Nerd Stalker

Nerdstalker's 2018 Best Reviews of Video and Photo Gear Happy almost New Year! Inspired to get some new gear to start a new hobby, profession or just to upgrade your old and tired gear. Here are my go-tos for reviews for the end of year wrap-up of 2018. Phillip Bloom Phillip Bloom is a cinematographer and Director of Photography. He knows what is up. He did a great job looking at some camera gear he used over the last year. Spoiler alert - it has cats as well. DSLR Video Shooter Caleb Pike is full-time You-Tuber and a bundle of energy. I don't know how he does all the reviews he does but I appreciate him a lot. He did a few wrap up videos on Monitors, Cameras, Lens and Audio gear for 2018. Check it out! Tom Antos Tom Antos is a cinematographer and filmmaker. I have been watching him for a few years and just love his candidness. DP Review Chris Nichols and Jordan Drake of DP Review. They were with The Camera Store last year and ...

Swizzle.fm Screenshot With all the videos out there, sometimes we need recommendation help from our friends. That is what Ian Lee and Nick Szabo of Swizzle.fm promises. We met these startup entrepreneurs at Founders Space 's "The Future of Korea" event last year and we caught up with them to hear about their new revision of their product. Originally, Swizzle.fm was a social music playlist platform, like a "Quora for Music Recommendation" and now they announced their new beta will be focused on sharing your favorite music videos. Watch Ian and Nick as they demo about their product, share how they founded their startup and talk about expanding their business strategy.

Videos are not just about views, it is all about what you want the videos to do for your brand. Viewbix helps bring interaction to videos by creating a layer above your video for better reach which in turn to lead to better business. We were able to catch up with Jonathan Stefansky from Israel and talk about his web app that hopes to increase you engagement and help your conversions.

Interview with CEO of TechShop , Mark Hatch at this years Maker Faire in San Mateo. From the TechShop site, "TechShop is a membership-based workshop that provides members with access to tools and equipment, instruction, and a community of creative and supportive people so they can build the things they have always wanted to make. You can think of TechShop like a fitness club, but with tools and equipment instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko's for makers, or a Xerox PARC for the rest of us. TechShop is designed for everyone, regardless of their skill level. TechShop is perfect for inventors, makers, hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families, entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, arts and crafts enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that they dream up but don't have the tools, space or skills. TechShop provides you with access to a wide variety of machinery and tools including milling machines and ...

Nerd Stalker interview with Storify co-founder, Xavier Damman. Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your readers.

We interview John Schimmel at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. John is adjunct professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU and teacher of Developing Assistive Technology. RAMPS is a wheelchair DJ interface - the left wheel fades between tracks while the right wheel scratches the music. Users bring their existing wheelchair skills to the show, RAMPS detects the speed and direction of each wheel. The wheelchair becomes an interface to music, games and new computer interactions. From John's Blog , " The idea for Ramps came from an 18 year old boy with cerebral palsy who called himself E-Money (spelled E$). He is part of the hip-hop culture, rapping with the other boys or to the nurses as they went to therapy. The boys had amazing wheelchair skills, swarming through the hallways in packs without incident. I wanted to develop something that could use the existing wheelchair skills. I developed Ramps with several classmates at the Interactive Telecommunications Progr...

Yoxi (YO-see) is a creative competition and a social game. Teams of problem solvers battle to deliver the best solutions to social issues. You vote, comment, pledge and play along online. The winning team gets the funding opportunities and positioning to make their idea a reality. The more stuff you do, the more your voice is heard. That way, you play to support great ideas brought to the real world.

Dr. Tony Wagner, co-director of Harvard's Change Leadership Group has identified what he calls a "global achievement gap," which is the leap between what even our best schools are teaching, and the must-have skills of the future: * Critical thinking and problem-solving * Collaboration across networks and leading by influence * Agility and adaptability * Initiative and entrepreneurialism * Effective oral and written communication * Accessing and analyzing information * Curiosity and imagination

Ramine Darabiha interviews Finnish startup Videolla . Videolla allows you to upload videos for free but what is interesting about the about the not yet live service is that they allow you to apply custom fees to the uploaded videos. Key examples would be for educational videos but the possibilities are obviously vast. Videolla is accepting signups for a public beta (come on hurry up guys).

