. Also some of the features were really interesting and unique but the main reason I wasn’t 100% on board with the idea is that youtube and flickr already do what they do so well that it would be impossible to try and do all of them together in one website. The second problem I saw in the future of PikSpot was that websites such as digg.com and youtube and facebook are already moving into the space that PikSpot is trying to occupy with content aggregation and that they already have HUGE user bases with litterally millions of people. It’s not that the site is buggy or the interface isn’t easy enough it is just that PikSpot is trying to squeeze itself into a tiny crack of a market which is ever shrinking. The large boulders already in place are filling the crack in more and more everyday with new features launching. PikSpot currently is in private beta and is scheduled to soon go into public beta which I predict it will not make it out of before it is shut down due to lack of user base. Users don’t want to have to create one more account and another password to remember just to access content they can get other places.

Overall though the night at No Regrets was fun, I got to meet two of my favourite commercial New Media creators, Leo Leporte and Amber Macarthur who is now the on site new media specialist at CityTV. Can’t say no to free food and wine…

I found this extra pair of flashing LED reindeer antlers so being in the true spirit of Christmas I tore them apart to see what was inside. After about 15 minutes of hacking with scissors I managed to cut through the thick sweat shop grade glue (and a wire! oops…) and dug out the six red LEDs.

The lights were controlled with a printed circuit that had a battery and a switching device that the user would squeeze in order to turn them on and off. What I found most interesting about the circuit was the simple plastic casing around the printed circuit board with a tab to give the user a nice interface to interact with.

When using the antlers this little plastic case is really what makes the circuit usable, the fact that the user can squeeze it, feel a nice click and then the button returns to its normal state. This is what’s most important for the user…does it turn on and off? This is something to take into important consideration next semester when I’m working on physical computing assignments.

This past Saturday evening I visited Nathan Phillips Square for the Cavalcade of lights for the weekly fireworks that are set off atop Toronto city hall. Upon arrival I discovered that a new media installation and performance piece was set up by French new media Xavier de Richemont titled “Immersion”. It’s a colourful 15 minute projection piece that is displayed on the west side of old city hall which runs every half an hour. The piece focuses on two key concepts, the first being the idea of how a building can be used as a canvas, the second concept is the abundance of water as a resource in Canada and how that shapes our country. The presentation began with chalk outlines being “drawn” onto the building, outlining the building and its details. It was truly a unique visual to see a large building being traced and outlined with chalk lines. More and more layers of chalk lines are added and different colours of chalk are used. Various other animated scenes whirl across the building about Native Canadian culture. Then the building began to “fill up” with water, which froze then began to crack and fall off the building.


The images themselves definitely weren’t the most stunning, the piece was more about the scale and unique projection screen being used. Personally other than the chalk outlines I found the projected animations to drag out and not really engage observers. It felt like some of the images were projected because it was interesting medium not because the images themselves had anything to say. Due to this, a lot of people lost interest at around five minutes into the display once the novelty of the medium had worn off. To me it was as though Richemont had the opportunity to truly take people’s breath away with the large scale and beautiful architecture but didn’t have that once moment where the audience was truly stunned like he has done with other installations in Montreal and Budapest. On the other hand, the building was very difficult to project onto and the accuracy and positioning of the projections is a high achievement. Richemont used five different projectors in covered tents setup on the raised walkway in Nathan Phillips Square to project onto the building across the street. The projections were slightly washed out due to ambient light downtown which is to be expected and actually photographed much better, more rich saturated colours, than it look with the human eye.
The accompanying soundtrack to the display was also lacking, as Barthes uses the term, “punctum” to captivate or speak to viewers. It was a very atmospheric and electronic original soundtrack which didn’t really suit the romanesque architecture and the older style images of Native Canadians. The one part where the soundtrack had impact on me was when the ice was falling off the building and revealing the bright colours underneath. Nathan Phillips Square felt like it was shaking with the deep powerful rumbling as the chunks hit the ground at the bottom of the building.

Overall the projection show was definitely a unique and interesting concept and the medium of Old City Hall provided a unique platform. The content itself, felt like it was lacking an amount of meaning or “punctum” for most of the show. Perhaps this was viewed in the wrong context and was meant to run while you continue about your activities at the Cavalcade of Lights, not stop and give all your attention to the projections.

This is something that has long irked me and been the source of several anry tirads at the IE team, as other can varify. It is with great pleasure I present you with this…
The Solution To Many Web Designers Problems
I’ll be using this a lot now to fix those finnicky images on my site

This movie trailer takes the cake in my opinion, it REALLY makes me want to go see the movie, 300 which is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel. It’s directed by Zack Snyder (Dawn of the Dead) who’s done great work directing TV commercials and although Dawn of the Dead wasn’t really my cup of tea I appreciated it for what it was. Obviously its done with lots of blue screening, which with a few exceptions (being Sin City) I haven’t found them to be that enjoyable to watch but this looks like it could be another exception. The cool part is that it was shot in Montreal and the post work was done my Montreal’s Meteor Studios. The Nine Inch Nails soundtrack on the trailer makes it even more k!ck’n. Now there is still the possibility for suck-age for this movie as sometimes trailers are a hell of a lot better than the actual film. But I’m feeling optimistic today so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt…

HD Trailer (720P)
(*heavy bandwidth warning)

300 Website

Technorati Tags: movies

One of the funnest things I’ve done was capture the flag in downtown toronto with the New Mind Space group. There were about 1200 people there and we were divided into two teams with different coloured glow necklaces. [poor John C. couldn't tell which colour was which ] and were given territory that was divied by King St. take a look at the map. Twas a grand time had by all with lots of SMS’ing in ways I hadn’t really used it before, lots of fun and great organization by New Mind Space. The reason I’m blogging about this now is that…

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