During Tonight’s Colbert Report, host and Real American Hero™ Stephen Colbert called upon his Nation of followers to flood Urban Dictionary with the true definition of the term “Canada’s History”.
You see, nearly 100-yr-old vaunted Canadian cultural and historical periodical, “The Beaver”, was recently forced to change its name because of popular euphemisms which I won’t bother attempting to explain here, because if you don’t know you’ve been living under a rock or you’re over 55.
So, to correct this injustice and teach Canadian’s to never back down in the face of silly double entendres, Stephen posited what will forever be the magazine’s lament – the absolute truest definition of the term “Canada’s History” as it stands in Real America.
“Canada’s history: A depraved American sexual act involving moose antlers, maple syrup, and the Stanley Cup.”
I am a prolific social media user. As a man who engages in the space for business and for pleasure, I thought I might share how I do my internetting, aka, how I propagate and build my personal brand across multiple platforms.
Now, as some of you, especially ping.fm users, are reading this, you might ask yourselves, “why doesn’t he just use one service to populate everything?” Well, the answer is simple: each service has different needs. They all have different audiences, and they (typically) each separately require unique approaches and handling.
Those few personal brands who work in the social space who have large, entrenched followings can afford to “broadcast” to otherwise “narrowcast”outlets (by that I mean they can send one identical content item/link/status to many different services, allowing their following to engage with what’s shared in the space of their choosing). But I think this is a less effective approach, and can be overly redundant. On the other hand, it does reach users in their preferred realm(s).
Well, I’m no Pirillo or Scoble as yet… but, as I said, while I’m trying to present a uniform message, or personal brand, I realize that each venue, each niche, needs to be handled in its own unique way – personalizing the personal brand, if you will. A web juggernaut like Pirillo might not need to do that, but as I am building my brand (something I can do for any brand, hint hint), I know I need that more niche-tailored approach.
I’m a regular reader of Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily. I think her blog is a pretty decent way of keeping tabs on all things business of Hollywood. Sure, she has some detractors, and “TOLDJA” (which she is trying to trademark) gets pretty annoying, but she tends to have really great items on a daily basis.
So, this little item from yesterday about how she’s been getting bombarded by folks with links to YouTube user Jaron Pitts’s superbly fan-made Green Lantern and Technotise movie trailers caught my eye for a particularly noteworthy reason, in terms of copyright and infringement issues. Before I dive in to that, though, first, the Technotise trailer he cut so you know what I’m talking about:
Basically, Pitts has assembled a trailer almost entirely out of infringing content from all kinds of sources (just as he did for the Green Lantern fake). Sure, he’s doing it as a fan and we could get in to issues of participatory culture and the work of Henry Jenkins and why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing (and we all know I’d be a hypocrite to call him out for it myself… ahem) but what is REALLY interesting isn’t so much that Pitts is doing the infringing, but rather for WHOM Pitts is doing it. More after the jump.
So, I’m at this house party last night. Nothing fancy. Bunch of singles playing games and goofing off. I felt too old to be there.
Anyway, as I’m leaving there’s this really attractive girl sitting on the couch looking at “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. Immediately, I’m thinking to myself, “win win win win win”. So, I lean over and say to her, “You like Douglas Adams?”
And she says, “Oh, it was just sitting here. I was looking at the first little bit.”
I’m like, “That’s cool. It’s really funny. Smart funny.” She hits me back with a bit of a blank stare. I explain, “It’s kinda comedy for the Doctor Who set.”
“The what?”
You know that moment when you realize you’re talking to maybe the wrong person? I mean, she was totally good-looking, totally friendly, and… completely unaware of what on Earth I was talking about. We’ve all been there – that ferocious little moment where your hormones and your brain cells cordially shake hands, turn their backs one to another, walk ten paces, immediately turn about face, aim aaaaaaand Fire! This time, my hormones took the bullet.
Anyway, she’s still looking at me, puzzled and waiting for the “what”.
Considering the profound global success of James Cameron’s Avatar, as well as the hype surrounding practical 3-D television at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the growing frenzy surrounding the current 3-D craze has got me thinking about the future of cinema and immersive entertainment yet again. Now, we’re no where near seeing holographic, pliant, lifelike simulations like the one illustrated in the clip above – in fact, in our lifetimes we’re more likely to see something like a real starship Enterprise constructed before we ever see its famous Holodeck – but, for all the commotion surrounding 3D, well, it has got me looking at some new entertainment ventures that are edging us closer to true, fully immersive digital entertainment. Read the rest of this entry »
Canon, with their 5D MkII and 7D DSLR cameras, (not to mention a host of other traditional still-photography camera manufacturers like Nikon), has slowly been making waves in the camcorder market for the last few years. The disruptive technology found within many modern DSLR’s through their video modes is the primary reason traditional camcorder manufacturers like Sony have to sweat. Video DSLR takes impressive advantage of the large image sensors traditionally used to make high-quality still images by applying these same sensors’ capabilities to video capture. Nowadays, models like the 5D are really stretching the definition of what constitutes a video/film capture methodology. It’s without question that the HD video capabilities of top-of-the-line DSLRs are going from novelty “extra feature” to becoming the primary purpose and use of the device for many production companies and hobbyists alike.
Clay Shirky’s 2008 book, “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” is not a book – it’s a love letter, a tome to the power of social media (albeit a far and balanced one). Subsequently, the following “review” (for lack of a better word) is a love letter in return, from me to Shirky. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is a Web version of a white paper (pdf here, embeddable Slideshare document here) I prepared for Anita Crofts’ Emerging Markets in Digital Media Fall 2009 course in the University of Washington’s Master of Communication in Digital Media program. The paper, entitled “The Emerging Market for Pocketmedia Storytelling in the Developing World” (and accompanying slide presentation, embedded at top) was delivered 5 December 2009, in the Communications Building at the University of Washington.
Hi, I'm Matthew Stringer and this is my blog. I'm a New Media Producer and Social Media Specialist, focusing on generating and curating content. This blog is about (just insert buzz word here) media. Like, digital, social, Web, new, multi-, interactive, mass, convergent, emergent, ad nausea. Plus, occasional musings on old media - film, TV, print, news and pop culture.
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