Shared Creation Magazine

Tank.tv a web site that specialises in showing new and original works from artists working in the medium of the moving image is running a series of three competitions to find new work for a series of exhibitions planned in 2009.

Entries must be no more than 10 minutes long and submitting artists must have a body of work consisting of 10 more pieces of moving image work to enter.

Further details can be at the

Three Graces website.

Good luck with the short films

Sadly after three years Eyespot is to close. I remember covering Eyespot some time ago on Shared Creation and liked the idea of being produce creative video mixes online. Sadly in the long run it has not worked out for Eyespot.

I do not know why this is the case.

I do have a theory regarding mix creation. Its my thought that this is not something most people want. A great many want to watch, and goodly number want to produce. However I think the produces want exclusivity over their material so that puts community mixing in an awkward place.

I do hope my theory is wrong. I think a lot can happen when film making gets shared through a community.

I wish the creators and technicians behind Eyespot every success in the future.

A quick something for all writers, and news bloggers. If citizen journalism is your thing then you should take a look at http://www.allvoices.com/ . It is another news aggregator site- however it is a little different and a quite interesting.

First of all it allows anyone to directly report onto the site. In addition it also integrates related news articles, blogs, videos and photographs. It uses all of this input to allow the reader to built up a picture of the news. So instead of editorial control instead there is a broad spectrum of information that lets the reader decide what it is going on.

Its also a good place for writers or those who can turn around photos or videos fast to post their work.

This week I encountered some presentation software and I’m going to talk about it. Don’t groan - as this really does fit in with Shared Creation - you’ll see.

I’m going to introduce you to 280Slides.com. This is presentation software that looks and feels like Apple Keynote. If you work on Windows then you may not have heard of Keynote. So I’ll fill you in. Keynote is good presentation software. It easily produces presentations that outshine MS Powerpoint.

Anyway back to 280Slides. Modelled very much on the Apple Interface (in fact If I’ve got my facts right then this is web software based on the famous Mac API).

280Slides simply put lets you create downloadable presentations through the web for nothing. It works very well and you don’t even have to sign up. Simply put you just go to the website, create a presentation, download it and use it. Wonderful!

So how does this fit in with Shared Creation. After all only business people use presentation software?

Well not true. Sometimes everyone needs to show something, to demonstrate something, to convey something, and to teach something. It also means you can create a very cool display to run behind a band for example. You may not need presentation software, and you certainly don’t want to pay for it. Yet you may need it. This is where 280slides comes in - pop online, make what you want and carry on.

It makes sense to me.

Creativity leads to communication and this is all about enabling communication.

Technorati Tags: 280slides, apple, mac, keynote, presentation, web, powerpoint

A long running theme in Shared Creation is the introduction of useful new services and Photrade is the latest to join this list.

Put very simply Photrade is a combination of a photograph sharing website (think the venerable favourite Flickr) and a stock photography site (think istockphoto).

The idea seems simple. “Lets do photo sharing - and create a community, whilst also adding a stock photography option”, in other words bring the worlds of photography, social networking and stock photography together.

You may think that’s cool, and it is, but the concept is actually even stronger than that. Fortunately there is a short video that describes the concept beautifully - and you can view that at
http://www.photrade.com/tour.php?pg=3

I’m not going to run through all the features simply because the video does a good job - you should watch it. Essentially what it says is this - you should share your photos, protect your copyright and if you want to - take a shot at selling and merchandising them. I like this. Not because I am die hard money grabber. But because some should make it easier to help photographers get started, and this site looks like a nice mix of community and professional service. In fact they have firmly nailed their stance on helping photographers by launching the HyperPhocal blog - aimed at teaching the art of photography.

Its a nice idea, and I hope it does well - its out there working to elevate photographic skills.