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Jumping on the band(width)wagon

My name is Will.  This is what I clicked.

April 14, 2005 | 6:48 PM ET

"The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ..."  It'll be exciting to see what toys like this start coming out as bandwidth and storage become cheaper and more efficient.

Speaking of large bandwidth toys, the new Google feature of the day is the we heard about earlier in the week.  I don't see a place to watch the videos yet, but you can submit them --of any size.  (!)

Speaking of video online: "We are building a free and open-source desktop television application tentatively "

Please sir, may I have another online video link?  Sure.  "At a time of ever-expanding, text-driven political sites, was launched in 2005, as the world's first portal to short, intriguing and entertaining "viditorials" (video editorials)."  So far it looks like they used video of Bush while he waited for the cameras to roll to make him look silly.

  There's something about this that makes it still feel obscene even after the joke is revealed.  Maybe it's my P.C. roots, but there's something about white women using black men as a sexual comodity that doesn't quite reach the "funny" threshhold.

I know I've seen the "" video before, but I never noticed what a long headspin that guy does.

I may be getting this all wrong, but it sure looks like Idaho state government passed some celebrating Napoleon Dynamite.

Speaking of what things look like and getting things wrong, it looked for a minute like the New York Times had an (inaccurate) line of an entry from Wikipedia.  I looked at to see which came first, but couldn't quite work it out.  Thankfully, the blogger worked it out and added an update/correction.  The lessons from this one abound.

  -Maybe they're happy on the inside?

is establishing itself as a close blog watcher of the Bolton hearings.

Getting to know the ... like the back of your hand.

  -With stuff like this and recent news of the , we are surely at a technological point where we can provide housing to anyone in the world who needs it.  (Um... provided there's enough cement.)

(Impending?)

  Ug.

Jon Carroll's piece on the has maintained popularity for the past few days -to the extent it has inspired people to create .

.  Have tissues handy.

" is a BBC led initiative to provide access to public service audio and video archives in such a way as to allow the British public to find, share, watch, listen and re-use the archive as a fuel for their own creative endeavours."  It has .

pulls together a bunch of the Google maps recreational links we've looked at over the past few entries here.

outlines the Online Freedom of Speech act.  The name is a little grandiose, but it's still important to the freedom of online politics.

Is Heaven living up to ?

April 13, 2005 | 4:09 PM ET

I have traveled out west to visit , so blogging will be choppy this week as I deal with meetings, jet lag, laptop connectivity issues...

Will's excuse haiku:

My blog calls to me.How can I avoid working?Let me count the ways.

That said, this is what I clicked while trying to catch up.

The "" video ( if it's not loading for you) is everywhere.  It's viral, it's poor man's Tivo, it's our Video of the Day.  That sound you hear is the combination of salivation and mental gears turning from every marketing person on the planet trying to figure out how to get bloggers to make free ads for them and distribute them to gazillions of people who voluntarily watch it for free.

Speaking of viral distribution, there's an actual contest on, .  The great paradox of viral distribution on the Web is that if you try to hard to make it happen, it looks crass and the whole thing fails, so I'll be interested to see if that becomes a problem for contestants.

is basically just a big collection of stuff people want.  But it might be worth keeping in mind next time you need to buy a gift and you're looking for ideas of things people actually want.

The Political Teen has carved a bit of a niche for himself by encoding the video the blogger segments from the Connected show and distributing them to the bloggers featured.  I'm not sure why is more popular than others, perhaps it features higher profile bloggers or else the feature itself is growing in popularity.  I'm in pretty regular contact with the producers of that show.  I'd be interested to hear your ideas on how to turn blog content into TV content other than having a guy read blogs to you or summarize blog themes.

Speaking of photos from the sky, here's another site viewed through Google maps satellite images.  The site is taking suggestions for places you've found.  P.S.  To correct something I said earlier, this map feature is in fact global.  You can't search for overseas addresses, but you can drag the map across the ocean.  I tried to find the Great Wall of China, but it won't zoom to that degree of detail.

Introducing .  Sorry, I can't help but cringe at that one.  All the courses I clicked were free though, including the "" game.  The registration steps made me say, "I'll play with this later."

?  (I love Rube Goldberg videos, but Rube Goldbergs as spectator sport with cheering and yelling... I'm not so sure.)

If you didn't already know that there was discussion about of cats, would seem like a really weird joke.  Actually, even knowing that it's not a joke, it still seems like a weird joke.

