The Web Videos
newest 100 the web videos / the web widgets / media rss:

I like to keep in touch with what’s out there. After all, Second Life is my fave virtual world, but once upon a time, I had never heard of it — hard to believe, I know. I’m in the closed beta for Just Leap In, and one neat thing is you can embed a player to their world in a webpage. Another neat thing: you can throw around other avatars. To put it subtly, DON’T OVERREACT THESE AREN’T REAL PEOPLE I’M NOT GRIEFING!

I enjoy the waves of wealth the Web has brought us to create new things with, even in fields we may ve shied away from traditionally. Lowering the barrier like this can only be a good thing, for it turns the craggy peaks of an intimidating learning curve into rolling hills, encouraging development of one s skills and potential future expertise but keep in mind I think expert is a largely meaningless word! Nevertheless, the fun cannot be denied. Heard a few days ago about FontStruct, brought to you by FontShop. In previous years, I wouldn t have thought of fonts as a social networking activity like swapping music or sharing pictures, but with the emergence of more media made easy (like the music-making programs that are continuing to rise), it was only inevitable. FontStruct is at once easy to use and enjoy. It s the easiest font editor I ve seen so far that blends a reasonable amount of modular power with an elegant, minimalist interface that lets you focus on your fontage with the glaring exception that keyboard shortcuts do not work in fullscreen mode. (It s a Flash app, and a well-done one at that.) FontStruct even has a well-made video tutorial (you know how fond I am of those!), and it indeed helped me get up to speed in a few minutes. A little over 1.5 hours later of browsing and dabbling with the FontStructor to make my darling new font, here it is: I call it Crimbelle , because it sounded right. Very, very nifty that you can embed fonts like this; that s the first I ve seen, and a very catchy way to share the fonts for sure. I would imagine as this catches on, we can expect to see more people who ve never made a font before have some fun with this. Fonts don t have to be literal, either; there are many pictoral ones, some very impressively designed like this gallery of robots: Another design inspiration usage: quickly creating some glyphs to be used as vector scalables in a larger design. With the whole process of build, share, download a quick one, your ideas won t get stale/forgotten. A side nicety about this is, FontShop is a business, so FontStruct is a gateway to their offerings; their advertising is delightfully non-intrusive: Go, create a font and let me know how it went!

I ve often heard jokes made about the lacking quality of YouTube s commenter culture , and in the light of Flickr adding video, observations about this have only amplified. While I ve never seen a formal study done comparing the civility of various Internet social sites, I m doubtful the divide is as simple as the difference between still and moving pictures. Part of it likely has to do with demographics, and while this is an unfair generalization to a bright s (which does allow porn as long as the pictures are flagged correctly and your beautiful wife should not be moving!) mainstay is largely simple nature and newborn babes check popurls daily for evidence. Beyond these two often-cited sites, I ve often been fond of Lifehacker s useful comments I ve only seen really crappy personal attacks a couple times, whereas some of its Gawker Media sister sites, like Kotaku, take on a more acidic tone. (Again, likely because productivity buffs are generally older and avid gamers are younger.) It s also fascinating to note the article-views-to-comments ratio amongst Gawker sites, in particular the NSFW Fleshbot s relative silence and sexy subtext of doing more than talking . I don t state these without giving plenty of a berth for exceptions, however. And what about you? What do you think?

