ABCNews.com Relaunches with Citizen Journalism

ABCNews is marking its tenth anniversary with a bold new redesign that features increased use of video. Beyond the new skin there's not a lot that's new with one key exception - ABC is opening up to contributions from citizen journalists. [Micro Persuasion via Unmediated]

In their own words: - The new site is designed to harness the power of community. And by community we mean "citizen reporters," our viewers and readers who help us report the news by contributing, commenting and telling us what they know. The redesigned ABCNEWS.com makes it much easier for our Internet users to add to the facts, ask questions of newsmakers and make their voices heard.

Users will also find it much easier to submit to us video from cell phones and their home video cameras -- video that we may choose to broadcast on our site or on one of our television news programs.

Pepsi Using Bluetooth to Distribute Video Adverts

Cellular News reports that Pepsi has started a Bluetooth based marketing campaign, allowing people to download a video clip to their mobile phone from poster adverts.

"The campaign to deliver viral video clips, which went live on April 2nd, runs for two months in outdoor advertising locations consisting of 120 bus shelters in Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Denver and Orange County, and pay phone kiosks in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Each of the media networks has integrated Qwikker's Bluetooth content distribution technology into their street furniture. Any consumer with a Bluetooth enabled phone is able to download free video clips from a Pepsi Smash advertisement. The viral video clips being distributed are five "Pass The Mic" clips of freestyle hip hop, provided by Yahoo! Music.

In the first week of the Pepsi campaign, opt-in rates to download content were reported to be 27% across the network."

Picture from USA Today.

Watch 100 live TV channels on your phone

Software company Makayama recently announced the availability of ‘Pocket Live TV’.

Pocket Live TV’ allows you to watch 100 TV channels, from 10 countries on Windows Mobile. The software provides a two-touch interface to streaming television on the internet. Pick a country, pick a channel and your set. The channels are all broadcast over-the-internet, and the application provides easy to use access to that content.

[NerdwithSwag.com via digg]

Thieves caught on You Tube

An Austrian computer store owner caught two teenage thieves after he put CCTV footage on YouTube, reports Ananova.

"... The video shows how one of the pair kept watch and covered what his pal was doing as the second teenager slipped the computer under his jacket.

People who saw the video online recognised the pair, told Mr Karer who alerted the police."

Full length feature film shot with a cameraphone

For more than a year, filmmaker Cyrus Frisch heard and observed growing tensions between Dutch and immigrant kids beneath his office window in central Amsterdam. By The Huffington Post covering the 6th annual Tribecca Film Festiaval.

"As he worked on another film, he began shooting the heckling occurring in the plaza - with his cell phone camera. The 70-minute avant garde piece is nearly without dialogue and is seen through the perspective of an Afghan war veteran played by Frisch. The result is Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan. " ...

Storyline from The San Francisco International Film Festival: "Told through the eyes of a traumatized Dutch soldier who has returned home from a tour of Afghanistan, Why didn’t anybody . . . documents the brewing tensions between native Dutch citizenry, immigrant youth and the police in a small square in the heart of Amsterdam.

In this decidedly experimental work, shot almost entirely with a cell phone video camera, these tensions are made palpable through a process of accumulation. Scene after scene of youths gathering, police detentions and aimless protests are lensed from a claustrophobic, subjective viewpoint.

The film also happens to be the first feature-length work shot on a cell phone to screen at the Rotterdam International Film Festival making it the first such work to premiere at any international festival of prestige worldwide. "

Iran to filter "immoral" mobile messages

Iran's Telecommunications Ministry will start filtering "immoral" video and audio messages sent via mobile phones, state television reported on Saturday. Reuters reports.

"The Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, a body set up after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution, has instructed the ministry to buy the equipment needed to prevent any misuse of Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), it said.

... It did not give details of the techniques it would use to filter such messages, when it would start or how it would define "immoral" messages."

Picture from Payvand's Iran News.

