My Flickr Favs - an ode to The Eye
I was just looking through my favourites on Flickr and decided that I love them so much, they deserve a whole blog post.
NIN - the cutting edge of geek chic
I love that Nine Inch Nails (a long-time favourite band of mine) look after their fans by offering free downloads of their albums as reward for their loyalty. But I also love that they offer other little goodies such as Google Earth KML files for us to install and play with:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nineinchnails/2612112871/in/photostream/
Because I have taken part in the downloading, I feel like I’m part of their history, which is ultimately becoming Music Industry history. So, I take a lot of pride looking at these screen shots and statistics, knowing that I’m somewhere in there.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nineinchnails/2610205036/in/photostream/
To my knowledge there is no other band of their scale doing this. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me, I’m used to NIN creating industry ‘firsts’.
Kudos to uncle Trent and his minions.
Phreadz set for Creative Commons
While most people enjoy a lazy sunday, perhaps doing the gardening or having a bbq and beer with some friends, my Kosso codes… and codes… and codes.
Phreadz is a labour of love, blood, sweat and… well the tears haven’t come yet. Constructed in less time than Seesmic*, by one person, on a shoestring budget of spare change donated by users and the profits from another Koz-invention; the Second Life blogging tool, blogHUD.
Phreadz has more features than you could throw a stick at, covering pretty much all the bases I can think of with what Kosso calls ‘V.I.T.A.L.‘ - that is, Video, Images, Text, Audio and Links. It has channels - some generic like ‘News’ or ‘Movies’ and some early alpha-tester personal channels that were offered in thanks for their participation. And last but not least, Phreadz offers ‘white label’ channels and personalised branding therein for products, companies, vox pops etc.
So… as if that wasn’t enough, Kosso has now brought in Creative Commons licensing to Phreadz and is giving the closed-beta users a chance to control their content and its distribution as they see fit. It’s clear that Kosso is aware of what features on certain sites work, citing Flickr’s system for Creative Commons licensing as a kind of inspiration for how it could be done on Phreadz.
Phreadz is pretty bloody revolutionary as far as I’m concerned, but of course I’d say that, I love it (I’m proud to be able to say I was the first test subject for Phreadz) and I’m going to marry the man behind it! But in all seriousness, I know that many Phreadz users, both current and future will be thrilled at having control of that extent, considering the questions that recent events have brought up.
*Kosso began construction on Phreadz while we were in Oz together in December 2007, partly due to capped bandwidth issues in Australia putting a sour flavour in our Seesmic participation.
Our Man Inside interviews Kosso, creator of Phreadz
Our Man Inside (aka Christian Payne) interviews one-man-band web entrepreneur Kosso about recent events regarding his creation, Phreadz.com, and how Loic Le Meur of Seesmic has reacted to these developments in a real-life David and Goliath battle.
read more | digg story
Social Media blah blah blah…
I’m feeling disillusioned with Social Media Networks more and more lately. I feel as though I don’t understand the point of it all. I put a lot of myself - who I am - out there for people to read/consume and I don’t feel like I get much out of it. Sure, I’ve met some great people and forged some friendships, and hell, I even met the man I’m going to marry through Social Media.
But there are days, and they are becoming more and more frequent, in which I just don’t see the point in participating. It’s not like I work within Social Media, or even get jobs through it, so why do I bother putting myself out there so much and so consistently?
Who the hell cares what I’m doing? And why?? And why do I feel compelled to share what it is I’m doing? It all seems so pointless to me sometimes.
What is the point of Social Media?
In an earlier post I asserted that we are missing the point in all these ‘Social Media meetups’ and communities. I argued that, if we spent more time with those who really matter, doing things that really matter, we wouldn’t need to find reasons to congregate and meet under the guise of something that seems so utterly pointless at the end of the day. Well, that sentiment still stands.
I frequently teeter between wanting to wipe out my whole online existence and wanting so much to be a part of ‘Social Media Networks’. And overall, I find that I am content in neither space. I know part of that frustration comes from being wary of what I say and do, a kind of self-censorship. I have never been one to censor myself. People who know me well, know that I am a very outspoken, opinionated person. And am known for being brutally honest. Unfortunately, as admirable as those qualities are in theory, they have brought me nothing but grief in the realm of ‘Social Media’. It seems that when I go on a rant, I tend to get a massive influx of followers on Twitter for example but equally it seems my words are open to discussion, and criticism! (Who asked you?!!)
I have tried, in order to accommodate my “teetering” to create various monikers and pseudonyms and personas to protect my identity when being (what some describe as “offensively”) honest. But that just doesn’t do it for me, and I think the reason is because I am not representing myself as ME when I do. In order for words to mean something, sometimes they need a reader, and sometimes you, the author, needs to be recognised for what you’ve expressed. Otherwise it becomes a performance without an audience - pointless.
In conclusion, I think what I’m trying to say is that as much as Social Media boasts about its transparency, it also calls for a watered-down, vanilla honesty. At least in some cases. Which to me, means Social Media isn’t all that transparent after all. I have problems with things that are done in half-measures. You’re either in or out. I know life isn’t always that simple, but sometimes it is. Naturally, my next question is, am I in, or am I out? And does it really bloody matter???
*edit* This post was inspired by a threaded conversation on Phreadz.com that was started by Deek Deekster
I’ve heard of ‘Fashion Police’ and ‘Fashion Victims’ but… Fashion Terrorism??
In 2002 I flew Emirates from Melbourne, Australia to Rome, Italy with a short stop-over in Dubai, United Emirates. Being the 21 year old punk (read cocky fucker) that I was, I wasn’t dressed for the flight. I was dressed as a punk. I wore black steel-capped army boots, black ‘ninja’ army pants, and a fucking army green FRENCH LEGION t-shirt with the charming graphic of a skull wearing a French Legion berret, and two semi-automatics as the cross-bones with the friendly caption “Mess with the best, Die like the rest.” around it. Not to mention all the studded crap that was fused to my limbs and hips. And at ALL the airports (Melbourne, Dubai and Rome) I was let through without a glitch (aside from having to take my belt and boots off). That was 14 months after the 9/11 attacks. I still own that t-shirt and it is still one of my favourite items of clothing. I bought it when I was 16.
Cut to: The year 2008
An average guy at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 tries to board a British Airways flight wearing a FCUK Transformers t-shirt
and is told that he can not board wearing it, because Megatron (a Transformers character) is holding a gun. I saw some comments around the interwebs that really amused me. Among others, I read “next time I fly BA, I’ll wear a tuxedo t-shirt, maybe they’ll say I belong in 1st class” and “better not wear a t-shirt with an animal on it, or they’ll make you fly in the hull where the animals and luggage go because someone on the flight is allergic to animals”.
As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, during my morning skim of BBC News online, I find an article about a Dunkin’ Donuts advert that has been scrapped because the featured chick in the advert is wearing a “black-and-white checked scarf around her neck that resembled a traditional Arab keffiyeh” and some blogger called Michelle Malkin said that it looks like “a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos”.
C’mon people, FFS.
Koz Farina and Baby Graves
hanging out at my beach cinema :)
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