James Wagner Au aka Hamlet Au, who I fondly address as Jamlet (a portmanteau of his First and Second Life names) graciously sent me a signed (!) copy of The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World. It s a thrill to see something from virtual spaces cross over and materialize physically, even moreso that I m deeply familiar with the topics covered and know the author personally. Earlier, I was tickled to learn that machinima auteur Lainy Voom had created a promo for the book, featuring Jamlet s avatar looking off into the distance beside a sculptieprimmed title and my music as soundtrack! The Making of Second Life on Vimeo. Among the parts I enjoyed most have to do with the behind-the-scenes bustle-and-rumble of how Linden Lab, and by extension, Second Life came to be. This includes how Jamlet first got started chronicling the world. In his own words: Rheingold was brought in as an early consultant to Linden Lab and perceived its potential to build on themes he d first identified. As I later learned, Rheingold s insights indirectly led to my joining Linden Lab as a contractor for the first time. I think it may have been when Robin first visited me to demonstrate SL, he says. Rheingold mused that they should hire a chronicler as the world began, saying that it seemed to me to be a great opportunity to document the social life of a community from the very first. Indeed it has been. (The Rheingold is virtual community pioneer Howard Rheingold, and the Robin is Linden Lab s Community Team Leader Robin Harper. BOTH OF THEM ARE MY HEROES OK!!!!) I continue to have great reverence for and am inspired by senior LL employees who shaped my fave online world before I ever heard of it. Those stories of what would transpire, as well as what didn t happen quite the way it was planned are severely inspiring, and I find a lot of treasure in Jamlet s recounting of the early Linden World days. This passage, describing the initial crew Philip Rosedale assembled, makes me smile big: it was an institution he d pursue in building Second Life into a full-fledged online world. And to do that, he began assembling a staff ideally suited to that task. Among the first hires were a sex educator, a rock star, a medical doctor, a late-night talk show producer, and, of course, a weapons expert trained to work a nuclear submarine. It sounds like one of those movie ensembles which is at once disparate yet with complementary personalities, and I mean that not so much a la Friends, but more in a Ghostbusters or Sneakers superteam way. I ve felt glimmers of that chemistry when being involved in various project teams, where the members play off one another. Let me rewind a bit here: I read New World Notes before ever entering Second Life. I read back to when it was still printed in Times New Roman and the web layout was near-nonexistent, and still, the stories tantalized me: they seemed extraordinary yet everyday all at once. And I d certainly say NWN was influential to bringing me inworld. I hope that readers of Notes from the New World also find that same joy and indulge their curiosities, altho the book has no pictures which is one of the things that impressed most on me when I first saw the cyberpunk skyscrapers of Gibson, the untamed militanza of Jessie, a gallery of amazing avatars, etc. Like Carl billions and billions Sagan s Cosmos (which I m reading), Notes would benefit from a color insert with illuminating imagery. But I bigress. Many of the stories within have already been covered online, but here, they re less fragmented by way of arrangement and editing, woven with bridging text into the sort of bigger picture that only a thought-out retrospectacle could afford: you experience events, they go by and become history, and you have some time to think and write about them what Jamlet s done here. With his individual posts as trees, over time they ve grown and become a forest: rich in its diversity, sometimes alarmingly confusing in its cognitive dissonance, all the while presenting new terms like bebop reality to identify what s happening. Speaking of, in the Preface, Jamlet coined 3 terms to describe aspects of his observations: in addition to bebop reality to describe the openended and improvisational aspect of Second Life s creation culture, he also uses impression society and mirrored flourishing to respectively define (1) how deft usage of inworld tools can generate positive reactions and (2) how one s Second Life can improve one s First Life e.g., someone materially poor can make a virtual living that benefits them with actual BLING BLING DOLLAH YO! Whether these terms will catch on remains to be seen and raking in money from an online world has yet to become mundane, but as a fan of freshening up verbiage and moving forth, I can relate, altho I think jazz reality would be just fine since what s key here is the improvisatory nature (and anti-nature) that Second Life presents us with, not so much a specific style. After finishing the book, I felt nostalgic because a number of people, places, things described have moved on, and are no longer in Second Life. Places which I was so excited to dive into and came away changed, each destination a gem on the necklace of my journeys. Simultaneously, I m glad Jamlet recorded our history so future generations can appreciate what came before. This is why it s so challenging to write, say, a guide to travel in SL, since even the coolest places are subject to disappearance if tier fees aren t paid, or if drama (a human problem, not a SL-specific woe) erupts. Knowing my 4th rezday (4 years in Second Life) is forthcoming, I m reminded of how newcomers now see me the same way I saw Steller Sunshine, BuhBuhCuh Fairchild, bUTTONpUSHER Jones, Bel Muse, Roo Jones, etc. so many other veteran names mentioned within these tales or hearted from my personal experiences. If you go inworld, look them up some are still around and active. I m also reminded of the kindness each of them showed me during my baby steps , and it s in large part that they were so nice which encouraged me to press on and share my own take on things on this blog (which has gone through many changes since I started it in 2004). In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explains the value of books in libraries and how the invention of writing is among the most significant human achievements. And even amidst all the turbulence and chaos Jamlet writes about, there are many moments of sublime beauty (often chaotic unto themselves) which may be unsettling to those who ve never experienced Second Life firsthand. I encourage such augmented immersion ! If you re not already a Resident, I strongly suggest joining Second Life with a free account to find out what it s about. Also on a happy note within the Notes, there s a part of my story in there, touching on my earlier relationship with Jade Lily and then following one day when I was checking out the sandboxes and came across a beautiful, ornate table and IMed its creator this: I consider Ravenelle Zugzwang my wife, he adds. We haven t met in person yet. I hope we will soon, though. Last year, Ravie + I moved in together and while we definitely have a lot more offline time as a couple, the bebop reality of Second Life as an impression society has lead to our mirrored flourishing together. Our lives are wholly better and it wouldn t have been possible if we didn t meet in Second Life. Indirectly yet evidently through a cause-and-effect of connectivity, it s likely I wouldn t be where I am today without Jamlet and his New World Notes. When you think about how many things have to be right in an existence that decays into entropy, it s a wonder. And you ll find many more wonders within the pages of Notes from the New World.

