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Realfans.tv on Tilzy.tv
Realfans.tv member Ben Homer of onlinevideowatch.com mentions Realfans.tv in his article for tilzy.tv! :D
community.realfans.tv
REALFANS.TV Kickoff Party Pictures! :D
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REALFANS TV Kickoff Party Flyer
REALFANS TV flyer, originally uploaded by Bill Cammack.
Flyer for the REALFANS.TV kickoff party on Saturday, August 25th in Washington, DC
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Bill Cammack to Team SCRIGGITY!
Effective immediately, Bill Cammack joins Drew Olanoff as a member of “Team SCRIGGITY“. :D
When I first got involved in videoblogging, a little over a year ago, I used to troll blip.tv‘s recent uploads to get ideas about shows that I thought were good. One of those shows was Jonny Goldstein’s “Reinventing Television” (reinventingtv.phovi.com). I got involved, immediately. => Text chat from Reinventing Television Episode 2 (October 12, 2006).
Another show that I thought was cool, interesting and innovative was scriggity (scriggity.com). Eventually, I met and hung out with Drew @ several NYC events, including Videoblogger Meetups, Network2 get-togethers and PodCampNYC.
Meanwhile, I was gearing up to do my own show… I mean, I *HAVE* my own “show” already, but it’s more like a feed of stuff that I do day in and day out. It’s not a actual show, but rather an indication of what it’s like to be me on any given day. So… I was gearing up to do an actual show and started filming episodes of “The Lab”.
What I found out, and outlined in my notes about the project… was that while I enjoy MAKING shows, I don’t enjoy the rest of the process. The “paperwork”, as I call it of all the stuff that has to be done PAST production and post.
Interestingly enough, Drew decided that he doesn’t want to edit. :D We chatted this morning, and I’ve joined “Team SCRIGGITY”, and we’re looking forward to big things. :D I always enjoy doing projects with friends, and I’ve been a fan of Drew’s concepts for a long time now. Thanks to Drew for the nod, and…
it’s ON!!! and it happens to be POPPIN’!!! :D
–
billcammack
Cruxy Presents Suzanne Vega (Virtually)
Tomorrow night, (Friday, July 13th, 7pm EST) Cruxy will host a one-of-a-kind event as Suzanne Vega returns to her avatar form for a special virtual listening party in Second Life. Vega will be celebrating the upcoming release of her new album BEAUTY & CRIME, out July 17 on Blue Note. I caught up with Jon Oakes to get the inside story. :)
What is Cruxy?
Cruxy is a media platform that allows any digital content creator (mostly emerging filmmakers and musicians) to promote and sell their works. Here’s a simple example: You’ve shot a short film. You put it in Mp4 format and upload it to Cruxy. We create all of the thumbnails, previews and promotional widgets for you. You set a price of $1 for others to buy a download of the film. We handle taking the money from the buyers and delivering cash to you (less a small fee that we charge).
Here’s a real world example of Cruxy in action. Some folks in the Midwest have a company called ShortTrackWorld. They go (in their cool van) to lots of small car races all over the Midwest where regular folks race their super modified race cars around… you guessed it, short tracks. ShortTrackWorld films the car races and then uses a satellite link to upload the videos from the event to their Cruxy page. They sell the videos of the race event to the drivers and fans and the videos are available just hours after the race. It’s pretty cool in action. You can check out the ShortTrackWorld page on Cruxy here: www.cruxy.com/stw
Recently we’ve been more focused on helping creators get their work into virtual world environments like Second Life. We see that as the next phase and our main focus moving forward.
What is the status of Cruxy as a startup, and who is team?
We are two full timers with a coterie of supporters, contractors, advisors and well-wishers. We are financed by our personal savings accounts, some paying engagements, anxiety and sweat.
Nathan Freitas and myself, Jon Oakes, have been working together for over eight years through three different (successful!) startups. We have built a ton of different technology, products, and solutions for people ranging from the government, to major corporations, and other technology businesses, but are most excited now to be applying our skills and inspiration towards creating new economic and marketing models for creative people, as well as the entertainment industry. Through Cruxy.com, we get to work with true indie talent and give them access to our entire platform. Working with a major artist and label such as Blue Note allows us to customize aspects of our platform, and create unique solutions, which also happen to help pay the bills. Its a good setup, and allows us to see the radical changes that are happening in this business from multiple standpoints.
