On My Radar: ‘California Is A Place’ Makes Videos I <3 & Google TV Is Coming
The ‘California Is A Place’ Vimeo channel is a place that I visit often, just to rewatch pieces like these over and over again:
Scrapertown from California is a place. on Vimeo.
“In order to become a member of the Original Scraper Bike Team, you must: Be a resident of Oakland, CA. Be at least 7y/o or older. Retain A 3.0 Grade Point Average (GPA), Create your own Scraper Bike…(It Has To Be Amazing, Or Else You Can’t Ride.) A single-file line when riding. After 10 rides The Scraper Bike King and his Captains will decide if your bike is up to standards and if you can follow simple guidelines. After your evaluation we will consider you a member and honor you with an Original Scraper Bike Team Shirt. Only worn when Mobbin’ Stay posted to our website for all upcoming Scraper Bike Rides…” – The Scraper Bike King
From their site:
The Scraper Bike Movement seeks to capture the creativity of youth living within dangerous communities. It gives them a positive outlet that is fun, educational, and promotes healthy lifestyles. The Scraper Bike Movement offers youth a sustainable group of peers that is positive and motivating. We want to expand and enlighten young peoples perspective on life through fixing and painting bicycles. Our goal is to support youth entrepreneurship and cultural innovation.
California is a place. is produced, directed, and shot by Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari. The folks behind this project inspire me to go through all the footage I’ve shot in Cali over the years and make something that I can share with my friends and family.
I love all of their videos and am impressed by the quality and diverse selection of subjects.
<3 <3 <3 <3 I pay for cable and have Netflix but I also watch a lot of free web content. I really only keep cable for work; if it didn't benefit me professionally to stay on top of certain shows and to track trends, I would drop cable in a second. I will still keep Netflix for a while because I like the ability to watch entire seasons of my favorite shows at once and to create movie playlists that I can share. Google TV (coming this fall) and other consoles that converge web features with traditional TV watching are interesting to monitor. I’m still waiting for my Star Trek set with a Minority Report-style interface.
When I was seventeen I started telling all my co-workers that one day the web, your phone and television would all be the same thing. You would use all screens for the same purposes – to learn, to communicate and to be entertained. The prospect used to thrill me and now it simply makes me a little sad. More technology isn’t making people smarter. It’s largely just making people lazier, although I do believe that many people use their access to improve lives and to connect (change agents).
I’m not going to lie: I will probably get Google TV, since I am a tech junkie, like the Chrome browser and Google TV will reportedly expand video choice from “hundreds of channels available through a pay TV provider to the vast storehouse of video content available through the web and streaming videos.” I haven’t bought a Boxee-like service yet and this would mean a simpler way to access online video from my TV.
If I could find more projects like ‘California Is A Place’ in a faster, easier way – that’s a good thing, right? I hope so.
I do have so many privacy concerns; all of this means that now all of our video consumption behavior will be tracked in an even more strategic manner. Whether it’s “online,” “cable” or “free,” if Google is up in there you can bet they’ll know what’s going and and soon you’ll start to see targeted ads on your telly, just for you.
Minority Report-style.
The kids don’t stand a chance. By the time they’re five, they’ll expect some invisible tastemaker to know what they will like even before they do. And that tastemaker will be right, because every single video they watch will be tracked like a hawk. Oh, what a world.
Edit: Some people think that services like Google TV are useless because essentially you can do the same thing right now just using an HDMI cable to connect to your computer, or use Apple TV or Boxee, etc. What people aren’t considering are apps.
There will be so many apps designed just for TV set use: Apps to create and record audio/video from “watching parties” with your friends around the world, apps to manipulate live television (imagine if you could put Regis’ head on Kelly’s body, in real time! You would do it!), etc.
People are already being trained to rely on apps through their mobile phones, the iPad, etc. Apps count on human nature and our love for time suck opportunities and this will be what makes services like Google TV “better” than what we already have.
See you in the webavision.