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Using YouTube As A Research Tool

Peter Simcoe — Mon, 17 Jul 2023 09:00:25 +0000

YouTube was launched on 14 February 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and was purchased by Google in 2006 for 1.65 Billion Dollars. In 2019 it was estimated that around 500+ hours of content was being uploaded every minute. YouTube’s 2.5 billion users have not gone unnoticed by the marketing team and with an aggressive advertising model providing revenue, the platform is set to remain a key player for user created content in the foreseeable future. For £11.99 per month (after a 1 month trial) it is possible to buy a subscription to YouTube Premium to remove advertising, allow the playing of videos in the background (eg on phones) as well as access to their premium music service.

Creative Industries

YouTube is a valuable platform for designers, video producers, photographers and other creative practitioners as a source of research regarding design trends, live events and technologies in development. It can also be used to learn more about content creation software such as Adobe Creative Cloud as there are numerous tutorials on Photoshop, Illustrator, Premier Pro, After Effects and InDesign. In my own experience of using YouTube, the additional benefits to logging in to the system are that the platform’s algorithm will supply you with a seemingly never ending series of suggestions related to your previous searches and viewing habits. It is also possible to subscribe to channels to further refine the experience. Below are some examples of podcasts, tutorials, reviews and other useful ways creatives could use their viewing time wisely on YouTube.

Tutorials

This playlist comes from the Jake In Motion YouTube channel and is a collection of demonstrations of effects in Adobe’s After Effects. As a video producer and Creative Cloud subscriber, these tutorials provide a useful journey through standard effects. Each demonstration is presented in a standard, easy to absorb format with clear step by step instructions. This playlist could provide the basis for a crash course in After Effecrts over 2-3 days or a more informal process of dipping in and out of tutorials in your spare time.

Reviews

Reviews and ‘unboxing’ videos can provide insight into new tech released to consumers. Whilst these may or may not be impartial (depending on whether the reviewer was supplied with the product free of charge), they do provide a useful tool in the decision making process when considering a purchase. The video on the right is a demonstration of Meta’s new Quest Pro headset which was released last October (2022) for £1499.00 in the UK (reduced to £999.00 on 15 March 2023). It provides a realistic insight from someone other than the Meta marketing department and may address many of the concerns not included in the original advertising.

Evolution of Products

Not only are product evolution videos fun to watch and, for some, a trip down memory lane, they can also be a useful way of tracking the development of technology. In this case (right), we can see the development of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator from the early release in 1982 to the most recent version in 2020. The most striking and obvious development here is the difference in graphics but there are also many developments behind the scenes in terms of flight models, controls and the level of realism. The visual difference is at such a stage that in my own work with Airbus, I have used Flight Simulator 2020 with a Google Maps and Hawarden Airport mod to create realistic sequences flying over the Plant in Broughton.

Longform Podcasts

Longform podcasts are an excellent way to obtain a real insight into both a subject and the interviewee(s). With mainstream media dictating both public exposure and narrative, longform podcasts enable in-depth interviews on any topic over a period of an hour, two hours or more enabling the viewer to gain real insight into both topic and personality – essentially, its much easier to hide behind your public persona in a brief 5 minute news piece than a two hour debate.

Lex Fridman and controvercial podcaster, Joe Rogan, are great examples content creators of this type with the later being one of the top podcasters on YouTube. If you prefer other podcast flavours there are so many to choose from, but each aims to impart insight and encourage debate on hot topics, controvercial events, future tech or even speculation on whether we are alone in the universe. There have been many times when I have personally followed references made on some of these shows and then discovered a new technology, breaking story, new internet trend or even find out about an up and coming film, band or comedian. Whatever your longform podcast of choice is, you are sure to come away with an insight and opinion – even if that is to find an alternative source.

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Freelancer’s Guide To Surviving A Recession

Peter Simcoe — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 10:00:41 +0000

Good times, bad times. Every so often on a global or national scale we experience what is described as a recession and having technically narrowly escaped one in the UK (with 0% growth in the last quarter), it would be wise to consider survival techniques if things do eventually go south. During a recession the economy shrinks, industrial and commercial output is reduced. The actual definition of recession is a reduction in GDP (Gross Domestic Product) for two successive quarters and therefore, depending upon the nature of work and sector, you may see a reduction in the amount of work arriving on your doorstep. Businesses particularly susceptible to changes in GDP such as retail, tourism, leisure and hospitality will find these times more challenging and are likely to reduce costs where possible. This may include cutting budgets for advertising including web, video and print and a pausing or cancelling the development of new products and services.

Survival Techniques

There are several ways a freelance designer, video producer or photographer can improve their chances of weathering the storm.

Portfolio and Branding

When several clients cancelled projects in the week leading up to the first of several lockdowns during the 2020 – 2021 pandemic, I immediately took stock of my branding and portfolio to identify areas that needed improvement. The idea was to put the business in the best position possible coming out of the lockdown. During this process I undertook the following:

Redesigned my logo to refresh and improve the design
Identified portfolio items online that would benefit from improvement in terms of visual and written content
Checked and improved the titles, tags, excerpts and other Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) data for all content to ensure that my business and project examples are optimised for organic search.

