Microsoft’s Bing has been around for just over a year, trying to cause a revolution in the search and location services market. But it hasn’t got the market share that I expected. So it was with great interest that Microsoft this week rolled out Bing Entertainment, a dedicated hub within Bing that hosts film clips and trailers, music videos, TV clips and games Bing Entertainment is only live in the US at the moment, but it has already been met with praise from many within the search sector.

Bing senior VP Yusuf Mehdi says there is demand:
“In the field of entertainment, 76% of people use search to help find and navigate their entertainment options online, but only 10% say they have a trusted place to go,” he said. [Source: New Media Age]

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Erin doing camerawork for the webinar

More successful live eventcasting was underway yesterday – watch the results of AmbITion Scotland‘s first webinar here on demand.

The next AmbITion Scotland webinar on March 25th is currently booking – click here for live and webcast tickets.
The AmbITion Scotlad Roadshow North (Inverness) will also be live and webcast online on March 18th – book here!

The AmbITion Scotland eventcast of the first Getting Digital event, live in Edinburgh on 28th January 2010 and live online, is also available on demand. You can watch the event, produced by Hannah Rudman’s other company, Envirodigital, at your leisure here! Scottish Arts Council simultaneously released their press release about the AmbITion Scotland programme – read that here.

As well as participating with the day through Twitter – #getambition – online audiences also participated with the event through online chat.

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First off, did I get my predictions right for 2009?! Read them here.
I predicted the rise in interest around cloud computing and this has certainly happened, with good options around for personal computing. Read my other company, Envirodigital’s summary of cloud computing at end of 2009. We’re not quite there yet with applications and security for enterprise computing (for business), but that offer becoming stable and attractive as an option is a predication for 2010.

I also predicted the rise of 3D in the living room, with games being the focus of this. In fact, gaming has developed in a different way, with the realism of graphics and the sensory experience of controlling games through bodily movement being the development of 2009. Didn’t Wii almost have it all?… Sony have just announced that their Bravia range will be 3D this year.

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Motherapp have just launched a tool that enables anyone to turn their blog and twitter stream into an iPhone app. This enables you to aggregate content together in one place for audiences to read offline – not bad for $99.

In June 2009, national brand strategist Maureen Craig conducted 12 focus groups with urban and suburban residents of multiple ages and ethnicities in Greater Philadelphia. These findings were included in the Cultural Alliance’s recent publication Research Into Action – Pathways to New Opportunities. View Maureen’s presentation here – to find out what ordinary Philadelphians really think about arts & culture, and what would get them to participate more often. Giving people participative activities in venues so that they get to interact with others is still a key desire from perspective audience.

Envirodigital client National Theatre Wales launched their programme last week via webcast!

They have also been increasingly busy establishing their wider webpresence – today they have 1058 Facebook fans, over 100 Twitter followers @NTWtweets, a YouTube Channel and of course the ever-growing membership of the online social network.

The depth of the participation and interaction and the quality digital assets are excellent: a real best practice exemplar

If you’ve been wondering what AmbITion is about and why we’re running the programme and its events, then watch my introduction!

The Age of Stupid – the brilliant new film about climate change and why we all need to wake up to it, crowd sourced funding – for the film’s production and distribution. For a while now, in the States, A Swarm of Angels have also been funding films via their group of business “angels” – everyday folk like you and me! A Swarm of Angels is a open source feature film, and participatory filmmaking community. Its a new kind of film process and movement pioneering extreme collaboration & digitally-native cinema.

You can also read more about crowd sourcing funding for cultural projects via this blog post I wrote on the subject last year, and there’s more examples and a great discussion about it on David Parrish’s Creative Enterprise Network.

Connecting. Commenting. Critiquing. Communicating. Contributing. Conversation. All positive words, needing energy and enagagement. And yet when cultural organisations hear the “C” words in relation to their audiences and their content, it usually invokes a fear of negative criticism. It takes a great deal of porousity and maturity as an orgnanisation to be able to handle that audiences engaging in ‘C” words may well have things to say about us that we don’t like to hear. However, the fact that they are engaging energetically is something that we should be celebrating and encouraging – a community is building around our content – people are pulling it to themselves, rather than just having pushed at them. They are perpetuating their content around their own networks, and will also self-moderate: if someone strongly disagrees with another, a debate will begin! I’ve been talking for a long time how virtual networks enable this as well as aftershow talks or discussion groups.

Now its a reality. A new Facebook Application “Payback Time” rewards unhappy movie-goers for sharing their thoughts on a movie they thought was rubbish. They share their thoughts and wager how much they think they should be compensated. The other users of the app read the review and vote on its integrity, with the crowd agreeing or disagreeing and therefore rewarding the reviewer with virtual money that can be redeemed on – more movie tickets!! Imagine it for theatre: the quality of the amateur reviews goes up as people compete for virtual money; the disgruntled audience member could have their faith restored by others’ points of view, comments, or the chance to get more tickets.

Christian Payne made this excellent video – on his mobile phone – of his day in Manchester, speaking at AmbITion’s latest networking/training event: Digital Conent re:connected.

Christian spent all day with his mobile in hand, capturing soundbytes and conversations. One of his observations about videoing with mobile is that people are far more natural and open when faced with a tiny phone camera than they are when a big lens and mic are presented, and this lovely personal and reflective video proves it!
Also check out the live blog archive and Twitter stream from the day. Over 40 people enjoyed the event live, with over 200 tuning in via the web stream.

Abandoning TV altogether, MSN and Endemol have launched Kirill, an interactive online sci-fi show. The Kirill series will run for ten episodes of three minutes each, following the stories of two characters living in a mysterious world. the content is free, bumpered with advertising – and as ever with online content, extremely context aware advertising – in this case, X-Box 360.

Produced by Endemol and Pure Grass Films the show will screen in High Definition through Microsoft Silverlight technology (Mac users get the plug-in via Firefox). Kirill watchers will be invited to get involved with the show through character blogs, videos and audio films, which will be hidden across the web. Secret websites will also be created to help watchers decipher clues about the plot and characters. This looks like the mainstreaming of Alternative Reality Games – ARGs – into interactive and interesting popular content. Its a brilliant way to empower people to use the web creatively and fully.