YouTube on your mobile

According to T3 Vodafone customers can now get clips from YouTube straight to their phone for free (for an (undefined) limited period).

"Vodafone tipped T3 to its new service today, saying it’ll serve up a selection of videos comprising the ‘Best of YouTube’ through its Live! service.

The selection will be refreshed each day with around 15 to 20 new flicks available each morning."

Postcards from Hell

A snatched picture of rich youths in Lebanon is the World Press Photo Winner, a decision that outraged some war photographers.

A Times correspondent reports on a controversy that highlights a changing profession.

"The image has become famous: the young glamorous Lebanese, mobile phone camera in hands and handkerchiefs to their noses, driving their red convertible through a bombed-out neighbourhood in southern Beirut, the rubble reflected in their mirrored sunglasses.

Months later, that snatched image was selected by a jury in Amsterdam last weekend as the World Press Photo of the Year. It was chosen, the judges said, precisely because it did not look like other pictures. “It’s a unique picture of war,” Platt explains. “It shows that life can go on being sexy and beautiful even in the midst of a war.”

Others disagreed. The Lebanese photographer Samer Mohdad described the jury’s choice as “an insult to all news photographers who have risked their lives to cover this horrible war”.

The five young subjects themselves, far from being wealthy war tourists, were simply returning to check on their own bombed neighbourhood. They learnt of the photograph from the internet and got their right to reply through other journalists.

But the controversy stirred by the picture strikes at the heart of the some of the most pressing issues facing photojournalism today. ... As the internet is being eyed up as the next great challenge — or opportunity — that will determine the future of photojournalism.

... Right in the centre of his winning picture is the object that is perhaps stirring up the photojournalistic community the most: the mobile-phone camera, turning every owner into a potential photojournalist, recording images as they happen, with no delay for the man from Magnum to fly in. Whether you view this development as a threat or a boon depends very much on your views on the nature and purpose of photojournalism."

[Times via régine on del.icio.us]

People power

Imagine 50,000 reporters armed with video cameras on their mobile phones able to report live via the web. That fantasy is about to become a reality this month for South Korea's OhMyNews online site. The Age reports.

"... A wireless broadband internet known as wibro launched in South Korea this month. It means that OhmyNews citizen reporters can broadcast live to the web from a moving vehicle. Jean Min, director of OhmyNews International, says any of the 50,000 citizen reporters could shoot video with their mobile phones and send it to a server. "From our server we can broadcast live to anywhere in the country."

More on the sucess of OhMyNews ... The number of the site's citizen reporters surged past the 50,000 mark this year. When the site launched it had 727. ... Late last year, Time selected Kim Hye Won, a Korean housewife and OhmyNews citizen reporter, as one of the 15 citizens who exemplified its "Person of the Year".

The Man with Horns

Not related to cell phones, but a haunting and beautiful piece on LoIP of Etienne Dumont, a brilliant art and culture critic with the Tribune de Genève newspaper in Geneva.

"I had heard of his physical extravagance, which beautifully matches his writing style, but I'd never seen the man. The picture was made without using any computer graphics. Dumont is tattooed from head to toe; has plexiglas piercings on the nose and under the lower lip; a titanium ring on the left hand; rings of 70-mm (2.7 inches) of diameter on the earlobes. And two horns on his head, which he plans to grow bigger in the coming days -- by replacing the two silicon spheres currently inserted under his skin with larger ones.

... He dismisses any psychological reading of his corporal transformation: "In the US, to justify their tattoos they often talk of spiritual quest; for me, it's just amusing" . And he states: "Being an extravagant man gives me greater freedom".

He was recently written up in the La Tribune de Genève, where he spoke out about his transformation (in French). "I was told this would change my life. Not al all! I live in the same apartment, work at the same job and have no health problems".

