Internet video, digital entertainment, social networks, online content, convergence and industry insight.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Start-Up Junkies
This Mojo HD reality-TV series was shot in Seattle. It chronicles the inner-workings of a start-up called Earth Class Mail. As someone who has experienced remarkably similar circumstances, I can tell you that this series is spot on. They really capture it. I know why I like watching this stuff. Does anyone else care? Apparently so...people are watching.
Above is a clip from Episode 3 which is described as follows; "With plans to sell his home, his planes and other valued possessions, Ron charges ahead and hunts for office space in downtown Seattle."
All this is courtesy of Hulu.com which keeps getting better and shows us what the future of "TV" might look like.
Gary Vaynerchuk created a big buzz with his recent keynote talk at the Web 2.0 Expo. Pacing the stage, he implores the audience to stop doing things they hate. He created Wine Library TV and has become an internet celebrity and successful businessman. He discusses how we are living in an age when the old media controls are crumbling and the new content creators have numerous chances to monetize their own personal monkey business. Create!
Andrew Baron, creator of Rocketboom, recently talked to Beet.tv about the numerous opportunities that exist for digital content creators. Now, more than ever, individuals and small shops can make a living creating original programming for the web and mobile devices. He talks in detail about how to approach entrepreneurial efforts in the fields of digital film making, story development, online video and web show production.
Some fellow creative media-makers I know here in Seattle just created a short documentary about start-up funding. The focus is on business owners who have pitched their business at the Early Stage Investment Forum("ESIF"); a funding event held every Spring in Seattle.
Ray Kurzweil: Outrageous Inventor, Entrepreneur, Thinker and Doer
Filmed in 2005 "Prolific inventor and outrageous visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why -- by the 2020s -- we will have reverse-engineered the human brain, and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. Kurzweil draws on years of research to show the speed at which technology is evolving, and projects forward into an almost unthinkable future to outline the ways we'll use technology to augment our own capabilities, forever blurring the lines between human and machine." From TED.com.
On the list of contemporary creative thinkers I'd like to eat a sandwich with, Kurzweil is near the top. I appreciate and respect a person who can simultaneously dream fantastical notions and also perform practical technical feats. He not only thinks, he does. He thinks about the power of cell phone cameras years before the technology is mature. Then he does a project and works with the American Foundation for the Blind to create a working product that will speak the text of photos taken with a modern cell phone so that blind people can read pasta box labels and street signs and love letters.
Check out Kurzweil Technologies to learn about his numerous successful business ventures. He's been building and selling companies since he was a teenager. He's started music product companies, the FatKat Artificial Intelligence investment tool and educational technology companies.
I've always been curious about his thoughts on the coming technological singularity. This is a point in the (near?) future where technology will be accelerating at such a super fast rate that culture will reach an almost magical point. Our tools and combined intelligence will make almost anything possible, including (near) immortality.
Wikipedia says, "Raymond Kurzweil (pronounced /kɚzwaɪl/) (born February 12, 1948) is an inventor and futurist. He has been a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, the technological singularity, and futurism."
This hilarious (but kinda true) video is available on 5min.com, "a place to find short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge."
In the video above, an Israeli entrepreneur shares his theories of how to raise money from venture capital investors. As he smokes his cigar, he suggests inserting the logo of another venture firm at the beginning of your Power Point presentation. Then politely apologize to the VCs you are pitching and pretend it was an accident. The theory is that VCs want to invest in companies that other VCs are interested in. Funny...but also true.
5min believes that everyone is an expert in something. So, either share your knowledge or go to the site to learn something. Where else can you get a 5 minute lesson in belly dancing, drawing and street fighting all in one place?
"NerdTV (Soon re-launching as SuperNerds) was a weekly online TV show from PBS.org technology columnist Robert X. Cringely. NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. Guests like Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy or Apple computer inventor Steve Wozniak are household names if your household is nerdy enough, but as historical figures and geniuses in their own right, they have plenty to say to ALL of us. NerdTV is distributed under a Creative Commons license so viewers can legally share the shows with their friends and even edit their own versions. If not THE future of television, NerdTV represents A future of television for niche audiences that have deep interest in certain topics."
Some Guests Have Included: Macintosh OS programmer Andy Hertzfeld PayPal co-founder Max Levchin Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle Internet publisher Tim O'Reilly Father of RSS Dave Winer Autodesk co-founder Dan Drake Intel Capital co-founder Avram Miller Anina High Fashion Meets High Tech Spreadsheet inventor Dan Bricklin Computer mouse inventor Doug Engelbart TCP/IP inventor Bob Kahn Internet entrepreneur, Judy Estrin
