I enjoyed reading Wayne MacPhail's article on rabble.ca today about how easy video is to get online using tools from startups like ooVoo and Utterz (both are in public beta). Wayne describes how he and co-host Roz Allen prepared to produce a live rabbletv program from Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation. While walking with their equipment down the street, Wayne used his cell phone to shoot a short video clip to let viewers waiting for the show on rabble know they were on their way. Within minutes, the video was viewable worldwide.

Recently, I've been looking at a service called qik, which lets you stream live video from a cell phone. qik is in public alpha testing right now, so only certain Nokia models are supported, and you need to have an unlimited data plan from your wireless carrier due to the high bandwidth requirements. Other manufacturers' handsets will expected to be supported later this year. Imagine having a tiny broadcasting platform with you every time you carry a cell phone!

As Wayne notes in his rabble article,

It's important to pay attention to this shift and to adapt to it early. Large corporations and mainstream media outlets will be slow to catch on to the shift of video from broadcast to conversation. All too often they're interested in using online tools to get out their own messages, and control their own spin. Groups that let the audience turn the cameras on themselves and help amplify the diverse voices around them will be early winners.

I added an Utterz widget to this page this morning. It's in the rightmost sidebar, and right now it just has a short (but in-depth) investigative feature about my blue pen. I hope you enjoy it. :)

Sometime in mid-1993, CBC Primetime News reporter Bill Cameron did a fairly detailed six-minute report on "Internet," the then-new collection of independent computer networks that were connecting people all over the world. As anchor Peter Mansbridge notes in his intro to the piece, if you had a computer and a phone (and about $200.00 a year), you could be part of "Internet" in your rec room.

The piece actually holds up well. Cameron's comments are a bit hyperventilated at times, but when you consider how new the whole concept was in 1993, they're justifiable. The interesting thing to me is the strong sense of detachment I had watching this ancient (as Internet time is reckoned) video; these people look like me, they sound like me, but I'm not really like them anymore, because of how pervasive the Internet (somewhere along the line we added the definite article to "Internet" and kept it) is in most people's lives today. We don't think about it anymore than we do the radio in our car, the television in our living room, or the water coming out of our taps. The Internet is an essential utility.

The short segment explaining emoticons made me laugh a bit. :D  Emoticons have taken a lot of grief over the years, but they're still a quick and effective way of getting the intent of an email phrase or IM comment across. Cameron's summary of "Internet" as "pure, clear, free, unregulated communication" also seems like a phrase from a distant, more innocent era, though the various governments (including Canada and the U.S.) that have attempted to regulate the Internet, and continue to do so, were already working on restrictions by the time the piece aired on CBC in 1993.

Although the piece doesn't have a specific date mentioned, Cameron talks about the release of information from an Ontario murder trial against a court order, so it's likely summer or fall 1993. The prosecution and trials of serial killers Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo had begun that summer, and information about them was restricted by a publication ban issued by an Ontario court. Bill Cameron died in 2005 after fighting cancer for a year. Peter Mansbridge is still the anchor of CBC's evening news program The National, a post he's held for 20 years.

UPDATE: This clip is also on the CBC's website, and the airdate is identified as October 8, 1993.

Word is that MTV is going to put this video at the top of the TRL playlist.

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