Update From Valencia, Campus Party

I know it has been a while, but I'm back. 

This time not from Madrid. But from the hot Valencia! 

At this moment 600 people and myself are located in a hall in  the Feria in Valencia. They all brought there computer. And we do what we do best. Gaming, blogging, producing content and having fun! 

I am at the Campus Party.

After a three hour trip with the train from Madrid to Valencia, I checked in at this beautiful hotel. I got a great room including an Hd-tv and Wifi! I am here with Marilin Gonzalo producing video and other content for Agora News.

Campus Party is something really different than what I expected. The campus is here in Feria Valencia for 1 week. In this week people from all over Spain are gathered in  these big halls. People bring their Desktops, Hd-tv's  couches and I even saw a bed next to the computer. 

People are gathered to game in a huge Lan-network, talk about their blogs, Sharing millions of files, hacking computers and building Robot's. Next to that a few companies are based here just like they do on a convention. However, they don't try to sell a product, they want to share what kind of cool things they are building. This way the atmosphere over here is just like you would find on a big Festival. People are just having fun with doing their hobby or work. 

 

  

The most fun of all is that during the week, the Campus will not close for one minute. People go on 24/7. I guess most of these people won't even see daylight for a week. 

Next to the geeks and the gamers, the bloggers are here for the first time since Campus. The bloggers are at the Campus Blog site, and share stories with each other, they keep on twittering for the whole day and they record everything what the people at campus party are doing. 

The main blog and podcast, run by Jose A. Gelado, is updated as soon as there is a new update. I was asked to contribute to the podcast soon. So I'll let you guys know when I did. 

The people here can sleep in tents. On the first floor of the Feria there is an airconditioned hall just for tents. For the morning strength there is Yoga, and at Symantec Norton they give massages. 

People here are really crazy. The have the weirdest and coolest computers. They hise up pirate flags and are really creative with empty soda cans. 

Everybody has there own seat in a very big hall, on very long tables. The Wirelles internet is free and that is the ultimate recipe for computer fans to come here. 

I will be doing some interviews with interesting people tomorrow. And will sent you a link to the video. 

This women which you see on the picture, isn't real. It is an Actroid! She looks so real, no picture can record what an experience she is. There is a microphone next to her, and if you ask her questions, she will answer. She can tell jokes and she will answer thank you if you say she looks good. She can move every muscle in her face, and her eyes look so real. It is almost if you are looking to a real women. Good work from the Japanese! 

For all my photo's check my flickr.

For the story of Marilin Gonzalo check this link 

You can also follow me on Campus Party at my twitter

Update from Madrid

So I have moved to the new apartment. Settled down again and went back to work.
So many things have happened this week. It is hard to keep up. Time just flies over here.

I had this great surprise in the beginning of this week. I was invited to go to the Campus Party in Valencia. I will be there with Marilin Gonzalo at the CampusBlog. I managed to get a press pass so I'll also have acces to the rest of the campus. The Campus party is an event which started in 2007. It is recognised as the biggest electronic entertainment event on-line in the world.

"An annual event which has taken place since 1997, that gathers thousands of participants together with their computers from all over Spain and other nations, in order to share their concerns, exchange experiences and carry out lots of different activities related to computers, communications and new technologies."

Sounds pretty cool huh?! I will be there from next thursday untill sunday. And I will be staying in a beautifull Hotel close to the center of Valencia.

Next to that I have been busy at Agora News. I helped out with setting up the studio which they will use for the production of their video's. I also went to the office of Agora News where I helped editing some video's.

On wednesday I went to the ABC Newspaper office. Agora news had a meeting with Javier Duro and they took me with them. First we had a great lunch in which we had lot's to discuss about online video. He told us how he is producing ABC TV. What kind of equipment they use , how they edit it , how they made the video platform etc.

After that he took us to the studio at ABC, and showed us where it all happens. It was very interesting to see where the program is filmed. Because next to their studio is the very big newsroom. Loads of people working over there.

