From an original post by MartinSFP @ 14Sandwhiches.com;

A few months ago something new happened in my Twitter feed; people started posting links to videos they had created on a service called 12seconds.tv. Intruiged, I looked into the service and sure enough it allows you to upload videos that last just 12 seconds and not a frame more.

Puzzled as to the appeal of the concept I signed up and then forgot about it entirely. After all, what can you possibly communicate in 12 seconds? Not a lot - it’s barely enough time to say hello!

Then, about a month ago, I finally ‘got’ 12seconds. The truth is, when you think about it, you really can say a lot in that short amount of time. The very fact that you have such a small window means that every breath, every sylable you utter, needs to count or you’ll be out of time. That means there’s no room for rambling. It’s straight to the point or bust.

In 12 seconds you can tell a joke, you can make an observation about life, share a bizarre moment or ask a question for others to answer. You can even use it for something more creative like short pieces of video art.

Here’s some of my favourite 12seconds videos, demonstrating the diverse ways people are using the service.

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1. As a video diary

Video diarists have a tendency to ramble. There’s no way you can do that on 12seconds! Christian Payne, AKA Documentally, frequently uses the service to post glimses into his life.

Three books in the post. on 12seconds.tv

2. To quickly share something unusual.

I mentioned him the other day and here he is again: Geoffrey Hickman sharing some bizarre bathroom tiles he’s found.

strangest bathroom tiles i’ve ever seen on 12seconds.tv

3. To express creativity

Who says you need a video camera? Some users use 12seconds to share their own home-made animation:

12seconds starwars animation on 12seconds.tv

4. To play games

Sadly this user appears to have stopped the game now, but it his ‘Name That Tune’ game was fun while it lasted:

Name That Tune 14 on 12seconds.tv

5. As a challenge

If one thing keeps me coming back to 12seconds, it’s the daily challenges. I was lucky enough to win one of these a couple of weeks ago. There’s no prize, just a link to your profile from every page on the site for a day and a nice feeling of warmth. The challenge I won was to suggest some new ‘Awards’ for 12seconds videos. Users receive little icons on their profile when they achieve certain tasks such as posting their first 12 videos or winning a challenge. I don’t think my suggestion will be taken up any time soon but it’s nice to win!

12challenge: Please suggest some new 12seconds awards (those picked will get credit on the awards page). on 12seconds.tv

You can find my 12seconds profile here. If you want to give the service a go let me know. It’s still in closed Alpha but I have a few invites left so leave a comment if you’d like an invite to try it.

Tags: 12Seconds.tv, video, social media, communication,

Released on October 14, 2008, Flock 2.0 is by far the best browser ive seen to date. Based around the Mozilla CodeBase and now incorporating Firefox 3 this is a serious contender for the Best Browser Award.

Designed as a self styled 'Social Media & Web2.0 Browser' Flock 2.0 comes with numerous 'Social Media' & 'web2.0' tools to make your life eaiser. Whats more i actual feel it help define what exactly 'Web2.0' is, as it quite uniquely brings all your popular Social Media applications and websites into well considered tool bars and sidebars.

Simply by visiting and logging into the likes of MySpace, Flickr, Twitter etc, your account is automatically added to the browser and grouped appropriately. This means you can check the status of all your friends from Facebook & Twitter, whilst uploading images to your Flickr account all from one place. Likewise the media panel allows you to access and search the likes of YouTube & Flickr, or even log in to your Gmail account.

Its all so easy and well organised. Ok, so it doesnt include every single Web2.0 service but it does cover the main players, with more to be added soon. It does however also include a Blog Editor, which when selected opens a new window, so you can type a new entry whilst researching the subject in the normal browser window. The great thing with this feature is that its just as easy to use a non standard Blog such as BlogEngine.Net as it is to use the more common Blogger or LiveJournal. Not to mention in some instances the inbuilt Blog editor actually adds functionality to your blogging by adding Technorati Tags in addition to the inbuilt Blog system tags.

With this being built around FireFox 3 you are still able to use a lot of the FireFox add-ons, whilst also taking advantage of those specificly for Flock. Unfortunately the later are a little sparse at present, and the Flock 'Addons' link only takes you to the Flock specific download area. But this will improve with time and user uptake.

There is probably so much more which i have yet to discover with this browser. One neat feature i only just discovered is that if you go to the Google.com homepage ad type a search term into the search box, Flock actually uses AJAX to give you suggestions and the approximate number of results. Nice! I Like!

Tags: SocialMedia, Flock, Web Browser, FireFox, Web 2.0, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, GMail, AJAX, Technorati, YouTube

If you're a bit of a social media freak, and want to keep the same username for all your accounts, or you simply want to know if someone else is using your username on another site, you need to use http://www.usernamecheck.com/

Just discovered an article at The Independent via dmhprior on twitter;

The Future Of Computing?

There's a revolution in the air. Literally. As we upload our lives into cyberspace, we're finally unleashing the true power of the internet. It's the sort of thing science fiction has been grappling with for decades and now it's coming true.

There's a scene some way into The Matrix in which Keanu Reeves wakes to find himself soaking in a bath of pink, primeval ooze, a USB jack plugged into the back of his head. He soon learns from Laurence Fishburne that the life he believes he's been living was a computer-generated mirage; that his memories, his friends, his office, were nothing but digital constructs.

The excerpt above is from an article in The Independent written by Tim Walker. The article reports on how the future of the computer and perhaps even the future of mankind lies in the realms of works of fiction such as the Matrix and numerous other films and books written over the last hundred or so years. The premise being that as mankind indulges more and more in Social Media such as Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, FriendFinder, MySpace, Blogs, and 12Seconds, we are uploading not only data and personal details but little bits of ourselves.

But with each tweet do we really plant a little bit of ourselves to run free on the web. Or are we just placing a bit of potentially useless data onto a hard drive that will one day be wiped clean. Its not like our tweets eventually get bored of sitting on the page and decide to pop off to Greggs for a pasty, and then gain some satisfaction from eating before subsequently feeling a little foolish at the sense of having greasy pastry lining its gut!

But i can see what the article is getting at, besides its not all that deep and futuristic. The main purpose of the article is actually to highlight the fact that Microsoft are developing the idea of using the Internet as a Huge Drive for storing data that can then be retreived wherever you are in the world. Thing is.... Some years ago we were all talking about the Gmail Drive Hack which allows you to use your Gmail account as a mass storage device.

That is all good as long as your web connection isnt down!