Everyone should know I love to share my enthusiasm about tools that ll do you well, and after hearing about it yesterday @ TechCrunch, I signed up for an account at WeGame.com and downloaded their movie recorder. Kinda like a YouTube for games with the unique bonus of giving you the tool to record with, they just went into Public Beta while it s Windows-only at this time, it is free and, as I ll emphasize again, very easy to use. How easy? I wouldn t overstate it by saying that WeGame has the most easy-to-use record and upload process I ve seen so far. It all begins when you start the WeGame recorder app, which shares the same polished design as their website (it s really pretty). After logging in (the registration form is as minimalist as Philip Glass, and literally took me 15 seconds good usability, guys!), there are very few preferences to set. No complicated codecs to tinker with, just two quality modes Web and HD recording which also depend on your computer s power, and they make sure to inform you of this. Considerate. After configuring those in a few more seconds, you can start recording by booting up your supported game/online world of choice I was very pleased to see my fave Second Life in the list (which is what drew me to try this out in the first place). A little red square appears in the upper-left corner (you can t hide it at the moment, a possible downside to the simplicity of the options), and turns red after you tap the recording hotkey. Note: I experienced oddities when trying to record and resizing my active Second Life window (I run it in windowed, not fullscreen mode), so start SL at a resolution you intend to film at. I hope this ll be alleviated in the future, because it s convenient to capture video on-the-fly at a smaller size without the pain of relogging, especially if your monitor s a substantially larger resolution (I have duals, and the one I use for SL is 1920 1200). After recording, the WeGame window has a little button to upload your footage. Click it, enter title and description, and you re pretty much done: it then starts the FLV (Flash Video) encoding process, uploading after that s complete. A progress bar keeps track of what s happening, and if you re on a reasonably beefy computer, you might as well get other things done while this goes on in the background. Wait a few more moments, and the video s on their site, ready for viewing to the world. It remains to be seen if things will be as responsive when WeGame is significantly more popular (as seems likely to happen). You can embed videos into your blog like I have using a code snippet, very similar to how most popular videosharing sites do it. In a little more than half an hour, I uploaded 4 videos, just raw footage of me wandering around Second Life and talking out loud. It may be a change from the polished Tip of the Week you re used to, but it s still me. Apparently, I also got selected as a Featured Video, and while I hope the comments here don t degrade into YouTube level which is a generalization, and not to knock YouTube as a whole since I receive many nice comments from existing and would-be Residents there there s no moderation tools yet. I ve already written to the WeGame inventors with thanxies and a query about how to report bugs, as I found these quirks: I thought it wouldn t show the red recording dot in the upper left on the final footage, but it does. WeGame doesn t seem to recognize other Second Life viewers (like WindLight) yet could this please be added? Cursor isn t captured either. Would be nice to have this for video tutorials and video bug repros (and because FRAPS offers it too). Sound recording seems very choppy and has intermittent hiccups . Would like to see or rather, hear this improved, as well. After a title and description are entered, they don t seem to be change-able from within the desktop app, and I don t see a way to edit from the website either. Looks like a clear feature to add. Am waiting to hear back from them. Also on the plus side, compression looks fairly good for final filesize. And as a bonus, since it encodes in compact FLV (which looks crisper in the small video player window than YouTube s blurry kind which obliterates fragile UI elements), you can upload that to other video-sharing sites, hopefully without much further loss in quality. Even better, I notice it recorded inworld sounds I only had UI ones on during my earlier sessions at the same time as my mic without needing to record through my speakers. FRAPS and other game movie recorders I ve tried only do one or the other, to my knowledge. The inworld sounds were too loud and distorted, alas, so maybe I just need to turn that slider (in Preferences Audio ll experiment later Oh, yayzerama, that experiment took me just a few minutes more! Proof, meet pudding. I just found out you can encode + upload existing films AND record new clips at the same time this is upright kewl, it s gotta be highlighted MOAR. And definitely, especially with the problems in Second Life s built-in movie recorder, it s very cool that this is free, in a not-crippleware way. I like people to have a choice in preferred platform for getting their work OMGSLOW video production workflows, and the user-UNfriendliness that comes with them and discourages more folks from getting into, say, machinima or even casual inworld vlogging. I daresay this could really help doing video bug reports (which is not the same as showing off how your party slew the 14-headed manatee-wyrn in the caves of Narrgath but still very noble), and after I forwarded word of this to fellow Lindens, I received enthusiastic responses in kind. I was musing recently about some way for me to share snippets of my inworld experiences more directly, and this may be it. Have you tried WeGame? What are your thoughts + feelings? Let the Torlster know.

Via Aleister Kronos blog, I found out about this nifty PictoBrowser widget, which is another way to dynamically show my Flickr images. (You may recall sometime back, I was trying out Slide.com which I ve seen is very popular on some social networking sites.) In this instance, it s pictures from a NMC Holiday Party Ravie + I attended some weeks ago. I find it s often rewarding to play with new toys and use them to show off your creativity. From virtual Zen gardens to Mashable s Top 7 Coolest Web Apps , the Internet has a lot to offer. It s true there s something about being able to touch and feel your art, but with the continued advent of haptics, it may not be long before this point, too, becomes as rocks bearing the brunt of the crashing waves