Blogging with your mobile

There is a real buzz around user-created content on the web at the moment. The popularity of sites like YouTube are sound testament to this. But, in order to find genuinely original material you often have to wade through a mass of lifted TV and film footage. Even if you do find the true user-created nuggets you are searching for, the talking heads and candid action rely upon people who have access to camcorders, digital cameras, or the most high-tech mobile phones.

However, as mobiles become more advanced this seems set to change. Cameras are now a fairly standard feature on everyday handsets and even video capturing facilities of a higher quality are beginning to appear, bringing the world of videography to the masses.

At the recent Internet World exhibition we spoke to someone from Moblog.co.uk, a new website which encourages people to film and take snapshots using their phones, and then share them with everyone else by uploading. Effectively it’s a blog for mobiles, hence the name!

Moblog has already been recognised by some as a useful marketing tool. Pop music group ‘Girls Aloud’ have already been documenting their day to day activities on the website, which has created much interest amongst their fans. It remains to be seen if companies will attempt to monopolise Moblog with fake user-created content designed to carry a commercial message.

John Scott

Flash video theory of relativity

A story of how Flash videos aren’t always where they ought to be when publishing online.

After I finish silently shouting abuse at the person who shot this video I’m trying to publish, I sit back and tell myself that filming is an ‘art’ and that us ‘techno-geeks’ have no right telling these artisans how to frame a shot.

At least its player looks great, and upon testing locally all seems fine. Uploading presents no problems…despite what others may think…this is an art. Finally a live test…never had a problem before. Whack all the files on the server and away we go. Except this time I’m uploading the video file and its player to a folder especially for media files, not in with the web page it is going to be displayed on.

Of course, it doesn’t work. Now I feel a fool, I can’t even do my own job properly, and there I was hurling mental abuse at the creative geniuses down at video HQ. What is called for here is a truly artistic approach…trial and error! (Those arty types will continuously refine their work but convince you it was all shot from the hip, I can be like them!)

So now I spend ages working out where I went wrong, test, test and test again, and no doubt allow frustration to get the better of me…include appropriate expletives (optional).

But finally I work it out, allowing me to pretend to you that I knew what was wrong all along:

When linking to the external video from flash, by default it is linked relative to the Flash file (swf). When published online, the swf is pulled into the HTML page which then changes the source of the swf and therefore the link to the video file. The video file must be linked to as though its player was located in the same folder as the HTML page.

Philip Spain