Geek Force Five Social Network
PHOTO: PodCamp Boston 3: Chris Clark by Steve Garfield, on Flickr CC BY-NC-SA
Shortly after fellow PodCamp Boston 3 attendee Steve Garfield shot the picture I’ve included above, he, along with John Herman, Leslie Poston, and a couple of others, convinced me that I needed to build a social network for Geek Force Five right away. They suggested Ning.com, which John and Leslie promised me would take literally two minutes to set up. And, since this whole site began with a social discussion on who each member of the community would include in their own personal Geek Force Five, I figured, “Why not?”
Thus, Geek Force Five on Ning was born.
If I’ve read correctly, a Facebook application may be possible using Ning, as well. And this is just the quick and dirty beginning. I have great plans for how to get the community more involved here at Geek Force Five, and I hope you’ll all stick around to see how those plans develop. Here’s a hint of what’s to come: Picture MTV Celebrity Deathmatch-style confrontations between each community member’s teams, maybe even in a March Madness-style bracket. Cool, right? I think so.
In the meantime, please consider signing up for the Ning site and answering (or re-answering) the question, “Who’s in your Geek Force Five?”
Geek Force at PodCamp Boston 3 (PCB3)
PHOTO: PodCamp Boston 3 Shirts - Front by Financial Aid Podcast, on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND
I’m at PodCamp Boston 3 this weekend, representing the association I work for full-time, as well as me, the writer, and Geek Force Five, the site. And I’m having a blast. Here’s a shot of me playing pool at the afterparty, if you don’t believe me. That’s me, first from the left, right around the time that my second or third Smirnoff Ice suddenly (and awesomely) elevated my game.
You can mind more photos on Flickr by searching for the tag “pcb3,” which is also the tag to look for on Twitter, YouTube, Viddler, or wherever else you might want to look
If you’re not familiar with the concept of a PodCamp, here’s a pretty good quote from PodCamp Capetown:
PodCamp is a community driven UnConference for anybody and everybody in New Media. Whether you create and/or consume content by podcasting, listening, blogging, reading, producing video, watching and anything else that is New Media.
I’m not exactly in love with the term New Media, but that quote pretty much sums up what’s going on. If you’re following me on Twitter, I’m sure you’ve already seen some updates related to the big show. Keep following me throughout the weekend for more. And, if there’s a PodCamp in your area, and you’re at all interested in this kind of stuff, please do consider going. It has been well worth the price of admission, so far.
Oh, and one last thing: welcome to any and all who might be joining us thanks to my pimping out the site at PodCamp. Leave a message in the comments, if you’ve got a moment, and let the world know who would be in your Geek Force Five. That’s the traditional method of greeting around here.
Geek Force FiveCast 017 (Video)
This week, I geek out about Wine Library TV wristbands, ordering an iPhone 3G, and PodCamp Boston 3.
Topics: Apple, Geekforce Reserves
Improv in Kevin Smith Films
Kevin Smith is known for telling his actors to “stick to the script.” Watch the making of Clerks documentary The Snowball Effect and you’ll learn that this goes all the way back to his high school days.
And so, it was very interesting to me to hear, way back when, that Kevin had cast Seth Rogen as the lead in his next film, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the same Seth Rogen whose “You know how I know you’re gay” improvisational bits on the 40 Year Old Virgin DVD had me roaring with laughter. How was that going to work?
In an MTV Movies Blog article I found through News Askew, Rogen explains exactly how it worked:
I made it really clear before I went anywhere near committing to the movie that I needed to be loose… I feel like [improv] is the way people expect comedy to be like now. In its time, the very-scripted kind of conversation was really new and revolutionary, but I feel like audiences have moved on from that, and expect more of a conversational, naturalistic kind of improvisational feel… I told [Smith] I’m not going to change everything, but if everyone just knows they can change things, I find that it makes all the actors seem more real, like it’s actually a conversation that’s happening
I think Rogen definitely has a point, but I think I would go even further. I think the “very-scripted kind of conversation” that he references was at its best when it felt conversational and naturalistic (despite the language maybe being a bit elevated). I think that’s why there are moments in every Kevin Smith film that have felt like actual conversations I’ve had with my friends and other moments where I am painfully reminded that I am watching actors reciting lines from a script. My hope for Zack and Miri is that, by allowing Rogen to become more of a collaborator than he has ever allowed one of his actors to be, Kevin Smith will rediscover the most authentic parts of his own voice.
Worth Your Consideration 011 - A GF5 Linkdump
It may be a good long while before I am able to buy an iPhone 3G. I have the money, but when you’re looking to establish a family plan with one iPhone and one non-iPhone, a trackful of hurdles come into play. First, my wife and I need to be in the same place at the same time for something other than dinner or sleep, and that might not happen again until sometime toward the end of the month (she’s got meetings on two evenings this week; we don’t get home until 7:30ish each night anyway; and I’ve got PodCamp Boston this coming weekend). Second, we can’t go to an Apple Store, where it appears that there are plenty of iPhones in stock (there was a line forming outside the Apple Store in Boston this morning, three days after the initial launch, but I’m guessing that’s just excitement and not people trying to snatch up a limited number of devices). Instead, we have to go to an AT&T Store, where we may or may not be able to get an iPhone, because they’re totally sold out.
Ugh.
So, since getting back from camping this weekend, I’ve been living vicariously through others. Here are a few of the most notable links I’ve come across.
- News Askew has released a new iPhone-optimized version of their site. I’ve been thinking a lot about coming up with a mobile version of Geek Force Five, and I’m curious about exactly how News Askew is redirecting people to the iPhone-optimized site.
- Apple’s MobileMe can apparently sync bookmarks from a Mac to a PC. According to the screenshot featured here, you can sync bookmarks into Internet Explorer, if you see fit. I didn’t know that it was going to be capable of doing this, so I’m very excited. I’ll be much more excited if it’ll sync with Firefox instead, since that’s what I’m using on my PC. Me, I’m trying to decide whether or not to give MobileMe’s free sixty day trial a try now instead of waiting until I get an iPhone. Maybe the coolness of that would tide me over.
- The iPhone App Store opened on Thursday afternoon/evening and Jason Kottke opened up comments on his site to ask people what the “cool” iPhone apps were/are. I, of course, cannot wait until I can actually contribute to this conversation. Sigh… Until then, I’ll have to live with things like the visual previews being provided by AppleInsider and others. The Unofficial Apple Weblog believes that the App Store will change the world, in case you hadn’t heard.
- On a much happier note, Apple released an update for my Apple TV in conjunction with the iPhone 3G/MobileMe launch and it’s improved the already-impressive device significantly. Aside from the updated feature list enumerated Apple TV Junkie, I am most pleased to note that browsing my purchased movies by genre has gone from glacially slow to incredibly zippy. TUAW has a gallery of screenshots.
