Archive for 'Videos'
Backstage Pass- JD Lasica
JD Lasica must have superpowers to do, and see, and interview all of the people that he does in any given month! Interested in all aspects of online social media, his new site socialbrite.org is tag-lined Social Tools for Social Change. If the word tools brings up an image of shovels or software for you, forget it! This site really has quite a range. It’s way more than just profiling online tools and sites.
SocialBrite also focuses on people to organizations, showing you how to apply those online tools to support the social activities that’ll help you build your organization for social good. JD has assembled a team of a half dozen experts who will help grow this site. Hey geeks, add SocialBrite to your RSS feed reader now!
Also see:
[1] Socialbrite.org
[2] Netsquared.org
[3] JD Lasica also on socialmedia.biz
How one company uses Web 2.0 tools to run and promote their business
Everyone wants to be more efficient, productive, and successful. We’re constantly seeking advice on Lifehacker. We gravitate toward any post entitled “How to …” or “Top tips to …” And we’re feeding self-help book publishers who dominate 25 percent of the publishing market.
Rarely, though, do we get an opportunity to see one person or one organization completely open up the kimono and show us step by step how they deploy all of these time and cost saving techniques to actually run their business. (more…)
Backstage Pass- Introducing Susan Bratton
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As if managing to publish 40+ podcasts at Personal Life Media weren’t enough, Susan Bratton is totally a bundle of energy. (In fact, maybe that’s her secret.) She’s no stranger to tech, having worked in the semiconductor industry, but her personal podcast DishyMix (now at 100 episodes) is focused on marketing and she does the most fascinating interviews, digging down deep to find out what makes each of her interview subjects really “tick.”
Susan says “Our mantra is ‘frank talk and deep discussion for your personal life.’ ” And Personal Life Media’s tag line is “Podcasts and blogs with expert advice on personal growth, anti-aging, intimacy and relationships.” You can tell that Susan is going to have a great time in the UK and we invite you to follow along!
[Video] TauTona Gold Mine
Another video from our bloggers’ trip to South Africa.
In March 1886, nearly forty years after the California Gold Rush, legend has it that Australian gold miner George Harrison stumbled across a rocky outcrop of gold in what was then the Zuid Afrikaanse Republiek. Says Wikipedia: “Ironically, Harrison is believed to have sold his claim for less than 10 Pounds before leaving the area, and he was never heard from again.”
That 10-pound claim soon transformed into a mining village called Ferreira’s Camp, which today we call Johannesburg.
The above-earth portion of the gold reef (’rand’ in Afrikaans, for which the South African currency was named after) discovered by Harrison has since become the most profitable source of gold ever found on earth. 40% of all gold mined on earth comes from this single reef.
And, as we discovered 3.5 kilometers below ground on our tour of the TauTona gold mine, that gold reef continues pretty far underground. Here’s a video of our tour:
The mine, in fact, is so deep that were it not for the ice cold air conditioning pumped down from above, the temperature would be around 55°C. When electricity outages hit South Africa last year the mine was forced to close down for nearly a week.
I was impressed by the obsessive focus on safety throughout the mine. Still, as John noted even before our trip, being a miner at TauTona remains a dangerous affair. (More than four people die in South African gold mines per week.) During the introductory presentation at the mine we were shown a graph of TauTona’s improving safety record over the past ten years. There was, however, a slight increase in deaths last year. A new part of the mine vulnerable to seismic activity was causing a flurry of ground fall and resulting deaths. The mine executives decided to cease mining there once the death rate reached a certain threshold. Still, I could picture in my mind someone coldly calculating the potential financial profits in one column and the loss of human life in the other.
We were told that, depending on the price of gold over the next couple years, AngloGold Ashanti plans on digging the TauTona Gold Mine even deeper – perhaps all the way to five kilometers beneath earth. The funny thing about economic crises is that they tend to be good for gold mines as investors hurry to exchange weak dollars for solid gold. While the rest of the world slumps, it’s boom time for gold towns like Battle Mountain, Nevada. So, as long as the global currency markets stay weak, expect TauTona Gold Mine to get deeper and deeper.
Soweto’s Mall Offers High-End Designers
Another recent Sowetan triumph is the Maponya Mall. With more than 180 tenants and 1.5 million monthly visitors, it’s Soweto’s first major upmarket retail space. It was built by Richard Maponya, an entrepreneur who bought the land in the 1980s and waited patiently for the political and economic landscape to change so that it could be built and that it could be supported by the locals.
