Lasting Rose

I love my Sandstrom, my Plastic Princess; irrespective of What Hilary Mantle will like to call it.

Valentine's Day is the ultimate celebration of love, the most precious of human feelings, personified by Elvis as no one else has. This is borne out by the titles he chose for his songs and their lyric, almost all of which had nothing but love to sing about. Why are we then waiting for the Kind Bishop St Valentine to abdicate to place the King himself on the throne of love?
What makes Elvis uniquely deserving is the emotional avalanche of each of his songs, delivered with powerful voice, intonation, timbre and mountains of emotion to someone in front of him, making you feel that someone was no one but you. Arguably even Luciano Pavarotti's superb delivery of the original "O Sole Mio" has never achieved the emotional turmoil of "Now or Never by Elvis" in listener's minds.
If 35 years after his death, in the age of social media, we still haven't done it, only the commercialism and short sightedness for immediate profits must be blamed.
As some one said "You can bet that Col Parker, Elvis' manager, would have been all over social media: for a price. It would cost money to click onto the official Elvis page, or even his website. If not that, you'd have to pay to use it, with a teaser front page leading to a pay for Elvis main section. Nobody got to see Elvis for free, the Colonel saw to that."
In reality, even without the Colonel around, the situation is exactly the same. Despite the social web being a free for all world on its own, nothing about Elvis is really free, which virtually destroy any chance of the legacy of Elvis being passed on to the future generations.
In today's competitive world of modern electronic media and entertainment, with different values and buckets of emotions of anger, hatred, lust, fame and glitterati, dominated by Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, the softer qualities of love, romance and angst of separation and loss, which endeared Elvis and his music to a generation, do not find much of chance to survive.
In the broken down social fabric of today, which is being dominated and reshaped by social media, where the Pope can tweet to his sheep and you can even find friends you can bang with just by a click, there is less and less people to listen to and experience the inexplicable emotional trips to fantasy worlds of joy and sorrow only Elvis songs can take you.
It is sad that whole new generations are really missing out on something which generations of parents and grant parents were granted to experience but have no real means of passing on, like lessons in text books or in curriculum. It is indeed a shame that future generations might not even know Elvis ever lived and graced the earth.
Numbers like "Can't Help Falling in Love", "Always on my mind", "Love me tender", "Are you lonesome tonight", "I will hold you in my heart" or "You don't have to say you love me" which are indeed immortal will be most probably forgotten.
When everyone is concerned about preserving and protecting our environment and a clean world for future generations and billions of dollars spent on efforts, there must be a ways to stop this being happening.
Releasing a royalty free album of memorable, evergreen Elvis songs as an ELVIS DAY album, free for all and downloadable on the net will be a good start.
Renaming Valentine's Day as Elvis day must certainly make awareness of his music and legacy for years to come.
With platforms like Facebook reaching over a billion memberships, with 6 billions more to join, the enormous power of the social web can definitely help to rekindle the dying memory of this great singer and human being among the younger generation.
For business minds in the know of the enormous power of the social web, that in itself must be ample reason for releasing at least part of the treasure on the web.
Sadly, the onus is on the baby boomers, who lived to experience the miracle in the voice and life of one of the sweetest of human beings, who gave us some of the greatest of music which could really touch heart and soul of humans, to make it immortal for the sake of future generations.
Let us show our love of Elvis, for a start, let us call this Valentine's Day as ElVIS day!

Facebook has amassed a gigantuan membership of over a billion people and Twitter aims to catch up with new features like Vine, taking micro Blogging to new levels. This spectacular growth of the social web, no doubt, is largely due to its nature as a free place for social interaction.

However, the role in the growth and evolution of social web, of pop stars and celebrities like Lady Gaga andJustin Bieber who have enhanced their fan base and interact with their fans through social web, is also undisputable.

But what about Elvis Presley, who sent millions around the world in a frenzy hardly ever stepping out of the US soil and just by singing I can't help falling in love with you, when no one had even heard of the social web? Could he have shaped the social web to be a totally different place from as we know it today?

There is no denying that without the Television neither Elvis Presley nor Lady Gaga would have reached the level of popularity they attained. So the integration of the social web with television by most recent technological advances like social streaming and social DVR, which allows for real time interaction over social media with time shift would have evolved naturally.



