The BBC is inviting you to ‘remix’ interviews with technology innovators, including Maholo’s Jason Calacanis, as the second edition of their R&D TV show goes live.
Created by BBC Backstage, the Corporation’s developer network, R&D TV is the first step in allowing viewers to legally re-edit professionally-produced footage into new forms.
BBC Backstage are hoping that this episode will prove more popular than the previous one, which resulted in only one video mashup from the public. The problem here is that while the video may be interesting to some people (readers of TheNextWeb will probably enjoy it without re-editing it) it’s not something that cries out to be reworked.
R&D TV is an innovative idea, but one that comes from a department at the BBC that’s a little like Morgan Freeman’s character in Batman Begins. They’re working on great projects, but not always with a great deal of support from the wider corporation.
Speaking at the June meeting of Manchester’s Social Media Cafe on Tuesday, BBC Backstage Senior Producer Ian Forrester discussed the project in detail. Many attendees asked why they hadn’t put a popular show like The Apprentice online for remixing. Sadly, there’s little chance of that as licensing deals mean that everything from music to many of the staff on the show would need to be paid for again.
Part of the problem is that some of the BBC’s TV producers and management aren’t keen on the idea of throwing footage out to the public to use as they please. Until there’s a culture shift within mainstream media, projects like R&D TV will remain nothing more than quirky side-projects.
This is a shame. Artists like Cassette Boy are showing that people will remix TV footage whether you let them or not; just see his Apprentice reworking for proof of that. The sooner the TV industry embraces this idea the better. This kind of cut-up TV art would make great promotional material for the show itself, not to mention brilliant training material for rookie video editors.
In the meantime, you can get hold of R&D TVhere. The footage is available in a variety of formats and can be used in any non-commercial project.
MTV has announced a fresh take on their old Total Request Live format that incorporates a heavy reliance on Social Media for audience interaction. The youth TV giant has engaged in formal partnerships with Twitter and Facebook for It’s On with Alexa Chung.
The host, who is well known in the UK as a former model-turned-presenter, is making her American debut in a show that will use Twitter on-screen to encourage the audience to get involved. Content from Facebook and Youtube will also be integral to the format.
What’s striking is that MTV’s partnership with Facebook involves a revenue-sharing deal that the Twitter deal doesn’t. Cnet reports that the Facebook deal includes selling “sponsorship packages that encompass both TV spots and social-media ads”. The Twitter deal sees Twitter building a back-end for MTV to use without any money changing hands.
Now, you could argue that as Twitter is still ‘pre-revenue’ they’re more interested in building their reputation in the broadcast media business at the moment. That’s probably the case; after all this is the second Twitter-based TV show that’s come to light this week. Still, it must hurt Ev, Biz and co. a little to see Facebook brokering a sweet deal while they work for free.
It’s On with Alexa Chung launches on MTV in the USA on June 15th.
Get the popcorn and let’s watch the battle. The court battle, that is, because The Pirate Bay (should I put the link to their site or not?) was finally dragged to the court this Monday by the Swedish authorities, The Guardian says.
The Pirate Bay is the most known torrent (BitTorrent) tracker out there (over one million of them and 22 million users). As we all know, many of these torrents are illegal because it allows to download free software/music/games for which you would otherwise have to pay.
The Pirate Bay doesn’t host any of these free media but it indexes (like Google does) the torrents which tracks to these media. It indexes also legally downloadable media (again, like Google does).
The lawsuit is led by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and they are claiming 100 million dollars in damage. The founders of The Pirate Bay – Fredik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi – could face two years in prison. But that’s not all. The dotcom millionaire Carl Lundström, one of the donors of The Pirate Bay, is also charged.
The Swedish police and the US government wanted repeteadly to shut down the service but without much success.
Could this trial be the end on The Pirate Bay, at last?
UPDATE
According to TorrentFreak 50% of the charges against The Pirate Bay were dropped in the second day of the trial. Fredrik Neij, one of the founders, said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.
So, the prosecutor had o drop all charges relating to “assisting copyright infringement”, so the remaining charges are simply ‘assisting making available’. “Everything related to reproduction will be removed from the claim,” he said.
It’s always painful to read about job cuts at U.S. newspapers. But the news became even more painful when I spotted mashup Paper Cuts. This mashup shows how many layoffs and buyouts U.S. newspapers have to suffer from. According to Paper Cuts more than 13.748 people in the newspaper industry lost their job in 2008. And new layoffs and buyouts are reported almost every week…
When will we see foldable e-paper on the street? Will advanced algorithms and Internet eventually put publishers out of business? – Nobody knows… But we do witness a devastating momentum for traditional publishers, how can these companies reinvent themselves? Are they doomed?
