Linking to comments

networks No Responses »
Jun 302010

Earlier this evening I was reading on Mark Rayner’s blog about a new version of Rock-Paper-Scissors with 5 elements – monkey, pirate, ninja, zombie, robot.

I always read the blog comments and have often been justly rewarded for this effort, as I was today. Far down the page, a poster called HB invents his own 5 element game – Rock-Paper-Scissors-Steak-UriGeller.

Rock-Paper-Scissors-Steak-UriGeller is hilarious. Go and read it yourself and you will laugh. I want to share it with my friends on Twitter and on Facebook. This isn’t the first time recently I’ve wanted to link to a blog comment or a post on a bulletin board, so I’ve been linking to the URL and then giving instructions for finding the right post (similar to what I’ve done above).

What I want to do is link directly to the comment itself, but I don’t know how to do that, unless I can edit the page the post is on, which is not the case for most of the pages on the web. It is inconceivable that there isn’t a way to do this.

Weirdly I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone send me a link to a particular comment in this way. It’s as though you’re either part of the comment conversation, or you’re not. People tell their friends about the article, but rarely one or more of the comments. Which is weird, given how good some comments are.

What is also missing is a convention for doing this kind of linking, so that you could type something like “>HB” after your link to indicate that you were really recommending the comment by HB, rather than (or as well as) the entire article.

Actually I don’t believe there isn’t such a convention already. There must be, and it was invented in 1998 and I just still haven’t heard of it.

Posted by dee harvey at 8:16 pm

Sharing videos privately

networks, video No Responses »
Jun 232010

The New York Times has an article about A Site for the Videos You Don’t Want Everyone to See. The site is called VidMe, and the idea is that you can use it to share videos with the people you know and love rather than with the entire world, as is normally the case with video sharing sites.

Well actually it is normally the case that video shared online is shared with people you know and love, the entire world is vanishingly unlikely to be watching clips of your family picnic along with your Ma and Da. But they could, should they choose, and that might matter.

In the comments on the NYT article the objections to this service seem to mainly be
1 that it is not possible to make anything on the web truly private
2 that you already can limit who can view videos using existing video sharing sites

Objection 1 is a well-rehearsed argument about online privacy being a pointless endeavour. I disagree with it, but that’s not really what interests me here.

One of the sites mentioned in support of Objection 2 is SmugMug. Now you may very well be able to upload private video to SmugMug, but what it promises is that “You Look Better Here”.

Compare this to VidMe and its question “Tired of sharing everything with everyone?”.

SmugMug’s upfront offer is:

  • Unlimited photos
  • No ads or spam
  • Gorgeous galleries
  • Stunning HD video

VidMe’s is:

  • Privately share videos with only those you want
  • Always see who has access to each of your videos
  • Easily remove anyone’s access to any video instantly
  • Take control of your online sharing

As Clay Shirky would have it, these services are making different, in fact contradictory, promises – the first is promising to make your media look professional and slick (presumably in order to impress people) and the second is offering to hide your media from all but the people you choose to share it with (presumably to communicate with people you know).

You could post video online before YouTube promised to let you “Broadcast yourself”. The fact that is has long been possible to restrict viewing of your videos doesn’t mean that it isn’t important when someone thinks it’s worth launching a service based specifically around doing that.

This is a service offering (a clunky and inconvenient) way to use video not to broadcast yourself but to talk to your friends. Few enough of existing video sharing sites are about that. The idea of broadcasting yourself has become the main way of conceiving of online video, even personal video. This is different.

Posted by dee harvey at 8:21 pm

A Woman’s Instinct is Always Right

networks No Responses »
Jun 162010

A lot of claims are made for the usefulness and trustworthiness of female intuition (whatever that might be). I was recently party to an online conversation where someone claimed that a woman’s first instinct was always right.

It’s such an extraordinary thing to think, never mind say, but what has really started to obsess me slightly is the idea of living it.

What would a (female, presumably) life look like if you behaved as though your first instinct was always right?

Who would your friends be (if anyone)? What job would you do? In fact, never mind a job, would you ever be able to get anything done?

Maybe I’m wrong to equate “instinct” with “first thing that pops into your head”.

Posted by dee harvey at 7:23 pm
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