This month Ideum’s own Emily Steinmetz is working on a documentary on Bolivia’s landless peasant movement.  Emily and her collaborators have been traveling the country conducting interviews.  They even interviewed Bolvia’s President Evo Morales! You can read more about their adventures on the Pueblos Unidos blog.  Way to go Emily!

This week about 20 more photographs were added to the John Collier Jr. site on flickr (including this gem on the left taken in 1943 in Questa, New Mexico.) This is the first new set photos to be added since The American Image website went live back in January. (You can learn more about this project in our portfolio.) Our partners at the Maxwell Museum of the Anthropology will be adding more great Collier images over the next few months. The American Image site uses a flickr mashup, so as new photos are added they automatically appear within the Collection and inside the Shooting Script activity. Back on flickr, it was nice to see so many positive comments about the new photos. John Collier Jr. now has well over 100 contacts in flickr.

Along with the two photo mashups, the Propaganda Filmmaker a Flash-based online video editor that allows visitors to create their own short movies has been very active. (I posted more about the online video editor earlier this year.) Over 200 “propaganda films” have been made, with new ones appearing daily. Our visitors’ creativity in working with the 150 clips that are provided has shined through. An American Hero does a great job of telling a very literal story, while Oh! Irony! as the name suggests, conveys a very different message–all of this in less than 40 seconds! You can check out the Top Ten and the latest videos here, or make your own. It’s great to see what visitors will create when we develop interesting tools for them to use.

Back in 2005, we developed a video podcast for NASA’s Sun-Earth Education Forum (see Traditions of the Sun). Soon after we were invited to became part of listserv which included everyone who podcasts at NASA. A master list of all NASA podcasts has been compiled and floating around the group for sometime now but it has ever been published. I asked Bryan Walls who administers the group if we could publish it, knowing it would be of interest to some of you.

Here’s what should be a complete list of all NASA sponsored public podcasts.

1. Ask an Astronomer Videos from SIRTF/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×240, AAC 44.1 Stereo, 650 kbps typical) Started: October ‘05 Average length: 2 minutes Active: Yes

2. Brain Bites Ask NASA from Johnson Space Center (XML) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×180, AAC 44.1) Started: November ‘05 Average Length: 1 minute Active: No

3. Chandra Podcasts from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (XML| iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×213, AAC 44.1, 680 kbps typical) Started: May ‘06 Average Length: 5 minutes Active: Yes

4. Ciencia @ NASA from Marshall Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (32kbps mono) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 6minutes Active: Yes

5. Hidden Universe of the Spitzer Space Telescope from SIRTF/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (H.264, 320×234, AAC Stereo 44.1) Started: May ‘06 Average Length: 3.5 minutes Active: Yes

6. Hubblecast from ESA/Hubble Institute (XML | iTunes) Format: N/A Started: Feb ‘07 Average Length: 5.5 minutes Active: Yes

7. NASA Aeronautics Research Technical Seminars from Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s (ARMD) (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP4 (H.264, 320×234, AAC Stereo 44.1) Started: Nov ‘06 Average Length: 1.3 hours Active: Yes

8. NASA Astrobiology Magazine from Goddard Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (32 kHz, 64.1 kbps, Mono) Started: June ‘05 Average Length: 7.5 minutes Active: No

9. NASA Digital Learning Network Podcast (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (320×240 or 320×180, Stereo 44.1 kHz) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

10. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Podcast (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kbps Stereo) Started: Dec ‘05 Average Length: 8 minutes Active: No

11. NASA Edge Vodcast from Langely Research Center (RSS) Format: MP4 (320×180, 128kbps, AAC Stereo) Started: Mar ‘07 Average Length: 30 minutes Active: Yes

12. NASA Student Opportunities from NASA Education (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kpbs mono) Started: Feb ‘07 Average Length: 10 minutes Active: Yes

13. NASA’s Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum from Goddard Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (96 kbps Stereo) or M4V (H.264 320×213, AAC 44.1) Started: Dec ‘05 Average Length: 3 minutes Active: Yes

14. NASACast from Headquarters (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (128 kbps Stereo) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

15. NASACast Video from Headquarters (RSS | iTunes) Format: mp4 (MPEG-4, 320×236, AAC 44.1 Stereo, 950 kbps typical) Started: Oct ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

16. PlanetQuest - the Search for Another Earth from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 160 kbps) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 2.5 minutes Active: Yes

17. Robotics Alliance Project F.I.R.S.T. Competition 2006 from Ames Research Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (MPEG-4, 320×240, AAC 24, 590 kbps typical) Started: Mar ‘06 Average Length: 1 hour Active: No

18. Robotics Alliance Project F.I.R.S.T. Competition 2007 from Ames Research Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP4 (MPEG-4, 320×240, AAC 24, 590 kbps typical) Started: Mar ‘07 Average Length: 1 hour Active: Yes

19. The Rovercast from Stennis Space Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 160 kbps) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 1.5 minutes Active: Yes

20. Science @ NASA Feature Stories Podcast from Marshall Space Flight Center (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (44.1 kHz, 56 kbps, Mono) Started: Dec ‘04 Average Length: 1.5 minutes Active: Yes

