Consider this. If humans were descended from cats, horror movies would not be dark and foreboding — the scary thing would be smells, not shadows and unlit streets. It’s almost certain that smellivision would have been invented before television.
However, our primate ancestors lived in savannah and forest, where smells can be confusing and it’s more important to be able to interpret patterns from vague shapes at close quarters than to see for a thousand miles (like a bird), or navigate round caves in the dark (like bats), or hunt mice at night (like cats).
We have good colour vision at at distance roughly comparable to the ambush distance of a sabre-tooth tiger.
Vision is such an important concept in everyday life and on the web as the popularity of YouTube. MetaCafe and Video Jug just go to show.
Today’s buzzword is “microblogging” — and especially Twitter (we even have Twitter at Scene). How do you combine vision and microblogging? The answer is 12 Seconds, the video bloggers answer to Twitter.
12 Seconds’ version of Twitter’s 140-character limit is exactly what it says on the tin — just 12 seconds of video, recorded via your webcam or mobile phone. The only issue seems to be that some users find the image from their webcam is upside down. 12 Seconds say they’re investigating.
And the other issue is conciseness — keeping it short. Like 140 characters, keeping to 12 seconds can be an envigorating experience. You need to learn how to say what you want to say in the time available and there just never seems to be enough spa
