watch .tv // european brand advocate

yes! - i did it.  phew.

that was pretty intense.  trying to get videos done on a time limit and especially over christmas.  i could not really record all the videos in a week sitting like i thought, i really needed to be quite dynamic with it recording a week at a time in some parts while in these last few days i've been trying my hardest to record a few episodes at once.  

taking into account the screencasts, audio setup and video setup and what i'm going to say as notes on pages on the ipad -- it's been immense, especially as i'm always in 'next year' mode and putting preperations on the biggest project that i've been wanting to do for years.  i'm not quite where i need to be yet but things are moving in the right direction and i'm really glad that i did the 31 days of advent digital advent calendar.  

proving to myself that i can do it, but also at the same time looking how much time i need to dedicate to getting things 'done' and how it effects my twitter, social output and conversations that i have with friends.  it's certainly a balance and i've learned some lessons about how poor my planning actually can be.  

of course i would have liked the videos and output to be a lot more professional and organized but we are on a budget here remember and actually the content was more about working with some new processes of how a website, output and social media engagement should wrap around something, it's how all the shows have to run this year.  planned and output in a certain format but as light weight an impact on my day to day as possible.

so, it's new years eve and everyone will be either heading out or hunkering on down in their homes with a private party as we all bring in the new year.  i hope you have something really exciting planned with your family and friends.  normally for me, new year is a quite one and i sorta just fall in and out of it softly.  

BUT, if your like me, it's a great time to start that video blogging year you have always thought about doing, if you have a digital camera, have a smartphone or some audio recording device why don't you make tonight the night you get started? - let's start to make some media, let's get comfortable with making that recording and holding peoples virtual hands through it and make them comfortable as we do it!

some suggestions for tonight are below! :)

mixlr
love this service, not using it enough right now.  i still have to lock down my ipad2 streaming, camera connector and snowball blue issues on the desktop but for just streaming out that mix of your bedroom to other friends and family at different stages of their new year it's pretty epic, you can even with a mixer mix in your microphone for voiceovers -- give it a blast.

bambuser
a service i've been using for over three years or more and something i'm hoping to use a lot more of in the new year once they bring some kind of html5 viewer and a smart embed to that we can embed this inside our ipad/ios devices as realtime streams.  that would be so cool.  download the free application today for most mobile devices or use it from a laptop or desktop with a camera. live video streaming to the web with a chat where your family and friends can type messages. 

justin.tv
similar site to bambuser in that it has desktop/mobile applications but what i really like about justin.tv is that the mobile application means you can turn into the streams from a really nice mobile application, i'm surprised that bambuser does not have a viewing program that does the same as a video wall grid that we can have as favorites.  it's very odd.  great quality thou and you'll find a bunch of gamers streaming full HD video stuff here as well if you get bored between the video shooting of your friends drinking too much! :)

google hangout
this is always pretty cool, having a video conference chat running so that you can have all your friends turned into a chat room as you see in the new year.  i remember one year having lots of people from around the globe see in the uk new year ahead of them, that was pretty cool.  you could use skype, hangouts or imeet hd for this.

skype conference call
not got access to friends for your new year party? - how about giving them a call and using the call recorder plugin to record a new years eve video about their achievments this year, the highs and lows of the year and put it together as a video?

pocket cheap cameras
seriously guys, tonight could get really messy so it might be a good idea not to take out that brand new dslr camera you were bought for christmas, remember the best photo can often be with the camera you have one you! - take something disposable or if your taking out your new iphone 4s make sure it's wrapped in some hardcore casing before you do.  if you drop it at least you will not spend the new first part of the new year stressed out.

oh and be safe people, remember, no drinking and driving and drop a message to your friends over the new year to let them know you care.  hugs to all your families and friends and thanks for joining me on this month long video run for my december advocacy.

i'm really looking forward to amplifying up again another level in 2012.

