Please.

I am taking 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story on a spurt of road shows over next 2 months- Barcuch College, Penn State University, Salem State College, and online version for Wooster College, and then a session at Ed-Media.

Gulp, am I becoming one of those shlock presenters that milks a show til it wont bleed anymore? I hope not. The entire presentation mode is going to change, and I am rolling in some new secret pieces.

In the next 2 weeks, the content is going through a sweep– links checked, 4 dead tools dropped, and several to be added. Currently I am down to 63 (from 64), but have at least another 5 I could add. Recently added are Prezi the sweeping swoopy cool presenter too (see example) and Pixton- a rather powerful comic creator (see new example).

I could use some input, and you can leave comments here or use the discussion tabs on any of the 50 Ways wikispaces pages (I check them via RSS so I will get your comments quickly):

• Sure, if you have more tools to suggest, I’ll consider them. But remember the criteria- they must be web based, platform agnostic, free, and able to mix at least two forms of media (text, pictures, video, images) into some thing that can be played back on the web.
• I’ve not done too many recent updates to the list of sources where people can find creative commons of un-restricted usage media sites- what is missing from http://cogdogroo.wikispaces.com/StoryMedia??
• I’d like more examples, especially ones that are relevant to educators for the Tools page. I have plenty for VoiceThread and Animoto, and am looking for examples from some of the more obscure tools.

Thanks in advance!

Maybe is the answer to all. I’m not ready to scribble doom and gloom, but the Deadpool is rising. One of tools on my “to do”list for 50 Ways, Sketchcast disappeared except for a one page logo (no notice) and I heard people who used it got no notification either. My procrastination paid off there.

But the puckering sounds are hitting the once rock solids, the giants. Yahoo seems to be losing its happy yodeling sound. I got wind today when @soul4real tweeted the doors closing at Jumpcut:

Ouch, Jumpcut was one of the best full featured web based video editors.

You cannot tell anything is up from the happy, cheerful front door:

But if you try to upload, the sad news is there:

or

We’re sorry to announce that we are no longer accepting uploads to Jumpcut.

We will be keeping the Jumpcut site up and running for the foreseeable future so you‘ll still be able to play, remix and share your existing movies – you just won’t be able to upload anything new.

If you’re looking for a place to upload and share your video, we recommend that you head over to Flickr: http://flickr.com/explore/video

So really Jumpcut still exists, but you cannot upload videos to it anymore; you have to plop them on Flickr (A Yahoo product).

I am not advocating falling of sky. And I always always advise that when you create the content in the cloud, you keep organized copies of all the assets that went into them.

But the FAQ does not inspire a rocket of confidence:

Why did you turn off uploads?
It was a difficult decision that we wish we didn’t have to make, but it was necessary in order to focus resources on other Yahoo! sites.

or “women and children first”?

Can I download my edited movies so I can upload them somewhere else?
Unfortunately, no. Jumpcut was built to assemble your movies in real-time so you wouldn’t have to wait for rendering. The flip-side of this design means there’s no single “file” to download.

There are third-party tools like http://www.clipnabber.com that you can use to get a partial download of your Jumpcut movies in .flv format, but the files created won’t include any titles, transitions or effects that you added using the Jumpcut editor.

or “tough luck, sucker! we get yer movies right here!”

I love video editing. Are there other free tools I can use?

Yes there are. If you’re running Windows, you should have a program called Windows Movie Maker on your computer. If you have a Mac, you should have iMovie. You can use these applications to make movies and upload to other video sharing sites, such as Flickr.

or “This cloud computing stuff is for the daredevils. Go back to your desktop.”

More on this story from TechCrunch Yahoo Putting Jumpcut In The Deadpool?

My advice is dont panic, but make sure you are tracking your original content. Don’t bet the house on one media site. And by all means, Bring a Towel!

As for Yahoo, well I think/hope they will make it. There is the new spirit of being innovative in the down cycle, and maybe the free coffee and pool tables might have to go. But get back to the labs, and keep inventing cool stuff. The sky is not falling (the earth may be rising).

But it’s not all so happy in Yahoo Land

Over the summer, I was honored to collaborate with Bryan Alexander (that guy can write! We wrote the draft on Google docs and tagged madly our resources) on the article just hitting print/PDF/web in the November/December 2008 issue – Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a New Genre:

We are hoping to stir up some conversation about this, and are eager to have some push-back on our assertion. Our research googling on the topic mainly brought up… us! But as we’ve talked about it in our presentations and workshops, we get lots of nods of agreement.

Our article describes Web 2.0 Storytelling as “telling of stories using Web 2.0 tools, technologies, and strategies.” emphasizing two components- microcontent and social media. We feel the rich media, non-linear capabilities, jumping of media platforms (or even ARG-like going out into the real world) make for a much different kind of expression than producing a personal video of some dog story.

So we want to generate some conversation, resource sharing, responses in story form. Our plan is then to have an open wiki-based discussion space for the month of November, after which we will archive the site as a resource for EDUCAUSE. The wiki address was provided in the print and web versions, which went live Friday (I thought we’d have til today), so here is our Web2Storyteling wiki:

Please help us out by getting some things into the four main response sections of the wiki (it is open to editing, no log in required). There is nothing more self-reinforced as lonely as an empty/sparse wiki. When people see a blank space, it seems they hesitate to be the first to write.

Please please pretty please toss something into http://web2storytelling.wikispaces.com/– I am hopeful with the light inbox and RSS readers that not all edtech heads are at EDUCAUSE conference in (lovely) Orlando.