I've been reading Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, Youtube, and the Rest of Today's User-Generated Media Are Destroying Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Values ... he makes a lot of good points and is definitely provoking debate, but I find his railings quite tiresome - the Internet isn't the only cause of the downfall of taste. What about America's Funniest Home Videos? THAT was the analog pre-cursor to YouTube.
Now, I do understand the point he is trying to make (whether I agree with his elitist notion of culture is another thing altogether), but I think he may either have an aneurysm or sign another book deal once he sees Flektor.
Flektor is this really fancy-pants multimedia suite (photo and video editing) that is available in your browser. It's really quite slick ... you upload photos, audio clips and/or video tracks (you can also grab them from sites like YouTube) and then create your own mashup video. For those folks who've used iMovie and similar tools before, it is likely old hat, but the web-based nature of it is a total bonus - it was great to be able to pull something Rose had loaded on YouTube into my video.
Flektor also comes with a number of transitions, text effects, postcards, video effects and other goodies. I've taken advantage of a number of them in my tribute video to our sharpei, Emmy Lou. (Watch out, Sophia Coppola!)
Luckily, there are several videos that are much better than mine. I really enjoyed a test drive Flektor by one of the editors at Salon as well as a video montage of a Hawaiian trip. Oh, one of the cool things about Flektor is that you can embed a poll at the end - so you can get a response. Also, when you embed one of your Fleks, you can choose from a number of options like include the comments, have the audio muted, the types of controls on the video and some other options.
Flektor is still in beta ... I had a few problems when I was trying to create my first Flek - I got some timeout errors and ended up starting it three different times. I did like that you didn't have to register first to get going - they let you dive right in!
So, I'm pretty sure Andrew Keen is spinning in his metaphorical grave right now. Tools like Flektor are only going to give more power to more people and enable them to join the creative class and enhance their attempts at self-expression.
Yay, Flektor!
Update: a couple of people have said they can't see the video above. Here is a link to the page with the video. Maybe it's a Flash version issue??