I'll be making another episode of As Told To Chris this Sunday, should be on there in the evening. I think tonight Í'll head to that great bar where I went last night.




Mojitos!

My interview at Agora News

Yesterday I found that the interview I did was placed on the web. Pretty weird to see yourself back like that.

Final Stadsspelen

I noticed I never blogged about this video I made. I made it quite a long time ago, but that shouldn't matter.
This is a compilation of the Amsterdam city finals on Dam square.

So how are they doing @ Mobuzz?

Yesterday I spend a good time in park Retiro. You could see it as the Central Park of Madrid, It is huge and you can get a lot of inspiration for any kinds of things over there.
However I'm not writing this post to tell you how great Madrid is. Because after my stay in the park I went to Mobuzz tv.


Mobuzz Tv is the portal of all kinds of shows. You have the Dosis Diara, Daily buzz and Le buzz which are a short news show about developements in tech and digital lifestyle. Next to that there are 2 other Spanish shows which called, el Noticerio and El punto gilton.

I went to see Gabe Mac, he is the presenter of the Daily Buzz. Gabe showed me around the building, "check for photo's". He needed to prepare some stuff for the Monday show, and I got to see how they made it. The first thing I noticed was that everybody at Mobuzz works with Google Docs. And if you think about it is great if you need to share a lot of documents with Colleagues.

The Mobuzz shows are made by the presenter, gabe in this situation searches through 9000 RSS feeds to find some interesting articles/films or pictures. That way he makes a choice on what will get in the show, and he writes his own show down. There is also a script which he will need to make every day for the editors. About 2 O'clock Gabe is ready, and they will film the show. All with an Canon XH A1 HDV camera.

After gabe has done his part the editors get to work, and look at the script of gabe, they will see all the content which he wants to have in the show. The editors will add all of these things working with the latest version of Final cut pro.

Pretty awesome to have seen this process.

When Gabe was done he made some time for me for an Interview. I'll be publishing this Interview on http://astoldtochris.wordpress.com tomorrow.

I'm heading to the park now, trying to get a tan. Shouldn't be a problem with this weather.

Woke up, checked my stuff y voy en Madrid!

Woke up, checked my stuff y vamos!

Arrived in Madrid this afternoon after a good flight with KLM. And now I'm enjoying this fantastic temperature.

First thing I did is installed all my electronics so I could be in touch with you guys. After that, I went for a stroll in the city.

Grotere kaart weergeven

I already made some pictures and bung them up on the my flickr account.

Tomorrow will be my first day where I will be meeting Jaime from Agora News. He said he had some work for me, so I'm having dinner with him. Also I'll be interviewing my first victims which I will ask all about Madrid!

Do you guys have a suggestion about who you would like to see interviewed? Please contact me and I'll see what I can do.

Noticed by chris:

Did you know:

"that in Madrid everybody smokes? I'm surprised to see how many people smoke over here."

"Madrid is a green city! Not only are there fabulous parks, but I saw some commercials which encourage people to save water and energy."

"Madrid has a very interactive show on TVE called Canta! , they use the ps3 singstar to find there Idol. The score of the ps3, the judge and the audiance decide who will be the next Idol. Funny to see that Spanish television is using Gaming to make a very modern Tv Show. "

As told to chris

If you follow me on twitter you might have read it. I'm planning a trip to the sunny and hot Madrid. I'll be leaving Wednesday the 16th and I'll be coming back the 21st of August. What will I be doing there?

Madrid, a big and hot city which doesn't stands still. I will be working on a big article over there. An article about new media in Europe. At the moment people in Europe think the new media revolution is happening in Northern Europe. I am not so sure about that, as I see a lot of online video channels and other great initiatives coming from the South. I will be interviewing people from these upcoming companies and will investigate what's going on there.

How will I brief you guys about this?!

