The new sharing economy - The next era of the social web | via Digital Ministry #infdist

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"Sharing is an industry thanks largely to new technology. And it's one that we still don't know much about BUT one that holds important implications and opportunities for marketers and business alike as we journey headlong towards a new era of the social web.

Not too long ago, we got eBay and Craigslist, more recently we haveCouchsurfer Airbnb, Free cycle, Zipcar and kickstarter. What do they have in common? They ask people to share in one way or another and are part of a growing trend where access to of goods and services trumps ownership.

In 2010, Latitude Research and Shareable Magazine conducted the first-ever comprehensive sharing industry study 'The New Sharing Economy 'to establish benchmarks for awareness and adoption of existing sharing services, as well as sharing attitudes and behaviours.

What they found was that:  

•75% of participants predicted that their offline sharing will increase in the next 5 years. 

•The most popular perceived benefits of sharing (67% each) were “saving money” and being “good for society,” 

•45% of participants liked the idea of sharing services that felt smaller and more accessible like local or grass root communities.

Download the report here

The rise of the new sharing economy

In her memorable TED Sydney keynote last year Rachel Botsman co-author ‘What's Mine is your's: The rise of Collaborative Consumption' outlined what has happened is that there has been a profound shift in the way we do business and how we consume goods and services, we have moved from a purely consumption based society to a new sharing economy. This combined with an economic crisis, environmental concerns, and the maturation of the social web, have given rise to an entirely new generation of businesses.

To put things in context take a look at the following figures:

•Bike sharing is the fastest growing form of transportation in the world which grew 200% in 2010

•Two billion dollar’s worth of goods & services were exchanged on Bartercard in 2009 world’s largest B2B business network 

Freecycle an online site that circulates items to reuse had 5.7 million members across 85 countries 

Couchsurfing a global website connects travellers with locals in more than 235 countries was most visited hospitality website in 2010 with over 3 million visits...."

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http://digitalministry.com/

Mind Control & the Internet by Sue Halpern | The New York Review of Books

Michael Chorost is a man who has benefited from a brain–computer interface, though the kind of BCI implanted in his head after he went deaf in 2001, a cochlear implant, was not inserted directly into his brain, but into each of his inner ears. The result, after a lifetime of first being hard of hearing and then shut in complete auditory solitude, as he recounted in his memoir, Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human (2005), was dramatic and life-changing. As his new, oddly jejune book, World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet, makes clear, he is now a cheerleader for the rest of us getting kitted out with our own, truly personal, in-brain computers. In Chorost’s ideal world, which he lays out with the unequivocal zeal of a convert, we will all be connected directly to the Internet via a neural implant, so that the Internet “would become seamlessly part of us, as natural and simple to use as our own hands.”

Smart Analysis from Maria Popova: In a new world of informational abundance, content curation is a new kind of authorship » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

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"Last week, Megan Garber wrote an excellent piece on whether Twitter is speech or text. Yet despite a number of insightful and timely points, I’d argue there is a fundamental flaw with the very dichotomy of the question. While Twitter can certainly be both, it’s inherently neither. And trying to classify it within one or both of these conventional checkboxes completely misses the point that we might, in fact, have to invent an entirely new checkbox.

I, of course, make no claim to using Twitter as it “should” be used. But here’s how I use it, and it works for me, fitting my workflow, intellectual curiosity, and creative process: I use it as an information discovery tool. So I follow a small number of “linkers” — people who share links to interesting content, often content outside my own comfort zone, in at least 90 percent of their tweets. I in turn share links in just about every single tweet of mine, with a few words that summarize the linked content or a comment on why I find it noteworthy. Neither transactional direction of this discovery economy is conversation in the sense that speech is — fluid, sequential, responsive. And it isn’t text, either: There might be text that prefaces the recommendation, but it is merely the frame for the message being transmitted and a pointer to the real “text” (text, image, video — any actual content), rather than its substance...."