Vibrating mobile televisions due from Korea

Those two Korean gentlemen in the photograph are not just watching television on mobile phones - they're actually feeling it. They are checking out the new force-feedback TV standard that's about to take the entire world by storm. Tech.co.uk reports.

"The so-called 3D broadcasting is so simple in concept it's surprising it hasn't happened before - take key moments from a TV show and send a simultaneous signal to make the phone vibrate.

The examples given by LG include a thud as a ball hits the back of the net in football or an in-hand rumble to match whatever onscreen violence is unfolding."

Al Jazeera on YouTube

The English-language news operations of Al Jazeera, the sister channel of Al Jazeera Arabic TV, have opened their own channel on YouTube, where they've posted some 100 documentaries so far. [via LoIP]

NTT DoCoMo adds motion-sensitive gaming to cellphones

According to Infoworld, NTT DoCoMo will begin selling in May three cellphones that offer motion-sensitive gaming like that possible with Nintendo's Wii games console.

PIcture left from Joystiq via digg.

"In a boxing game users can throw punches or duck, and their movements are picked up by the phone's camera. In another game, the phone can be tilted in different directions to guide an on-screen ball through a maze.

... To be sure, the cellphones aren't nearly as reactive as the Wii console but they are likely to become more so as technology improves."

Chronicle of a Spring. Call for projects

A new media art project calls for work and people online willing to participate in their project called Chronicle of a Spring.

An update of the 1961 French documentary Chronique d'un été (Chronicle of a Summer), this work collects video clips collected on digital cameras and video phones filmed in the spring of 2007. Both friends and strangers were approached with questions about the what makes them happy and the way they live.

"Chronicle of A Spring" is not limited to the scope of our short film and the area of Providence, however. By distributing the film through YouTube.com the project also encourages participation from users all over the globe. Along with the short film, we created a YouTube group and uploaded much of our raw footage of the impromptu interviews. There, the original interviews can be viewed, commented on, or responded to with other videos.

YouTube gets Va. Tech shooting footage

It was inevitable that the online video world would offer its take on a crime glimpsed as it unfolded most dramatically via a cell phone camera, carried out by a student who put together a CD-ROM of his manifesto and mailed it to a TV news network. The Associated Press reports.

"A quick search of YouTube brings up dozens of videos posted in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, many of them simply news footage lifted from the various networks.

But one of the most-watched videos — viewed by some 150,000 people — is a song dedicated to the families of the 32 victims. Playing keyboard, Kojo Best sings: "God bless your family, and your community, through this insanity."

Also posted, though, are dramatizations of two of killer Cho Seung-Hui's plays, which have become easily available on the Web."

Cellphone videos showed workers at an Anaheim facility striking disabled clients

Following several camera phone videos of caregivers striking disabled elderly patients, the administrators overseeing Orange County's programs for the developmentally disabled responded not by disciplining the caregiver, but by banning cell phones from the premises.

"The cellphone memo was distributed Feb. 13 — less than two weeks after news reports of the abuse video — and was intended for the hundreds of caregivers providing group homes, daytime activities, transportation and other services to 15,000 of the county's developmentally disabled." Bad timing.

[via LA Times]

Phone designed for watching TV

Handset makers are racing to develop better mobile phone screens to meet expected demand for watching TV on the devices, reports Investors Business Daily.

"In Japan, where TV on phones already is becoming commonplace, Sharp announced a fall release of phones featuring 2.2-inch screens that offer contrasts of 2,000:1, about 4 times greater than current top screens.

The new phones also will be capable of receiving digital TV broadcasts, significantly expanding their capabilities since most phones are only able to show video downloaded from the Internet."

Party Pics

PSFK writes about a new online community called 476ad.com, that lets you share photo galleries and connect with party people in your area and around the world.

"Users can create their own scene (their personal profile page) where they can share their photos, thoughts and personal information.

