Strictly Come Prancing? BBC wildlife presenters do the Elf dance - Starring David Attenborough, Backshall, Packham, Dilger & McGavin.

*This is an unofficial creation and is independent of the BBC* Created using www.Elfyourself.com

Featuring some of my favourite BBC Wildlife presenters - David Attenborough, Chris Packham, Steve Backshall, George McGavin, Mike Dilger.

Have a Wild Christmas
- Paul

Sir David Attenborough for Christmas No1 - A Wonderful World

This gets my vote for Christmas number 1 (although I'm also backing the military wives). Sir David Attenborough, the voice of wildlife, gives his unique perspective on the wonders of our world. Beautiful, epic, and timely, following last nights episode of Frozen Planet in which David explained the consequences of climate change. 'On Thin Ice' revealed an alarming prediction - that by 2020 the Arctic will have completely melted.

What a wonderful world it is - let us protect it for ourselves and for all life on earth. 

How long will you survive? Download the free app from @ARKive

I just download SURVIVAL, ARKive's Free iPhone & Android Game

Tap, drag, scroll, swipe and pinch your way through a series of quick-fire mini-games to reveal the identity of some of the world's most endangered animals. It's packed with factoids and some of ARKives excellent images, but you'll have to survive to see them.

"What a brilliant idea! It’s a fun way to learn about endangered species – though I have to admit I was too slow to beat my eight-year-old goddaughter.” - Mark Carwardine, zoologist and wildlife TV presenter

Cyberstalking Psychos to Elfs - 5 mins of fun in the office!

Ever thought that you might be sharing too much information on Facebook? Then this video might be the trigger to sort out your security settings. Visit www.takethislollipop.com and click on the lolly. Ironically it will ask you to share your Facebook information, but that's just so the programme can temporarily use it to deliver your  personalised private horror film. This project was designed to play into fears about cyber-stalking, and to make users question what kind of information, photos and data they share publicly on social networks.

"When you see your personal information in an environment where you normally wouldn't, it creates a strong emotional response," "It's tied into the fears about privacy and personal info that we have now that we live online." - Jason Zada, the films director

 He's looking at YOU

Eek! - He's looking at me

 The Pyscho gets out of his car but who's picture is stuck to the dashboard - Gulp!

Dancing Elfs

After that shocker I'd recommend a dose of Elf Youself which will be back in two days, promising to be elfier than ever. YAY! 

 Be the Elf you've always dreamed of being

Gob-smacking Panoramic 360 Video capture with your iPhone

You may use one of the many iphone panoramic apps that almost seamlessly stitch together multiple photographs to reveal a spectacular vista. Have you ever thought how cool it would be to bring these panoramas alive with video? Well, I've just discovered something that will do just that. It's called 'Dot', a little lens attachment for the iphone 4 that will let you capture panoramas in a whole new dimension - 'immersive, fully navigable, panoramic video in real time' i.e. gob-smackingly awesome 360 degree video. Just hold your iphone up, press record and hey presto! It's almost like the dodecacam. Thankfully, Dot is a minute fraction of the cost, and it fits in your pocket.

Imagine using one of these in the middle of a flock of feeding birds, or carefully placed (with some durable armour) amongst a herd of migrating wildebeest?  Look at what was achieved with the Dodecacam during the BBC oceans series. Dot would be so much more portable and easier to use. I can't wait.

You can be first in line to receive one by 'pledging' through the Kickstarter site to assist them with gaining the funds to see Dot through to production.

Watch Prehistoric moments on BBC Wildlife Finder

The fabulous folks behind the BBC Wildlife Finder have launched the much anticipated 'Prehistoric Life' section of the site. Now you can watch some of the BBC's top Prehistoric moments from series such as 'First Life' by David Attenborough and 'Bill Oddie's Killer Dinosaurs'. Find out about the 5 Big mass extinctions or the top 10 Dinosaurs... or just marvel at how CGI recreations have evolved over the past 30 years.

Ammonites

The first thing I did was head for the ammonites and I found this clip from 'Journey of Life' a series I worked on back in 2002. We filmed on my favourite beach in the world - Pinhay Bay, West of Lyme Regis. When the tide is out, a magnificent array of ammonite fossils is exposed.

Unbroken Thread: Singing Attenborough, Sagan & Goodall

I was so excited when I saw this that I just had to post it. A wonderful and inspiring piece of work - it's also pretty hilarious!

Short Film: 'Plastic Bag' from Supermarket to Sea

http://futurestates.tv/episodes/plastic-bag

This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.

