Boingboing points out a great example of what, I guess, would be termed “surveillance-generated content.” Honestly, I’m not really sure how to describe it, but the gist is that an unsigned British band, looking to conserve money, hit upon the idea of using the 13 million-odd CCTV cameras in the U.K. to create a music video.

Random trivia fact: London has the highest density of surveillance cameras in the world.

The band set up their music equipment, from microphones to drum kit, in eighty different locations, including busses and what appear to be taxi cabs, and then requested all of the footage using the Data Protection Act, an English statute similar to the U.S.’s Freedom of Information Act that mandates any individual should have access to all information collected about them.

Interestingly enough, the video created using this footage (included after the jump) was originally uploaded to YouTube in December of last year, but recent coverage by the Telegraph and by BoingBoing has spurred an resurrected interest in it and the video has appeared a second time on the site, gaining an extra 20,000 views in the span of about 24 hours.

It’s hard for me to place my finger on exactly what makes this seem like something ripe for a viral take-off to me. I think it’s the playful subversive quality of using something designed at best for a serious purpose (e.g. stopping crime) and, at worst, for nefarious uses (e.g. totalitarian monitoring of citizens a la 1984), gives this video a Banksy-esque feel.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of using CCTV cameras to create video content is not new. Adam Rifkin’s film “Look” is a great example of a movie shot entirely from the perspective of a security camera. What makes the Get Out Clause’s video so great, as well as the DPA-aided work of filmmaker Manu Luksch, such great examples of counter culture is that it utilizes a government act designed to provide information to citizens as a medium to create art. And that’s the stuff that viral videos are made of.

Videos of the Get Out Clause and Manu Luksch’s “Faceless” after the jump.

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An interesting new development happened yesterday in the telematics space. Microsoft and Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group entered into a long-term agreement to co-develop next-generation in-car infotainment systems based on the Microsoft Auto software platform. What will be particularly interesting is what will come of the Microsoft and Ford “Sync” alliance. Presumably the work being done in this new co-development alliance with H-K will leverage the knowledge that has been gained through the “Sync” experiment. Also, questions remain about what involvement or sharing of technologies will come out of the Hyundai Autonet MediaZen collaboration that has developed voice controlled interfaces.

The first product from this union, which provides voice-controlled connectivity between mobile devices and car entertainment systems, will be introduced in the North American market in 2010. It will further apply to Asian and European markets, and expand into multimedia and navigation devices.

If anything’s clear in mobile, it’s that nobody’s really figured out yet how to market it effectively and consistently. Save for the carriers, of course; but beyond voice and text, even they’re throwing darts. So as the rule book sits wide open and mostly blank, it’s refreshing to hear some contrarian approaches.

Like that of Sean Rosenberg, head of mobile marketing over at RCA Music, a Sony BMG label. To Sean’s way of thinking, as he explained in a recent panel, there’s actually too much mobile content out there. (The moderator, by the way, asked him to repeat himself, just to make sure he heard properly).

That he did: Carrier decks–or what you see when you log onto your provider’s mobile web area, such as Verizon’s V CAST or T-Mobile’s T-Zones–are overflowing with content, says Rosenberg. It’s hard to get found with such limited space on the screen, not to mention a lack of strong recommendation engines that percolate good content up to the front.

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Clay Shirky, author of the Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, has a fascinating post on his blog about the sheer amount of brain power invested in television and, in specific, the amount of time we spend watching advertisements. According to Shirky, Americans spend the same amount of brain power watching television advertisements every weekend as it took to create Wikipedia. All in all, Americans spend the equivalent of 2,000 Wikipedia projects each year watching television. And all of this is because of a cognitive surplus caused by the increasingly ease of modern life.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost got off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now, I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

Shirky likens the television watching in the post-Second World War era to the usage of gin to assuage the jarring experience of moving from largely agrarian societies to the industrial revolution during the 19th century, and makes a pretty convincing argument for it.

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing - there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

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As summer music festival season kicks off this weekend with Coachella, Microsoft’s Virtual Earth team is plotting out some key festivals happening this year across North America, the UK and Western Europe. They’ll continue to update with new shows over the next couple months. The festival circuit continues to make great use of rich internet content and social media applications to link fans in advance of concerts, encourage buzz and build attendance. Check out AT&T’s ‘blue room’ live webcasting,

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Bant Breen delves into the burgeoning potential of social media with Ben Kartzman and Mikhail Lapushner of up-and-coming social event management site Spongecell.

Back in the swing now after an exciting week in Las Vegas, covering the 2008 CTIA Wireless conference. While the floor was full of interesting mobile plays all up and down the value chain–some viable, some not–I thought it would be insightful for readers to focus on what the experts were saying. Or, as it were sometimes, selling.

So this will be the first of four posts covering several of the informational panels I sat in on. Let’s start with mobile TV / video.

Actually, let’s start with some intriguing stats: According to the panelists–which included mobile execs from MTV Networks, Discovery Channel, MobiTV, MediaFLO, and NBC Universal–of those users who are subscribed to mobile data plans, only around 30 percent are actually viewing mobile video. This nets out to just about 6 percent of all mobile users, and roughly 15 percent of those with smartphones. So what’s stopping mobile video from popping?

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Amazon.com has often been lauded as one of the first forward-thinking retailing sites to invite consumers to participate in the marketing of the products. Soliciting and publishing the unaltered opinions & experiences of anyone who cares to share for all shoppers to see. Mash that info with rich purchasing metadata (yours and everyone else’s) and you inarguably have an open and trustworthy marketing platform that is completely consumer driven. In 1995 terms: Brilliant. Slick. Avant-garde.

In 2008: Meh.

Today this type of consumer-driven marketing is de rigueur. Any site that’s done its marketing homework utilizes some flavor of published consumer feedback as an engagement tool. So what’s next? Glad you asked.

Amazon.com seems to be back in acquisition mode. After a quiescent period where their few investments seemed geared towards rounding out their service infrastructure, they are now quietly funding some noteworthy startups.

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We are enjoying the ongoing coverage and debate on whether street artist, Skullphone, hacked his way into Clear Channel digital boards across LA last week or if it was a paid placement to promote his line of skullphone emblazoned prints and t-shirts.

Clear Channel has three 10-screen networks running in LA proper, here are more photos of Skullphone’s public hack/art installation at various locations throughout the City of Angels.

Ah, yes, spring is in the air. And it’s not just fever; it’s madness.

March Madness, that is–as in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, which tips off today. So as focus shifts to tracking players in fantasy leagues, there are a number of mobile players doing their own kind of tracking–as in customer acquisition. Here’s how the first round has shaped up:

• –Yahoo launched a widget for its Go 3 mobile platform–in addition to a dedicated mobile tourney Web site–sponsored by Jaguar. The widget pumps out ongoing updates, news, and pics from Yahoo Sports and Rivals.com, and the WAP site integrates with their oneSearch offering.

–AT&T added a March Madness portal to its Media Net service, delivering video highlights, news, scores, polls, and NCAA roundball trivia. The service also includes a text-polling feature that allows users to help select winners of the 2008 Naismith Trophy, which is awarded to the top men’s and women’s player of the year.

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