Well Deserved! Canada's National Film Board at the digital forefront

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Excerpt:

"...A third interactive NFB production, the animated Bla Bla, recently inspired “major articles” in the French newspapers Le Monde and Liberation. That’s the beauty of the web: the NFB is getting as many hits internationally as it is in Canada for its productions.

“It’s interesting where it gets picked up, and how it gets picked up,” says Perlmutter.

The new technology is also allowing people to work together from different parts of the country. Dao is currently working with colleagues in Canmore, Alberta and Toronto on Bear 71, a project about a grizzly bear near Banff.

“The park service tracks bears, and they tracked this particular bear over years,” says Perlmutter. “So it has all this video footage. Being able to get hold of this footage, and being able to incorporate it in an interactive work, allows you to see what happens in terms of this human/animal wildlife interaction.”

“The co-creator [Leanne Allison] came to us with several million photos from Parks Canada, trail-cam photos,” says Dao.

“She’s working with Jeremy Mendes, who’s here — they work remotely, they’ve maybe met in person once over the last year. The other interactive designer and programmer is in Toronto, so our team is just spread out all over the country.”

The NFB has a relatively small budget — $65 million — but Perlmutter says it has been able to “find efficiencies internally” to be make the “massive investments” to go online and produce original digital content.

Perlmutter says the NFB has become a world leader in the digital domain, so much so that it’s partnering with a French network on one new project, and has a senior producer from NHK in Japan studying the way it does things.

Why? Because the quality of work is great, and people are actually watching it.

“On the interactive side in 2010 we reached over 1.2 million users, with just the first 30 interactive projects we’re doing in English and French content,” says Dao.

“This year alone, in the first five months we’re at a million users already, with just a couple of new projects added. That bodes well in terms of audiences.”

“It’s an article of faith,” says Perlmutter.

“We’ve got to make sure Canadian audiences have access to this, and are able to see it in some form for free. As we do now, by streaming.”

Welcome to Pine Point can be viewed at www.nfb.ca/pinepoint

Out My Windown is at www.nfb.ca/outmywindow

Bla Bla is at www.nfb.ca/blabla

The NFB website is: www.nfb.ca

jmackie@vancouversun.com

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Canada+National+Film+Board+digital+forefront/4927...

Simple! Doing fun things with two iPhones and YouTube’s 3D editor | The Sociable

Doing fun things with two iPhones and YouTube’s 3D editor

Here’s a quick one for you. Dublin based web and video development company Mad Dog Digital (Facebook | @maddog_dave) has created this short (19 seconds) 3D video using two iPhones, taped together, and YouTube’s 3D video editor.

The 3D video editor is one of the under used features on YouTube, probably because of the effort involved in recording two videos at the same time and then processing them online.

3d video

If you are doing this yourself YouTube recommends that you “Place both video cameras side-by-side (against each other, or even attached if possible), and start recording at the same time.”

Great Opportunity! $10,000 Storytelling Project Competition -FITC Storytelling X.1 Submit by June 13!

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FITC along with its partners in the Ontario Long-form Interactive Narrative Initiative (INI) is pleased to present the Storytelling Project Competition that will provide a maximum of $10,000 in contributions towards the development of no less than two Ontario-based long-form interactive narrative projects–up to the point where they are ready for production financing. This competition is a part of the Storytelling X.1 event

This Storytelling Project Competition is intended to seed the development of individuals or companies to create new long-form interactive narrative projects and to provide opportunities for emerging writers, producers, designers, and producers to develop their interactive narrative ideas and establish financial strategies for producing their projects.

Projects supported through the Storytelling Project Competition will receive cash contributions of no more than $5,000 per project, based on a negotiated schedule, between the time the contribution is agreed to and August 30, 2011.

Objectives

FITC will provide cash contributions to seed the development of long-form interactive narrative projects.

The goal of the Storytelling Project Competition is to get a couple of long-from interactive narrative projects through the first phase of development. This means that the projects will get to the point where they are beyond the conceptual phases with a demonstrable path to market and/or monetization.