In the end, the wayward plastic bag wafts its way to the ocean, into the tides, and out into the Pacific Ocean trash vortex — a promised nirvana where it will settle among its own kind and gradually let the memories of its maker slip away

Wildlife Wind-Ups on BBC Wildlife Finder

'It's not only humans that like a good joke, animals play all kinds of tricks on one another in their attempts to gain an advantage. Based around the April Fool tradition, this collection of videos features the weirder side of nature where it's not always easy to tell what's real and what's not. Watch animals play practical jokes on each other and on us, and look back at some real gems from the archives where we've tried to fool you in a wildlife world that's often stranger than fiction.'

Visit the BBC Wildlife Wind-Ups collection

(BBC Wildlife Finder clips are only viewable inside the UK but other information and images can be seen)

Remember this one? Flying Penguins!

Nature by Numbers - a short film

Nature by Numbers from Cristóbal Vila

For more information go to http://www.etereaestudios.com/ This film is inspired and based on theories anc concepts such as Fibonacci, Golden Ratio, Delaunay, Voronoi… The website also has stills and screenshots showing the development of the film. Plus free training materials and 3D workshops.

Rare EarthTones: free endangered species ringtones

The eerie warble of the Puerto Rican crested toad, the siren song of the Okinawa dugong and the call of a relatively pint-sized elephant seal pup as it cries for its mother. All these and many more are now available as free endangered species ringtones

View and download all available ringtones

The Center for Biological Diversity offers you free endangered species ringtones and phone wallpapers — a collection of high-quality, authentic sounds and images of some of the world’s most threatened birds, owls, frogs, toads and marine mammals.

Whether the cry of the Mexican gray wolf or the underwater warbles of the beluga whale, these ringtones provide a great starting point for talking about the plight of threatened species worldwide.
The Center for Biological Diversity

750th Clip NOW LIVE on BBC Wildlife Finder

(Wildlife Finder video is only viewable by people within the UK)

Wildlife Finder now has over 750 video clips from 46 BBC Natural History programmes, clips from breathtaking and spectacular films such as 'Life in Cold Blood' 'Life' & 'Planet Earth' plus some gems from 'The Natural World' series. Wildlife Finder now has 523 species pages published - increasing weekly!!

This week you can see10 clips from the brand new series broadcasting on Sunday Great Rift: Africa's Wild Heart - Fire and 6 new clips from Wednesday's Natural World The Secret Leopards

Don't forget you can always find all these new clips and other information from each programme on their respective programme pages…

Subscribe to the RSS feed and be the first to find out what's new.
Click on the orange link on the homepage: www.bbc.co.uk/wildlifefinder

Watch 30+ UK TV Channels LIVE

www.tvcatchup.com

Watch 30+ UK TV Channels LIVE
In addition to BBC iPlayer it's all you could ever need.

TVCatchup is a free online service for viewing certain digital terrestrial channels live without the use of a television receiver. The service is currently under beta and is only legally available to users in the United Kingdomdue to licensing restrictions that limit the showing of streams to those users who can already legally view the same content on their television receiver. You are legally required to hold a UK TV license if you use TVCatchup.

Launch of The BBC Wildlife Finder

You may recall that the BBC launched Earth News and Earth Explorers in the Spring and animal pages in July. Since then they have been adding more content, more animals and more magic. Now its time for the launch of the much anticipated BBC Wildlife Finder, which promises to take 'Wildlife on the web' to a whole new level. What more could you expect from the worlds top Natural History producers?

50 years ago Sir David Attenborough led us into the era of wildlife Television and now aged 83 he, and the brilliant team in BBC Multiplatform, lead the way into Wildlife online. The highlight of the Wildlife Finder is David Attenborough’s Favourite Moments, two and a half hours of the most spectacular wildlife footage of the last few decades, all selected and introduced by the man himself.

If that's not enough, the site boasts an additional 550 clips from across 30 TV series and covering a whopping 370 animals - an Ark of awe-inspiring entertainment that will keep you captivated for hours. Prepare for a jaw-dropping adventure...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/collections/p0048522

 

BBC Natural History Archive launched

Following the recent launches of Earth News and Out of the Wild the BBC Natural History Unit have just launch the archive clip section of 'Earth'. This provides unprecedented access to the BBC's natural history assets combines with 3rd party data, to create media-rich pages about species, behaviour and habitat and forms the foundation of the new Nature offering on bbc.co.uk.

There aren't yet any 'homepages' to aid navigation, but if you fancy a browse here are some entry level pages to showcase the different areas of interest:

Species

Adaptations

Habitats

Still to come on the archive section are radio programmes, plants, season, timelapse and other special capture pages and lots more behaviour..

