Advercation = Advertising + Education

I use lots of web apps. I build them for clients, I try them for fun, and use them for getting stuff done in life in general.

Most of them though I’ll log into once, poke around, and then never come back to. Some become an integral part of my daily life (twitter, facebook, workstreamr, etc.).

And it’s really not often that a new web app comes along that joins this revered list. Well, I think another just did: TokBox.

In a nut shell, TokBox lets you send video voice mails and have unlimited participant video conference calls (I got up to about 13 people simultaneously today). Oh, and it’s entirely browser based, free, and embedable.

Today Leora and I were chatting and I enjoyed the ease of initiating a video call by her just clicking on my tokbox link (http://www.tokbox.com/corbett3000):

I then threw my link over to Leslie on google chat so that she could call me…once she did, hit the ‘merge call’ button and she joined our video chat:

We then tried out the Conference Call function, and you can see below we’ve got 5 video conference users (Zvi and Sam joined) and one voice only (our friend didn’t have a camera). You’re able to join a conference call by simple clicking a link…you can see ours to the left of the headshots below.

Then a few of us tweeted the conference link and a bunch of people showed up (the black boxes/voice only are people configuring their cameras):

Tokbox is in beta at the moment, and I’m happily providing feedback as an ‘interested user’, so if you’ve used the tool and have something to say, please leave a comment here!

The following videos contain interviews I conducted at the Web Manager’s Roundtable.

The focus of the discussions was ‘how broadband video can deepen brand engagement.’

Enjoy:

Video 1 of 3

Video 2 of 3

Video 3 of 3

I’m in love with Ustream.tv these days and as a digital agency sponsor of the Web Manager’s Round Table we thought it would be fun to live stream the event.

One Wednesday, July 18th at 8:00 AM Blattner Brunner (bbdigital) will be broadcasting live from an The Web Managers Round Table, a DC event we’re sponsoring that it will focus on “what broadband video can do for your brand.”

This is a gathering of about 100 web managers from around the DC area. We’ll be interviewing interactive marketers, asking them how broadband video is moving their business forward – hopefully we can uncover some tips for you that you can apply to your own online efforts as well.

Please tune in by visiting http://www.bbdigital.com/bbtv tomorrow beginning at 8am!

Or clicking the play button below:

Campbell-Ewald and LitFuse have recently launch an beautiful new micro site for Michelin.

Their innovative use fo 3d graphics and broadband video kept me enanged for almost 5 minutes - which you may know to be roughly about a lifetime or two online.

http://www.michelinman.com/forward/ 

MIT Technology Review has posted an incredibly insightful video of Tim Berners-Lee explaining the elements of the “Semantic Web”.

In summary -

Web 1.0 = A Web of Documents

Web 2.0 = A Social Web

Web 3.0 = A Web of Data

Click Tim’s Pic to watch the video

Thank you for inventing the web, sir!

I’m pretty sure I saw Moby in there somewhere…

It’s no surprise that Broadband Video is the perfect channel through which politicians can reach their varied and desired target audiences.

Ken Liebeskind of ShootOnline’s iSpot gives a good recap of it’s initial usage thus far in the 2008 Presidential campaign:

“Candidates Use Broadband Videos To Announce Presidential Bids”

I’m quoted in the article and agree with is conclusions. I have to say though that the last qoute should read:

“What we call ‘web 2.0′ technology is enabling users to share media. This sharing ability creates social media. People can comment on it, tag it, mash it up, and foward it on. How do you interact with a TV spot? Really?”

I’m looking forward to working on some interesting interactive implementations this political season and seeing how the rest of the field embraces the new tools that have been created for them to use.

It hasn’t hit the mainstream yet as it is still a little early in this election season, but the political marketing/campaigning buzz will center around the social media aspect of each campaign.

You know what though…I have to wonder if a democratic candidate will create a profile on myspace (owned by FOX> FOX no likey ‘democrate party’ [sic]). Will a republican?