If I was to walk into a mobile phone shop and demand a full size skateboard controller for my mobile or an interface to control an Etch-A-Sketch I wonder what they would do? Maybe they would laugh or insist that no normal person would want to do that or claim it can't be done. Yet last Thursday night in an unassuming corner of the east end of London, UK, I found people who were experimenting with these ideas and more. The event was the Push N900 Showcase, organised by Nokia, and I was delighted to be invited along. I even had a go at a bit of live video broadcasting with my trial Nokia N900 while I was there.

Thanks to a fellow user of Twitter I was alerted to this great video on YouTube which is a presentation by Michael Wesch who is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, given at the Library of Congress back in June 2008 which is all about YouTube and the community that uses it. Admittedly, when I first saw the title I wasn't encouraged really, I thought it might be a rather dry, navel-gazing study of the community surrounding YouTube, reading too much meaning into what is happening there, maybe with slow death by Powerpoint. I was very wrong, this video is well worth watching, and all 55 minutes of it too. It is thought provoking and even moving in places, with plenty of facts and figures that make fascinating viewing.