Online Observer

The new task for future best men

Martin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 13:22:22 +0000

Last Thursday one of my best fiends got married. In addition, to helping him and his new wife with some usual “best man” tasks I decided to take it a little step further. I decided that I would try to document various scenes from the day using my Canon A520 camera. The camera has a video option and is relatively light and easy to use.

The video scenes I filmed were between 30 seconds to 2 minutes long. I did not try to compete with the professional video guy or camera guy that were at the wedding, but did try to capture authentic moments that I felt would be cool to view later on.

After recovering from the wedding (I drank way to much!!!), I downloaded the video clips to my Picasa account and got a chance to look at them. The video scenes were awesome and definitely captured personal moments that the hired camera and video guys might have not scene or felt. In addition, the scene provided a sort of behind the scenes view that is usually forgotten about and not captured.

The next thing I did was download these scenes to my kyte.tv account. Kyte allows the user to download video scenes both live and stored and scale them among various social platforms and blogs. In addition, users can add music to their clips, live chat during live video feeds and several other options that to be honest I have not gotten a chance yet to try.

Here are a few examples:

So for all of you future best men, I would recommend you take some video footage of your friends wedding. The crazy memories will be online for you to remember and warn you of drinking too much at your next friends wedding

Polls Boutique Flips Consumer Generated Media

Martin — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:32:17 +0000

Consumer generated media (CGM) volume and awareness grew as a result of the web 2.0 movement. The CGM movement has provided companies the ability to understand and study consumer sentiment and opinions by monitoring online conversations that are taking place daily on online forums, blogs and social networks. The ability to understand the “what” and “why” behind consumer sentiment via consumer generated media is one of the major contributions of the web 2.0 period.

Today I encountered an interesting new website that takes the CGM concept and flips it back to the user community. What I mean by “flip” is that the website Polls Boutique (www.pollsb.com) allows the user not only to participate in onli1ne opinion expression via online poll participation, but in addition allows the user to create their own online poll and disperse it among the online community. Polls Boutique flips the poll experience by empowering users to create their own online polls and receive feedback (i.e preferences and opinion) from their online community peers.

Polls Boutique’s user interface is clean and easy to use. In a few minutes I was able to register and create an online poll.

The cool thing about this site is that anyone can create within minutes their own online poll and post it on their website, blog, or forum. The ability to embed these online polls in a short and easy process will definitely make Polls Boutique a favorite among CGM contributors (especially bloggers) around the web.

Whats going on with WordPress?

Martin — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 19:03:01 +0000

The past few days I have been having some problems with WordPress.

1. not able to embedd videos

2. not able to embedd pictures

If anyone else is having the same problem or knows the reason its occurring please send me an update.

Thanks

Gamers are spreading the love (screencasts) and hype of video games

Martin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:24:35 +0000

I remember reading about gamer screencasts in an article posted in techcrunch a few months ago. The article introduced a new gamer screencast web site called Wegame. The concept seemed cool and I thought to myself that finally gamers from around the globe have a new home to post their gaming videos, but other than that I did not see the added value in consumer generated gaming screencasts.
My opinion shifted this evening after viewing a GTA4 screencast that I happened to watch on digg.com.

Not only are some of these screencasts very entertaining (depending on the music the editor decided to use), but have a true marketing (or hype) value that can not be underestimated. I personally after watching this particular gaming moment had a sudden urge to go out and buy GTA4.

The ability of gamers to share video moments from a particular game combined with the ability to spread these videos via web 2.0 platforms has transformed these screencasts into marketing currency that any video game publisher would kill to attain.

online snowball causes misinformation regarding israel.com

Martin — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:33:37 +0000

Yesterday I reported that the domain name israel.com was sold for 5.88 million USD. Today I was contacted by a spokesperson on behalf of Moniker and notified that the domain name israel.com was not sold and is still on sale (please contact moniker.com for info).

What is interesting in this case is that I attained the story from a leading online news site in Israel and decided to post it in English and share it with my digg community. I guess that even sometimes leading online news sites get their facts wrong and must be checked by the blog community before spreading the news further into the web.

Domain name israel.com sold for 5.88 million USD

Martin — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 21:32:47 +0000

UPDATE: Israel.com was not sold.. please read updated post

The domain name israel.com sold for 5.88 million USD on May 29, 2008. The bidding price started at 5.55 million USD and lasted for a couple of days before closing at the above mentioned price. The domain auction was held by Moniker Online Services LLC which is a leading provider of domain name registration, management, and monetization services for individuals and businesses and is located in Pompano Beach, Florida.

Joel Friedman was identified as the owner of the domain name israel.com, but the identity of the domain purchaser is unknown. The site currently has tourist and history links dedicated to the state of Israel. Mr. Friedman purchased israel.com in 1994 and did not expect to receive a significant amount of money for it. He decided to place the domain for sale as a gesture of celebration in honor of Israel’s 60th birthday.

Trying to get on the “Jeff Pulver Party…Part II

Martin — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:30:20 +0000

After posting the previous blog post and submitting it to digg.com I was able to get a total of 23 diggs, which was not enough to get front page and possibly get Jeff Pulver’s attention!

But

I managed to get into the party @ about 12:30 pm (using an old special forces trick) and had a blast. The party was amazing with tons of eye candy and free booze. I personally went up to Jeff and thanked him… and hope maybe next time I will be able to get into the party in more conventional manner.

thanks to all the diggers that tried to get my post front page

Martin

Trying to get on the “Jeff Pulver Party@Galina TLV” guest list

Martin — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:55:03 +0000

Hi everyone !

I am going to make this short and to the point. Jeff Pulver is having a killer party at the Galina Bar in Tel-aviv and all of my friends except me and a buddy were not able to get on the guest list!

I have decided to try and use the power of the web 2.0 forces and ask my fellow diggers and online people of the globe to assist me in getting into this party….there is free beer involved…so please help.

How

please digg this story and call Jeff (if you know him… and ask him politely if he can add Martin and Ori to the guest list!

its 10 pm Israel time … so I need your help asap

Thank you in advance

Martin

p.s

send me any updates via twitter , martin1st2c

new iphone application for music lyrics

Martin — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 13:55:04 +0000

Tunewiki is an iphone application that allows users to download music lyrics on their iphone. The start-up launched in December 2007 and has raised an initial round of financing from Benchmark Capital (see full techcrunch article).

I have attached below a video demonstration of this new iphone application.

Tunewiki currently works on jailbroken iphones but from the growing popularity of the app they may going legit in the near future.

How to use Twitter

Martin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:14:13 +0000

I have been interested in the past few months about the micro-blogging application twitter. Here’s a cool “how to” video which explains how to use this micro-blogging application.

enjoy and please feel free to add me to your twitter friends

my twitter username is: http://twitter.com/martin1st2c