Yesterday I received my Beta invite for Spock, a new personal search site that claims to offer a smarter alternative to searching for people than through regular search engines like Google.

Tim O’Reilly recently posted a very comprehensive blog entry, “Why I’m so Excited about Spock”, marveling at the ability to gather information on people from Wikipedia and social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. Spock also lets users contribute to the results area for people found through search. You can add tags of your own, vote existing tags up or down to strengthen the associations between people and topics. You can also identify relationships between people (friend, co-worker, etc.), upload pictures, and provide other types of information.

In theory, this sounds lovely. Sites like Zoom Info and Freebase don’t have these kind of features, and although the concept of users collectively contributing information on individuals was already pioneered by Wikipedia, you can’t search for “drug-related death” and find results that are as current as what you find in Spock. As people add, remove, and modify tags on celebrities and everyday people, (in theory) the more detailed and (hopefully) factual search results will be.

In theory. Like any Beta, there is still some work to do. Take my experience, for example.

Once I am logged in, if I click on my name the results are the following:

Hmm. I don’t seem to exist anywhere. However, if you search for me in Google, I believe the first thing that appears is my IMDB profile, my blog, a byline from MTV News, and my Friendster profile.

However, if you search for me in the search box, this is what appears:

My Friendster profile is displayed, but that is all. Not only that, it lists my age as 26 which is WRONG. hmph. Your profile results and search results should at least be in sync.

I tried searching for my mentor Angela Morgenstern. She is a well documented producer/strategist/visionary for both on air and digital, and if you do a Google search on her about a million things surface (ok not that much, but you get the idea). I was confident that her various keynote appearances, interviews, company profile pages, etc. would be displayed. Wrong.

The only thing that appeared was her LinkedIn profile, along with her gender and location (not correct).

So, the ideas behind Spock seem practical, in that it would be nice if I was a student wanting accurate information on a politician, celebrity, or historical figure… But how do I feel about random people adding tags for me? I may be able to modify them, but how often am I really going to be checking on that? Will Spock notify me when people modify the details of my search results? The idea of having to constantly correct the inaccuracies of my online presence seems tiring and annoying.

And now that I think of it, the functionality behind Spock seems like something any major search engine should already be offering. Why should comments I made in message boards in 1998 surface before something from this year?

I just put up producer Conor Bezane’s package on Leslie Feist, known to many for her contribution to Broken Social Scene. Click the image to check it out - I think it’s definitely worth watching, and if you are a fan of Patrick Daughters we’ve also included several of his videos. His collaboration with Feist on “1234″ is pretty amazing (see fans gush) - the entire video was shot in a single take.

If you like what you see, you might want to give a listen to her third and latest album, The Reminder.

On the subway ride home last night, I was staring at everybody’s ugly exposed pale feet (an unfortunate side effect of warmer NYC weather) and thinking about online video, close captioning/subtitles, and globalization.

-feet are gross

“Nerd!” “Trekkie!” “Feet Hater!” You may be shouting at your monitor, well whatevs bub. Hear me out.

ps: I know I said I wasn’t going to write in here anymore this week, but I’m at work early and well, deal with it.

Podzinger claims that it is unleashing the content within audio and video, and it is…. But for now, only from the tip of the online video iceberg. Currently, they are (correct me if I am wrong but I’m probably not) only successfully transcribing/providing click points within video/audio for English language content. Podzinger was beefing up their Spanish search/transcription capability, but as of today it’s really not that useful.

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AlwaysOn has been posting lists of up-and-coming entertainment execs who really “get” technology.

It’s pretty, what I like to call “Frenchy”, in that their professional profiles also include their ages. I guess when you are part of the transparent scene, there’s no need to be shy.

So far they have only listed two women: Beth Comstock - President, Integrated Media, NBC Universal and Stefanie Henning - Senior Vice President, Global Marketing and New Media, Fox Television Studios.

Two is better than none! Go Ladies!

You can also check out archived video panel of “IT List” winners from last week’s OnHollywood conference. Panelists discussed what to expect in the next phase of digital entertainment. In the related poll asking where will tomorrow’s entertainment execs come from, over 50% answered Silicon Valley….

—–Original Message—–
From: Joost Support [mailto:support@bounces.joost.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 11:31 AM
To: Capistrano, Daniela
Subject: Now you can invite all your friends to Joost

Hello Daniela,

We hope you’re enjoying your Joost experience.

We’d like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta - Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost.

To access your invites, log onto Joost, go to My Joost and fill in your friends’ details in the Invite Friends widget box.

If you’re running out of friends, you can make new ones by letting people know you’ve got invites. To help with this, we’ve made a few goodies especially for you, which you can find at http://www.joost.com/share/goodies.html.

Last but not least, we invite you to enjoy the variety of new shows we’re introducing each week. This week will bring you a host of over 40 new channels in the US including Adult Swim, five new channels from National Geographic, new channels like Spike TV from Viacom, great comedy from Heavy, and classic series from Hasbro such as The Transformers. And that’s just the beginning.