Chosun media, showing off newspaper 2.0
Doomed? Not by a long shot! at least, if we have to believe the marketing manager of Chosun. Chosun is a Korean newspaper giant, based in the heart of Seoul. I have to admit, I never heard of the company before I visited them today. But like many unknown Asian companies, Chosun is a prominent player with amazing proportions, newspaper circulation surpasses that of well-known newspapers like the USA today. The marketing manager believes that businesspeople will always appreciate an edited and selected overview on the daily hot topics. And if it isn’t on paper, it would be on a different medium. And as much as I like to argue the contrary, he might have a point. Financial Times recently announced that their amount of online (paying) subscribers is increasing fast. We got a tour at the HQ, and they actually got excited of the Nintendo Wii again! (has been a long time)
Epic 2015
But if you ask me; newspaper publishers are biased towards their believe that a good paper requires manual work, something that will seize to exist in the future. This three-year-old videoclip made by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson try to sketch that situation. Skip to 6:40:
Hey you, new review service Blippr asks you something:
Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gosh, it’s really annoying I can’t organize all the media I’ve encountered over my brief years on this little planet known as Earth…”?
I know I did, I even started a blog once to write short reviews about all the cultural stuff I had done. After three reviews, the blog died a silent dead. Now the time has come for me to reconsider whether I want to organize my media or not. This time with an awfully-named new service.
Blippr has another advantage compared to the blog, since it also allows users to recommend each other new music, films and other types of media by either writing short reviews or rating them. ‘Not another social network!’, I hear you say, and it’s exactly what I thought. But the founders of Blippr claim that it will function within the context of your social network. You know the deal: Facebook apps and all.
However, we’ll have to wait a while, since the service is still in private beta. They’ll launch the sharing tools when they go in to a public beta. It will look something like this:
I must admit, I’m writing this article on the basis of their well-designed tour. I’ll definitely give it a shot when it’s in public beta, so I can start organizing my media again. They offer me three lists:
My sphere: every time I ‘blip’ – or dig for that matter – something, it goes on this list. So this is basically my archive.
My queue: Paul David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, will love this, since it’s a list to keep track of media you want to see, hear or read in the near future.
Wish list (or: Blippr’s money machine): show Blippr the money! Their business model is of course generating money through sending people to Amazon to buy all the media their friends recommend. I can put the stuff I want to buy on this list, which makes it also a useful list for my friends during the holiday season.
One thing though, my friends have to be on Blippr then. That’s the danger of starting a service like this, it only gets interesting as soon as the people you like are on it as well. My advice for the guys of Blippr, you’d better start thinking about how you gonna make this service at least as viral as NotchUp.
The title of this blog is ‘The Next Web’. We are constantly looking for events, technology, services and people who are changing the web. In a way, we are trying to predict the future so you can take advantage of that. And of-course we are not the only ones doing this.
Deloitte, a company that offers services in audit, tax, consulting and financial advisory, is also interested in the future of technology. But instead of just reading this blog they have invited the public to help them.
They are hosting a Dutch predictions event in association with Fast50.nl which will take place on February 13, 2008. During this event, Deloitte presents its vision on the Telecom, Media, and Technology market for 2008.
Prior to the event, everyone is invited to participate in a discussion on these predictions on the weblog www.dutchpredictions.nl. The input from this blog discussion will be an important driver for the event on February 13.
It will be interesting to see what will be the result of all these user generated predictions. If valuable information comes to light I’m sure we will see similar events in the other 139 countries where Deloitte is based.
Written on 5th June 2009
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The BBC is inviting you to ‘remix’ interviews with technology innovators, including Maholo’s Jason Calacanis, as the second edition of their R&D TV show goes live.
MTV has announced a fresh take on their old Total Request Live format that incorporates a heavy reliance on Social Media for audience interaction. The youth TV giant has engaged in formal partnerships with Twitter and Facebook for It’s On with Alexa Chung.
Written on 17th February 2009
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![the grand tour: discover - blippr [beta]](http://img.skitch.com/20080225-nkjhespij1anfxc9mwpxgjfp4a.jpg "Blippr: finally an easy way to organize your media Photo")
Written on 24th January 2008
The title of this blog is ‘The Next Web’. We are constantly looking for events, technology, services and people who are changing the web. In a way, we are trying to predict the future so you can take advantage of that. And of-course we are not the only ones doing this.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