Speaking of cats, I'm not much of a cat person, but I understand that photographing one's cat is an important part of the culture of blogging.  So I present to you, the .

that the bloggers vs. journalism debate is a dead horse and asks the folks who assemble panel discussions to stop beating it and move on.

Lesson: Love your mother (and don't diss anyone else's mom).

Speaking of muscley guys from the past, from the "where are they now" files, no-name wrestler you may only vaguely remember, "Ultimate Warrior," is ... sort of.

Michele at provides a nice reminder that the blogosphere is vast -don't let it (whether it's toxic pundit bloggers or something else) get to you.

(and why)

keeps track of which cities are in the news and displays their relative "buzz" on a map.  It's an interesting interface because it did make me ask, "Why is Willington the 4th most talked about city?"

-Given the trends, "mainstream" is seeming less appropriate with each passing day.

"Fourteen percent of the world's cell phone users report that they have stopped to answer a ringing wireless device, Ad Age reported." 
::CoughParisHilton(NotThatIWatchedThatVideo)cough::

for the skateboard/basketball Video of the Day from that is presently spreading around the Web like wildfire.

A detailed and documented explanation of why the music industry.

compares the amounts of money spent on government programs.  Just a few, not a comprehensive list, but still interesting.  Warning: In my opinion this is actually not the most interesting page on the site.  If you click the next button you will end up losing precious quantities of your life to this place.

.  Why would you care about such a thing?  just ask of fame.

gives an update on how his live-by-the-blog fundraising efforts went.  Looks like his parents will not be having a new tenant.

Speaking of people giving money, here are some .

On the death of Andrea Dworkin, bloggers are primarily linking to .  I have a habit of checking for feminism issues.  She recommends .

Don't put your keyboard in your mouth, .

  -They really play and there doesn't appear to be any spam angle.  I have no idea how they're able to offer this.

-The folks who think ahead about things are really excited about E-paper.

Saved by the mailbag!:

That's not a bald teletubbie.  It's a Boohbah.  Actually, the boohbah site might be worth writing about sometime - .
Cheers,
Rebecca

Dear Rebecca,
Thanks to  you and the jillion people who wrote in to point out that the bald blue teletubbie in the stuffed animal version of "Se7en" is in fact a boohbah.  I've seen that cool site before, butI didn't realize it was a TV show with merchandise and all.  My apologies to both teletubbies and boohbahs.
Cheers,
Will

I'm a 1976 graduate of the Air Force Academy, and as you can imagine, the "Everybody Dance Now"/"Dance, White Boy" video made the rounds REALLY fast in the grad community. I'd like to know if that guy has made it to Leno/Letterman/Conan shows (or even the morning "news" shows). One thing's for sure - I don't know anyone who's seen that video that hasn't left it smiling.

(I feel sorry for him AND his room mate, though - that kind of stuff would have been POISON when I was there......)
-Mark S. Shanks

Dear Mark,
I wondered that too.  They seem to get a good laugh out of it in the video, but I wonder if they ended up with some regrets at some point.  I haven't seen them do any other media, but the guy seems a perfect guest for Ellen.
Regards,
Will

Those Air Force Academy guys TOTALLY copied who was the original "my room-mate is a crappy white-boy dancer" submission (from nearly a year ago).  There's some other great videos on that site too.  Oh, and who will ever forget the ?

What makes these 2 videos so funny is that they are serious and had no clue that they would ever end upon the Internet.  The kid in your 4/9 submission seems like he's "in" on the joke and was doing it on purpose.  But maybe I'm wrong.

I nearly died laughing at The Found Footage Festival Preview though... good stuff.

Thanks for doing what you do.  Without you I'd be lost in a murky world of blog-soup, wondering what to click that would be worth my time.
-Carol

Dear Carol,
Thanks for the links.  I also wondered if there was a bit of a set-up happening in the dance video (but decided I didn't care too much because it's still fun to watch the guy go).  The best argument I can think of for why it isn't staged is the grief they must be getting (see above).

What made the Star Wars kid video both funny and unfunny at the same time was that he didn't know it would go public.  I felt bad for him, and the following legal actions and were pretty messy.  Didn't he get an iPod or something out of it as a show of appreciation from the blogosphere?  (After checking... .)
Yours,
Will

Supposedly, the entire "movie" was created by doing Google searches for pictures on the net, then the story was created around it...pretty creative.

Love your forum, keep up the great work...
-bugart

Dear bugart,
It's a little slow moving for my taste, but well produced, and I love the idea of it.  I am a lukewarm fan of "found object art" in the real world, but the things people have been doing with bits and pieces of what they find online has been really great.
Cheers,
Will