• Bambuser app allows you to stream live video from social media sites (tortsreport.com)
• VIDEO: The beach hut Advent calendar (bbc.co.uk)
• The Advent Calendar War (manbehindthecurtain.ie)
• Eurovision Advent Calendar: Least Favourite Entry (eurovisiontimes.wordpress.com)

quicklink | redirectware.com

at the start of last year i hated (strong word i know) qr codes. 

in fact, i disliked them that much i just hated the sight of them knowing my previous frustration with trying to get my camera phone back then (a nokia) to not only the application without crashing but to actually scan the thing properly without constantly tracking the camera trying to focus and even then i had to press the button to actually scan making me often NOT actually scan it.  i left it, it was rubbish.

fast forward this year and things have started to change at pace with the common qr code with lots of brands and promotions understanding the benefit of scanning a code for tracking the number of people reading it and consuming the information on the other end (as long as it's mobile ready of course)

i've been playing around with a new service that hit my radar called redirectware.com - they have a nice system that i thought bit.ly could do but seems they cannot.  redirectware allow you to link a qr code with up to 10 links that can be scanned in order or can be random.  i used them this christmas on my friends presents, they took you to youtube private link videos thanking them with a little video of me and ella singing a christmas carol.  it was cute.

i'm really starting to dig them now.  i give you a quick runthrough of the redirectware system and the moo card qr codes that i had made up and how i'm using them as part of my cut down on business cards in the new year. 

let's start tracking our interactions instead of relying on cardboard hope that someone will actually get back in touch with us.  let's take the hand of the client from the first scan and invest in them rather than just have them as a name on our walls and inside our phone books.

• Free QR Code Generator (ethelthefrog.com)
• Keeping Christmas present hunters guessing with QR code gift tags (hackaday.com)
• Scan me happy: QR Codes, Biometric passports, human microchips... (gnashey.wordpress.com)
• All I Want for Christmas is a QR Code (jamestheva.wordpress.com)
• QR Codes for Christmas! (mlsiren.com)
• How to Create a QR Code in 4 Quick Steps (hubspot.com)
• Hackers Use QR Codes To Hijack Smartphones (boston.cbslocal.com)
• Email Marketing Meets QR Codes (marketingvox.com)
• Charities and QR code (charitiescomms.wordpress.com)

greetings.  nearly there, near the end of the year.

it's been a real balancing act to get these videos and blog posts done between christmas, sorting out next year for the ark project and fibrecamp 2 (and maybe 3) and putting these videos up.  i do everything myself.  the scheduling of tweets, the video recording, the encoding and writing the blog posts.  it's a lot of work.

i think with a bit more of a faster workflow, faster encoder and faster recording facilities i would be able to crank out these things faster -- at least i've proven to myself that a month of video recording can be done for an advocate.  now i need to speed that up for multiple advocates.  then i'll be rocking! :)

phew.  sorry, just wanted to get that off my chest.  it's been a real intense end to a really slow to fast ending year and i'm just glad i'm going to get a few days over the new year to reflect on where i'm going to and where i'm currently at.

talking about reflecting (what a segway, that should have an award) we take a look at a number of applications for the apple ipad (mainly the two as that is what i'm working with) that help you consume information and media.  i've got some great applications lined up below that you really need to start adding to your daily news fix.

flipboard
pretty much the king really at the moment of all things newsreader for me on the ipad, it was one of the first that gave us a really nice page style turning effect that really nailed it in terms of ui feedback, the ability to have lots of different channels makes it super quick and easy to get into -- you can even view your instagram timeline.  we like that.

editions
following up the rear (so to speak) is the offering from AOL, manned by one of the guys that ran 12secs (sol) way back and now on a team making things like this.  i like the way that the edition gets 'made' but it can take a long time to make.  i'm wondering if that making process is just a way of tracking people in some way seeing as apple does'nt not normally allow to track users - it does feel like it's making a version for me.  i do like the magazine format and font thou.

metro
not sure if this is uk only (thinking it probably is) but it certainly beats giving out papers in the morning in train stations filling up trains with pointless paper everywhere.  it's actually really great on the online version, free downloads - i just wish it had some kind of automatic downloading and notifications, i give this a quick scan every other day when i'm bored or having a coffee break. 

flud2
another kid on the block that i'm really just getting used to after only downloading it about two weeks ago, i remember playing with the first version and not being all that impressed, this new version looks better thou and i'll be digging into this at some point over the new year to see what features it has to make it stand out from the rest.

boxee
bit of a step away from the newsreader style applications for the moment but keeping in a similar guise, the boxee application is a viewer for video -- with selections from your friends, social grids and the ability to view later on your boxee box this is a nice middle ground for when your on the move with your ipad and want to watch something you favorited on your boxee set-top box.

showyou
we love showyou, and it's not just because we are nearly 1700+ subscribers on our fibrecamp channel (thank you all that are following) but because of the ease of use of this edgeless video wall, you simply swipe and waft around the ipad screen area and it presents you with a thumbnail of a selection of videos that it discovered from your facebook and twitter friends.  it's a great way to keep up with things that have been posted across your friends social grids that day.

• Boxee 1.5 releases as final version for desktop (slashgear.com)
• The Future of Context: Mobile Reading from Google to Flipboard to FLUD (wired.com)
• FLUD is a Mobile News Reader that Wants You to Read and Discuss the Top Stories of the Day [Video] (lifehacker.com)
• Boxee updates to 1.5, will be the last updated for Mac, PC, and Linux (technologytell.com)
• The battle for the future of social video (thenextweb.com)
• The Best 5 Amazing News Apps For the iPad (makeuseof.com)
• With v2.0, Flud Wants To Do For Social News Reading What Spotify Is Doing For Music (techcrunch.com)
• Flipboard, Smaller and Smarter, Launches on iPhone (prnewswire.com)
• Curating Flipboard content: two varieties of personalization (metaroll.com)

getting started | posterous, tumblr, wordpress or squarespace

so, today - let's build that blog.

i wanted to touch on a few different ways you can get your blogging on with a variety of different platforms that can have you up and running even in minutes!

this month (advent calendar) has even used one of the platforms i'll be discussing -- posterous and has been my favorite for the last year.  all platforms require an email address to get started and most have hosted solutions, posterous even allows you to post without signing up if you so wish by sending a blank email to post@posterous.com

i personally use a combination of tumblr and posterous -- tumblr to pull content in from a variety of places to a 'portal' style frontend page to my website and posterous for 'autoposting' to a selection of other social services to alert people to content going on my webpage.

if your looking for some lightweight blogging -- i would suggest either using tumblr or posterous to get setup on the web if your want to get started straight away and need a place straight away to post all different kinds of medium formats straight away.  both have great mobile applications as well.

wordpress have a few ways of getting started including a self hosted solution which takes a bit more explaining for those that are confused with all things ftp and servers.  most hosting providers (the people you buy your domain from) also have a 1-click installation system if you do want to run your own wordpress solution.  personally, i prefer someone else to do the heavy lifting these days -- you can find yourself being an admin more than working on your content.

check out the video for short walkthroughs of the process of the 1-click installation and some services that i use that are fantastic at hosting your own blog on the internet.

a few new ones that have just popped on my radar because of my social grid are checkthis and jux which look really interesting if your into some totally fresh that might suit you better!

• Squarespace 6: Rebuilt From The Ground Up To Take On WordPress, Tumblr And Everyone Else (techcrunch.com)
• WordPress, tumblr, posterous and back (arun.wordpress.com)
• Bulletproof your blog - survive the Hacker News effect (maxmasnick.com)
• Posterous has left the building (stufftimwrites.wordpress.com)

quicklink | register a .tv domain today!

seriously, how many times this year did you have a brainwave of a good idea that you know would make for a web video show that with the right traction might actually pay you enough to commit to doing that full time? - i know a number of people who are already doing it and have been in it for the long haul.  maybe you have a lot to offer your industry and have decades of experience that is untapped and just not sure where to start?

below i have put a number of areas that i think you should be thinking about when it comes to pulling those thoughts and ideas together to form concepts that you can try out on the web.  with web tools getting cheap (sometimes free) it is easy with spare time to make content that others can benefit from on the web.

process control
it's simple really, how much time do you have to chip away (a bit at a time) at building this idea out, taking it from just a thought process to actual walkthroughs and stages of a design.  setting aside time and sticking to it each day/week can really help you start to act on that idea instead of it just sitting inside your head.  start making sketches of the flow of how you see your idea being delivered to the end user.

building the brand
what do you stand for, what's the goal of the idea, what are you trying to help achieve or who else in the world is doing something similar to you.  have you looked at other people that are making something similar, how are they successful, what are they doing well? - i often find myself looking at some amazing web apps purely based on how wonderful the app is interact with before i see what level of features it has.

the last one for me was path after doing a fantastic upgrade to the UI from v1 to v2 it really made path one of my go to applications daily overnight.  proof that you don't have to get it right first time round on the design/branding front if your idea is a solid one.

get a freelancer - alpha test/beta building
your impatient, you want something today and you have some money to spend but your not sure who with and where -- your probably best going to your friends and family members first and then your social grid to find people who can probably advise you on who to use to develop a first version of your idea.  if your still struggling one of the ways i got started on an idea was to pitch a small project build out over on get a freelancer -- a fantastic website for finding people who can help you develop and build out your project.  

i found a fantastic guy that charged a reasonable price for some coding work on an idea that we sat and developed over a few years together.  i had to go through over 50/60 emails from my initial project post but it was good to get my hands dirty with remote workers and developers and learn how long things took and how to curation remote communications with people -- we have some great tools for keeping in touch now - i suggest you add any remote workers to as many chat, social network tools as possible so you can get in touch in a timely manner to find out where your project might be at.

where to host
when i started videoblogging we only had one choice for video (youtube was just really starting up) and that was blip.tv -- althought blip is still a fantastic choice for storing your video for your end result show and getting it distributed to set top boxes and distribution partners it might not be the best place to start these days.  other services like youtube, vimeo, wistia and a whole raft of others are available for you to host your video content and offer additional services to give you indepth stats and pointers about your distribution.

• Misconception: the freelancer's #1 enemy. (xemion.com)
• How to sell a website and make money (aaronchua.com)
• Profitable Ideas To Make Money Over The Internet (blogpronews.wordpress.com)
• 7 Reasons Why Competition is Good (problogger.net)
• Brainstorming Your Link-Building Strategy (seomoz.org)
• Competitor Analysis and Benchmarking With the New Domain and Page Authorities (seomoz.org)
• 5 Ways Freelancers Can Benefit Your Online Business (noobpreneur.com)

result.  you made it.

how did it go, eat too much, still have a hangover? - maybe those back to back sessions infront of the television set catching up on all those movies was a mistake.  maybe best to back away from those chocolates right now and think about how your gonna get rid of all that wrapping paper right?

so, boom! - you made it.  boxing day, day 26 and were at a loose end as to what to tell you about so instead of lining up a bunch of applications we thought we would pile through our archives and tell you about a bunch of websites and web apps that will help you plan and get ready for next year, sorta get you in the mode to start to feel your way into that 2012 set of resolutions that you have been writing.

you have been writing them right?

check out some of these today and see what you think -- tomorrow i'll be giving some pointers about how to get planning for that niche website or concept that you came up with late last night while sitting in the bath after a day of pure gorging.

evernote
get your notes in one place, all of the time.  seriously, evernote is awesome.

wunderlist
as a half way house between notes and tasks - the free wunderlist is brilliant (wunderkit will be awesome as well when that rolls out as well)  and works on everything.  pretty much.