What’s some of the interesting technology behind Cruxy.com?
As a startup, we need to be smart about how we spend our money so we use Amazon’s S3 and EC2 services for all of our server and data delivery needs. We pay on a variable basis (we did not have to go plunk down $25k for a bunch of servers and commit to a high monthly data service fee). This is really “on demand” computing and it allows us to scale in a pay that is precisely correlated ith our traffic and demand… rather than investing everything in infrastructure and hoping to fill up the pipe.
We’ve built a pretty robust system for syndicating media content. We built our syndication system to use the XSPF format which gives us unlimited dynamic playlisting capabilities.
We’ve also built a “virtual world widget” which allows people to distribute their music to their avatar in Second Life. They can then stream their music into their land or venue in Second Life so others can experience their music in a totally new and social way. Rather than just have a bunch of people anonymously visit a web page and listen to your stuff, with the virtual world widgets, you can hang out in your virtual environment in Second Life while a group of people check out and discuss your work.
Besides Second Life, are there other places where creators can syndicate their media?
Cruxy supports a variety of technologies that allow any media upload to our system to be republished and indexed by almost any standards-based service on the web. We’ve got flash widgets, RSS feeds, XSPF feeds, and even some microformats support. We also recently announced our deep integration with FaceBook so creators can get their work out to their FaceBook network more easily. We expect to launch this feature in August.
Looking towards the future, we see the growth of gaming and virtual worlds as online social environments to be a huge opportunity for creative artists to gain exposure and income. We fully intend to extend the Cruxy platform into these types of spaces and economic models.
What’s the story behind tomorrow’s Second Life event with Suzanne Vega?
We have built a virtual lower east side “Ludlow Street” circa 1990 environment to promote Suzanne Vega’s new album “Beauty and Crime”, which is full of songs about various aspects of New York. Suzanne will join us (in avatar form) for a live interview and take questions from her fans. Avatars who attend will also be able to watch video of some of her recent live performances and sample her new album.
Each attendee to the event will receive a Virtual World Widget that allows them to host their own listening parties and share the music with friends in their own land or club within Second Life.
What makes this event with Suzanne Vega different from her first appearance in Second Life?
We used the new Second Life voice beta software for this event. We also built the lower east side environment where avatars can come to hang out, drive taxi cabs, talk on pay phones and spray paint on walls long after the event. This event is about more than just the event… it’s about the environment where people can come whenever they want and sample the album while experiencing the New York that so inspires the album. We’ve got graffiti by Zephyr, the prolific graffiti artist of that era and guitars by Robbie Dingo, the renowwnded Second Life designer, at a LES guitar shop.
One other thing to note is that the MTV virtual lower east side is designed for the 18 to 25 crowd that might not remember New York pre-Guiliani. We wanted to recreate more of the grunge aesthetic that we so enjoyed in our 20′s in NYC.
How big is the market for what you are doing? Breakdancers and indie musicians don’t really make much money, right?
What everyone is realizing is that there is a growing appetite for independently created media content.
Cruxy is also one of those UGC filter sites. The higher end of the UGC market puts their stuff in Cruxy. We don’t get much of the teenage car surfing or flatulence type stuff (nothing against it as a… social… expression, but it’s not what Cruxy is about)
Thanks Jon. Good luck with Cruxy and Suzanne Vega’s event tomorrow! :D
“Graf art building on Virtual Ludlow Street New York”
Photo Credit: Nathan Freitas
Jonathan Oakes founded and managed his first start-up, a systems integration consultancy, at 24 years old. In 1998 Oakes co-founded ThinAirApps, where he served as CEO and Chairman leading the company to a successful acquisition by Palm Inc. in 2001. Oakes spent over two years at Palm, as Senior Director managing corporate and product strategy. Oakes earned a BA in American Studies from Skidmore College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Over the last ten years, Nathan Freitas’ career has spanned the academic, corporate, and non-profit worlds, solving difficult problems through the thoughtful application of technology. His work has been built into Palm handhelds, on display at JavaONE and SIGGRAPH, included in Wikipedia, and covered in media ranging from Boing Boing and Slashdot, to the New York Times and Howard Rheingold’s book “Smart Mobs”. He also plays a mean double bass.
Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack
Pretty Girls – Too Unapproachable?