Just today I made a podcast channel called "As told to Chris". This will be a weekly show in what's happening over there in the world of New Media. Are they ahead of us? What sort of gadgets are the most normal thing in the world over there? How does a Southern-Europe Culture use New Media? Next to that I'll be adding interviews with interesting people. I'm trying to reach Martin Varsvasky, Gabe Mac, Anil de Mello and some other guys which I think will have a interesting opinion about this subject.

Besides that, I'll be producing little video's which I'll post on fulltime chris, these will contain little documentary's about the city, the interviews and other reports about New media in Madrid. Also I will be making photo's which I will upload to Flickr, the idea behind this is that the pictures should talk for themselves. So I won't be saying more about that. You can check these pictures on As told to Chris or on my flickr account.


Going to Madrid alone is pretty exciting for me. I hope you guys will follow the show. And have input on my output.

It would be very cool to have a lot of interaction with you guys.

Internet, what a shock!

found this website through another blogger.
thought this was a great video. Have fun ;-)

Visual Search engine top 5...

Thanks to Erick Alejandro I found about two other visual search engines.He got me thinking and I just made my visual search engines top 5.

5.

Quinturq is a visual search engine which works with tag clouds. You can enter your query and it searches for related tags. The search engine works with split screen so you can see the results of your tagcloud right away. The most cool thing of this engine is that you can make your own tagclouds pretty fast and embedd them on your website. The thing I don't like about it is that the website looks terrible. It hasn't got that 2.0 feeling like other websites. I think this is just a Google, Ugly but efficient.

4.

Kartoo is a funny flash based visual "meta" search engine. It connects tags and looks at the content. For instance if you search for "Toto" you'll see that the connection boxes on the screen contain words like "Music, Rock, Band, Artist" if you hover over the words you'll notice the tags which contain that sort of information will be linked with a line. What I truly find stupid of this website is that it gives you the illusion you can enter search with categories such as"Images, video, wikipedia" However this is just a link to yahoo or wikipedia. Is this because their lazy? Or do the just don't want to keep people on their website?

3.

A visual search engine isn't always a website. So we can see from Ergo. Ergo is a search engine which you download on your computer. It works with a combination of online and offline searching. What does that mean? Well that you can organise your own stuff just like you can do with programs like Picasa. The cool thing from Ergo is that you can search in multiple sources. From your local hard disk to Flickr to Google. Of course these results are shown as a nice Apple frontrow style copy which gives it a nice 2.0 look and feel.

The thing I don't like of Ergo is that you need to download a program to search your computer and the web. Besides that the give you a trial version first. And after that they expect people to purchase the software. I would never pay for a search engine on my computer, would you?!

2.

I think Redzee is a great number 2. It has a very beautifull way of showing their results. It reminded me of a carousel which you can make with Wix. Is very User friendly and it makes searching a lot easier. It is simply just click and drag with websites. The website however does contain a big ammount of bugs. It can't find query's, or the website doesn't load properly. They are just like every 2.0 company in Beta, so you can't really complain. I really think we can hear more from these guys.

1.

You type 'visual search engine" into google, and these guys come up. I think the best visual search engine at the moment because of the true 2.0 way of designing and programming this website. I think Web 2.0 has all to do with sharing litteraly everything you can. I never even thought of sharing my search results but if you think about it, it can come in handy sometimes. Search me works with the -not to original- but very beautifull Apple frontrow display. It shows thumbnails of the websites and you can enlarge them, and go that website if you feel like it. The greatest function of Search me is building your stacks. You can just drag websites/photo's/video into a stack which after that you can simply embedd in your blog. :-) Tried it before in this blog which worked fine for me. I think these guys will be followed by a lot of other search engine company's. However at the moment. They are my number one.

So what about you guys, did you miss one in this top 5? What are you're top 5's?
let me know.

My searchme stack

Ok going to test this one! :) Check out Search me for their wonderfull way of searching through the web. This gadget what you see in the post is made with Search me, it is a stack which I made just simly by dragging websites into a box. And embedded on my blog! I surely advice you guys to try this, because it's cool :).

Searchme

Maximize stack view