Users can connect with other users and check out their "scenes" by browsing the site or searching by name, city or tag. "

In their own words: 476ad is for everyone:

-- Friends who want to meet Online
-- Promoters who want to get the word out about their events
-- People looking for the next hot party or event
-- Friends and families that want to share pictures
-- Business people and co-workers interested in networking
-- Marketers and advertisers who want to see the latest trends and styles

Other party pics: - lastnightsparty.com / ambrel.ne / thecobrasnake.com

Jaipur students shoot state on mobile phone camera

Three college students have filmed the stark realities of villages in India with camera phones, reports New Kerala.

"Rajasthan Part Two", whose name is derived from Rajasthan, is a 20-minute documentary highlighting the core issues including child marriage, poverty, unemployment and child labour, prevalent in today's times.

"The reason we made this documentary was that there are so many evil things happening in the society like female foeticide, illiteracy etc. which we thought of eradicating. But despite so many efforts these things are still prevalent. So we wanted to highlight them," said Sanjay Munjal, one of the filmmakers. "

Eyewitness testimonies and footage dominate news

On CNN, the earliest on-scene pictures of the Virginia Tech shooting and words were provided by Jamal Albarghouti, a Virginia Tech graduate student from the West Bank. His cell phone pictures of police charging Norris Hall as shots rang out were broadcast and streamed over and over throughout the day. The Baltimore Sun reports.

"By dinnertime, CNN was featuring Albarghouti standing on campus, microphone in hand, reporting from the scene as he talked with anchorman Wolf Blitzer, who was in the cable channel's Washington newsroom.

"Let's face it, right now, his material is still the best of the day in terms of capturing on video what took place there," Nancy Lane, CNN's vice president of domestic news, said last night.

... "On this story, the Internet and digital technology have been a driving force like never before," said Dan Abrams, general manger of MSNBC.

"We're using Webcams, we're soliciting any video that viewers have, we're monitoring the online communities of MySpace and Facebook to bring viewers as much information as we can from as many places."

Indeed one of the richest sources of information for the mainstream media became online social networking sites. "There are these communities developing on those sites with hundreds and hundreds of people - many of them students, some of whom were there at the shooting," Abrams said.

Cell Phones, Web Cam Record Shooting at Virginia Tech

Students used cell phone cameras and a professor used a Web cam to record vignettes of the tragedy Monday on the Virginia tech campus, where a gunman went on a rampage that left 33 dead and more than 20 injured in the worst mass shooting in US history. KWTX reports.

KWTX publishes the video taken by a student and his cameraphone - which has been all over television news. But when you click on the link for this video, you are greeted by a humorous Pontiac car commercial for a convertible. Appalling, offensive and such a lack of sensitivity for the lives of so many students lost in this terrible trajedy.

Related:

-- Student's video on YouTube - without commercials

-- Lack of emergency information at Virginia Tech

-- Eyewitness testimonies and footage dominate news

EMI to offer 'artist-generated' content

Air Traffic, Gisli and The Aliens are among the EMI acts set to share their daily lives with the masses using Shozu's Share-It platform. Mobile Entertainment reports.

"EMI is equipping the three acts with Shozu-enabled mobile phones so they can uploads pics and video to their website, Flickr, YouTube or other online channels, effectively creating an artist-branded content feed.

The label will also be using with Shozu's Zucast service during the festival season this summer to deliver content created by bands direct to fan phones."

Nokia, Samsung agree on joint mobile TV standards

Nokia said on Monday it had agreed to work with Samsung Electronics to boost open standards in mobile television, based on its favored DVB-H technology. Reuters reports.

"Cellphone makers and mobile operators alike are keen to tap the potentially lucrative market in phones that receive television, but the take-up of services has been held back by fragmentation of the technologies on offer.

There are half a dozen competing systems.

Nokia said it and Samsung plan to make their DVB-H mobiles work with the same standards as the Nokia network services system. They would work on using the OMA BCAST standard for mobile operators, the statement said."

