Great synopsis of If I Can Dream by the housemates themselves. Just days to go! You can read more about If I Can Dream here.
Viewing entries tagged
entertainment
Yay! The folks at Mashable covered If I Can Dream again today. Pretty sweet since we’re so close to launch. (It’s set to premiere on March 2 on Hulu and IfICanDream.com.) See the latest teaser video below.
For those that haven’t gotten the low-down yet, If I Can Dream is a live, made-for-web TV experiment — that will use Hulu as the “Television Network”, will be broadast live 24/7 at IfICanDream.com, and follow the lives of five young people – a musician, an actor, two actresses and a model – as they leave their hometowns and live together high up in Hollywood Hills – and go on their journey to stardom as their journey is documented across the Internet via Twitter, MySpace Hulu, etc.
Full disclosure this little labor of love is the baby of my little nerd tank POKE.
some great comments from mashable below
The show — with new episodes released every week — will take a reality-esque look at the lives of five aspiring artists who are trying to make it in Hollywood. A sneak peek of the episode can be seen below.
What’s especially interesting about If I Can Dream is not just the fact that it sprung from Hulu (a website) and Simon Fuller (of traditional TV fame), but that the content and format seem much more broadcast-like than typical web/TV shows.
Essentially the series has all the ingredients of a network television show, but an entirely different and experimental distribution model. It appears as if the basic premise being tested is whether or not the web as a platform can syndicate and distribute highly produced content and churn out a hit show without broadcast as a medium. Although we’ve seen web TV shows make their marks in the entertainment industry — The Guild comes to mind — we’ve yet to see this exact formula tested online. So the real question is: Can this formula pump out a hit show on the same level as a hit TV show?
Good question Jennifer. I confidently say from everyone back at POKE, we sure hope so. In a world where Hulu and Boxee are about to explode…it seems like a great wager to make. Wouldn’t you say?
Readers, what say you?
Funny little tidbit: When I first picked out the name KideoPlayer, I did a Google Search for it and there was just about 1,000 returns for names similiar. Just today I searched for “kideoplayer” on Google and found near 11,000,000 mentions! This is fantastic!
For those who don’t know what KideoPlayer is, click here. (It’s pretty self explainatory. :)
To read my original posting on KideoPlayer, click here.
To run the Google search and see the KideoPlayer mentions, click here.
Thanks everyone (friends, new friends and family) for helping get the word out. I would also like to thank Douglas Rowell for the outstanding character development he did for the KideoPlayer mascots. They are adorable, and everyone loves them.
The mentions online and the traffic seem to be doubling every day. Please, if you love the site - give us some feedback. We’d love for it to keep growing.
Yay!
slap the spacebar for the next clip!
Today POKE and I are launching KideoPlayer. A fun and safe way to “channel surf” YouTube.
the backstory
As a creatively-focused web nerd and as a parent of two young boys under the age of 2, I try to keep my family engaged with what is happening online, including interacting with, sharing and viewing of safe content. Having sat down to try and find this safe content with my boys a couple of times now, I can tell you it is not easy to locate. If you search long enough for YouTube content that is appropriate, it always returns search results with wonderful gems to share, but, they are usually sitting right next to something questionable - if not - down right offensive.
I was amazed to see how little has been done to help curate they sea of online video content in a way that makes it easy, interesting, and fun for parents and kids to experience together. Online video and simple interactivity can be a great source of entertainment and learning for the whole family. Someone just needs to care enough to make it so.
how it works
I will spend my free time sourcing, identifying and curating the safest, most educational (and most FUN) YouTube videos I can find. This ongoing list of videos will be served up in a simple little interactive package that I can sit down and play with my boys. I call this package “KideoPlayer.” e.
And since I’m doing this online (and the web is as social as social can be) you get the benefit of all my hard work. Yay!
how KideoPlayer is interactive
KideoPlayer is based on POKE’s UPL8.TV framework (@neonarcade’s brainchild) It allows for easy video surfing by using your keyboard (spacebar) to “skip” forward to the next interesting thing. UPL8 is also cool because you can search YouTube using the URL field. For example, entering http://upl8.tv/hamster+dance basically rolls your own rediculous hamster dance mash up channel. Pure poetry.
Ok, back to kids…
KideoPlayer works the same way. Only different. :) It seems that YouTube’s G-Rated filter has some flaws. You see, KideoPlayer can’t reliably search only “Safe” areas of YouTube right from the URL bar as some questionable content still sneaks through. As such, we’ve built in a work-around.
Typing http://kideoplayer.com/babyeinstein still executes a search. The only difference is that it searches “locally” — only sifting through the library of videos that I am curating. Neat huh? Just by typing that you’ve rolled your very own “Baby Einstein” channel. From there, you can keep using it like the regular KideoPlayer features, and use the spacebar to get to the next Baby Einstein video (in this case). Bear with us! As I tag more video from behind the scenes, these search queries will get more and more robust.
As parents, it is up to us to be informed about what and how our children play and to make appropriate choices on their behalf. Fortunately, there are many tools and resources that we as parents can utilize to be better parents in the information age. Perhaps someday, this will be one of them.e.
In the meantime, enjoy! Oh, and remember parents - watch with your kids and slap the spacebar for the next clip! e.
Love,
Tom and your friends at POKE
Read more on UPL8.tv here.
Submit videos you’d like to see on KideoPlayer here.
Update on 2009-03-19 14:09 by Meat
KidoPlayer is picking up steam! To read my original posting on KideoPlayer, click here.
Funny little tidbit: When I first picked out the name KidoePlayer, I did a Google Search for it and there was just about 1,000 returns for names similiar. Just today I searched for “kideoplayer” on Google and found near 11,000,000 mentions! This is fantastic!
To run the Google search and see the KideoPlayer mentions, click here.
Thanks everyone (friends, new friends and family) for helping get the word out. The mentions online and the traffic seem to be doubling every day. Please, if you love the site - give us some feedback. We’d love for it to keep growing.
Yay!