Each week we’ll launch new channels - making sure you can watch what you want, when you want. So stay tuned…

If you’ve got any questions, feel free to check out our forum http://www.joost.com/forums, and don’t forget to send us feedback on what you like and things we could improve.

Enjoy, and see you on Joost!

The Joost Team
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am awful, I know. I promised Joost invites and then life took over and I never replied back to the 5-10 or so that asked for some. Now I have no excuse, so, hit me up with First/Last name to use and email and I will send you one by the end of this weekend.

WARNING: If requests exceed…. 20, I reserve the right to send the rest later next week.

Oh. My. God. Sistas In The Pit’s Ieela Grant left a comment on my blog entry praising Girl Drummers.

I rarely indulge in dorky fan spazz-outs so, deal with it.




Click the pic to watch Matt’s footage!

“The Sistas in Denver on April 17, 2007, at the Fillmore Auditorium, opening for Iggy Pop and the Stooges. I have no idea what song this was, it’s not on their album, but oh my god did it rock. Sorry about the sound quality, it was taken by a small camera. Incidentally, I have permission from the band to post this. :)” - Matt Bentley

Thanks for posting your video comment, Matt! Set up a flickr account and let me know when all your pics are up!

Besides moving, there are a lot of other things going on in my life over the next few days so I can’t guarantee I will be blogging. I invite you to stop visiting this page until Monday, and enjoy the sunshine.

Links to Peruse

* Poptopus - via mashable
A MySpace compatible music widget that pays every time a song is played, instead of only when it’s purchased.

* Added to the Lair’s Feed: Format Magazine

* I enjoy reading these blog entries by aspiring journalists/soon to be grads.

* Brandon Fletcher’s new “we met online” series Date: Unknown

I don’t think the people he is following are particularly interesting. It’s actually pretty cringe inducing for me to watch, but some people are into that. What I do find interesting is that he’s visually documenting something that has been happening for quite some time (people hooking up through MySpace) and using the same medium to promote/distribute/find sponsorships.

* Branding yourself through Social Networks - via quicksprout

QuickSprout’s steps to branding success are (to put it nicely) no-brainers. However, for those who are aspiring artists/filmmakers/new media moguls with limited knowledge of the vast world social networking, the pointers are useful. It could even help those who claim to be experts. It amuses me how the most “honkin’-their-own-2.0-horn” sites still don’t seem to get what being Sticky actually means.

5 Signs that You Aren’t Sticky

by Daniela

1. Your site has a blog, but it is rarely updated.

2. You offer video on your site, but limited options of how that video can be shared (no RSS)

3. You have to login to view content on your site (lame)

4. Your website is as visually appetizing as petmeds

5. No one ever comments

- via flickr

This past weekend I moved to the Bushwick area of Brooklyn, for the second time. Like many non native New Yorkers, I have lived all over the place and find myself coming full circle. The first thing I’ve noticed is that the area has taken on a very hipster vibe, similar to the one slowly spreading in my former home, Washington Heights. Neither dissing or considering myself a hipster, my reasons for moving to Bushwick were not motivated by the fact that I can’t afford Williamsburg - Simple fate brought me back to Bushwick, or what now appears to be referred to as *snicker* East East Williamsburg.

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I was going to damn Beet TV’s Andy Plesser to Hell for (as of today) still not offering a video podcast feed, as if anyone still cares about FireAnt anymore with the plethora of rss video aggregating channels out there with embed options. I don’t want to have to download anything to watch video! Sheesh!

I would like to watch video feeds from Fast Company, Adult Swim, Democracy Now!, Wired, AND Beet TV - switching between them all with ease - and then if I feel like it, getting them all on my ipod. I can do this with all - save Beet TV. Why Andy, why? Why do you continue to force me to visit your page to watch video when most other sources provided mobile options?

I am a part of the Me generation, and us Me’s like to have it OUR way. NOW. Most of the innovators behind the new media revolution are young and plugged in. We are connected, interfacing with people through several mediums all day and night, and we are not timid to question/complain when we are not being served properly.

..But I hate the idea of permanently damning someone anywhere, even if it’s just a page on a website.

Aw, when did I become a nice girl?

- damning site via jetset

Towards the end of what would otherwise have been a peaceful march and rally, LAPD riot police fired rubber bullets into a crowd of immigration reform demonstrators in Los Angeles Tuesday, May 1, 2007.

This video clip shows police using aggressive crowd control tactics, including rubber bullets and gas, to disperse a group of demonstrators from McArthur Park.

At least one person had bruise marks after being shot. Others were seen being pushed around by police.

There were many other peaceful marches across the nation, as tens of thousands of people marched nationwide, urging Congress to give status to millions of illegal immigrants who come to the U.S. for work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My best friend Rose Hernandez sent this to me this morning…

It’s typical. The police use the (non violent) aggressive actions of a small few to justify violent retaliation against an entire group, and in the process prove that our government still has a lot to learn about respecting basic human rights.