Apologies for the shocking lack of posting activity recently, but I’ve been on holiday in Japan. And guess what: the internet access there is surprisingly limited. Wireless: forget it. Internet cafés: if you ask, they look at you like they’ve seen a ghost. Because wifi is sooooo 2004-5-6, sir. Everybody over there is on their mobiles, surfing the worldwide wap web. Interesting. 

Anyway, Japan is a crazy, beautiful, funny place with lots going on. And they have good beer. So I’ll try to filter the creative info in my head into a few posts over the next few days. 

The first pleasant surprise came straight when we arrived. 

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I was chatting with my friend ZuluZulu the other day about digital media (he’s a bit of an old school new media dude; you know the ones; they were programming CD-ROMS when I was still impressed by Word and survived the dotcom-crash) and got talking about Joost, the much-hyped, long-forgotten Future of TV. The application that was going to change the way we watched tv. Or content, I should say. 
Whatever happened to them, we wondered? And shouldn’t they be doing something with a browser (it was the day that Google released Chrome), incorporate their software into a more user-friendly website. 

Well, speak of the devil etc etc. Turns out that Joost is no longer focusing on letting you download a software application, but are integrating their p2p technology into a website and the browser, thus bringing it closer to the likes of YouTube. [Read more]

When bands ask their audience to participate in their new music video, it generally doesn’t get much further than a cameo in the audience of the ‘club-performance’ or at best, the chance to use the artists music to send in your own creation. Apart from the fact that cynics see it as a cheap way of getting result, it’s pretty standard fare. But here’s an interesting one: a music video project that’s based on technology and a global community of UGC-makers.

For their next video, Chemical Brothers and Nexus Productions are asking people around the world to upload a still or short video, documenting “the insanity that goes on at the stroke of midnight”. That’s a nice idea in itself, but the makers want to have material that’s “related to the specific point of origin”, so it can be uploaded and tracked via Google Earth. 

Collaborative, open, global and creative. Who knows what the end result will be, but I like the idea of it already.  

For the full brief, go here (open until August 25).