Finding the human connection

I think one of the things that has really fascinated me with Web 2.0 is the way that people can connect...not just through conversation, but through the human experience. I got particularly interested in this after watching the Michael Wesch lecture that talked about how people responded to the "Numa Numa" guy by wanting to join in to be part of the abandonment of dancing to an upbeat song. There is so much that is negative in the world right now, that I find I really like to see these moments where people are just happy or willing to help their fellow people. That's why the "Where the Hell is Matt?" videos are neat to me as well- it's just dancing and people join in. This reminded me of link that one of my favorite websites woot.com provided on the tweenbots project.



This is something I would love to do as a group project- something simple like getting an item from point A to point B. This is one of the reasons I'm really a fan of geocaching right now. In geocaching, I have often come across a travel bug that I have to look up on the website to see where it is heading. I then move it to a geocache that is a little closer to its end destination. What would be neat is to video an item traveling and have a sort of traveling vlog for an item. This is obviously a project that would take much longer than we have remaining in this class, but it's something that I could see doing for fun - releasing an item into the world that has a destination and directions to post a vlog to a specific channel in youtube so everyone will follow it. This has the possibility to go viral simply because as more people help the item get to its destination, the more people that will be interested in how the progress is going and tell their friends about it.

A series of videos I am digging right now have Ben Folds using Chatroulette at his concerts and basically welcoming the person that pops up on screen to be a guest of honor at the concert.



I'm not quite sure how I would use this as a group project, but it seems to have a certain potential to allow for interactions. I'll be honest, I've gotten on chatroulette a few times, and almost every time, I get to see naked guys. So I've kind of been leery of it since then. I like the concept of it, however, and think it could be used to create some really interesting videos, as evidenced by the Ben Folds videos.

These are just a few ideas that I could see playing around with videos in the future (maybe even in my classes!- I'm sure I could tie this into World Lit somehow), but since we sort of have (several) directions that the fun group project is heading in, this is just food for thought.

Attempting to Embed

Embedding is a lot easier than I thought it would be, if you are using the right sources. I embedded an audio clip, a youtube video, and a slideshow from my accounts on my web 2.0 portfolio page and was surprised that I was able to simply cut and paste and put my item right in my page. However, this wasn't achieved until after I realized that what I put in CMSimple using Internet Explorer simply wasn't viewable unless I switched over to Firefox. I'm not sure what would prevent IE from showing something that Firefox allows. Maybe I need to upgrade a browser or something, although I'm loathe to do that until my school finishes converting to Moodle since Firefox blocks files from being downloaded in Blackboard.

The other problem I encountered was that Chirbit doesn't really have a way to play embedded audio files. In trying to find a way to embed the chirbits, I did a google search on audio embedding and found this neat site that gave some specific things, like embedded players (my favorite was the Google Reader MP3 Player that seemed easy enough, but again, it wouldn't allow for me to link Chirbit to play into it. I ultimately had to settle on starting a Woices account since a few people had said that it gives an embedding code.




This was the ultimate result. As I was typing this post up, I found that embedding doesn't show up for Internet Explorer on blogger as well, so it looks like this isn't just a problem with CMSimple. I had to switch to Firefox to finish this posting.

In addition to embedding audio, I also embedded one of my videos from youtube


and I embedded some pictures from my Flickr account


Embedding is easy when the codes are given to you to just copy and paste into an edit html page on wherever you want to embed, but I think it would be much harder to do if I was trying to embed from a place that didn't provide the code. However, it seems like internet searches yield enough results from people who have found players that work to help embed, as I found when I searched for audio players. It seems like it is becoming pretty standard to provide an embedding code when something is uploaded now though. A lot of times, programs automatically embed links - I've found this to be true with Facebook and Google Buzz where just providing a URL as part of your post allows these programs to then post a small thumbnail sized version that shows what the link goes to. Maybe this is the direction that programs are going in that you don't even have to go through the hard part of copy and pasting an embedding code since the program is smart enough to do it for you.

Really getting started (again) in Youtube

I've had an account in youtube since the fall, when I uploaded a video tutorial about using the Picassa program, but since then, my account hasn't really had anything added to it.

This semester was different. Because I'm teaching an introduction to film class, I need to be able to show clips of older movies to my students, and as it turns out, Youtube has all of these things. Since Youtube has the ability to create "playlists," I can save youtube videos in whatever playlist I need for the next class period.

I honestly hadn't really used it or wanted to use it for uploading videos since fall, but now I've started having ideas on how to put together youtube tutorial videos to help my students next semester with the transition from Blackboard to Moodle at my school. I have a guniea pig class now, and I was able to create a video using Camstudio that shows them how to get rid of some of the extra clutter in the class (something that I'm tired of answering in emails)

My Camstudio has been acting up, so where I wanted to play around with recording and uploading some more videos like my first, I had to settle for using my flipcam a little more. Everytime I use the flipcam, I realize how easy it is to use and wonder why I don't use it more. I just played around with using it on my cats and uploaded those videos. Not really educational, but a nice stress relief (especially my orange cat who purrs 24/7 - the camera did a nice job of picking this up).

My experiences with uploading videos on youtube have been pretty hit or miss. I was able to upload my two kitty videos with no problems in under 5 minutes, but the other videos I have up there have taken at least an hour a piece and sometimes more since I have often gotten to the 99% mark only to be told there was an error. I'm not sure what causes the difference unless it's the file types and the content, but it can be pretty frustrating to be hanging out by this computer waiting for my files to upload (I use my desktop since it is wired directly into the internet).

I'm not sure I'm ever going to be one of those people that will be comfortable having a vlog or really filming myself too much, but I don't mind using it to achieve specific objectives, i.e. showing a class how to do something since I don't see the students in person.