Verimatrix offers security for shows delivered over IPTV

As telephone companies worldwide roll out video over telephone lines to compete with cable TV, Hollywood studios are gearing up for a piracy battle akin to the one that rocked the music industry a few years ago. SignOnSanDiego reports.

"Many telephone companies will deliver TV over digital networks using Internet Protocol – known as IPTV.

Hollywood studios tend to view the Internet as a vortex of piracy, where hackers pluck recently released movies off the network with relative ease and post them online for free – essentially vaporizing the way studios make money.

Hoping to ride to the rescue – so to speak – is Verimatrix, a San Diego company develops content security software and forensic watermarking for video delivered over IPTV networks.

Its main product encrypts movies and TV shows before they are sent over the network. It then unscrambles the video when it reaches the particular set-top box of a pay TV customer's home – making sure the correct signal is getting to the right subscriber.

Verimatrix's watermarking technology embeds a sophisticated code into the video. The code is invisible to the viewer. But it allows the video – if it ends up being pirated – to be traced back to the set-top box from which it originated. "

Starbucks in Beijing display barcodes on table tops

China has come up with an amazing new type of advert to try to make the most of mobile users, reports Mad4Mobile Phones.

"The new format allows physical objects to be turned into hyperlinks. A user clicks on the link, which can be a billboard or even a leaflet on a coffee table, by taking a picture with the phones camera. The phone then reads a barcode from the advert and opens up a corresponding web page.

According to Business Week, "For a three-month period that ended in February, Chinese barcode pioneer Gmedia provided Starbucks with barcodes to display on tabletops in the chain's 50 outlets in Beijing. When a user clicked on one, they were linked to a website that allowed them to redeem a free coffee."

Candidates to post videos on YouTube

As of yesterday, White House contenders from both parties will take turns posting videos on News and Politics's site, and YouTube watchers will get to post their own video responses. [via the Associated Press]

"The experiment is an outgrowth of YouTube's "You Choose '08" initiative that kicked off in February to let candidates showcase their campaigns on the Web site through their campaign videos.

Beginning this week with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, candidates will get one week to engage in a video discussion in YouTube's "You Choose '08 Spotlight." Romney's video question: "What do you believe is America's single greatest challenge and what would you do to address it?"

He encourages watchers to post their video replies and vows: "I'll do my best to watch as many as I can and respond to them."

The new political give-and-take comes as political campaigns begin to explore the realm of new technologies for reaching voters."

Mobile advertising to hit $3 billion in 2007

The worldwide mobile marketing and advertising market is expected to be worth $3 billion in 2007, according to market research firm ABI Research via News.com.

"The market will balloon to $19 billion by 2011, the firm said in a study published Tuesday.

The bulk of the revenue will be generated by advertising through mobile search and video. In particular, broadcast mobile video will see a lot of mobile marketing activity. T

The firm predicts that by 2011 video-based ads will surpass SMS as a source of mobile marketing spending, and that advertising on broadcast mobile video alone will reach about $9 billion by 2011."

"The Godfather" special edition Nokia phone

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the release of "The Godfather", Nokia has teamed up with Paramount Pictures to launch the Nokia N73 Godfather edition phone.

The N73 Godfather is exactly the same as the standard N73 except it includes a 256MB memory card with a full length version of The Godfather film and a nice presentation box.

[Unwired View via Mad4Mobile Phones ]

iStockphoto Goes Wireless

Image Bank iStockphoto is taking its photos to the wireless industry, allowing mobile phone users to download wallpapers for their phones from a selection of 5,000 images.

The pilot program will begin in the UK this month, where photos will be made available to subscribers on the 3, Orange, O2, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, and Vodafone networks. The images will be delivered via mobile transaction network mBlox, and be available through a dedicated mobile storefront accessed through the iStockphoto Website at www.istockphoto.com.

[via heresehow.ca]

Easter Break

Off to Naples for a holiday break, back on Wednesday April 11. Happy Easter to one and all.