However, the popularity of Lady Lady Gaga, who is a singer, songwriter, record producer, dancer, and activist on the social web is largely based on her daring stage appearances and the issues like bullying and causes like lgbt which the artist actively support.
Her achievement like being invited to speak at Harvard is more of a reflection of her belief and support of the issues she has chosen to champion for. As a result, the technology she sought was some means to interact with her fans on the web on those issues, enhancing her presence among her fans, which created her famous back room chats with her fans and which rendered her role of counselling her fans possible.
But in the case of Elvis Presley it was his talent, good looks, sensuality, charisma, and good humour which endeared him to millions, as did the humility and human kindness he demonstrated throughout his life. Known the world over by his first name, he is regarded as one of the most important figures of twentieth century popular culture. He has been described as the sexiest man of his generation, so manly yet beautiful!
In the words of music historian John Robertson, Elvis was a flirtatious teenage idol with a heart of gold, a tempestuous, dangerous lover, a gutbucket blues singer, a sophisticated nightclub entertainer and raucous rocker.
Years after his death, fans continue to yearn for him with comments like "We will never have someone like him again... Elvis, unique, wonderful, our king forever!!!!"
Obviously, the persona of Elvis Presley, which had no need of a social web for the entire world to swoon for him, might have attracted the entire world to Facebook, if he were to have a fan page!
Given the wild passion and infatuation his fans felt for him as was evident from his concerts, It is conceivable that tactile technologies like the remote kissing devices would have found their place in Facebook much head of simple chat.
May be you could have enjoyed an on demand virtual concert by Elvis Presley singing I can't help falling in love with you, just for you.
Perhaps a new version of the Aloha from Hawaii music concert that was headlined by Elvis Presley, and broadcast live via satellite around the world on January 14, 1973, in which fans could rejoice by touching Elvis, using this invention, wherever they happened to be could have been broadcast through Facebook or whatever name the media would have been called.
There is of course many things one can imagine as was possible. The predominant factors would be the key elements which made Elvis irresistibly humane and accessible to millions. One thing is sure, whatever shape the social web would have assumed, it would have done more to bind people of the world in romance, love, passion and compassion, qualities which Elvis was graced with in abundance.

Vinepeek has the potential and power to replace Facebook and Twitter in your life. For that very reason, no one can say how long it will last. However before you read this further, you must be aware that Vinepeek brings to you people's lives in uncensored, raw, six seconds shots. If you don't want to watch what people do in real life and share with others, better not take a peek at Vinepeek.

Simply put, Vinepeek is a website with a small window which continuously shows a stream of 6 seconds long micro Blogging videos embedded by people in their tweets by a video sharing feature called Vine, recently introduced by TWITTER.


Vine, which is a video sharing service of TWITTER, needs software currently available only on Apple's products like iphone, ipod and ipad, for you to embed your 6 second videos in your tweets. Once embedded and tweeted, the clip which has its URL can be clicked by anyone who can see your tweet, to watch your video which loops continuously, in a little window.

According to Twitter vice president of product Michael Sippey, like Tweets, the brevity of videos on Vine inspires creativity. Dom Hofmann, co-founder of Vine, said the Vine embeddings are little windows into the people, settings, ideas and objects that make up your life.

In fact Vinepeek is actually more ingenuity than technology, As a matter of fact you can easily get a widget from TWITTER to pull up the stream with tweets with Vine videos. But with the power of Vine and the enormous popularity of TWITTER, sites like Vinepeek can take millions of users of the social web to a new phase and level of addictive dependence. Here is why:

In real life, if you are depressed, dejected or hopeless about your life, you head to your local pub where you can meet up with your pals and share your life with them. In reality, that is the reason most people get hooked to Facebook and Twitter where they can meet up with their real friends and hundreds of others who they have never met, with the convenience of a desktop or handheld device. However they still need to read, type or do some work to take in the updates of their buddies or watch the stream on the wall, not entirely conducive with the mindset. Vinepeek practically removes that element of unpleasant work by having to do nothing but watching to get the same level of enjoyment.

In fact the constantly changing and unpredictable short videos on the by Vine stream, with amazing visual and sound quality, are like info graphics on steroids. You are taken in to a never ending whirl wind of time, space, and motion full of life, engaging your mind as never before, offering an experience entirely deserving to be called a new form of entertainment. It is always there, you feel like taking it in, you watch it. You don't, you simply ignore it and carry on with whatever you are doing. There is always the next one. In fact Vinepeek actually brings the Social Web to life!

Vinepeek in fact even makes the raison de etre of sites like Tech crunch, Mashable and a lot of others where we constantly check for "NEW" things a little bit questionable, bringing a series of objects and ideas we have never heard of or imagined, quenching our thirst for "novote" in life.

The exponential power of the video compared to the rest of the media in the development of human communication and understanding of life around us has not been fully understood. Vinepeek in fact brings a new dimension to this quest by pumping up an unusually high volume of imagery, sound and emotions to our brains, consciously and unconsciously in the shortest time. This alone can explain the enormous addictive power of Vinepeek. In time there can be hundreds of valid reasons to support sites like Vinepeek.

It is quite normal that initial glitches can be deterring. It looks like Apple has temporarily taken the Vine software from their store. Weather Twitter will continue with the development of Vine or not, utilities like Vinepeek are sure to pop up as any one who has enjoyed it even for a few hours will now find anything else unsatisfactory. For now My Facebook window is closed and the little Vinepeek is open in a corner of my second screen.


