Dancing on YouTube is another "feelgood" online moment

Story about WhereTheHellIsMatt via A Private Dance? Four Million Web Fans Say No from Charles McGrath of the New York Times.

All in all, I vastly prefer the warm and fuzzy Internet memes much more than the excremental instances.

Video from the BBC: Flying penguins reported in the Antarctic

This one premiered on April 1st, so the natural assumptions about its veracity apply.

It upholds the longstanding (and inspiring) tradition of grand hoaxes from the BBC.

Cyberdonkey: "Big Dog" Robot from Boston Dynamics

Big Dog has been all over the Internet today. How can it not be?

The unearthly gait, buzzing operation and weirdly mammalian bounding of Big Dog are even more impressive in this outing with a payload and snowy hills to navigate.


Boston Dynamics and DARPA are well on their way to giving Skynet a hardy pet someday.

eTrade's baby/clown commercial is still making me laugh whenever I see it

Never underestimate the creepiness of clowns.

Family Guy and Star Wars?

I feel like I've gone to Geek Heaven.

We'll see how long these embeds stay live on YouTube.

Part I



Part II



Part III



Part IV



Part V

Simpsons intro for the new season -- nice nod to the movie

What can I say? I'm a fan.

John Butler picks up a storm

Just remarkable finger picking. Wonderful!

BigDog Quadruped Robot: I don't want to pick up after this one

I'm not afraid to say that this thing scares the s--t out of me, even while I think it's really quite amazing at the same time. Bruce Sterling (easily one of my all-time favorite sci-fi writers) wrote about his impressions a bit more eloquently:

Yeah, yeah, I know -- some boondoggle Pentagon robot. Where's the zillion-dollar spare parts? But look at the insane way this lurching mongrel picks its way through mud, sharp rocks, and snow. And those horrible little hooves it has, and its bandage-wrapped black-zombie legs... and that irritating whining noise it makes. I don't see it "running and jumping," but it's so cheap-looking and pig-ugly that it looks entirely convincing -- twenty years from now, tech-savvy global-guerrilla marauders will be strapping IEDs and AK47s onto these things and unleashing them on remote mountain villages.

Eeek.

Video: Italian Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin and Hobbes. Animated. In Italian. I don't think Bill will be thrilled to see his work used by yet another unauthorized party...but this is, as is noted in the comments, a labor of love. It might just squeak in under "fair use" -- but I doubt it. Either way, the animated short is a delightful trip down memory lane. I adored Calvin and Hobbes as a kid. Still do, really. Whenever I mention to a friend that something will "build your character," it's a direct homage.

Best kitty-video ever: Even kittens can use a mac

Absurd cuteness.

Brings new meaning to "ease-of-use" though, eh? I wonder how the screen looks after those tender attentions. I have no doubts about whether this feline Q&A specialist might pull of a similar demo on a Wintel machine: nada.

Vote Different

I'm still woefully behind in posting here -- and for the few that are still checking the feed, I apologize -- but I did see something sufficiently provocative today to warrant a quick upload.

The blogosphere has been going a little batty (moonbatty, perhaps?) about a mashup of the iconic original 1984 Mac commercial and Hillary Clinton's online fireside chat. The video was made by an Obama supporter (shocking) and while I'm reticent to entirely endorse either candidate (I prefer Bill Richardson to both on a number of levels, frankly) the impact of this political ad/statement/art if undeniable.

I hope it's the first of many such mashups, on both sides.

YouTube = the new CSPAN?

Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine reports:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s blog — note how that rolls off the keyboard — has been putting up video of representatives floor speeches against the war. That’s fascinating enough but get how they are posting the video: via YouTube. Here is Pelosi’s own YouTube user page.

C-SPAN has been the place to get source information on video: watch and judge for yourself. Now YouTube can take over that role and not just for limited official events but for source video anywhere. [crossposted at PrezVid]

This really is quite extraordinary. I'm sure my friends are tired of me blathering on about the Craigslist generation or the YouTube election -- but here we are. We're more wired than ever before, with the Edwards campaign on Second Life and the first presidential commercial (thanks, Mitt -- we'll all stop "dithering now") popping up there for embedding nearly simultaneously with its entrance onto the broadcast airwaves. The fact that the Speaker of the House is posting speeches from the floor of the House of Representatives (or more likely, one of her aides) strikes me as a significant step towards transparency. In other words, YouTube is good for more than just macaca moments. Such engagement in new media might even grab the attention of those who have turned off and tuned out from network news and newspapers, nearly en masse. I hope so. There are so many important stories out there.

Geektastic: Gollum and Smeagol Sing a Barry White Duet

So funny and yet so deeply distubing. I love it -- and not just because I read LOTR half a dozen times before the age of 12. Thanks for the link, Xeni.

My favorite Superbowl spots, courtesy of YouTube

Go YouTube. This page of Superbowl ads is a thing of viral marketing beauty.

My favorites?

6. Snickers


5. Rock, Papers, Scissors -- Bud Lite
One of the first commercial was also one of the best.


4. Coca-cola

Give a little love and it all comes back to you. How Lennon.

3. Wittiest title nominee: Connectile Disfunction (Sprint Mobile Broadband). The commercial isn't otherwise remarkable but that initial cleverness sold me. Mostly.


2. The K-Fed National Insurance ad. Tough call, but seriously, what other ad is generating more buzz?


1. The Robert Goulet appearance in Emerald Nuts actually made me LOL. There it is.


The worst? I love Garmin products, but this was just a mindblowing waste of 2.6 million dollars:


Ditto for SalesGenie:

Like the 2000 Superbowl ad season but perhaps even worse.

Update: Gizmodo posts on the SuperBowl ads more extensively -- and with awards, no less. GizFunny. Of note is that the iFilms render and play much more smoothly, IMHO.

Update II: The lonely GM robot was sadly overlooked. Score another one for anthropomorphizing our machines.


Update III: Embarrassment descends. I've been given a scathing dressing down for overlooking the Blockbuster spot that has some priceless neoLuddite humor that provoked a belly laugh. I don't know how I forgot to include this....too much time fussing over crab cakes, clearly. I think I even prefer this over Goulet.

Watch YouTube inside of Google Reader

Steve Rubel posted about an announcement from Google that he calls "significant." I think he could be guilty of understatement, but let his words speak for themselves.

Earlier this week Google made a significant change to Google Reader. You can now watch videos from dozens of sites without having to leave the reader. This means you can set up a RSS search feed, from say YouTube, and watch them all as a playlist in reader.

What Google didn't mention is that if you have the Google Reader widget on your Google Personalized Homepage you can actually watch all of these videos right within the page itself.

Page views? What page views? If no one is actually visiting your site, how do you monetize and sustain your business model? Creating meaningful social media metrics will be quite a challenge in this age of feeds, where content can be stripped of much of the branding, advertising or even authorship by a feed browser like Reader or Sage. I think it's about influence. At least, that's what some wiser blogging heads than I seem to believe.

Update: I subscribed to the most viewed feed from YouTube and then zipped over to Reader. Sure enough, the embedded Reader widget on my Google homepage now will pop up a window with a YouTube video embedded and playable within it. Cool.

What is a 3D PDF?

MAKE demonstrates how to make a potato gun.

Mashup of U2's Window in the Sky

There's some remarkable editing at work here. Provocative. I felt surprisingly hopeful and then saddened, inspired and wistful by turns.

Chomsky vs Buckley debate from 1969

Part 1:


Part 2:


Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan for the link. I like YouTube more and more each week.

The iPhone as 21st Century Swiss Army Knife

Tom Hanks is James Bond

Speaks for itself. F--cking brilliant editing and conception.