UK's Biggest BioBlitz Hits Bristol

The UK’s largest BioBlitz will be kicking off in the Ashton Court Estate in Bristol this Friday the 26th June. For 30 hours, naturalists from all walks will be racing against the clock to catalogue the fauna and flora of the estate.


Wherever you are, you’ll be able to follow the action via the BioBlitz Blog at http://bioblitzbristol.wordpress.com

The dedicated media team will be on location posting up to the minute tallies, photographs, video and more, so, come rain or shine, you don’t have to miss any of the action.

Get involved by posting your comments or by coming down to the event and sharing your images and experiences of the BioBlitz to appear on the blog.

For more info check out:
BioBlitz Blog
BioBlitz Website

10 steps to becoming a Covert Google Earth Surfer

If you are a Natural History film-maker than you will no doubt find Google Earth invaluable. Unfortunately some organizations seem to have put a block on this crucial piece of software - even years after it was first released! As a result they have limited, if not reduced, the 'productivity' of their staff. Here is a guide to Covert Google Earth surfing... use this at your own peril!

1. Visit the Google Earth website and download the 'Google Earth.exe' installation file. You'll need to save this to your computers non-networked drive it might be called the 'D' Drive.

2. The first step in covert Google Earth use is to rename the downloaded file 'Google Earth.exe' to 'decoy.exe'. High-tech I.T.bots sweep through your computer for anything named "Google Earth" and then deploy their digital missiles to obliterate them from your system.
So to avoid this and to prevent a .exe from being an ex .exe - rename 'Google Earth.exe' to 'Decoy.exe'

3. Next - the point of no return - launch the installation of Google Earth by double clicking on 'Decoy.exe'

4. Go to C/ Documents and Setting/ Your Username/ Application Data/ Google/ Google Earth/ and once again change the 'Google Earth.exe' in this folder to 'Decoy2'.

If you've gotton this far without being shot by the I.T.erminators then well done.

5. Under the cover of darkness, right click on 'Decoy2.exe" and select 'send to desktop (shortcut)'.

6. Go to desktop, and while simultaneously looking over your shoulder, right click on the shortcut of "Decoy2" and select properties.

7. In the window that pops up click on "change icon" - try to withhold your excitement - any hint of this may alert the I.T. Bots.

8. Another window will pop up. browse for another icon, or paste this: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe into the browse box to give you access to a selection of carefully trained decept-icons.

9. Select an alternative icon from this platoon. My favourite decept-icon is the earth icon - very experienced in the field of covert Google Earth access.

10. You should now be ready for a life of secret Earth surfing.

The Earth is in your hands - enjoy, I hope it helps with planning your shoot.

- Matt the Mysterious

BBC Earth News launched today

BBC Earth news launches today, part of the exclusive Earth Multiplatform project from the BBC Natural History Unit. For over fifty years, the NHU has produced award-winning wildlife films and documentaries. Each year, up to seventy NHU expedition teams travel the world, visiting the most remote and inspiring locations, filming, reporting and celebrating life on Earth. Earth News is here to bring that world to you, and to tell the greatest story of all. The story of life.

Also visit 'Out of the Wild' for expedition updates from Natural History crews in the field.

BBC Earth News has launched with a strong lead story exclusive to Earth News, disclosing the origin of the gigantic tide of green algae that almost derailed the Beijing Olympic sailing regatta.

Multi-platforming: Breaking out of the box REVIEW by giantsorbiting

See GiantsOrbiting for a review of this fantastic workshop, hopefully soon to be a regular at the Wildscreen Film Festival.

21st Edition of World on the Move

Tomorrow (Tuesday) at 11.00 on Radio 4 "live from the BBC Natural History Unit" is the 24th edition of World on the Move, and the last before a 4 week break. It will return on 2nd September and will broadcast weekly until December 16th.

Tomorrows show is anchored, as ever, by Philippa Forrester and the NHU's very own Brett Westwood. And you'll also hear from two other members of staff: A thrilling piece about Humpback Whales bubble netting in Alaska reported by Joe Stevens (Natures Great Events) and the third instalment from Grant Sonnex as he follows the migration of Salmon through the river systems of Alaska. We also have our World on the Move scribe Paul Evens delivering his prose on the show - And a fascinating insight into how Alaskan Bar-tailed Godwits sustain their migration between Alaska and NZ.

So an Alaskan fest as a mark of poignancy for this hugely important part of the world for migrating animals. And all can be seen and heard on www.bbc.co.uk/worldonthemove

And you can listen to the 21.00 repeat on Wednesday or hear elements of the programme on World Service Science in Action.