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Drawn By Pain

Without a doubt this week’s member of the week is Jesse Cowell, the creator of the wildly creative Drawn By Pain live-action/animated series.   Jesse, or Jeskid as he is known on Next2Friend, is an award winning film maker who is about to premier his full length film with the support of Next2Friends!  We are very proud to be backing such talent, have a look at his trailer:

The premier will take place at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City on October 4th at 6pm.  The open to the public screening starts at 6:30 followed by a question and answer session with Jesse.  Tribeca Cinemas is at 54 Varick Street, New York, NY, 10013.

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We hope to see you there!

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Problem

The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting cooler and all this can only mean one thing: It’s time to head back to school!  As Megan Morrone states in her hilarious blog “First Day of Kindergarten Stats” parents often have too many choices when it comes to capturing those first few days:

“4 - Number of cameras in my purse.  2 - Number of cameras in my purse that ran out of battery.  1 - Number of cameras in my purse that ran out of memory. 12 - Number of megapixels in the first camera that ran out of battery. 2 - Number of megapixels in the one camera that didn’t run out of battery or memory.”

Do you grab the digital camera?  The camcorder? Extra memory cards?  Batteries?  It’s dizzying the number of choices you have.  And then what if you want to share those precious moments with grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends?  You’ve got to spend all that time uploading or sending individual pictures and videos.  After all is said and done, we’re talking at least a couple hours of time, and probably more.

Solution

Next2Friends has a simple solution to all these problems.  All you need is a compatible mobile phone.  Gone are the days of storing a bunch of photos on a camera.  You can snap and upload photos of your beaming child to the web for anyone to see instantly using Next2Friends Snap Up.

And gone are the days of transferring video to your computer for hours.  You can stream live video of those first cautious steps onto the school bus directly to the web using your mobile phone, viewable by others in real time, with Next2Friends Live.  Kind of like the picture below…well…only if you replaced the screaming fans at the rock show with an image of your beautiful child:)

And the best part is that you can share those photos and videos so easily by either directing people to your profile or generating a recommendation email with a link.  So go ahead, give it a try!  All you stand to lose is a few cameras and camcorders!

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Announcing the “Fall Into Next2Friends” Contest

Fall is right around the corner and that means a whole host of activity to share with your friends and family.  Bring them into the fold by inviting the most people to join you on Next2Friends by September 22nd and you could win a brand new BlackBerry® Pearl™ or Curve™!  And the new Next2Friends Address Book Importer makes this easier than ever!

Share the first days of school, fall colors,

fall sports, Homecoming, or virtually

anything from anywhere with

Next2Friends and your mobile.

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And the winner of the Next2Friends Share Your Summer Contest is…(drum roll)…

Wayne Anthony

Wayne was responsible for sending over 500 people to Next2Friends using the new contact importer!  Wayne will receive a new Motorola Q™ which, along with many other Windows Mobile® devices like the Samsung Blackjack II™, is fully compatible with Next2Friends Live!

Here is what Wayne had to say about winning:

“Brilliant. I’ve been a heavy user of next2Friends ever since I found out about you, and am really chuffed to have won. I can’t recommend the service highly enough for its wide range of uses. I’m an independent film-maker and being able to immediately  get content out onto the internet for others to see will make a big difference to how we work. I’m also fascinated with how technology is innovating film-making, and Next2Friends is a stand-out example of how things are evolving.

As a consumer, Next2Friends offers me a great way to socialise, share information about what I’m up to, and use cool technology. Really excited to be a part of this revolution. Keep up the great work!”

Thanks Wayne, and we’re so glad you’re a part of our community!

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 I Want to Work For Diddy

We’ve had some awesome activity this past week!  The first bit comes from none other than the VH1 Hollywood premier of the show “I Want to Work For Diddy“.  “I Want to Work For Diddy” is a new show in which contestants vie for a chance to work for P. Diddy or Puffy as he was formerly known.  We’ve got an exclusive interview with Poprah, one of the contestants as well as a cameo from Bishop Don “Magic” Juan, old school G.  And the fun doesn’t stop there, take a look at all the Next2Friends shout outs and endorsements:

Swimming With Bears

The next feature of the week comes from our former member of the week Wagnet88.  Wagnet88 continues to be an extremely active participant on Next2Friends.  Check out his profile for over one hundred thought provoking videos and behind-the-scenes-of-filmmaking footage.  But the video that has landed him into “Member of the Week” hall of fame again is “Swimming With Bears“.  This video has climbed the “Most Viewed” ladder very fast to become the number 2 most viewed video on Next2Friends!  Have a look:

Picture of the Week

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Member of the Week

Yes, it’s time again to elect the Next2Friends Members of the Week.  Next2Friends continues to draw people from all over the world and this week’s Member of the Week is no exception.  She lives in Singapore, is an active blogger, mother, and from the looks of it a brilliant cook!  Annie K, or Chic as she is known on Next2Friends, has been making our stomachs growl for the past week with her cooking videos.  In fact she has several very instructive videos of her preparing various dishes.

Videos of the Week

And another in the series “Stir Fried Spinach, Carrots, Tiger Prawns and Bean Curd”:

We’ve really been enjoying these. Granted, there are a lot of cooking shows and even an entire network devoted to it in the US, but to watch an everyday person go about a ritual that is performed probably somewhere between 3-12 billion times a day seems pretty cool. Here is the last of the series and boy do those prawns look good!

And somehow Annie still finds time to write on her website/blog, ChildhoodSpeech.com. She speaks 4 languages and is very interested in language development. Topics range from grammar tools to dating! Check it out!

Picture of the Week

The picture of the week comes from the ever active Karizma:

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It’s that time again.  We’ve had A LOT of great activity on the site this past week.  And particularly from new member Wagnet88 who runs a film company called Viral Headfood.  He has done such great stuff, we’ve all been watching his fascinating behind-the-scenes look into film making.  One thing that watching his clips has brought to my attention that I sort of knew but ALWAYS take for granted when watching a film is that despite the fact that the actors may be “alone” in the shot, they are FAR from alone.  There all sorts of people around them, make-up people, lighting people, audio people, directors, everything.  It truly has given me a greater appreciation of just how good good actors are.  Despite all the activity that surrounds them they can create the illusion that they are perfectly alone.  Amazing! And that’s not to minimize the amount of incredible work and talent that goes on behind the scenes. Film production takes SO much work and the talents of SO many people, I think we all take for granted this incredible medium.

See what I mean, On Set with Wayne (Day 2) Make Up:

And another:

Our picture of the week comes from Becca. She is a student at Sussex University in Brighton, England. Check out this photo:

Great stuff!

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Ok, forgive me, I tried to invent a new word: featureds.  I know it isn’t a word, but I needed to pluralize the word ‘featured’.  Why not just call them ‘features’ of the week you might ask?  We try to reserve the word ‘features’ for the actual features of Next2Friends such as Live Video Streaming and Snap-Up.  No, I’m talking about our weekly round up of members, videos and photos.

This week’s video of the week comes from Cyprus.  Shot at Limasoll Water Park this place sure looks like a blast!

This week’s Member of the Week is That Boy Kana. He is one of the founders of the Kool Kids Klub. I’ll let him speak for himself:

“I was part of the original crew that started a night named The Kool Kids Klub, with my friends. It originally was just somewhere were we could play tunes to our friends but since our opening night we’ve climbed the ranks to become one of the UK’s coolest underground nocturnal brands, selling out venue’s up and down the coutry and getting support from superstar Dj’s like Sinden, Hervé and Kissy Sell.”

He’s got some great content and seems to throw some killer parties. Check it out!

Here’s the Photo of the week from Next2Friends member Lawrence.  Pretty awesome!

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The Next2Friends Share Your Summer Contest has been officially launched and we’d like to take this time to introduce you to the contest and the exciting new feature that will help you win!

First off, the contest, which runs until August 15th, 2008, is to see who can get the most people to sign up for Next2Friends this summer.  The person responsible for the most new sign ups will receive a brand new Motorola Q!  Anyone can participate, all you need is a Next2Friends account.  So many members are already sharing their lives from virtually anywhere through great features like truly Live Streamed Video from Mobile, and summer is such a great time to connect with friends, so we thought now would be a great time to run a simple contest around sharing Next2Friends!

Contact Importer

The exciting new feature we’ve added to help you on your way to winning the Motorola Q is the Next2Friends Contact Importer.  The Contact Importer is a simple way to send out Invites and Friend Request to contacts that you already have established on various other webmail and social networking sites.  You can import information from the following sites:

Good luck and may the most connected win!

Next2Friends - It’s NOW!

It’s time for the Next2Friends Members of the Week again.  We’ve seen a surge of interest lately and are pleased with all the new additions to the community!  Lately one in particular has been standing out.  His name is Karizma and he has been very active! He traverses the world of fashion and music and yes, even fine dining?!? Have a look at him “At Work, Not Workin”:

And here is some footage of him hanging with the fashion models at Wimbledon Fashion Week 2008:

Great stuff! Keep it coming!

The picture of the week is an illustration:

More and more people have joined us to do more with their mobile so if you’re not already a member, head over and sign up today! We’d love to have you!

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