North West Vision, the region’s strategic film and tv agency, is currently running a very interesting competition that takes advantage of the latest mobile phone technology:

Got an idea, some mates, and an eye for a good shot? Then now is the time to make that short film, documentary, or animation.

If you’re 18-24 and in the North West, send us samples of your handy work and you could win one of ten places in a mobile filmmaking boot-camp plus £250 to spend on a new production. The best of the best will then be selected by audience vote.

Want to have a go? It’s simple, just send us anything you have recorded using your mobile phone. We’re not looking for perfection, just an indication of your ability to be creative with a mobile phone.

Short Sharp Shots’ submission deadline is Wednesday July 4, though you can already view some examples on their YouTube channel. They’re also on Myspace.

Entries should be under three minutes long and must be submitted via the competition website in .3gp or .mp4 format. Camera phones at the ready…

I’ve just been for a wander around Manchester’s newly unveiled Second Life presence. Second Life, for those who don’t know, is an online community with millions of ‘residents’ and it’s own currency, which is convertable to real money.

The virtual city (actually an island) includes Urbis, the Printworks and what is possibly the Great Northern. There are plenty of less recognisable buildings too - and lots of potential space for retail and the like. It is unoccupied at present, other than the odd BrandRepublic stall and shop (for Manchester’s own Second Places, who appear to be the developers).

Urbis, both physically and virtually, hosted the ceremony for the Big Chip Awards last month. A clever move in theory but - according to a comment on North West media site How-Do - ‘a total disaster’ in practice.

Anyway, here are a few snapshots of Second Life’s Manchester (click for full view):

If you’re a Second Life user, you can visit Manchester by clicking here.

I’ve been meaning to post an update about the BBC Manchester Blog since finding this post, which calls it ‘a sustainable project’. But, as often happens, the internet has overtaken me and Robin Hamman and Richard Fair have now saved me the effort.

I’ve included the middle of three videos here, because it is the most explanatory, but you can check out the other two videos for more information. They talk about the Manchizzle in detail, while Spinneyhead and The43 get brief mentions too.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTbku-L5j3w]

[Hat-tip to Craig McGinty]

So I’ve been busy with things: namely the Digital Futures seminars last Tuesday, which was much better than the previous conference.

The two speakers I saw - Mike from Idaho again and Richard Adams from Chemistry Group - presented plenty of good ideas. Amongst them:

• To be successful online people have to be able to find, share, play with, talk about and recommend what you do
• Privacy will increasingly become a premium (paid-for) service
• Likewise, community-owned networks will develop in the future
• Create content that can be edited easily for different platforms
• Match the feeling of your product with the experience of your web presence

I came away with some good ideas this time and felt that I actually learnt something this time.

The next series of seminars, which appears to be more commerce-based, takes place on April 3.

There’s been an explosion of search engine marketing and optimisation of late. I’ve tried my hand at it - a meaningful URL here, a directory listing there - and a generous Google PageRank of 5 is the result.

Manchester-based PushOn are the real professionals though (and nice guys about it). They’ve made this funny no-nonsense video, which I found through Web-Strategist, to explain what they do: