Ok, we know, we’ve been pretty quiet lately in the megaphone social broadcasting about ourselves sense that is. We’ve been hard at work on a new video series that’s set to launch with GOOD and Ford called “Reinventing the Outdoors” which we’re really proud of. It’s been a ton of work, and in the coming week we’ll be posting the stuff.

So that said, we’re gearing up for a little European holiday/meet the creators tour. I’m going to be doing my best Chev Chase, while trying to stay out of trouble.

We’ll be in the following spots, and we’re looking to connect with creators, be you a blogger, a digital enthusiast, what have you in every city.

Tel Aviv
Jerusalem
Budapest
Berlin
Istanbul
Amsterdam
London
Belgrade

STAND UP!!! Dates to come, looking forward to buying ya’ll a round of drinks. If anybody has recommendations for good pub type spots, please feel free to ping me direct.

These days we’re all pretty aware of how to get news online. There are so many information streams and so much content being created that you literally can’t even avoid it. It’s a huge mess really. Media mogul, Rupert Murdoch wants to tame this current media blizzard with a simple, elegant iPad app called The Daily. The title says it all. It’s a self-updating, fully interactive, daily publication complete with articles, videos and images that aims to set a new standard for media consumption. Here’s what Mr. Murdoch had to say:

“New times demand new journalism. (It is the) Best of traditional journalism combined with the best of contemporary technology. 360-degree photographs. Images that respond to the touch. The iPad demands that we completely re-imagine our craft.”

I’m sure this is the direction we’re headed in, but I don’t see this app becoming widespread just yet. Why? Most people don’t have iPads. The risk here is that sometimes you release a great product with the best of intentions, just that it’s too soon for the rest of the world. We’ve been rocking newspapers for millennia now. They had them in ancient Rome and China. So yeah, it’s going to take a while to evolve. Still, it takes bold moves to make changes and The Daily could be a powerful spark for this transition in news delivery. We must give it some time.

via PSFK

Whether you like him or not, Daniel Tosh is turning into a face for the YouTube generation. It’s all thanks to his show Tosh.0, which riffs on the dumbest viral and buzzworthy web videos out there. It’s the stuff we all watch because we don’t want to fall behind on our quick-changing pop culture references. Daniel Tosh knows we all watch this stuff and that’s why his show now has it’s own blog too, featuring funny content relevant to his show.

As the audience grows for the Tosh.0 blog, it allows the show and blog to feed off each other – which should unearth some opportunities for clever interplay between the two entities. Imagine blog updates to check out during Tosh.0 commercial breaks for instance. Who doesn’t have their laptop or iPad out while they watch TV these days? I imagine Tosh will comment on blog happenings each week. If so, it could make people want to drop more post comments at the chance of getting mentioned on the show. What if the show rolls over onto the blog after it ends on TV? Whatever happens, this move should help reveal new ways to tighten the web connecting television and relevant areas of new media – especially the YouTube community.

Vimeo Tutorial: Tripods from Casey Donahue on Vimeo.

On July 24th around 80,000 people participated in YouTube’s “Life in a Day” project. The idea was to get people to capture their day on video and upload the footage to a special YouTube channel to be worked into a feature film. At the helm is producer Ridley Scott and director Kevin MacDonald who are reviewing the videos and hoping to put something interesting together for the scheduled premiere at Sundance 2011. In the mean time, the submissions are being added to the brand new interactive gallery on the YouTube channel. Take a moment to explore the orb of videos. It’s not the most amazing display, but I like that YouTube is exploring different experiences for navigating through content.

Check it out here.

Indie band Arcade of Fire released a music video for “We Used to Wait” from their new album “The Suburbs.” Writer/director Chris Milk and Aaron Koblin from Google teamed up to create an interactive, personalized and experimental video using Google Chrome and Google Maps to support the HTML5 database. The video was posted today on the Official Google Blog which gives more details on how exactly the video was made etc. The video is meant to take you down the streets of memory lane of where you grew up. To start, first you have to download Google Chrome onto your computer. Once you do that, go to “The Wilderness Downtown” page, then type in your childhood home address or any address that has enough footage for Google Maps to recognize. Once the music video begins, multiple browsers open up showing different videos of the address you typed in as part of the music video. I tried typing in the address of my hometown on Kauai, Hi but there’s not enough footage to make the video interesting… just a bunch of trees. Try something that has landmarks that you can recognize easily. It makes the video more interesting to view that way.

Remember LonelyGirl15? YouTube’s 5th birthday was last week and I’ve finally gotten around to watching the “YouTube Stories” series they produced– 2 minute interviews with select creators about their successes with the medium. The stories, and this interview with the director, contain interesting little insights about creating for YouTube that are worth checking out–

What kinds of techniques do you use to make these videos look so good and feel emotional?
When we all make YouTube videos, we’re creating for a screen size of about 630 by 350 pixels, so go in close. Use eyes, use foreheads, look at the way people move their mouths when they talk…all that says a lot, beyond just the words. Use that emotional power of the face to amplify what they are saying. Shoot as close to the face as possible, because we’re trained by thousand of years of evolution to respond to those movements of the face. And don’t forget hands, which can speak in the opposite way…or in sync…and reveal much. In the end, we want viewers to feel they’ve had a chance to meet these subjects over a cheeseburger or a beer and really feel them viscerally.

What is something about YouTube users you didn’t know before you started this project?
What I didn’t fully understand was how much the content creators have given their lives over to communicating with others. They’ve found their mission. Sharing their talent or passion with the world. Despite realities of family obligations, old jobs, the need to learn a bit more about technology, the people who shine come through because of sheer passion and faith. They believe that what they are doing on YouTube will change the world, and the effort that belief inspires in them usually gets to a positive outcome.

– Inside the Making Of “My YouTube Story,” interview with documentary filmmaker Stephen Higgins

The story behind LonelyGirl15

Roger Ebert made a sober, slightly disconnected argument about interactive games not fitting into the most basic criteria for art (in response to game-creator Kellee Santiago’s TED talk about how games were in the initial phase of evolution into a great art form). Then, the internet collapsed under a title wave of (mostly) angry comments, one-sided debate and allegations of chinless-ness.

I’m more inclined to side with Santiago, over Ebert, because I was raised in new media, and my definition of art is expansive enough to include cultural expression of teams of interactive developers. That said, I still believe Ebert is one of America’s great public intellectuals, partly due to his tenacity in staying alive, but mostly do to his ability to translate very serious film criticism into a very approachable context for the average, non-cineaste cinema-goer.

So, that got me wondering who the most major video-game critic out there is, capable of rendering a serious understanding of the nuances of game criticism into a format which I cold appreciate. I’ve tried reading the work of @davidwolinsky and @johnteti, who both write for the AV Club, but I haven’t really been hooked into it.

How long will it take until there are major, public video game critics, able to guide us gaming phillistines through the murky waters of gaming to this ish that actually matters? And if they are out there already, can someone please tell me where?