Hey Derek. Thanks for the question! :D
Yes. There’s double truth in your statement. Pretty girls are perceived to be unapproachable, AND there are lots of pretty girls without men because of this issue.
See, first of all, girls are girls. :D When you live somewhere like Japan, there isn’t much difference between the girls, so they all have a chance to get guys. This leads to them being more approachable because they don’t develop a perceived superiority to the other girls.
In the USA, there’s a VAST DIFFERENCE between the looks of the girls. :D There are a few that are really attractive and a lot that are just totally busted. :D What happens here is that all the guys chase after the attractive girls and give them anything they want. This goes to the attractive girls’ heads, and they get this inflated sense of self-worth…. Until they hit 19 and their bodies stop maintaining themselves on their own. When this happens, if they don’t start working out, they get out of shape and become has-beens. :) This is when you see the zombie-like girls that you can tell used to be fine, but now they stumble around town opening their own doors and not having anyone rap to them in the streets or try to pay for them to eat or buy clothes. :D They are now experiencing what life is like for most of the population, and it’s pretty depressing for them.
Until that happens, though… They’re held up as the best of the best of American society. There’s nothing better than a fine chick, so they get everything they want and everyone listens to them and wants to be their friends. Because of this, MANY fine girls get conceited. They act bitchy towards people because they know they can get away with it. This has the effect of giving fine girls a bad name. People think they’re ALL stuck up because of the ones that can’t be gracious about their God-given good looks, which are actually the luck of the draw and have nothing to do with their own actual worth, but instead is a function of their parent’s genes.
So… Guys go out to parties and meet stuck up attractive girls and get tired of getting shot down so they stop approaching fine chicks. They start sticking to the more humble, more personally attractive and still decent-looking girls. This is why you see more girls in this range married. The guys looking to get married are tired of the incessant demands of hot chicks, so when it’s time to get married, they choose someone more ‘Down To Earth’.
Reader Derek writes:
Bill,
I hear that many a pretty girl are without men because they are perceived to be unapproachable. Any truth in that statement?
This is why a lot of pretty girls are without men, as you mentioned. Because they’ve been given a bad rap, everybody wants to hook up with them but nobody wants to keep them. Even if they have the sweetest personality, the guys that would be good for them are tired of dealing with women that attractive, so they have to go without. The only guys willing to kick it to them are players who know what they’re doing and enjoy the challenge. The problem with that is that these guys come in loaded for bear, and the hot chicks end up getting used and dumped.
So… What does this mean for attractive women? Y’all need to showcase your personalities AS.MUCH.AS.POSSIBLE! :D Let the guys know that you’re willing to hear what they have to say, and they’ll let down that shield that they built up from being rejected so many times by the upper echelon of American females. The best bet for very attractive women is to be friendly… not to EVERYBODY, but to the guys that you’d like to talk to you because they’re scared to death that you’re going to be some crabby bitch and they’re looking right past YOU at your not-as-attractive homegirl, because they figure she’ll be more friendly and likely to be good relationship material.
As for the guys… You have to realize that attractive women get a lot of stuff, but they’re also getting played left and right. Sooner or later, they get tired of that and want a “good man” to spend time with that actually likes them for who they are and not just because of their fantastic looks. Pick yourselves up after the thousandth rejection and don’t get jaded towards attractive women. Give them a chance to give YOU a chance and see where it goes from there.
Do guys really care how chicks look?
Roxanne writes:
I’ve heard both. “Guys go for the pretty girls.” But I’ve also heard that guys think girls fuss way too much over their appearance. Like makeup for example. Most guys really don’t care that much about it? What’s up with this big disconnect?
Wow, Rox… That’s a REALLY good question, which unfortunately calls for a complex answer. The first question is “what is makeup doing on women’s faces in the first place?”…….
In the animal kingdom, dogs, for instance, can tell when other dogs are receptive to sex by perceived cues. It might be a smell… It might be a behavior that coincides with being in the fertile phase of the cycle… It might be how the other dog’s skin looks… I’ve heard of something called “flagging”, but I’m no dog-breeding expert.
Anyway… Humans have bypassed these natural cues by utilizing items such as CLOTHES and DEODORANT. In most cases, whatever one’s natural emissions are are completely masked now. This is why people get compliments on their cologne or whatever it is they used in their hair, because all other smells have been suppressed.
