Despite the masses flocking to their nearest Apple store to get their hands on the new iPhone, there is lots of frustration amongst the anti-Apple fan boys/girls who say the iPhone is all style over substance-
And they are quite right, lots of ‘new’ features on the new iPhone aren’t new technology at all, Apple is just great at repackaging the technology and marketing it in an attractive way. This video sent to me by @natts is a poke at the recent Applemania.. what do you think, is iPhone all style over substance?
Just saw this amazing video over at Mashable and thought I would share it with you. It’s not just a clever and fantastic advert for Java, it’s also, in my opinion, a piece of art!
I’ve been in Melbourne the last couple of weeks, scoping out the tech/startup scene down under and when I return back to the hustle and bustle of London Town I wanted to ”pass the baton” to another young video blogger to keep the Techfluff.tv spirit well and truly alive!
I found Leila Bagundol, a RMIT media student, via Twitter (actually via Ross Hill tweeting to her), and a combination of looking at her media studies blog and tweets, led me to an interview with the social media enthusiast in Fed Sq last week.
I studied Media and Communications at University, and Hermione Way set up Techfluff.tv’s sister Internet video production company Newspepper.com, during her Journalism degree. She was being taught newspaper journalism only, at a time when newspapers are in decline (and in most cases still are). She wanted to be taught about video journalism and writing for the Internet and knew that even at local newspaper level journalists are having to video blog and learn a range of other skills to adapt to a profession that is rapidly changing.
After chatting with Leila, it seems that RMIT – one of Australia’s leading technology educators – have stepped up their game and have restructured their course to include more practical skills especially within the online sector. A great example is her group project titled Facebook as a Successful Business Tool.
Leila is graduating at the end of this year, and as part of her course, she is looking for an Internship – within an Australian-run company. Although Techfluff.tv beams straight from London and beyond, we’d like to welcome her to the Techfluff.tv family and have her video blog about the tech scene down in Melbourne. But if you are looking for an enthusiastic intern, I’d snap Leila right up!
If you want to get Leila to blog at you event get in contact with her via her twitter
Jess is a 20-year-old gamer from Guildford and is launching an online, user-to-user video game exchange called GaBoom.co.uk.
Crowned National Champion of the National Varsity Pitching Competition 2010, Jess is due to launch her site into open beta in July. The site employs a user matching system where users can list the games they want, list the games they own, hit a button and are automatically paired with the users they can exchange with. Gamers can use the site to sell, swap or buy their video games.
Jess came up with this idea to solve a problem she also experiences herself; that video games are expensive and not everyone can afford the games they want.
GaBoom is now running in closed beta and Jess is looking for all you gamers out there to become VIP BETA users and test GaBoom out before it launches into open beta in July. Sign up to get an exclusive look at GaBoom and start swapping your games! Go to www.gaboom.co.uk to sign up and be a VIP beta tester!
You can also watch my video interview with Jess below:
Today is the Facebook Developers Garage London and Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg will be talking to the developers at the event. The talks kick of with Zuck’ at 2pm GMT, What’s that? You didn’t get a ticket to the hottest event in London? Well you’re in luck-tune in here, now!
The most annoying thing about shopping online is not being able to try clothes on to see what they look like, especially for someone like me who has no fashion sense what so ever and ends up purchasing a load of random tops and skirts that when put together, make me look like Ronald MacDonald on acid.
But there is hope dear friends in the form of Dutch startup MimicMe.com. They aim to give you a free virtual dressing room which enables you to mix and match all kinds of fashion items on your personal virtual model.
I really hate any kind of clothes shopping, but have actually just spent over an hour on their site having dare-i-say-it, fun trying the different looks on my avatar – The thing is when you can see garments together on yourself it’s much easier to see what look goes and what doesn’t.
MimicMe have already got a number of brands and retailers onboard, I tried some leggings from TopShop on my avatar and the best part is that you can ajust your avatar’s weight and measurements to match your own which allows you to see what the clothes really look like on you, instead of seeing them on some skinny rake of a model that looks nothing like a normal human being.
Currently all the big retailers, Asos, Topshop are giving you rich media in what the clothes look like on other models, but no one is enabling you see what the clothes look like on yourself, the consumer. There are a few technology startups in this space trying to crack this issue, but I recon Mimicme’s technology stands out in how realistically the clothes fit. Now all they need is a couple of big retailers to adopt their platform and it could revolutionize the way we shop online.
What would be really cool for the future of online shopping is if when you bought an item you could use an application on your phone to scan it and that item would be automatically added to your online wardrobe- This way you could see how your new purchase would go with all your existing clothes in your wardrobe.
Here are my MimicMe outfits: How cool are the different backgrounds?
I just wanted to share this AMAZING video Techfluff’tv’s @thatgirl_chloe made for my birthday. I was just thinking how it’s great to work with passionate people like her and then she sends me this video so I have to love her a little bit more than I do, gad damn it! I generally hate birthdays (one year closer to saggy breasts) so this really made me feel I’d got the love!
