I am not the only one who feels the whole world could be at a crossroads right now -  with the result of the US Election probably deciding the course of much more than just income tax levels in down town Idaho.
The implications for the World seem huge - because the possible outcomes seem so different.
Anyway, there are tons of political blogs for this sort of thing.
What interests me is the use of the internet in this election.
There has been a proliferation of internet blogs about this election.
Some are by concerned voters, some are set up us fundraisers for the campaigns and some are even funded and by the parties with a view to disseminating information to voters in a new way.

The internet is also going to be used to cover the elections in a new way.
The Guardian - at the forefront of online journalism as usual - will even be getting its journalists to Tweet using Twitter to keep us up tro date throughout the night. I’d like to  point out that Property Week used Twitter as far back as MIPIM in March

Also, according to AFP more journalists than ever before are descending on the US from around the World to cover this election and they will be “posting Internet photos, videos and blogs” - no more running to the nearest pay phone to dial in your copy - most will be using web-based Content Management Systems to put copy straight onto websites and that same copy will then be used to write tomorrow’s papers.

And that’s where the internet comes into its own - its immediacy. You can Tweet from an election count straight to the Guardian website so that someone in Guildford will know the result of a Key primary before anyone outside the Town Hall i the town itself.

Newspapers cannot compete. They will have the in-depth look at what it all means - not the NEWS itself - which is now almost exclusively to be found online, on TV and on Radio.

I can’t wait to see this election unfold in all its multimedia glory

yay!

Today propertyweek.com is celebrating another award nomination - this time Best Website in the IBP Awards 2008.

That follows our recent nomination in the BSME awars for best business website.

It shows we are heading in the right direction - although we know there is a long way to go.

In fact unlike most journeys this one has no end - that’s got to be the thing about the web.

You can keep driving forward but you will never get to the edge because the edge keeps moving.

Every week i hear about or come across some new software - or hardware - which is showing yet another potential direction the web could take.  I love it.

The constant excitement.

My favourite of recent times has to be Qik.com if you have a compatible mobile phone you can stream live video from your phone to the web - that’s right.

Not from the web to your phone like everyone is tryiong to do but the other way. You can be out on the street and see something exciting happening and you can broadcast live video from where you are standing to the www

it’s amazing - although so far all i’ve managed to record is some footage of my football injury (broken nose), and a few shots of my desk at work - oh and one of me after a few beers in my kitchen trying to impress mates in the living room who were watching the live broadcast…of my kitchen.

Surely i will shoot that elusive money-making video footage soon.

anyone got any other great new uses for the web - or just great new websites?

Google - not making much of a song and dance about Her Maj’s visit…

Today, her Majesty the Queen is visiting Google’s London HQ - another step on the internet’s path to universal acceptance!
Lots of people you speak to in property say - without any shame - that they don’t use the internet.
They see it as a threat to the way they live and work - instead of a tool to help them go about their daily lives more efficiently.
i wonder if the Queen’s visit tothe all-powerful Google will lend some respectability to the internet. Will stuffy, old technophobes finally realise the power and potential of a good website?
I doubt it, but like I say it has to be a step in that direction. Vive la information superhighway!!!

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Comedian Sean Lock with some of the winners - i had to shoot fro the back of the room :(

Okay, so it took me a while to edit - largely because i’ve never had any Premier Elements training - but the video from last Thursday’s IAS Awards is on the site.

You can see it here 

I’m actually almost proud of it - although there is no doubt a lot of room for improvement and one day i will be acutely embarrassed by it, no doubt - but i think considering i had one camera, one mic, no editing training and a day job to do - it ain’t half bad.

We normally pay thousands of pounds to have these post-event videos produced - admittedly more professionally - but i think with a little editing training and some more equipment i could do a passable job.

And that is the great thing abou the web - it’s ideal for people who like ‘having a go’.

What do you reckon?  Be kind….please.

