Suggestion submitted to skype support

Hi, I am writing to ask you to add Scottish Gaelic as a choice on the language options in Skype profiles.

Gaelic is spoken by about 100,000 people world wide and I know personally personally organisations and groups who are using Skype to communicate in Gaelic.

It would be great if you could those people the ability to show their language of choice and encourage other people by being able to search by that language.

TheyWorkForYou.com

I heard that Thom Yorke was supposed to be on the news light night, saw him come up on the Guardian Environment feed talking about reducing emissions followed this to a critical Comment is Free article which led me to their blog on radiohead.com

And onto the bigask.com a site by Friends of the Earth dedicated to getting a Bill passed which requires 3% year on year reductions in Carbon emissions. I watched the embedded video hosted by Google Video.

Its the most impressive use I’ve seen by an NGO of using video on their site to get their point across.  Towards the ends it cleverly deconstructs the press coverage throughout the day, how effectively they used the media to get their message out, very smart.

Thom Yorke’s passion on the topic and statement that it has to come from Government to work inspired me to get intouch with my own MP Angus Macneil, not just with the identikit letter, a personal one with my own ideas of what we should be law to lower our impact.

I don’t think the 3% is realistic, but I agree that if we don’t do it we’re in trouble, and its a smart way of getting people enthused about reducing emissions like An Inconvenient Truth does.

Continually impress by the projects coming from http://www.mysociety.org/projects.php be interesting to build something similar for the Scottish Parliament?

Fon blocking and throttling?

Fon appears to block me uploading videos to Google Video but I appear to able to upload them through YouTube?

Also it throttles my uploads to mp3tunes.com, which I would recommend trying.

I understand that this prevents visitors from abusing it but I bought the router, should I not be able too max it out myself?

Video Messaging

Last weekend I bought a webcam and microphone for my sister and her family. They have broadband in the home and a laptop.

My intention was for her to be able to use it to communicate with the rest of our distributed family. The problem with video conferencing is getting the other person in front of the hardware, setup and with time to chat. So I looked for solutions to enable her to leave video messages which could be viewed later by the rest of the family.

I came across Sightspeed which I knew of as a competitor to Skype specialising in video calls. They have a basic video messaging service with their free service ( 30 second limit and hosted for 30 days, accessible through an unsecured web page viewed through embedded flash player ). Their premium service at $5/month didn’t offer much more length ( 2 minute limit and length of subscription to service hosting ).

Having experiemented with their free service, which is really easy to use with their desktop client, you just add emails ( recipients don’t need to be members of sightspeed ). I’m impressed but the time limit of even the premium service is a major flaw. Fair enough they don’t use have advertising on their video pages, so its hard for them to monetise it.

Somebody like Google which already allows unlisted video hosting the expensive part of the equation. Gtalk already has a voicemail facility which ends up being hosted on your Gmail account I believe. If they offered video functionality in Gtalk they could use Google video as a hosting service, for that matter so could an independent client if you gave it your Google account details.

Is their any money in hosting a lot of videos intended for a small audience?

I believe their is if they offer targeted ads from the information they accumulate through the Google account already plus if the instructure is already in place for hosting videos for a large audience, does it make much of a difference if a percentage of those are have very few viewings, I imagine this is currently the case with many listed Google videos anyway.

I imagine its just a case of waiting for the voip technology and video hosting to mature, before this becomes a big service, although I do note that BT have launched a videophone only available with BT Broadband.

It does remind how good a video device a 3G phone compared to a webcam, even the low quality videos the N70 takes are far superior to the majority webcams and with better sound.

I should use it more with the folks, it sometime feels a bit intrusive and I have to remain a cameraman/director opposed to a fixed camera/mic.

Iraq

In Edinburgh several weeks ago, we went back to our favourite bookshop Tills, now with website, eBay store and partial online inventory.

Most of my book purchases are now through the Amazon marketplace, but nothing beats the serendipity of going through a shop stacked high with quality books.

I picked up Salam Pax’s The Baghdad Blogger, strange reading a blog in paper. Its a short book comprising his posts from about 6 months before the conflict till 3 months after the start of the attack.

Never read any of his blog online and it took a little while to get into it. There’s a good introduction by Rory McCarthy. His posts start off short and trivial, he started of writing it as a public letter to his friend Raed in Jordan, but as the build up to the war begins, he writes more on the impending invasion and how day to day life is affected.

There is an interesting point when he starts to receive links from big sites like yahoo. He becomes scared that what he has written has put himself and his family in danger and considers deleting the blog. He decides against it and continues and his posts become more about life in Iraq and the immanent invasion.

His references about events in Iraq past got me interested in its history, particularly the British involvement in the creation of the state

Recently on More4 Robert Newman presented a comedy show titled A History of Oil ( kindly uploaded to Google Video ), he speaks of the German Iraqi

I came across the wikipedia article on the Anlgo-Iraqi War, referring to the conflict in 1940-41, it mentioned the RAF base in Habbaniya

When the Iraq war was on, I remember asking dad if he had been out there, he said he was stationed near Baghdad, he was a radio operator in the RAF during his National Service, I guess it must have been there he was stationed. ( Update: He was in Habbaniya for 18 months )
Newman argues that British aims during the First World War was an Invasion of Iraq ( Here’s a link, 10:20 in ), where he looks at the Batallion of the Dorsets going to Basra in 1914, to prevent the completion of the Berlin Baghdad railway and that railway as a cause of WW1

The Habbaniya base, was handed over too Iraqi control in 1955, it is now a US base.

Dad having been there, over half a century ago, make me think about the recent calls ups of reservists and TA.

A History of Oil is well worthing watching, entertaining and informing.

Pocketful of Euros

The second night of the book festival, featured Kevin MacNeil.