21. Skywatch/Hubble Watch from STScI/NPR/WYPR 88.1 FM (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 48 kbps, Stereo) Started: Sept ‘05 Average Length: 4 minutes Active: Yes

22. Space Place Musings from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (RSS | iTunes) Format: MP3 (48 kHz, 128 kbps, Stereo) Started: July ‘06 Average Length: 5 minutes Active: Yes

23. Spitzer Space Telescope Podcasts from SIRTF/IPAC/CalTech (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 48 kbps, Stereo) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

24. Traditions of the Sun from Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (XML | iTunes) Format: M4V (H.264, 320×213, AAC 44.1, 560 kbps typical) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 3 minutes Active: No

25. W. M. Keck Observatory from Keck/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (XML | iTunes) Format: MP3 (22.05 kHz, 56 kbps, Stereo) Started: Aug ‘05 Average Length: 6 minutes Active: Yes

Late last Fall we posted of number video clips we developed with The Tech Museum of Innovation up on YouTube. Admittedly, it was an afterthought, as we originally began work with the Tech on the Understanding Genetics website years before YouTube was much of a force. The video clips in question, came from interviews I conducted at the Future of Science Conference in Venice back in September. The interviews were with an amazing group; Daniel Dennett, Peter Atkins, Marc Hauser, and Ian Tattersall.

The original plan was to post them on the Understanding Genetics site in a Flash video player and then to Podcast them through the website and iTunes. After seeing Ontario Science Centre’s early efforts on YouTube we decided to spend a couple extra hours uploading the video clips to our own channel on the site. Three months later, it is nice to see that some of the Future of Science clips have over 1,000 views. Atleast one has a long discussion associated with it and all 26 clips have at least one rating and a minimum of 100 views. While these are modest numbers, still a few thousand Web visitors who likely would not have seen these interviews on The Tech Museum site or on iTunes saw them on YouTube. (The Understanding Genetics’s website itself receives around 600,000 unique visitors a year.)

We’ll continue to experiment and watch as museums move forward in their efforts to colonize social websites, it seems like a simple and natural extension for projects like Understanding Genetics to expand their reach.

Earlier in the month, we launched The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr., one of the activities included was the Propaganda Filmmaker. This custom version of our own experimental online Flash video editor, allows visitors to make their own short, 40 second films, which can then be embedded or emailed. Some work on the server-side keeps track of the latest videos and the top rated ones. It is an interesting activity in that the visitor is given creative control and can immerse themselves in the content. (You can learn more about the project our design portfolio.)

We’re currently working on a new and more elaborate version of the video editor. The new editor will include; four minute editing time, a pan and zoom timeline, draggable clips on the timeline, and a pop-over video “inspector.” But the biggest new feature will be two-track editing. An overlay track will allow visitors to edit still images and video over other video clips. This process has reminded me of the early days of desktop video editing. Adobe Premier 1.0 (1991) used “A & B” track editing in much the same way. Nowadays nearly all desktop video editors use single track editing, something that would be extremely difficult to build in Flash.

In designing the first and now the second video editor we’ve spent quite a bit of time looking at desktop and online video editors. Below is a listing of online video editors and some Web 2.0 video sites that we came across.

In the online world, JumpCut is perhaps the best known of all online video editors. Purchased last Fall by Yahoo! this was seen as a move to help them compete with Google which acquired YouTube last summer. JumpCut uses a standard player interface with a “clip sorter” below. It allows “trim” (changing the durration of clips) and supports wide screen video. Additional features include: transitions, titles, effects and styles. Jumpcut’s most important development since the acquisition is the ability to import content from flickr and facebook.

Eyespot allows you to arrange video clips sequentially has a “trimmer” to cut clips. You can upload your own video or grab clips from their promotional partners–mostly music videos and movie clips. Eyespot isn’t really a video editor, it is a “mixer” as they correctly call it. What’s interesting here is that while the clips are Flash video, the thumbnails and timeline interface utilizes Ajax.

Movie Masher is a Flash-based video editor, loaded with features including: trim, multiple transitions, timeshifting, color adjustments, and compositing. I found it harder to get started with Movie Masher than the others, but there are some very impressive features here. This was created by one developer who has estimated he’s put in 8,750 hours of time in creating this online application. The site is also for sale you can read about this on the site.

The other video editors we found work more like our own with a content focus and more traditional timeline-based editing. Bravo TV’s Project Runway has an excellent flash video editor, they call it a video mashup. (Not to be confused with mashups that use public APIs, Application Programming Interfaces.) The Simpsons TV series had a video editing contest which has since closed. You can view the winning entries, the editor was Flash-based.

We’ll likely see many more of these online video editors, mixers and mashups as online video sites themselves continue to multiply. In searching for online editors we came across a ton of video social networking sites: Brightcove, Motionbox, FireAnt, Metacafe, StashSpace, VideoEgg, Blinkx, Vimeo, Phanfare, Dailymotion, Ourmedia, vSocial, Beedeo, Dovetail, among others. How many of these will develop editing (or still be in existence?) in the next year or two. We’ll have to see.