new blog

My new and improved blog is here: http://webviarich.tumblr.com

Art in film

We're taking the stylistic route of Journalism for the last semester of our degrees, and producing a documentary revolving around 24 hours in Winchester. The film will feature short stories of 'every day' people in Winchester-working in pairs each group follows a random person around (with their permission) for five hours or so and tries to capture what their life is really about. The story behind the story if you like. The technical problems in filming a piece this big is the truth behind it-as it's all based on 24 hours in Winchester we all have to film on the same day, meaning the loan counter staff aren't too keen on us at the moment and will be fresh out of equipment that day. The GVs are going to be flimed in a Powaqqatsi styled way, and the interviews/tailing in a similar fashion to D A Pennebaker's 'Don't look back'.

I watched Powaqqatsi yesterday and had some pretty good ideas and drew up some designs for shot types and shooting locations. As a footnote, Powaqqatsi is actually pretty good, which I suppose I should have expected seeing as it was presented by Francis Ford Coppola.

Omar and I are going to be shooting 4pm til midnight on the actual day so hopefully there'll be either a decent sunset, loads of rain or settled snow.

SEO experiment

Have started another blog on a different account-the new blog has a very narrow range of content and I'm interested to see how the SEO results will vary. Keywords and meta tags are much easier to assign because the posts are always about the same things. Analytics stats are looking hopeful, but only at day 3 so far. I reckon the new blog will overtake this one in Alexa within a month. Today the second blog has a 'no data' rank on alexa though which I think means it is below 25 million. I'll post any results on this blog and even refrain from linking to it for free link bait.

Named and shamed

The photographer being pursued by Kate Middleton's lawyers has been revealed as Niraj Tanna(not pictured in this blog-no juxtaposition libel suits please) from Ikon Pictures.

Apparently Tanna spent Christmas following Prince William's girlfriend, and even tried to snap her through the window while she was at dinner with her family on Christmas day.

The pap then distributed the pictures via Rex Features, only to have the shots declined by several papers. This one was a bit predictable really wasn't it? As recently as December the Queen herself warned the media that they were walking a legal tightrope in regards to their relationship with the royals. So not only do they have the right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights, but now also under the editors' code of practice which protects people seeking "a reasonable expectation of privacy".

152"er

Panasonic have been saving the ace tucked neatly up their sleeve for a while now, but pulled it out in a blaze of high resolution glory at the consumer electronics show this year.

Their groundbreaking bar-raising TV as pictured above is an astonishing 152 inches and has 4,000 by 2,000 definition. Not only is it stupidly big, it is also one of the first full HD 3D plasma displays to be announced.

Industry insiders are saying that 2010 is going to be the year of the third dimension in entertainment, but the big question on everyones mind is "will this thing fit in my living room?"

Taking the moral high ground?

Google has drawn a line in the sand and said that it will be shutting down its Chinese sector Google.cn should the Chinese government continue to insist on filtering search results. The announcement comes after Google told the world it had been the victim of an organised sophisticated hack. According to Google the attack was based out of China, and the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists were accessed. Here’s what Google's official blog said about the hacks:

“In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. (...) We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. (...) As part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Google initially brought their services to China because it saw a business opportunity, and as a company that aims to collate and organise all of the information in the world it didn’t make much sense to not provide their services to a fifth of the population of Earth. So this move to pull out of China if the Government’s censoring continues seems a little strange. In an idyllic way it’s nice to see such a huge company taking the moral high ground, but I fail to see how A) stopping their services in China will end or lessen the censorship enforced by the Chinese government or B) how anyone will benefit from this move-especially not Google. Essentially, I don’t understand how the hacks/malware attacks are related to Google not being allowed to provide unfiltered search results in China. It seems to me that there are some other reasons behind all of this and that we’re not getting the full picture….

Peaches Geldof today accepted what I'm sure was a handsome payout from Express Newspapers. The money was paid for damages caused to Bob's daughter by the Daily Star headline "Peaches: spend the night with me for £5k"

The article claimed that the fruity TV presenter had accepted cash for turning up to parties and other social events. If this is true and the 5k figure wasn't just plucked out of the air then I think this is a little harsh. Not only does she get paid to go to parties, but she then gets a lump some plus legal fees for an accurate and fair headline? Careful Peaches, those palms will be getting sore soon.

That said, according to Geldof's solicitor Jonathan Coad, Express Newspapers agreed that the headline implied Ms Geldof "provided services of a personal sexual nature for the payment of a fee". Though they did print the apology and retraction on the graveyard page so their feelings of guilt can't have been too overwhelming.