He read some short stories, a particularly good one about a Wedding from the perspectives of all those involved and their drugs of choice to help themselves get away from the event. Talking about his education he was really positive about the Nicolson. Strangely although his stories could be quite dark, he was really positive, maybe he gets his dark side out through the writing.

I assume the guy questioning him on stage was somebody from the publisher, asking when The Stornoway Way was going to be released and highlighting the preview copies available, even though Kevin had said the same thing about 5 minutes before, repetitions for the media I guess.

Speaking about literature, he comes across passionately, talking about writing with a social cause and how he deliberately set the book in a topsy turvy world to challenge himself. The book has abortion and suicide in it. I asked him weather he wanted to try and break the social taboo around these locally?

He started by saying that reviewers have claimed that he tried to get attention by attempting to shock the reader.

I didn’t feel this at all, but quite a few people I know locally have taken a dislike to the book, I’m not sure why that is.

He said that he felt especially in the islands where suicide is such a problem that the normal attitude of trying to ignore the situation doesn’t help.

The Western Isles does have among the lowest rate in abortions along with the Northern Islands: Orkney and Shetland, which all the have the highest rate in suicides.

I think this may have to do with the sense of shame in an Island community, you are likely to know the medical professionals in another way, secrets are much harder to keep and the power and guilt of the Church are still strong.

This is a negative way to look at it, you could put it down the strong community/family which pulls together to look after any new members, the economics of raising a child in a rural setting and correspondingly the quality of life much better.

I don’t think its one or the other, but the fact that is highest and the other the lowest is interesting and worth looking at further.

Kevin and Willy Campbell will be doing a Gig for the suicide awareness project at An Lanntair next Friday 8 September, should be good.

Willy’s band Our Small Capital, came on later and did a good hour and a half set to the ‘emptymate’ 25 strong crowd. Covering OutKast and finishing up with their fantastic track ‘Ways and means around the gospel’

The film rights for the book The Stornoway Way have been sold, and Kevin stated that if it is done it will be done here with local talent, sounds great

Sharing

The Hebrides Book Festival ‘Facalan’ began today, invited through work I attended the showing of two old BBC programmes, one on Murdo Macfarlane ‘The Melbost Bard’ and the other on Iain Crichton Smith

The first was a look at the bards life from the beginning born on the day Queen Victoria died, seeing the island as it was when the crofting life was strong, through the first world war, and the disaster of the Iolaire, recalling how he ran out of the smokehouse where he was working when he heard there had been a disaster. Seeing one of the first victims lying against the cemetry wall, he thought it was as if he was halfway between the grave and the sea.

He journeyed too Canada, then the US in the twenties, angered at the poverty and the farmers waiting for the right price to sell their grain. He returned home at the end of the twenties, the documentary seemed to leap forward at this point to 1942, where he was in the army, angry at the war, he wrote about being handed many slender bullets to kill a mother’s child.

There was a brief mention that he helped bring the Trades Union movement to the islands. But the part that most stood out for me was how his poetry was taken up by the Na h-Oganaich a young band of three who were very successful. Calum Macdonald of Runrig and members of Capercille commented on how this strongly influenced their music.

Noal Eadie a member of Na h-Oganaich commented on how he never said don’t do that with my words, he always seemed happy with what they did, always willing to try new things. Donnie Macleod commented that he was glad of a larger audience.

I feel thats a really important thing he wanted to share his work, much as I would love to share the documentary I viewed tonight, I would love to upload it to YouTube and embed it here and get it linked too, I think thats our natural want as humans is to share.

I believe the bard would have liked the bigger audience too, but is it fair on those that put effort or money into making the program not be rewarded for reshows. I would like to reward them, but I think the greater danger is that these fantastic emotive programmes aren’t out there, aren’t available, in a culture that is so media driven, and a culture that so desperately needs the boost.

Is it wrong?

Thurston Moore, in Mix Tape, notes that “trying to control sharing through music is like trying to control an affair of the heart – nothing will stop it.” (quoted from Dan Hill’s excellent essay ‘New Musical Experiences‘ )

The ease that music was shared with in the 80s with formats like Cassette, Is the same kind of era we are entering now for video.

With large capacity devices in our pockets, phones that can play video, high speed broadband, easy tools for converting formats and site like YouTube and Revver ( where artists are rewarded ) and the big studios realising there is a lot of money in per episode downloads from iTunes.

I agree with Tim O’reilly and Cory Doctorow that Piracy is progressive taxation and that All complex ecosystems have parasites, the great danger here is obsurity and piracy can be positive if it can convince the publishers to release the material on DVD or commision more work like that. Like the online file trading that encouraged Fox to make Serenity and put out Family Guy on DVD. I see it working like a free market, where the audience who have the demand, release the supply, encouraging the real suppliers to supply more.

Update: Created a wikipedia page for him, suprisingly their wasn’t a great deal of info about him on the web.

Unposted Questions

Mark Thompson was good pushed all the right buzz words, user generated content, long tail etc

Seems like a good guy and a good idea of where to take the BBC in a very different world.

Saddened by concentration of questions on budgets/independents etc, but it is my own apathy at getting the mike.

Well my question would have been a follow on from what Calum Iain ( Niseach, An Comunn… ) said about the RNG not serving the community as closely as 20 years previously RNE had. I felt moved to speak as the best commentary I found on some island issues ( Sunday Sailings. Health Board etc ) was Arnish Lighthouse published and moderated by the BBC.

My question was how does the BBC shift from being the GateKeeper in a traditional media setting to engaging properly with User Generated Content ( Hate that term ) that means taking a less authoritairan slant and being more permissive as people will only contribute to services that respect them, and don’t overly restrict the discussion?. I think it is a really tricky situation as even the Poster Childs for user generated content such as wikipedia infer a stricter and stricter contribution scheme.

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