Tomorrow I’m going to be videoing the Industrial Agents Society and Property Week Awards at the Hilton in Park Lane…and i’m scared.

You will be able to log on to the site soon and see how i managed but right now i’m hastily scanning video editing tutorials online and borrowing lighting equipment - the bowels of the Hilton were modelled on an underground network of caves carved into limestone by millions of years of water erosion - well i think that’s what they were modelled on!

I’m using Adobe Premier Elements

to edit the video and our trusty Sony AE1 to shoot.

I’m getting better with Elements and i enjoy editing but it’s not easy.

keep an eye out for the results

Royal Mail's horse-drawn carriage would've got to Munich quicker...almost

Okay, this is not going to be as much of a problem for everyone as it is for me but have you ever tried to send anything bigger than a holiday snap over the internet to someone, somewhere else?

Anyone got any ideas on how to do it?

We’ve all heard of You Send IT and there are various others out there like Senduit and even sendbigfiles.com and a few months ago MSN  offered me 5GB of space on their Spaces servers - lovely!

The good news is they all claim to be FREE!!!

The bad news is they don’t appear to work - unless you are willing to pay.

I was trying to send a video i had shot of a Property Week European Awards winner who couldn’t go to Munich to pick up his award in person.

Mr Peter Vernon, chief exec of Grosvenor UK & Ireland, kindly allowed me to record his acceptance speech at his office on Grosvenor Street and our AV Team in Germany were on stand-by to receive the footage.

After i had hastily edited it and saved it out as an AVI (which meant it was going to be large ) i looked for ways to send it to Germany - or in real life i was looking for a place on the internet which would allow me the server space to save my file and allow my colleague Matt Papworth to download it in Munich and play it at dinner.

Not hard you may think. You’d be wrong.

After trying various file share sites with my -hardly massive 160MB file - i found that none of them wanted to accept it. Prize for most infuriating goes to Sendbigfiles.com who made me wait an hour and 45 minutes before giving me an error message which read ‘An unknown error has occured’. Yeah, my error in using your site i reckon.

Even the usually reliable MSN Spaces and Senduit were both having none of it.

in the end i had to have the file added to the root folders of the website! Then hastily removed once it had been downloaded.

Anyone got any answers?? I might even offer a prize for the best solution.

Listen , I’m not a huge fan of American foreign policy and i do sympathise with the stereotypical view of most Americans as being a little like Middle Age astronomers who thought the spot they were standing on was in fact the centre of the universe - with everything, and everyone revolving around them.

However, i have to say that when it comes to shear watchability you can’t beat Americans. They were made for TV and TV was made for them.

Just when i thought i’d had my fill of caucuses, primaries, presidential nominees and the whole US election… along comes the self-styled Pitbull with Lipstick!!

Sarah Palin - Republican Vice Presidential candidate and John McCain’s running mate - is an internet sensation.

Clips of her are all over blog sites and video aggregators.

She is also the only way the Republicans were ever going to get news coverage in this country which would compete with the reams of press given to their rival Barrack Obama.

Let me round it up for you as much as i have a handle on it so far:

1. She is known by her friends as Sarah Barracuda
2. She fiercely contested reports she had extra-marital relations with a colleague
3. She was forced to put to bed rumours that her baby son, was in fact her grandson.
4. She did so by giving the press her 17-year-old pregnant daughter (who couldn’t be the mother of the baby because she was carrying a child of her own)
5. The 17-year-old daughter’s boyfriend lists himself on MySpace as “a f**@ing redneck” who likes to ”shoot some sh*t” and “doesn’t want kids” - nice bloke i hear you say.

So far the only thing missing is some kind of conspiracy/government control angle

Oh, oh… wait a minute.

Here’s the Redneck, don’t want kids, gun lover up on stage with Pailn’s daughter at a Republican convention and he’s holding her hand and obviously completely happy about it all - and his MySpace site has disappeared!

Awesome.