lemon and curdbee
both of these are relatively new to me but i plan to use both of them in 2012 to get my finances on track they both look awesome. 

hootsuite
i used hootsuite a lot for timed/scheduled released tweets.  i'm not saying to use it to just be a conversation spammer when your really not there.  don't fake social if your not.  useful for setting up regular tweets on certain days and times if you know you need to push something out as part of a timed schedule, newsletter for instance.

lovely charts
again, i'm just discovered this -- i like the idea of mind maps but they are not really suited to what i want to do in terms of process so i'm trying something new.  i quite like the way this works on the ipad.  the desktop version looks more advanced.

pages and keynote
i really like both of these on the mac desktop and i'm happy to say they are really quite powerful on the ipad too.  pages is especially nice on the ipad because it uses icloud.  i'm not sure if keynote has been updated to use icloud yet.

cloudette
using cloudapp (get a subscription, brilliant!) you can grab your files from the cloud, i host pdf, text, graphics and all sorts on there.  can also be used as part of your blog installation in terms of hosting images there in the cloud -- think they use amazon s3 for storage

now rest up that belly and onto the sites and links! :)

happy christmas!

i'm pretty sure you'll all be too busy to watch this video as your busy unwrapping christmas presents or doing something really important with the ones you love somewhere in the world.  not phoned a friend in a while? - drop them a line today to tell them you love them and are thinking of them, all my friends are out entertaining family today and i'll be taking a completely relaxing day off watching films and having a few glasses of whisky here and there.

really wanted to wish a number of people a really happy new year who have made 2011 for all of it's problems and pain a better year for me than 2010 was and i have so much to feel empowered from, the birth of the fibrecamp concept has been a real push forward for me to deliver on some of my ideas instead of them locked up inside my head.

<list names, business, etc here>

• Merry Christmas! (thomas-day.com)
• Merry Christmas to All (ufos.about.com)
• Merry Christmas and Thank You!! (bdtoms.wordpress.com)
• Merry, Merry from the Wondertwins. (mynewfavoriteday.com)
• Merry Christmas!!!! (gmcgarrity.wordpress.com)
• Merry Christmas to All! (farthestoceans.wordpress.com)

hey christmas eve came around pretty quickly.

did you get all the presents yet for everyone, are you ready to go for christmas dinner.  most important did you finish work yet? - i'm presume your all done, done and done so just wanted to give you a headsup to some great applications and software (and games!) for tomorrow when you get, give or just get back into on your iOS based devices!

sorry android people but it's the platform that i have and i'm pretty sure a lot of people will be getting an apple product of some kind for christmas and will want to know what to get.  these are few of my favorite applications and i've tried to group them together by type starting off with video applications seeing as that's what we are all about at watch.tv then i've put in a few picture, video and blogging applications finishing it all off with some great applications for you and kids if you have them!

enjoy! :) 

video
some of my favorites that i'm constantly dabbling with is imovie, cine-ma-trix, splice, imotion HD, videolicious, vyou, collabracam, keek, bambuser and obviously moviecam as i mentioned at the start of the advent calendar month.

entertainment apps
had trouble really thinking of a better name for this group but this kind of covers it - i'm including checking out boxee, showyou, fancy, evri, stylapps, ted, shelby.tv, tumbleon and deja in this group. 

pictures
these are some of my current favorites i like to use on my ios devices - snapseed, psexpress, photoforge2, composite is also very cool, i just started to use that.

audio
hokusai, soundcloud, dragontape, tunein radio, spotify, audioboo

comms
osfooraHD (twitter), path, skype, im+, verbs, imeetHD

gaming
CK Zombies, Bike Baron, Deadlock, DrawRace2HD, ForeverDrive, DH Challenge, GTA3

kids games
my bella absolutely loves tap the frog, pirate scribble, kid mode, sock puppet and ABC Food

obviously i have stacks more on my various mobile devices and applications on the mac pro i use on my desk but i wanted to get you started -- i'm pretty sure you could spend a number of weeks just playing with the above.  i should add that if you put any of the kid ones on your ipad device you might not get to use it for a number of hours!

