Lindley Moor Panorama. Taken, edited and posted using a Nokia N95.
By virtue of the fact that it works pretty well, is free and doesn't require any set-up whatsoever; this blog has just become the default home of my mobile postings. I had spent the evening playing around trying to set-up some other sites (with varying degrees of success). This set-up was instantaneous. So, I declare Vox the winner! heh ;D
The image was taken with a nokia N95 and uploaded from the phone.
It's strange and a little sad that after all these years, this simple stone is my Grandparent's only monument. Alongside the surviving memories of living children, grandchildren and assorted friends and relatives.
To quote a French proverb - “Youth lives on hope, old age on remembrance”
I'm not sure of the virtues of blogposts created using such a mobile phone. Somehow the idea of tapping out my personal profundities on a tiny phone keypad makes writing seen a tiny bit like a chore. Something it should never be.
The photo was taken in Weston-Super-Mare in December 07, looking out over the beach.
Seesmic is a conversational video messaging service currently in alpha. Access is invitation only right now and although the serrvice still has a long list of flaws and needed improvements before it arrives in the public realm it's shaping up quite well.
Founded by French blogger and entrepreneur Loic Lemeur, Seesmic allows users to post videos directly from a computer or mobile phone to the Seesmic application. Other users can follow these and respond with their own video posts inside Seesmic. It's simple and it works. The relatively fast flow created by a group of people interacting in this way creates a series of almost instant conversations. The video's can also be embedded in a users blogpage.
The conversational speed resembles a Twitter exchange, as opposed to that of videoblogging which remains more closely aligned to the traditional idea of a broadcast transmission by the creator to an audience.
The audiences ability to comment and feedback almost instantaneously helps create an interesting back and forth dynamic to the interactions. One of the nicer aspects of the service, is that everybody gets to finish their sentences and nobody interrupts.
It's already clear that even in these early day social video networks can further extend the possibilities of relating online creating new conversational dynamics and relationships in the process.
Below are a couple of examples of my own Seesmic postings.
Here's a repost of a recent interview I did with Eric Rice over on Citizen Scoop for Podcast User Magazine.
Here's the podcast portion of this month's exclusive in-depth interview with the one man media empire that is Eric Rice. Eric is featured in the August edition of Podcast User Magazine and designed the cover for this brilliant edition .
Thanks to Eric for all the time and energy he put into this piece and for answering the door every time I rang his virtual bell! The result is a fascinating series of conversations, taking place on multiple platforms and excavating well below the surface of the current new media landscape.
Visit Podcast User Magazine to read the rest of the interview and check out this wonderful edition. It's full of great articles, insightful interviews, news, reviews and so much more.
Thanks to Eric, Paul H and Linda, for all their time, energy and input, in helping to make this idea fly.
The more time I spend interacting with my fellow humans in the nodal time of cyberspace, the more I find myself wondering how the countless hours I spend viewing the world through the electronic lens of my computer screen is colonizing my personal and cultural head-space.
My monitor has become a kind of electro-magnetic relationship portal, overlaying its optical and auditory display onto my physical reality - replacing actions, conversations and journeys that would once have taken place in real-space and time, with a virtualized, decentralized, tele-present equivalent.
It occurs to me that many of my relationships now occur via software. Often with people I have only a tangential and ephemeral acquaintance with. These relationships lack a defined sense materiality and corporeality. In order to 'meet' my virtual friends, I never actually leave my home. I 'arrive' for a rendezvous, without taking any journey. There is no effort involved in my getting 'there'. Indeed, it is debatable that there is even a common 'there' between us at all. Our mutual references are electronic and psychic and our communication takes place inside a virtual construct. We get close, whilst simultaneously remaining at a vast distance. There is a kind of sensory shrinkage involved, with certain material components removed. In a very real sense the reality of our interaction is diminished, forced to fit its multi-dimensional geophysical complexity into the confines of my 17-inch LCD display.
I realize that I couldn't definitively identify many of my virtual colleagues by appearance. Their faces are blurred, behind the distorting lens of profile-photos that are often several years and several pounds lighter. I don't know where may of them live; beyond a generalized geographic location. In certain ways, I know more about the man in my local shop than I do about some of the people I call my friends online. Yet I am (supposedly) in a relationship of trust, one that implies attachment and an emotional bond.
It seems sometimes, that the additional freedom, to cross spatial boundaries, circumvent time differences and step through the electronic doorway of the screen into (apparently) limitless virtual space comes at a price. One where the information on my monitor and not the reality of the physical universe achieves primacy. Where I define my relationships with others through the surface of the screen and sacrifice the deeper slower reality of the material world, for speed and shimmer of the pixelated surface.