This is where makeup comes in. Makeup FAKES certain skin conditions and basically cheats the guy, biologically, into feeling more attracted to her. For instance, you’ve seen someone become embarrassed, and their face turns red (blushing). Some people have naturally rosy cheeks. Others do not. All they have to do to fake rosy cheeks is paint their cheeks red. Same deal for enhancing lips and eyes and essentially coloring shadows onto a woman’s face to make it appear that her face has curves it really doesn’t have. Same thing with plucking eyebrows. HAHAHAHA I can imagine how many guys had kids with women that they THOUGHT had slim eyebrows, and then the kid came out with some kind of bushy unibrow, hehehe :D but I digress……
Now that we know where the makeup came from, we can look at what guys consider to be “pretty girls”. Obviously, that’s subjective. Everyone has their own idea of what’s attractive and what isn’t. Even though I’ve seen makeup do ABSOLUTE WONDERS for some women….. I’m not a makeup fan. Applied stylishly, it can give a girl a HOT look, except the only time you’re going to see her like that is when she makes herself up like that. The rest of the time, she’s going to look like Plain Jane, and you’d better hope you like her that way. We’ve also seen on television when women go to sleep on their “face” and wake up looking like The Joker after he got caught out in the rain without his umbrella. :/ no good. Having said that, there are some guys that won’t be seen with a woman AT ALL unless she has makeup on and her clothes and hair are proper and she looks ‘right’.
So… Do guys go for the pretty girls? Yes. Definitely! :D However, the path to “pretty” doesn’t go through makeupville. Attractive is Attractive. She could look good in a professional suit-skirt. She could look good in sweats and sneakers after playing frisbee for three hours in Central Park. She could look good with glasses on. She could look good with contacts in. She could look good in a box. She could look good with a fox. She could look tasty like green eggs & ham! ;p~~~~~ um… what point was I making? :/
Anyway… the “too much fuss over appearance” thing is that there isn’t much difference for the guy in whether she wears the green shirt or the red shirt. Whether she wears the Manolo boots or the Payless boots. Whether she wears the skirt 3″ above her knee or 5″ above her knee… what belt she puts on… yadda yadda yadda. If the guy’s into whatever her natural beauty is, all extra preparation she’s doing is useless to him and a waste of time. That can include makeup. So, yes… Guys like pretty girls… Pretty does NOT equal Painted…. and women need to give themselves a break and take a guy’s word for it when he says “you look great… let’s go”. :)
That doesn’t mean to show up all disheveled and looking like a BUM! :/ Just figure out “when to say when”. :D
DatingGenius
ReelSolid.TV 1-Year Anniversary
(Lafayette Hotel)
Neo: Whoa, deja vu.
Trinity: What did you just say?
Neo: Nothing, I just had a little deja vu.
Trinity: What did you see?
Cypher: What happened?
Neo: A black cat went past us, and then another that looked just like it.
Trinity: How much like it, was it the same cat?
Neo: Might have been, I’m not sure.
Morpheus: Switch, Apoc.
Neo: What is it?
Trinity: Deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something….
On May 27th last year (2006), I made the first post announcing Reel Solid TV. My first videoblog post was one year ago, today. [ReelSolid.TV Episode 01]
It’s been a very interesting year… kind of like a wild ride with endless twists and turns. Blogging, Videoblogging, Compression, Editing, Production, Pre-Production, Hosting, Conferences, Socializing IRL, Social Internet Networks, Festivals, New gadgets coming out every day to make it easier to connect with each other……
In the end, I look back across the last 365 days and I see 157 episodes and I don’t even feel like trying to count how many hours of content. :/ When I make a “ReelSolid.TV Season 01″ DVD, I’ll let you know how long it takes to sit down and watch everything I posted in my first year of videoblogging:
MasamiBillShow – 5 Episodes (April 13, 2007 – April 24, 2007)
The Lab – 6 Episodes (March 16,2007 – April 20, 2007)
ReelSolid.TV – 49 Episodes (May 28, 2006 – May 11, 2007)
Eight Million Stories – 97 Episodes (November 20, 2006 – April 05, 2007)
I ended up with several shows because they’re all different topics, styles and lengths, and I didn’t want to dilute one show with another one. I thought that would be beneficial to me so that I could point people to one specific style of video that they might be interested in. At this point, I’m a fan of consolidation. Put the video where people expect to see it. Myriad shows under one brand… one focus… one RSS feed.
