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Rory Cellan-Jones

This is a viral blog

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 13 Mar 09, 09:16 GMT

"Well of course it isn't, you blithering idiot, you're abusing the language. You've completely misunderstood the term "viral" - and anyway this isn't even a blog."

That will, I'm sure, be the reaction of many of the weberati to my provocative headline. But I've been pondering over who decides what various web terms actually mean - and whether the increasing professionalisation of Web 2.0 and the social media (what on earth are they, you may ask) is diluting their original purity.

It's the Today programme "viral" that's got me thinking, of course. The project has been very well explained by Evan Davis, but the idea was to place a video on the web, and then sit back and watch it take off. Last time I looked, it had got nearly 18,000 views in two days - not so much a viral as a blockbuster - but then of course, Today has been cheating, hasn't it? Here are a few of the comments by those who've viewed the YouTube video:

"The idea of a Viral is that it spreads under its own "steam", not plugged by the author on a National Mainstream radio show."

"Well, I loved it, but it's not really a viral per se and it does not really stand on its own"

"This is very poor show indeed. Smacks of being forced and fake"

"Evan Davis rocks. I never thought I'd say that."

Well obviously the last point is true - but just how genuinely viral is this video? It has indeed been ruthlessly promoted, both on air on Wednesday morning - and by BBC people like me, Twittering and Facebooking about it. I've even stolen it to place on my Red Nose Day fundraising page - my own attempt to make my page go viral along with the Today clip.

So what is a viral video? Here's Wikipedia's verdict:
"A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the process of internet sharing, typically through email or instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites." And here is the verdict of the Computer Encylopedia - whatever that is:

"A video that spreads quickly via the internet. It is often a short clip on a video sharing site such as YouTube that people reference in blogs, e-mails and instant messages."

Well, by those definitions, I think "Inside Today" hacks it. But the purists would say the essence of a "viral" is that it spreads in a slow, undercover manner, and that viral status can only be conferred by the democratic will of the people - in other words, the web community - and not by some media behemoth or shadowy marketing agency.

Too late, folks, I'm afraid - the marketing folks have seized on the "viral" idea like drowning men spotting a lifeboat. Just do a quick Google search for the word viral and on the front page you'll find nothing about infections, plenty about marketing - and the sponsored link is for what appears to be a professional viral video production company. The web purists have lost the battle - "viral" now just means another way to spend your advertising dollars.

So what about "blog"? Surely the whole idea was that blogging was a platform which gave a voice to millions of "ordinary" web users, the unheard who had no access to the mainstream media, and wanted to share their ideas, their prejudices, their jokes, with the world. But now those tired old voices we've all heard for too long - newspaper columnists, politicians, chief executives, and yes, BBC broadcasters - have all decided it's hip to blog. They're fooling themselves, of course, say the purists - they don't know what a blog is.

Back to that incredibly authoritative Computer Encyclopedia:

"Blog: A website that displays in chronological order the postings by one or more individuals and usually has links to comments on specific postings."

Well I think dot life ticks all of those boxes. But the purists are right to say that what we originally understood by the term "blog" - or "weblog" - was something extremely personal. That is now being diluted by the arrival of a new wave of bloggers with something to sell - whether it be a newspaper, a software company, or a broadcast news outfit.

So who is to decide what a blog is, or what viral means? Perhaps we need a National Institute of Web Terminology, appointed by the government to rule on these matters. Then again, perhaps not. Much better simply to let the people decide - go on, have a row about it on this blog. Or whatever you'd like to call it.

Maggie Shiels

Revolutionising sport on the telly

  • Maggie Shiels
  • 13 Mar 09, 09:02 GMT

The company behind all the weird and wonderful TV tricks on CNN on the night of the American election wants to transform the way we watch sport on TV.

The highlight was the ability to "beam" a reporter who was actually on location into the studio in front of anchor Wolf Blitzer. Everyone was talking about the hologram effect for days on end here but it was just a bank of cameras, computers, sensors and some smart software that performed the magic.

The company behind that technology is called SportVu from Israel. It has since been bought over by Stats.com which is the big beast in providing statistics that "track every pitch, snap and goal in detail."

Stats.com, which is owned by NewsCorp and the Associated Press, covers every major sport the world over - boxing, cycling, racing, netball, basketball, horse racing, the Olympics, football, soccer, American football, baseball, poker, rugby, skiing swimming and tennis. You get the idea.