have a great christmas! :)

quicklink | mbr1400.com

CradlePoint’s Mission-Critical Broadband Router (MBR1400) takes the power and flexibility of our industry leading router, and when combined with an active high-speed wireless broadband data connection, gets your business network online in no time.

i'm a lucky boy.

i get to play with some great technology.  cradlepoint have been one of those early adopter supporters with me for a long while now i guess from when i started to use the phs300 three or so years back now.

recently, they bought out a pretty impressive mobile hotspot router that allows for mission criticial fallover in the shape of support for FIVE devices - three usb dongles and two pcmcia card slots allowing for multiple cellular devices.

for instance in the uk you could probably thrown in three, o2, tmobile and orange with a side order of giffgaff if you have a certain data package (still o2) as the fifth service.  alternatively you might want to mix it up and have some of those sim cards with european/american sims in so you can jump from country to country with different sim cards activated for those countries giving you ready to go connectivity without satellite uplinks and messing with expensive hotel wifi costs.

sure, you could use something awesome like xcomglobal (and you such, they rock) but you might want to just go to that uber tech level.  this router is part of the solution to something i'm currently building called the 'bandwidthinthebox' - it's been on my mind for a while and after seeing the 'freedom tower' kit in austin this year at occupy austin i've been wanting to build a mobility kit that can be picked up and dropped into a venue giving people connectivity in a super lightweight footprint.

just wanted to share with you what awesome kit you can get out there these days! - why rely on one company/brand and cellular network when you can have more than one!

• Cradlepoint PHS300 Personal Portable WiFi Hotspot: $40 (9to5toys.com)
• Will a giffgaff SIM work in a phone from Tesco? (mobot.net)
• Drag your office into the technological future (theglobeandmail.com)
• New Cradlepoint Travel Router CTR-500 for 3G/4G USB or ExpressCard Modems - 150 Feet of Wi-Fi Range ONLY $59.99 (kathleensblogspot.com)
• Cradlepoint MBR900 Mobile Broadband N Router With 160Mbps Data Transfer ONLY $49.99 (kathleensblogspot.com)
• giffgaff launches 'gigabags' (mobile-ent.biz)

integrate your cloud apps into one personalized activity stream.  share your activities with team members and get instantly notified of theirs.

today we are looking at hojoki, a cracking new web app that burst on the scene at leweb.

while very cool little dashboard for 'updates' and commits and pushes of code bases (for instance it covers -- beanstalk, github, pivotaltracker) but it also supports really interesting updating services like dropbox and twitter.  as of now it supports about ten services (no multiple twitter accounts thou) which is a nice way of keeping all your updates from those cloud services you use in one place.

why mention this when we are all about video? - well, it's good to complement those transfers and assets that you might need 'ontheground' at an event, if you have all your dropbox assets pulled together you can (at a glance) look for updates and additions.  if you run any of the plugins you'll like this.  personally i've gotten used to jumping between a handful of tabs these days to make sure everything is flowing nicely.

catch up with you tomorrow then for the 23rd and a bit of a walkthrough of the mbr1400 - an awesome mobility device that you'll see me talking about and using more on location travelling between the uk and europe (might be the odd flight to the states in there too mind) to give me a mobile phat pipe for a variety of my projects.

• Hojoki launches at LeWeb as a Facebook-style newsfeed for enterprise cloud apps [Video] (thenextweb.com)
• Hojoki Aims To Solve 'Information Fragmentation', Raises $620,000 (eu.techcrunch.com)
• Centralising cloud app notifications might be the next big thing (eu.techcrunch.com)
• SAP Finally Picks Up The Pace On Cloud (informationweek.com)
• Head in the clouds. What is Cloud Computing and could it cut your business costs? (premierlinedirect.co.uk)
• The next big app battle: Automatic video editing (gigaom.com)