Time consumption: Moderate
Value to business: Increase professional appeal of the business

Personal Projects

Personal projects should be a feature of every day activity for creatives. Exploring a subject of choice should be fun, engaging and lead to the production of content for a portfolio, social media and client discussion. These projects help to expand skills and experience outside of the day-to-day business and may lead to new sources of business. Personal projects can include:

A photographic collection using a different media format eg 3D, portraiture, macro, technical
Writing a book on a subject of interest featuring creative visual content
Writing, producing and publishing a song with artwork or music video
Engage and collaborate with other designers on a project relevant to your professional interests eg Facebook Spaces

Time consumption: High
Value to business: New skills and additional content for portfolio

Updating Skills

There are a range of online tutorials designed to help improve creative and business skills. LinkedIn Learning (formerly lynda.com) is a rich source of detailed tutorials with project files available for download. There are free samples but the majority of the library is accessed with a subscription fee. Courses are generally high quality and worth the investment.

There are also a vast number of YouTube tutorials available for free (though the amount of begging for likes and ‘smashing subscribe buttons’ somewhat distracts from the whole experience) and it’s easy to keep up with the latest changes and improvements to Adobe software as content creators demonstrate new features.

Understanding the latest trends and design techniques is useful when assessing which skills to develop. Websites like Dribbble and Behance make useful reference points.

Time Consumption: Varies
Value to business: Improved competitive edge

Promotional Activities

A freelancer should constantly be identifying opportunities for income as part of their every day activity. However, there are times where the process requires more focus and nothing focuses the mind like the potential effects of a looming recession. Here are a few ideas for improving the chances of finding new clients or repeat business:

Detailed search for local, regional and national companies and organisations that may be interested in your services on Google Maps or Bing Maps. Follow these leads with an email or phone call.
Consider using Google Ads to target specific audiences such as businesses searching for a photographer, graphic designer, video producer or similar creative role.
Make a promotional video for your business. See the Simcoemedia promotional video as an example.
Ensure your business card and CV are up to date and available at all times. (There have been numerous occasions I ended up using pen and paper because I did not have my business cards with me!)

Time Consumption: Medium
Value to business: Increase chances of new business

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Exploring ChatGPT AI Technology

Peter Simcoe — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 13:54:22 +0000

Chat GPT’s meteoric rise on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) scene has made numerous headlines, podcast debates, commentary in the broadsheets and studies in academic journals across the globe. So, what’s the big deal and why are people viewing the release of ChatGPT version 4 as a game changer?

What is ChatGPT?

Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer has been developed by OpenAI, the team behind AI art generator Dall-E, an online app designed to create realistic images and artwork based upon written descriptions. In addition, OpenAI also created Whisper, a highly advanced automatic speech recognition (ASR) based upon 680,000 hours of system learning using different languages and tasks.

ChatGPT is essentially an interactive tool designed to emulate human interaction in response to human input whilst providing a host of other capabilities. It can provide answers to questions, write short essays and stories and even generate programming code. You can try the free option by signing up to https://chat.openai.com. Note that the limitations of the ‘free-to-try’ accounts are the number of characters for any response (up to 25,000) and restrictions on the number of users during peak operation. Many limitations are lifted for subscribers ($20 per month) with faster response times and early access to new features.

Game Changer?

ChatGPT has been hailed as a game changer in the race to develop sentient artificial intelligence and while we are not there yet (though some disagree), it’s perceived as significant leap forward. I recently heard AI referred to as Augmented Intelligence in the sense that AI creations will never fully replace human interaction or creativity but instead support and enable people to progress their thoughts, research, writing and artistic endeavour more rapidly. With this in mind, having performed some simple tests and viewed videos demonstrating key CGPT features, we are certainly looking at a significant milestone.

Any reservations?

Some. Mainly around ethics and standards. Whilst Chat GPT’s intentions are honest and honourable, the reality is that it is open to misuse by the more unscrupulous in research, teaching, marketing and creative writing to name a few. The temptation for students to submit their latest assignment with more than a little assistance from AI, the researcher to cut corners whilst writing a paper and the marketing assistant to generate a blog post at the click of a button is a little more than some can bear. The release of Chat GPT4 spawned numerous YouTube videos outlining dubious get-rich-quick schemes, from search engine optimisation to one click marketing solutions and many more. Search ChatGPT business on YouTube for examples.

A conversation with ChatGPT about ChatGPT:

Food For Thought

Whilst I have not personally reached a final conclusion of my own on the future of ChatGPT and similar technologies, there are a few thoughts and issues I would like to share:

AI technologies may become problematic for search engines such as Google and Bing in terms of quality of content. If ChatGPT is used to generate web content there is the risk of creating a permanent feedback loop where AI robots create content indexed by other robots (eg Google) until all human created content is elimated from all but a few of the top 100 pages for any given term. This presents less of an issue if all information generated by robots is accurate and rigourously researched, but as indicated on the image above in the last question, ChatGPT sources information from a variety of potentially inaccurate sources. The solution to this is for search engines to reverse engineer algorithms to detect and penalise AI generated content prior to indexing. The identification of such content is already available using sites such as copyleaks.com and my advice to business owners and academics is not to try to game the system as search engines will clamp down on this.
AI poses a problem for academic research, teaching and learning. Quality research involves the distillation of findings from experimentation in addition to reliable, peer reviewed sources and academic rigour throughout the process. One-click solutions to research with all its current limitations is almost certainly at the very least questionable, if not outright ‘cheating’. It removes human evaluation whilst generating information the AI user is highly unlikely to be able to qualify or justify under examination. For teachers and students AI content will be difficult to police and manage, though many project submissions are now online making automated identification of AI generated content easier.
AI presents a moral dilema. How does machine learning on the web understand and process social, academic, political, ethical and other subjective discourse within an increasingly polarised landscape?

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