New at the Learning Center

New at the Personal Media Learning Center — some of it created by the Ourmedia staff, some of it republished with permission:

8 ways to shoot video like a pro

All about digital audio

A simple guide to publishing audio on the Web   

How to add voice narration to a slide show 

Video editing software choices

Self-publishing a book 

Top 7 free video editing software products 

Personal media glossary

Adding identifying info to music files

Fixing unbalanced sound levels

All about aspect ratio

All about the widescreen format

The Pan and scan technique

How to remix content

Five rules for building a successful online community

How to make a stop-motion video short

What EXIF data do digital photos contain?

Where to find photos for remixing

Updated:

How to record Internet radio (or any audio)

New servers for Ourmedia

This morning we pulled the switch and moved over to new servers to host the Ourmedia.org site at San Francisco State University. The site's apparently visible to a lot of people, but not to me -- it's taking the new DNS name servers more than 12 hours to populate so far.

Valenti gives Ourmedia a big thumbs-up

The other day I spotted Jack Valenti, who headed the MPAA for nearly 39 years before stepping down last year, at a lunch table at the Aspen Institute. So I introduced myself and we had a nice chat for a half hour. I devote half of Chapter 2 in Darknet to Valenti and the MPAA. His son, John, has been one of the biggest cheerleaders of the book and its central message: that the entertainment industries need to embrace their digital future by adopting new business models. The senior Valenti had nice things to say about the book as well.

So I whipped out my cell phone and Jack agreed to sit for a video interview. In this 90-second clip, he talks about grassroots creativity seen on video sharing sites like Ourmedia. (Ourmedia page | watch video)

Unveiling the Ourmedia Learning Center and Open Media Directory

Ourmedia is proud to announce the unveiling of the Personal Media Learning Center as well as the Open Media Directory.

The Learning Center is an ongoing project with a simple aim: to help people engage in the participatory media movement by showing them how to create videoblogs, podcasts, screencasts, digital stories and other emerging media forms.

There are sections on Video, Audio, Multimedia, Images and Text. In addition, we have what will undoubtedly become a deep Topics section. We're starting out with the subjects of Personal media - Getting started, Citizen journalism, and Copyright & the law.

We have a lot of needs in fillng out these sections, so if you'd like to write a tutorial, share an article, or create a screencast, video or podcast that would be helpful to people, see our guidelines and contact me. This is media training of the people by the people.

The Open Media Directory is a clearinghouse of dozens of different sites where you can find legal, podsafe music, audio and video clips. For anyone who wants to add a music soundtrack to their online video or add music to a podcast, the Open Media Directory is a treasure. Thanks to the UK's David Holmes, the directory's editor, for pulling it together for us.

These projects represent a significant step forward for Ourmedia. We've been promised new servers this month, so look for more improvements in the site in the weeks ahead.

Blogger dinner in Milan

Had a fantastico time last night at a blogger dinner organized by Paolo Valdemarin, a consultant who's one of the big thinkers in Italy's social media scene. The gathering at Il Verdi Trattoria in Milano brought together 17 people, including Massimo Esposti, whose new Unwired Media publishing venture (see the Area 51 blog) will debut next month with the Italian version of Darknet. (Howard Rheingold's preface and the Introduction are available for a free download in Italian.)

Also met Fausto, Marco Zamperini, Gianluca Brugnoli, Andrea Lawendel, Luca Lizzeri, Giogio Baresi and several other great folks. I'm hoping we can get a few volunteers in Italy to help out with Ourmedia; we're looking for moderators, coders and administrators.

Earlier in the day Deirdre Straughan gave us a tour of the offices of TVBlob, an interactive communication startup using TV and broadband. (Deirdre was a welcome addition to the blogger dinner as well.) Stayed for two nights at Deirdre's place in Lecco, and I'll post some video and a slew of photos when I get back. (When you've spent years mastering Photoshop, it's hard to bring yourself to upload photos that need lightening, cropping and sharpening.) So far: Rome, Venice, Lake Como and Milano. Just got to Florence. More soon.

Q&A at WorldChanging

At WorldChanging, Micki Krimmel has an interview with me about citizens media and Ourmedia. Excerpt:

One of the big changes we want to make on Ourmedia in the next few months is to make it more of a community-centric site. The world doesn’t need another YouTube. I’m not picking on You Tube, but they’re the ones who are getting all the attention today. There are plenty of sites now where you can just upload your funny video, right? We want to get to a place where more people can feel like they’re doing something - they’re creating video for a social purpose. So, if your passion is all about local politics or the environment or energy or global warming, you should be able to share your thoughts in a text blog or video or podcast.

What's coming at Ourmedia

Ryanne Hodson caught up with me in South Park (the San Francisco landmark, not the TV show) a couple of days ago and posted this video interview about what's coming at Ourmedia.

Happy birthday to Ourmedia

Ourmedia launched one year ago today!

Little did we realize how influential we'd become in helping to spur the citizens media movement. We now have 87,000 members and about 150,000 works of personal media that people have uploaded -- video, audio, photos and more.

Our first year was about giving people the power to share their media. This next one will be more about helping people to create better media, to collect and to discover great grassroots media. We've launched a preliminary Digital Media Learning Center and have ambitious plans for the rest of the site.

Wish us luck as we embark on a slightly new course!

A podcast about Web 2.0

A second podcast went up today, this one by Drew Olanoff of The Blog Factory. In this 20-minute podcast, we talk about Darknet, Ourmedia, Web 2.0, citizens media and where podcasting and blogging are going.

New leadership roles at Ourmedia

Ourmedia has two new board members:

Joining our Board of Directors is John Seely Brown.

JSB is one of the most revered figures in Silicon Valley. For many years he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the Director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He describes himself as being "deeply involved in the management of radical innovation and in the formation of corporate strategy and strategic positioning of Xerox as The Document Company." In 2004 he was inducted into the Industry Hall of Fame. He is also the author of several books.

Joining our Board of Advisors is Susan Wu, whom I hope to meet in person on Friday.

Susan is Chief Marketing Officer of the Apache Software Foundation, where she helps define the organization's overall strategy and leads its PR, branding, partnership and marketing activities. The Apache Software Foundation is one of the world's most influential open source software organizations, with over 1,200 contributors, 35 major product groups, and 70% global market share in web server software.

Susan's roots in the open source community stems from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of a multiplayer gaming environment hailed by Sony Online Entertainment's Chief Creative Officer as revolutionary and one of the best of its time. In Susan's spare time, she has remained active in online gaming. She was the Executive Producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award winning Quake 2 modification. Susan also contributed as a developer and project manager to the open source Nebula 3D Graphics and Game Engine. She was also one of the leaders of a 1,000 person guild within the MMORPG Asheron's Call.

Which sounds pretty impressive, even to us non-MMORPGies.