You ever shocked to learn about something that you realize maybe you should have known about before? (”What’s up with this Nirvana band — are they new?”) At NOI last week, I had one of those moments when Carly Dobbins-Bucklad, Pittsburg organizer and web guru for the League of Young Voters turned me on to the fact that CVS and Rite Aid both sell disposable video cameras and have for two years.
They retail for around $30 and take 20-30 minutes of video (saving each press of the Record button as a separate clip), and you can preview and delete clips all day long. The only catch is that you have to bring the camera back to the store to have the video pulled off the device and provided to you on a DVD (the retailer of course refurbishes the camera and sells it to another customer), bringing the total cost per use to around $45.
Carly’s used these neat little critters for advocacy purposes already (nice shaky camera work there —an homage to the French New Wave?), and I can see plenty of applications. Since they’re disposable and cheap, you could buy a dozen of them and spread them throughout the crowd at an event — similar to the way people leave still cameras on tables at wedding receptions — to get footage from within the fray.
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March 14th, 2007
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The random byproducts of three very busy days online. Not all entirely on topic, but easily digestible nonetheless.
- Time reporter credits blogosphere for keeping Federal prosecutor story alive in the face of mainstream media indifference. “And we’d have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids!” Via Glenn Greenwald. Another role of our beloved Internets in this rising scandal: follow the emails.
- Unruly bloggers strike again, with RealClimate and Grist ably deconstructing and debunking a New York Times article about supposed skepticism in the scientific community towards Al Gore’s stageshow. Via How The World Works.
- Those damn bloggers just won’t quit: did they also kill the Fox-sponsored Nevada debate?
- John Dickerson looks at a “clever” (disingenuous?) edit in a John Edwards campaign video (sorry to pick on your guy again, mom). In other Edwards news, he now has a presence on Twitter, a site I haven’t quite figured out yet (maybe I should ask Josh Levy). And, his hair is coming back to haunt him.
- More video fun: Giuliani 2007, meet Giuliani 1989 — “There must be public funding for abortion for poor women.”
- Two takes on last week’s NOI training, with Matisse Bustos pointing out the over-abundance of white men in the room (but I’ve been losing weight!) and Jason Z revealing the deepest secrets about this reporter’s writing methods (he shall feel the sting of my wrath in due time).
- Campaign Design Review: McCain for President Let us spend a moment “staring at the grim, unblinking visage of John McCain.”
- User Generated Animation Site MyToons Launches. Another place to post those advocacy animations? Unfortunately, no NC-17 allowed.
- Apple unveils new product-unveiling product, finally realizing its true skill as a company.
- P&G Gives Tampax a Social Spin. Social media tampons = fun with cheerleaders.
- From Junk Mail to Junk World. A not-so-happy look at consumer microtargeting.
- Hydrocarbon glaciers and seas may dot Titan’s poles. Perhaps Halliburton should consider relocating there instead of the Persian Gulf. In other news from Saturn, the subprime mortgage market is planning to stage a comeback by financing waterfront property inside Enceladus.
- One Hit Too Many: the most bizarre image I have seen all week.
– cpd
March 14th, 2007
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