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Recently in off-topic CategoryAriel Atka, a 5 year old girl from the town of Ra’anana in Israel, needed to undergo a rare and risky surgery to save her life. Her parents, both classical trumpet players, gathered 60 premier classical musicians, who volunteered from all over Israel, and performed in a concert that was broadcast live on the internet to help fundraising efforts. Ariel Atka suffers from a serious condition known as Cortical Dysplasia and needed to undergo urgent brain surgery in Toronto, Canada to save her life. The risky and complex surgery was a staggering $350,000 USD, so her parents, both of whom are professional trumpet musicians, decided to raise the needed funds through music - their other love. Part of the funds were raised by selling a self produced audio CD, where both the parents and their colleagues played select classical pieces. In response to a YNET article - the father, who wrote several of the musical scores himself, said: "Ariel gave me the greatest gift in my life - the ability to write music and connect with my emotions through it..." To complete the remainder of the needed funds, on January 29th 2010, the parents gathered 60 leading classical musicians from around the country to a performance that was broadcast live on the internet, and enabled viewers to donate to the cause by SMS. The parents, who were not willing to compromise on the quality of the broadcast, chose Flixwagon to provide an inexpensive yet quality broadcast directly from the performance hall to the internet. Five standard Nokia N95 handsets were positioned in the performance hall and in Ariel's house to capture and broadcast the concert in real time to a special dedicated website. One of the handsets was connected directly to the audio console of the venue itself to ensure the classical performance were streamed at the optimal sound quality. Other handsets broadcast the concert from backstage and also captured audience reaction, both before and after the concert. The event, which enabled the first ever, live mobile phone broadcast concert, garnered mainstream media attention and produced the desired effect by raising funds well beyond the target. The surgery was carried out successfully, and Ariel is now in recovery and rehabilitation. For more information please visit:
The Flixwagon store is now open for business in the U.S, UK, and EU. Get your Flixwagon t-shirt, hat, or bag today:
http://flixwagon.spreadshirt.com  Flixwagon was founded on
the premise that capturing and sharing video should be fast and easy. We realized
that existing ways to share video were too cumbersome and that there was a
better way. This is why we started Flixwagon. Our friends at Boxee are also trying to
change the world, but with a very different focus. Boxee is
building the ultimate media center which we believe can change the way
people consume and share digital content at home. Boxee allows
users to easily consume and share video, photos, and music from various sources
on their computers and TVs, interact with their friends around this content,
and more. We think this is a huge leap from anything that's out there
today. Boxee just came out
with their alpha for mac. We encourage you to sign up for their alpha program,
download, and get ready for an entirely new and exciting media center
experience. Kim Kardashian of E!'s reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians started using Flixwagon to stream live videos from her cell phone to her blog. Check it out to get real-time behind-the-scenes videos of Kim's life: http://www.officialkimkardashian.com/2008/06/live-behindthescenes-of-family.php Most bloggers have already covered all the Mobile World Congress news, new gadgets, who attended which event and how the hell didn't they had enough bandwidth for 60,000 mobile phones and laptops?! How can we communicate with no means?! Also many have already blogged about who had goodies, who had nice giveaways, and most important who offered free coffee and water... (the lines for a bad coffee were impressive!). Here are my off-topic observations: 1) 99.9% of the attendees wore dark grey or black suits. The only variations were the color of the thin stripes. 2) Mobile techies don't push and they stand in a nice long line with no complaints.
3) Most mobile techies are men. Try to spot a woman here: This one is a little off-topic... it was so cool I decided to post it here anyways. I was going through my rss reader and found this at Lifehacker:
Downloading and installing took me about a moment and I took it for a test-drive (with an old pic of my Dad and me). Check out the results:
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