Archive for January, 2008

• Web Address : http://mrbehi.blogs.com
• RSS Feed : http://mrbehi.blogs.com/i/index.rdf
• Star Rating : 8 out of 10

Blogs are a great way for personalities to shine. Whether you are talking about technology, music or yourself, the key thing is to write the way you speak. Obviously this can be a problem if you are writing in English, when it isn’t your first language, but even then it’s still possible to be true to yourself in the printed word.

Mr Behi is an Iranian currently living in Libya, although he does seem to travel quite a bit in connection with his work. He provides a whole new perspective to Iran, from internal politics, to everyday living. It’s amazing to read this blog, when it’s so in contrast to the Iran we see nearly everyday in traditional news and media. Everyday we’re fed this image of fanatical extremist, but it’s the everyday people who are also tarnished with this image. It’s great to get a kind of inside look, at a country that is shrouded with mystery, as the West is often deemed not welcome, or that’s the impression we get, whether right or wrong.

Mr Behi works in some kind of IT area I’m guessing, for though his description of everyday life is fairly detailed and lucid, you do get the feeling he’s working in part to shroud his real identity. It’s funny, a recent posted (or it could have been as long as a year ago, coming to think of it), had a mention of work in Tehran and bonuses received, for some kind of job or contract was finished and many of the employees received an iPod as thanks. This surprised me in a couple of ways. Firstly I’d never really considered that Tehran was a bussling cosmopolitan. Stupid really, as it is the countries capital city, but again from the media image, it’s just something I’d never thought of before. Secondly, I’d never thought of Iran as having iPods. I know it’s a silly thing to think, but that again is the reality of living this side of Iran.

This all makes for fascinating reading. As well as work and travel, Mr Behi talks often of his wife, affectionately referred to in the blog as Mrs Behi, she even on occasion makes a guest post. Were it not for the fact that this extraordinary couple were in Iran, this would all probably be fairly mundane stuff. However it’s like peering behind the curtain for an inside look.

Conclusion : A great blog, which at times features some incredible photos. It’s so great to get such an interesting view from a person who’s country is often maligned, based on the common media driven stereotype.

SeesmicSeesmic has been gaining a lot of media attention, much of this however has been pretty negative. Mild mannered Loren Feldman (yeah right) of 1938 Media, didn’t hold his punches when describing the service. Being the cynic that I am, it wouldn’t surprise me to find that it was all just a front, aimed at raising public awareness, which indeed it has, as they say “all publicity is good publicity”. That’s not to say everything is right with this video conversation service. The user interface is very dated, harkening back to the early Flash based sites. The progress bars in particular drive me nuts, at least integrate them with the rest of the site, so they are unobtrusive.

The real disappointment however is the quality of videos recorded through the site, which not only suck, but for the most part are out of sync with the audio, making the resultant video just plain unusable. I’m pretty sure these issues will eventually be addressed, the site is after all in pre-alpha. You can also upload video, but why would I want to do this, when YouTube does it infinitely better.

The big question however is, who is Seesmic’s target audience. Video conversations just don’t work for me. I’d much rather use email, IM or the good old fashioned telephone. It’s certainly not good enough to use as a video blog. I thought it would be good to use as a way to capture quick hellos to my family back in England and friends around the world, this is only just passable, given the current state of the service.

Seesmic is certainly a service to keep an eye on, however there are many other companies vying for a piece of the video action and many of them have much nicer interfaces and services. Video is an interesting space at the moment. As bandwidth goes up and prices come down, higher and higher quality is now possible. 2008 is certainly going to be an interesting year.