Another month, another great Facebook Developers Garage in London, what? you missed it?! No problem we were there to catch all the action! Here are some of the great presentations and event report. Newspepper are proud to be a media partner of this great tech event which helps the Facebook developers ecosystem.
With geeks being the rockstars of the future, I thought it was pretty fitting that June’s Social Media Club Melbourne was held at the end of AC/DC Lane on Tuesday 8 June.
It was a packed house at 24 Moons, which was filled with Melbourne’s Twitterati and social media enthusiasts keen to hear from some of the most successful people making a living from bashing away on their keyboard. The draw cards included the wise and experienced Darren Rowse aka @Problogger, the tell-it-like-it-is Editor and Publisher of The Inquisitr, Duncan Riley, aka @DarrenRiley and the arty but beautifully crafty Pip Lincon aka @meatmeatmikes The panel’s MC was former Miss Megabyte, Yvonne Adele aka @IdeasCulture.
Now these three super bloggers couldn’t be more different if they tried, and each speaker speaker gave a refreshing view to the secrets of their success. I sent in a question to the panel about video blogging and was surprised by their contrasting experiences.
In short, once @problogger started putting videos on his site, he started getting comments from people who told him they have been reading for a year, and had never left a comment – until watching his video blog.
For @meatmeatmikes, it was slightly different, because she posted a How-To crochet a ‘granny square’ video which – surprisingly for her – it got her sites a lot of hits because a lot of her readers can’t read a patten and they really appreciated the video tutorial. Finally, @duncanriley has a different approach to video blogging, and put simply he suggested it was too hard and took too long. Though he did have time to make this little video (leave Zuck alone!)
Yes, video, can take a long time to produce – much longer than most people think – but the rewards from using video is more than just ‘pretty images’ but that bloggers can really engage and connect with some of their readers on a much personal level than words written on a web page.
What I really learned from the panel, is that audiences responsed to different mediums, and that bloggers should accomodate for their readers and try to be adaptable for their ever growing readership and dabble in a little bit of everything i.e. from written posts, to video blogs to podcasts etc Or you can do a video blog, post it as a transcript and a podcast in the one entry
I also learned a great deal more that evening -but I’m going to take a short-cut and reference a few bloggers who did a great job of jotting down some notes and insights – which they generously shared with the wider community. Think of them like cheat sheets for the knowing.
And you can watch the full panel here on SMCmelb’s youtube channel here.
A couple days later, I caught up with Tim Beveridge, Planning and Insights Director at E-Services, and one of the organisers of SMCmelb.
I first heard about this group when I googled ‘social media’ and ‘melbourne’ and volia – I was taken straight to their website. I sent all the organisers an email introducing myself, and letting them know I was doing to be down under for a while, and that I wanted to interview one of them for Techfluff.tv and Tim was one of the organisers who was very kind to give up some of his time and have a chat with me about the group and what he thought of Tuesday’s event (ahhh the beauty of social networking). So I went to his high rise offices on St Kilda road – to not only admire the view – but to get his Insight and Ideas (which also happens to be the name of his blog) on social media and stuff!
I came across an article in recent months from Nielsen.com, which reported that in December 2009 Australians use social media the most – you can read it here. Interestingly, Tim suggested the reasonings behind this figure was that Australia may have been a bit late joining the game and that the statistics reflected that international markets have matured relatively quicker than down under. But what is encouraging that Australians are clearly engaged with social media platforms and it validates their usage.
One of the things that caught Tim’s interest after listening to the panel and chatting with people during the evening, was the general theme that blogging is a lot of hard work and that bloggers need to post consistent, content-rich information. He also learned from the Global Power Bloggers that blogging can be treated like owning a business and that you can learn from an entrepreneurs’s approach i.e if at first you don’t succeed, try again and that you are never know your market, until you are swimming in it!
You can watch my full video report below.
Thanks to #SMCmelb, and to the speakers for their time and wise words – next time I’ll capture on my flip for Techfuff.tv
Oh and one last thing, for those about to blog, we salute you!!
You’ve been reading some chatter from @ThatGirl_Chloe and you can follow me to find out more about news tech and bit more fluff here.
Last month, Sara Alison – evangelist for Microsoft UK – and reporter for Ubelly.com teamed up with our sister video production Newspepper.com to cover the digital front line at Thinking Digital Conference which was the Sage Gatehead in Newcastle. You can watch the video report below:
Ubelly.com aka Underbelly is a website about anything and everything web related, talking about Microsoft technology and the people who work at Microsoft in an open way and engaging with the web community at large.
Also, as a side note, I came across a fun viral made by Darling Dash for Institute of Digital Innovation, using crowd sourced particpants at the conference. I personally like the guy in the orange shirt with the line ‘When no one cared about their rights, to online privacy’. You can find the lyrics on their website.