For my second post about interesting Finnish startups, I decided to interview Timo Vuorensola . Timo is the director of the scifi movie Star Wreck , the most popular Finnish movie ever. He started a new crowdsourcing startup called Wreckamovie , which helps directors create movies the same way he did, as well as their next movie called Iron Sky (it's about Nazis on the Moon!). We discussed his past, current, and future projects.

(4mins) Nerd Stalker attends the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco and speaks to the CEO of ooVoo , Phillpe Schwartz. ooVoo is essentially a video conferencing solution with all the bells and whistles of any other solution. The differentiators seems to be the quality, the video streaming is very nice and you can choose weather to go hd or lower quality by a simple drop down selection. The ui/design is very nice, you can tell they spent some key time on this which is refreshing to see. Another big win is that the install supports both win and mac os, there is also a browser based solution such that if you conference someone in who does not have the app installed they will be supported. oovoo also has an api available to developers and a contest which offers $2500 for the best app. Or watch this video at YouTube , Yahoo , MySpace , Metacafe , DailyMotion , Blip.tv , Veoh and i2TV

(8 mins) Nerd Stalker visits the San Francisco Soma headquarters of ffwd to speak with CEO Patrick Koppula. Koppula is an entertainment battle-tested entrepreneur formerly of iLike, but you would never know it based on the down to Earth demeanor. The man is bright and insightful; he is passionate about ffwd's mission and future. ffwd is to video what Pandora is to streaming music, the application does an amazing job at learning your tastes and creating online video channels customized based on your viewing habits. Beating out YouTube, ffwd recently won Mashable's People's Choice award for best video solution. ffwd has a fantastic web browser experience but they will soon have a great TV, DVD player, and mobile experience as well. They also have a great partnership with our friends over at Boxee so look for that integration. It has unlimited content potential syndicating from any source including YouTube, Funny or Die, New York Times, Comedy Central, Hulu and CBS. They hav...

(4mins) Roost is hands down the best real estate tool available for consumers. The biggest advantage they have is access to the much desired Multiple Listing Service in various locations across the country. We get the opportunity to talk with Senior Director of Marketing and Social Media, Derek Overbey. Roost offers two services in parallel - a consumer search engine for places to live and a technology platform for REALTORS®.

(4mins) Interview with TurnHere Director of Marketing Morgan Brown at a Mashable SF party. TurnHere is a leading Internet video production and advertising company for both big brands and small businesses. Leveraging professional 7,000-strong filmmaker network, TurnHere creates professional-quality, authentic, engaging online video around the world at a fraction of the cost of traditional production. Big brands looking to make video an important aspect of their Web presence and online directory resellers looking to offer online video to business customers turn to TurnHere for their online video needs.

We were one of the lucky few who got word that the Spot.us web application goes live today. We speak to Founder David Cohn at Project One in San Francisco about the breaking announcement. David was conducting research for Jeff Howe, author of Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business, when he thought that this concept could apply to journalism. Spot.us empowers both the general public and journalist to cover (and contribute to) the stories that they want, while circumventing the possible exclusion by traditional editors. This could very well be the new face of traditional news and we will be watching closely. See a demo of Spot.us .

Recently wherever I go in the tech community, I keep hearing about Blip.fm, and how everyone seems to love the service. I knew we had to stalk Blip immediately, I contacted CEO Jeff Yasuda who graciously agreed to a sit down. Jeff turned out to be a very cool down to earth guy who has all the right qualities to take his company to success.

This demo is way better on a computer, but it's pretty impressive that it could be done on an iPhone as well. I was really impressed with the simplicity and amount of services that Add to Any works with. Add to Any Pat Diven II, Founder & CEO Add to Any’s "Share/Save" and "Subscribe" widgets help your website visitors share, save and subscribe to your content using any service. http://www.addtoany.com

Been trying to get a Sliderocket invite since day 1, killing me.

The new Bugaboo Bee looks dope if you can get past the creepy cirque influenced video and a $530 price.

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