R e - P e t e

Time’s Person of the Year: You

Person of the Year: You

It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace.

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The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.

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And we didn’t just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped.

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Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I’m not going to watch Lost tonight. I’m going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I’m going to mash up 50 Cent’s vocals with Queen’s instrumentals? I’m going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the steak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion?

The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.

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Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. … This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It’s a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who’s out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you’re not just a little bit curious.

What a beautiful article. And to you: the netizens, the creators of contents, the You-tubers, the MySpace addicts, the MMO playing, the broadband addicts.. to you all. I salute you!

This article rang so true for me. I’m not the greatest creator of content but this is all a big experiment to me. My blog and online experience has been a mishmash of everything. If the web were a buffet, I’d have stuffed myself with everything from chicken-chopped salad to pasta to blueberry pancakes. This year, the internet really felt like it was on steroids. It’s as if the internet were this pool of coke and someone decided to open up a packet of Pop Rocks into it. I can’t wait to see how things end up.

An Addiction Continued…

The more I explore YouTube, the more great things I find. YouTube has these concepts of “channels.” I can create my own channel which people can subscribe to.

I randomly came across Diddy’s profile while persuing some random stuff. I was curious who else would have channels and whether other actors/musical artists have adopted this as a way to release content. I came across the HappySlip channel which have videos made by a 20-something filipina. Here are two videos which had me laughing:

Morning Meest

and

YouChoob

MyTube

Like everyone else, I’ve been obsessed with YouTube. Frankly, it’s quite amazing. Despite all the laws it is breaking, you can find anything from mixed martial arts fighting to a hilarious South Park episode to.. well anything! There is no end to what people will upload.

I’ve jumped on board. I haven’t jumped on board this piracy bandwagon but I’m now using YouTube to host the random videos I’ve created using my digital camera throughout the years. The process isn’t exactly seamless. I take the videos outputed by my camera, use some easy software to convert it to DivX and then upload it. The conversion to DivX leads to some quality loss but incredible compression.

So far I’ve uploaded videos like:

Bryan Golfing

Em and I on a motorbike in Thailand

Em getting stuck in deep powder at Sugarbowl (last season)

More links:

• My YouTube “Channel”
• Urban Trybe YouTube Group

Web 2.0 or not Web 2.0? That is the question.

Web 2.0: The 24 Minute Documentary

A couple of weeks ago Michael Arrington got together with a number of startup CEOs and executives to video a discussion about Web 2.0.

Big Brother

I’ve always thought that conspiracy theorists, for the most part, were full of it. I’ve read 1984 and have seen (and enjoyed) Conspiracy Theory (with Mel Gibson), but it’s always something you find hard to believe.

Interestingly, it was has recently been discovered that many color laser printers (from manufacturers like Canon and Xerox) actually print nearly invisible codes onto each printout. They consist of a series of dots that can only be seen with special lighting and a magnifying glass.

Here’s an excerpt from an article:

Xerox previously admitted that it provided these tracking dots to the government, but indicated that only the Secret Service had the ability to read the code. The Secret Service maintains that it only uses the information for criminal counterfeit investigations. However, there are no laws to prevent the government from abusing this information.

The Slasdot Article
The EFF Press release