The more time I spend playing online, the more innovations just blow me away. But this one takes the cake.

It’s called “telepresence”, and in this video it was used to create a 3D virtual, live, image of a presenter, who could not physically attend a conference, but presented anyway. His image was projected onto the stage, and since it was happening in real time (think teleconferencing, but on steroids) the “virtual” presenter (who was actually in India at the time) was able to speak and interact with a colleague (his boss) who was “really” on the stage.

The virtual image is not projected onto the screen, but onto the stage. You really do think you are looking at a live person. (Well, you are looking at a live person, but he happens to be thousands of miles away).

There are many possible applications to this. The video mentions doctors “visiting” remote patients. But I immediately had another idea: If my deceased father was able to make a virtual “video” of himself (prior to his death, of course!) then I could listen to a message from him after his death, and see it coming “directly from him”. My daughter could “see” her grandfather, whom she now does not remember. The potential is tremendous.

In fact, this is so awesome that I was waiting for a “April Fool’s” kind of spoiler at the end. But no, it seems the Cisco people are really pulling this off. Watch it, it really is amazing.

If you use Twitter, and you are a South African, please add your name to this wiki.

It will give everybody an idea of how big the twitter community is in the country, and will also hopefully allow us to hook up with some twitterers that are slipping through the cracks :-)

Also, once you add your name, please tweet the link to all your followers, so we can cover as much ground as possible.

I did a very informal poll of those who follow me on Twitter (@EveD, btw) and the consensus seems to be that there are less than a thousand South Africans using the service.

But who knows?

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I was directed to a Nerve.com site showing the 50 most popular advert parodies of all time. I love stuff like this, so was eager to see what made number 1. Well, I don’t know.

For some reason, NBC.com has decided that because of my geographical location, I am not entitled to watch the video. Which would be free to watch if I lived in the US.

This makes no sense, and has thoroughly pissed me off. You cannot play in the social media playground, if you are going to be a bully. We’ll kick you out.

As I have mentioned before, Gino and I are working on a book for a UK publisher, on the topic of Social Media. Actually, that should now be phrased in the past tense.

I had a careful look at the contract, and was horrified to consider the implications of some of the terms:

• We would be lucky to see any money before December NEXT year

• We were obligated to provide the publisher with updated versions for future editions at her request (and we know how often social media topics need updates!)

• Should either one of us die, the estate would not receive royalties for future editions

• Should the publisher successfully sue a copyright infringement case, she would keep all of the proceeds.

Quite a cheek, if you ask me. I kick myself for not reading the contract much more carefully before, but at least now I have a semi ready manuscript to take to market. Since neither Gino nor I expected to make big (or any) bucks out of this, we have decided to do the next best thing: issue the book online!
The original book would be about 60 000 words, which is a bit hefty for an e-book (I think), so we are probably going to split it up into the respective chapters that each of us wrote, and publish two separate books, under our individual names.

We hope to release the books concurrently, and although each of us is now responsible for their own book, we are assisting each other with the editing, the flow and the general tone. May I say that we have drunk far too many coffees during the process!

I am very happy that due to the nature of the book, the online medium seems the ideal space in which to distribute it. But I cannot help but wonder how many authors, who have penned their great masterpieces, have been conned or pushed into a tight corner by one sided contracts. It is my understanding that the book industry is a tough one, and maybe this is a clue as to why.

By the way, none of this has any huge impact on the Social-media-for-South-Africans book that I announced earlier. The format might change slightly, but the book will definitely appear soon on a shelf where all good books are sold ☺