Tweets With VINE

I think he (Rahul) is one of the most talented, able and insightful of the younger generation of politicians worldwide, but how he ends up in your politics again, that's for you, for him and for his party to decide. But I think he has got first class mind and great commitment to India.

That opinion of Tony Blair, given during a visit to Delhi in 2008 as an ex Prime Minister of the U.K, turned out to be as much intuitive as it was prophetic.

Four years on, Rahul Gandhi has proved his worth as a political leader in his own right and not just as the son of Sonia Gandhi, the president of the Congress Party. He has been favoured as a leader who can take the party to win the next election and foisted by a majority of the Party leaders to the position of the Vice President.

His insightful mind and commitment to his country could be glimpsed from the pathos of his acceptance speech which the Indian media has ascribed as the "Obama moment" of the party. His speech, revealing his personal anguish and hinting a lack of avarice for power, which he could have grabbed anytime he wanted, is seen as a rare one in the Indian politics.

Despite this, why is India, especially its youth, judging from the chatter on the social web and the Indian media, so sceptical and suspicious of the young Gandhi?

Here is a relatively obscure snippet of news, which could have made the corporate honchos of the leading makers of DVR like TiVo, Motorola, RCA, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba and cable companies like Time Warner, Comcast and Cox which offer TV packages that include a DVR, sit up and take note.

DVR Falls Victim to "Social TV"

"Social TV," in which young viewers use cell phones to communicate with friends about shows they are currently watching, is reversing the trend to record shows on DVRs and watch them at some later time, according to a survey conducted in the U.K. by Digital Clarity. According to the study, 80 percent of users below the age of 25 communicate with their friends while watching TV, with 72 percent using Twitter, Facebook or other mobile applications. "Rather than social networks and television competing for attention it seems that young people are happy to embrace both and use one to enhance their enjoyment of the other," the study said. Digital Clarity founder Reggie James suggested that Social TV's actual victim has been the DVR.

"Social TV has changed this completely by turning programs into online events where you have to watch them as they happen," he said.

If the DVR marketing guys didn't take note, at least their dwindling sales projections should have given the first warnings of the changing trend.

However, ARKTAN, a Silicon Valley technology upstart, which has pioneered the social streaming technology, which enables the Social TV, has seen the writings on the wall and has come up with innovative solutions which allow social streaming to integrate with the DVR technology, which they call Social DVR.

So all those, who don't want to miss the fun of sharing what they watch in the privacy of their homes, with their friends on the social web, don't have to really give up their DVR just because they can't share their joy, excitement or anger with their friends on the social web unless they are glued to a telly.

With groundbreaking stuff like Social DVR, anyone can have his cake and eat it too! You can have the fun of watching your telly with social web and the convenience of a DVR when you want it, when you are ready for it and not as dictated by a channel's pre-determined schedule.

Keeping all the exciting features of DVR like pause, fast-forward, add, skip, etc. in tact, the Social DVR, with its time-sync capability is a technology enhancement that brings you the convenience of the DVR with all the fun and excitement of the social web. If you were at work and missed that climax of your favorite serial or a clinching moment your favorite team missed a goal with your friends, as and when it happened, you can still enjoy the moment as if you were with your friends, with SocialDVR bringing you their live tweets, comments, etc. as it happened at that moment.

So how do such amazing features become a reality? For a start, the developers have already successfully implemented their social streaming solutions with integration and curation technology for various platforms like social TV, celebrity homepages and curated social hubs.

TV shows like Dallas and Falling Skies and interactive web presence of celebrities like Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and a host of others, powered by this social streaming technology implemented by media groups like UMG, place this technology provider ahead of the pack.

The developers have simply added additional features like time sync and support of additional functions, so that you don't have to mess with a second remote control, to robust APIs which allow you to capture and curate real-time social web content and conversation from multiple social platforms

Good news for those who are always on the move is that the time-syncing feature and social DVR capabilities are available for live and on-demand videos of TV shows and video programming playbacks across all platforms, including mobile.

If you are excited and want to know when this technology will be available to you, the website of Univision, is powered by both Social Streams and Social DVR, is live from October 2012. The site has already registered millions of viewers and thousands of videos on demand.

Apart from delivering the fun of live media with live social media, the effect of this technology might be far reaching. For example, reactions to events like the tragic gang rape in New Delhi or the Sandy Hook school shooting could be wider and spread over days, with decisive impact on shaping public opinion as more people will be sharing the impact of events.

Least of all, the enormous effect on an industry which will otherwise be facing a downgrading due to a product no one wants any more cannot be under estimated.

Fortunately, with Social DVR everyone can keep on smiling and hoping for better times both on the telly and on the social web.