Hells bells they even do camogie, a Celtic game played with a stick and a ball not unlike hurling

For years there has been plenty of talk about being able to watch say a football match, or soccer game, from any point of view. The delivery has never really lived up to the promise.

At the TV of Tomorrow Conference in San Francisco, Stats.com's executive vice president Steve Byrd told me that will change.

"With the SportVu technology we are able to track all the players, the referee, the ball on the pitch and all in real time.

"The algorithms allow us to measure speed, distance, location on the field, the number of times a player has the ball, how long the passing takes, how accurate the pass is.

"From that you can create really interesting graphics for the broadcast and also run the data stream, if you will, of the players through a graphics rendering engine and from that you can look at the match from any perspective."

Mr Byrd said from a hardware point of view, nothing would change. It's all about the software.

"We are tracking the players in real time, in three dimensions if you will with object tracking technology.

"The sensors are standard, so are the cameras and the computers that process the information. It's all down to the software algorithm that takes what the cameras and sensors see on the pitch and translate it into useful data.

"The trick is going to be for stats to partner with the graphics rendering companies so that we can merge our data stream into good enough looking animation that the public will want to watch. We are there and it's just a matter of getting into the venues."

To that end Mr Byrd said the company is in talks with the English Premier League, the Football Association and the International Cricket Council.

From next week however the technology will be used during Major League Soccer matches in the States.

"I would be very surprised if in two or three years at the most you don't see something in the broadcast that gives you the ability to watch a game from any point of view, or to do it online," said Mr Byrd.

He admitted that while there is a lot of interest in the technology, at the end of the day it will really be about dollars and cents and who gets what slice of the pie.

"It always comes down to the money," he said.

Darren Waters

Countdown to SXSW Interactive Festival

  • Darren Waters
  • 13 Mar 09, 08:34 GMT

The streets of Austin, Texas, are quiet and the city feels like it is waiting for something.

It had been waiting for rain: after a 17-month long drought the downpour finally arrived this week and the whole city is breathing a sigh of relief, not least because the area surrounding Austin is farmland and there had been talk of ranchers going out of business.

No, the city is waiting for the first wave of visitors. More than 10,000 web professionals arrive for the interactive festival, followed by thousands more for the music and film festivals which take place later this month.

Apparently the only way to tell the web geeks from the music heads is that the T-shirts on the latter group are slightly cooler.

The first of the festival goers are already here. In the corridor outside my hotel room I've heard a handful of people walk past discussing their record labels and music deals.

"I have a very diverse audience. If you like hip hop I can give it to you; If you like rock I can give it to you," said one man, giving himself the hard sell on the phone to someone who I assume is in the music business.

Austin is now used to the wave upon wave of visitors, not least because the city itself has been growing at an exponential rate over the last few decades.

Everywhere you look you can see buildings been thrown up. The standing joke about Austin is that the state bird is the crane because of all the construction work going on.

Before the madness begins I sat down with science fiction author and Austin-ite Bruce Sterling, who has been part of the SXSW festival since the early days and is giving a State of the Cybersphere talk next week.

He used to give the closing talk at the festival but is now one of more than 350 different sessions.

"I am a relic of the early days of this particular enterprise. I think they keep me around for sentimental reasons really," he tells me over lunch in one of Austin's dining institutions, Hut's Burgers.

Sterling's annual party at SXSW became a legendary event. Held at his house, the open invitation grew from a handful of people, to 100, 300 and eventually to 800 people four years ago.

"I wasn't doing an exact headcount but the cops did show up. It got out of control."

For reasons of safety and sanity, Sterling had to end the annual shindig.

The party became famous not just as a place for great conversation but also as a way for geeks to meet the opposite sex.

"A number of romances started at my house. Lots of women come to SXSW and it's known as a Web 2.0 cruising site," he laughs.

While Sterling is no longer the finale to SXSW Interactive, he does still promise some surprises.

"My ability to go in and give a blessing to these geeks has faded with time. The speeches tend to toward emotionally unloading on people. I could do some futurist punditry but people like the literary and poetic aspects.

"I try to do things 'left brain' for a crowd that is quite geeky; something intuitive and sentimental."

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