It opened in 2007, a gorgeous space that looks along its middle like a sleek international airport terminal, with a selection of food purveyors, department stores and some upscale shops featuring goods that place design at a premium.
The parking lot was full of cars, as the video shows. Shopping, it turns out, is the international language.
First Film
Lesego Mlambo comes from the Braam Fischer section of Soweto and has spent the past year with the Joshua Youth Development Programme run by Metro Evangelical Services, working with the poor in the Johannesburg inner city. As part of his preparation for the Joshua programme, he was sent on an Outward Bound course, which is how we came to meet him in Mountain Sanctuary Park in the Magaliesberg. We went for a hike with him and other young Joshua’s who had been on Outward Bound. Inspired by David Sasaki, we put a camera in his hands. Here’s the result:
Virtual Worlds….Really?
We have a few pieces posting on Tech Ticker today and Monday that parse through a lot of the first quarter venture capital data. I’ve never interviewed that many people in studio at once and not sure how good of a job I did 🙁 (Video on the jump and more on TT)
Anyway- among the biggest surprises to me was how hot virtual worlds were in the first quarter. (and how hard it is to say “virtual worlds”) Wha???
I heard a lot about virtual world companies in Europe and Israel, but
my impression was it wasn’t a US phenomenon any longer. Some bets were
made, Club Penguin did well, Second Life– eh, we’ll see. I just don’t
think virtual worlds are like social networking where everyone will one
day use one in some way. In short, because they’re don’t meld your
online self with your offline self– it makes them more distinct. That
seems so at odds with how the Web is developing to me.
I’m sure there are some niches and some good bets, but $185 million worth in one quarter? Sheesh. Do you want
to lose money, Sand Hill Road? Assuming it has mostly been momentum
chasing the kids space, which is an untapped area of development
online. Still…let’s get our heads back in reality here.
A Chat with JVP's Erel Margalit
JVP’s Managing Director Erel Margalit talks to our blogging group this week about start-ups and innovation in Israel.
Their Jerusalem outskirts office is not unlike a Silicon Valley-based VC office except that the printers and fax machines might be a tad older and like every other Israeli company kitchen, they’re well stocked with Nescafe instant coffee. The latter is an integral part of the culture here in the same way it was 20′ish years ago.
We learn about their DreamWorks-like initiative Animation Lab, which extends beyond a typical technology play. “The line is blurred between where technology ends and content begins,” noted Margalit. As the former head of MSN Israel, he has a background and perspective on digital rich content.
Erel and his team ‘get’ social media. We were introduced to three stealth mode companies and saw ‘on-screen’ demos. I can’t talk about them just yet, except to say that they’re dabbling in virtual worlds, interactive games, social networks and online video.
When asked about entrepreneurship and why there’s so much innovation coming out of Israel, Erel says, “Israelis don’t think about what they can lose but about what they can gain. Unlike Europe, they don’t have a plate on their door in a town where their family and history was rooted for 1,000 years. Israel is new and full of immigrants from all over the world. So its much easier for us to take risks.”
JVP is currently the king VC in Israel, having launched between 20 and 40 companies, with most of their exits in the communications and media space. “We’re on our 5th fund,” he added. English to Armenian “The key is to make a few home runs in each fund.”
We got the impression that they’re on track and that the climate was ripe with opportunities. Eran continued to rave about the opportunities that Israel has over Europe and the states…..and why. “Silicon Valley is very engineering driven versus the rest of the world. Not having that as a major driving force gives us an opportunity.”
He sees other opportunities in Asia where they’re developing a lot of interactive content. During his last trip to China, he observed that 500,000 were playing online warfare games. In LA, it was all about broadcasting entertainment. In Europe, mobile continues to take a leadership role.
I captured the tail end of his interview on video – see below (also uploaded to Flixwagon.com). Click play to tune in.
Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre
It has been more than two decades since I last walked through Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre (black and white shot is of the church in 1885).
A deeply spiritual and moving place, a Greek orthodox woman prayed to my left, a Polish catholic priest led a group to my right and every religious variation in between stood among me. Within its walls, you can either pray or quietly reflect with every other walk of life from around the world and be at peace.
I took a few short video clips while inside which are captured below. Click play.
As I took these earlier today, they were streaming live on Flixwagon.com, a real-time video solution by an Israeli start-up. More on them later.
