Alcat, a very good friend of mine, has had his YouTube account for more than 2 years now. He was born in SF and was a wannabe video blogger after being inspired by the likes of Bre Pettis and Steve Garfield at Gnomedex 2005.

He never quite got his act together, however, and languished behind the scenes, licking his paws.

Until he found Seesmic. It was easy to post quick, often rude and argumentative videos there and he liked it. He liked to mime. People seemed to like him. He performed for them. He answered their questions. He joined in their conversations whilst feeling slightly “luckier” than the other cats there because he, unlike the rest, had the power of speech. And he wore wigs well.

He went to SXSW and there he found he could at the same time delight and frighten people. Was he real? Why was he talking? He collected stickers. He ignored those who stared as they passed him talking into the laptop in anticipation of sessions. He marvelled at the people and their geekery. He liked what he saw.

Now, it seems, he is not alone. And he is pleased. When once people scoffed at his video ambitions, taunting him with cries of “but you are a puppet”!, now people are paying for other such felt fellows in video form.

Even Flickr is doing it to launch their video service because they have realised that humans are essentially boring.

Alcat welcomes this. The internets is a big place. There is enough space for all the puppets in the world.* He has even encountered the Feldman man on Seesmic and he looks forward to more encounters of the felt kind.

Except he is furry. Superior to felt.

*Never must he be called “puppet” to his face.

90 secondes.

Tout ce qu’il faut pour capturer l’instant...

L’instant après lequel on court tous.

Depuis ce matin, Flickr s’est ouvert à 90 secondes de vidéo. Un groupe d’exclusifs de bêta testeurs ont pu depuis deux semaines s’adonner à coeur joie, donner des commentaires, des recommandations, tester la vidéo de fond en comble pour finalement pondre cette nouvelle fonctionnalité, qui devrait bien plaire à plusieurs. Des semaines de pur plaisir, en catimini.

Aux vidéos authentiques, vrais, touchants. Aux clins d’oeil que l’on se fait à soi-même ou à son petit groupe de fidèles et d’amis.

Voici une Vidéo humoristique de l’équipe au Quartier Général de Flickr..

Voici les fonctionnalités à venir – en bref:

• L’upload est réservé aux membres Flickr Pro uniquement. Aux personnes qui uploadent des vidéos sur leur caméra et qui veulent que soit conservé cet aspect unique, personnel et intime de cette vidéo.
• La possibilité de partager ces vidéos sur des blogs, ou l’envoi à des amis.
• Capacité de rendre ces vidéos privées ou publiques.
• Des tags et du geotagging.
• Des droits de license Creativecommons.org
• des APIs!
• 90 secondes et 150 Mo.
• Visualisation sur écran géant
• Un service en 8 langues.

voici un commentaire sur le blog de techcrunch… qui prouve que les 90 secondes, c’est comme un exercice de style forcé. Don Campbell April 8th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

Wow – I’m looking forward to playing with this. The 90 second limit on the videos seems like a problem at first, but it may actually force people to be creative. It makes me think of how the new iMovie software works – it encourages you to work with clips of video, and I find myself making short movie clips along with photos to tell a story that is much more interesting than the longer videos. Also – I wonder if the new Flickr video will allow you to embed them in your blog easily like YouTube does