Steve Garfield said he subscribes to people. I’ve found out that I do the exact same thing. I don’t so much watch JetSetShow or Galacticast or SomethingToBeDesired as I tune in to see what Steve & Zadi did this week or what Rudy & Casey did or what Justin did. I would watch if it were the same thing every week or if it were different every week. I would watch whether the shows were produced daily or arrived sporadically in their RSS feeds. Similarly, I’m going to consolidate MY shows into MY RSS feed, and people can watch it if they feel like it.
A very special “thank you” shout-out goes out to my Season 01 subscribers! :D It means a lot to post a video and get a certain number of downloads right off the bat. It also means a lot for y’all to post *FEEDBACK* when you watch a video that you like or even one that you don’t like. I’ve had several conversations over the last two months where I started to describe one of my episodes to someone, like my Vlog Deathmatch Music Video Promo, and the person I’m telling goes “Yeah, I saw that… That was great! :D I especially liked the part where…….” and I’m standing there like ??? because I had received ZERO FEEDBACK from that person that they even SAW that video. To date, I have 929 views on my VDM Official Entry (Starring ActionGirl) and I have 27 comments on the page. :/ FOUR of the comments were BY ME, so either those 24 people watched that video 38.708333 times each or the amount of WATCHING far outweighs the amount of COMMENTING! :D
Recently, much has happened to change the game, and BillCammack.com / ReelSolid.TV is going to flow with that. Stay tuned for live events, interviews, contests, forum discussions, collaborations… even AUDIO PODCASTS!!! :O Now that Season 01 of ReelSolid.TV has been spent learning the technology, the ‘business’ of videoblogging and the philosophies behind all of that, Season 02 is going to be WAY LESS about organization, structure and paperwork and WAY MORE about content creation and self-expression through video & audio… which is why I do what I do in the first place.
Thanks again, all… especially those that dove into videoblogging as soon as they realized what they could do and have made their knowledge available to other people, like on the yahoo videoblogging list and freevlog.org.
Deja vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something….
ReelSolid.TV Season 02 kicks off NOW!!! :D
billcammack
PodCamp NYC Starts Today!
PodCamp NYC starts today, Friday April 6th. There are lots of sessions to attend on Saturday at The New Yorker Hotel (481 8th Avenue at 34th St).
Hi everyone, Eric Skiff here. We’re having a bit of trouble with our email service, and we’re currently not able to send mail to the PodCampNYC list. We’re working hard to get it back online so we can get everyone the pertinent info for Friday and Saturday, but in the meantime I’ll be starting to put some of the info here on the blog. If you use a feed reader, you can subscribe to the rss feed for this blog to get updates as we put them out. We’ll also be putting out late-breaking updates throughout the event on the PodCampNYC twitter account.
Schedule Info
With over 100 talks in 12 different rooms, this event is going to be AMAZING! You can now view the schedules and subscribe to them via Google Calendar or iCal.
Links, and instructions for using the calendars are here:
http://www.podcampnyc.org/wiki/index.php?title=Session_Schedule_Calendar_LinksYou can also download the scheudle as a big, single page PDF.
If you’ve been to another unconference, having the schedule set in advance might seem a little foreign. Often, unconferences are scheduled by filling in a grid on the wall at the event itself. Because of the sheer number of speakers and attendees we felt that in order to create the best experience for everyone we had to focus on making good use of our space and getting sessions arranged in a sensible way.
That said, we do want to encourage ad hoc presentations and last-minute discussions. This is your event, we’re simply doing our best to facilitate. To help foster spontaneous events, Christopher S. Penn will be hosting a “mashboard’ at his sponsor table. Be sure to check out his booth if you’d like to schedule a talk not on the “official†schedule and see what other people are putting up on the board.
Chris has also put together a fantastic “Unofficial Guide to PodCampNYC.†It’s a printable PDF with maps of NYC and the hotel, sessions schedules, local restaurants, and much more. You can download the guide here:
http://www.financialaidpodcast.com/2007/03/31/the-unofficial-guide-to-podcamp-nyc/We’ve only got a few more days between now and PodCampNYC. I’m looking forward to getting to see lots of familiar faces and meet many new friends there!
See you Friday!
Eric Skiff
Co-organizer, PodCampNYCTags:podcampnyc
Be there or be L7! :D
Bill Cammack • New York City • Freelance Video Editor • alum.mit.edu/www/billcammack
