Videogamers will appreciate the following feat. This female gamer beats the 1-1 stage of Super Mario without looking at the screen. She even goes down a pipe and gets all the coins. She misses one at first and then goes back and gets it. I’m not as impressed with this lady’s feat as Ben Underwood, but it’s still impressive.

(Update 2:16pm PST: YouTube pulled the Japan TV video already, so I removed the video embed. Must have been an infringing clip? Well, I pretty much described what happened in it. Thank you JohnnyRS for the head’s up that it was pulled, now update your blog bro!)

Did I mention before that TV in Japan is one of my favorite blogs? Earlier this year, yes. This blog finds and share some wild clips from TV in Japan.

Someday when I visit Japan, I might spend an entire day in the hotel watching their TV. Great stuff. I know I said it a couple months ago but this is the type of TV I’d watch. Maybe Joost will beam in stuff like this (legally)? They just inked a deal with CNN, so who knows.

Hmmcast #104 mp4

Somebody really must have been passionate about the commonly misspelled word ridiculous. So passionate that they registered how-to-spell-ridiculous.com with a mission:

How-to-spell-ridiculous is about one final valiant stand. A simple word, a simple goal: To improve the overall correctness of the spelling of the word ridiculous on the Internet.

Yesterday I told a couple local Real Estate Agents that one effective way for a website to gain traction is to create a compelling, easy to follow hook. Something uniquely yours. Something like this is works as evidenced by more than 1,000 unique daily visits according to Site Meter.

Note: I resisted the urge to misspell ridiculous for at least the image name in this post. So tempting.

Hmmcast #100 mp4

Behind the Hmmcast
Wow, here it’s only April and the 100th Hmmcast has arrived already. Isn’t the 100th videoblog I’ve done though, as the first 30 Hmmcasts were podcasts, but this means around 70 videos have been recorded. Among my personal favorites are the Thursawday videos. Each week on Thursawday you’ll find a different way the SAW gets used. Perhaps some (or many) might find these excursions silly, but I’ve tried very hard to make sure the video medium was used. You cannot isten only to the Hmmcasts, you really need to watch them to get the message and I’ve kept most of them under two minutes. Many are under a minute and a half. It’s pretty much an extended commercial length only without the commercials.

Here are a few which stick out at me for various reasons:
#32 Too Old for Video blogging - I don’t think I’m too old but do viewers?
#35 Things you can do TV-less - the first and probably last time you’ll see me with half my face shaved. My first Hmmcast comedy or tragedy, you decide.
#38 Two teenagers interviewed on the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 - invited my sons into talk about the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 as boxheads. A visual experiment, not sure it worked, but they had fun.
#39 Cloudy chainsaw Thursday (Jan 11, 2007) - the true birth of ThurSAWday, although it wouldn’t be called that for another week (#43 Jan 18, 2007). You can follow the other Thursawday videos here: #48, #53, #58, #62, #66.6 (really, the numbering was not planned in advance), #71, #74, #79, #84, #89, #94 and yesterday the 12th Thursawday production: #99
#46 From an OnStar pizza galaxy not so far away … was my first trip out of the office complete with a Star Wars like intro

Do I feel like I know what I’m doing yet? Not yet, no. I’m still learning different ways to combine shots, clip frames and only this past week have begun to experiment with shooting and editing video on the Mac.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it all the way through 2007 videoblogging every day and I’m still not certain, but as long as there are ideas, there will continue to be Hmmcasts. Thank you for watching the daily 420 Hmmcast.

At the end of one of the spookiest weeks in recent memory including a commenter this morning declaring the Virginia Tech shooter is “Jesus” we could really use a laugh. Got a nasty troll or somebody flaming you, why not break out the Biblical Curse Generator and say something like: “May you be captured by Midianite maniacs, thou plaything of Beelzebub!”

Added this to our growing web generators list. And if you don’t like this then: “Listen, O thou dabbler in abominations, for you will see your pomegranates wither!”

Hmmcast #99 mp4

Creator of Techmeme, Gabe Rivera was interviewed by Jennifer Jones at PodTech and at one point she tells Gabe and condescends the listeners at the same time: “Keep in mind this isn’t a tech audience.” Gee Jennifer, what audience does PodTech have? Maybe it’s a sports audience? Perhaps Gabe is really Tom Cruise in disguise and the listeners are movie fans?

Discovered this interview embedded in a Deep Jive Interests blog post and while I don’t share Tony’s enthusiasm in the interview, I am doing the same below so readers can make their own judgement. Sounded over edited and kind of clumsy. Something Jennifer herself somewhat admits in the comments area: “I had to edit the interview quite heavily so that the production was good and it may have affected the interview. ”

After poking around Podtech to find Jennifer’s primary podcast page (pictured above) I see she has a marketing audience, ahhh. So marketing types wouldn’t be interested in the technology behind how Techmeme works? Of course they would! Marketing people are most likely to want to know the technology so they can do a better job marketing for themselves and clients. This makes Jennifer’s warning (?) to Gabe even more bizarre. Let’s look at some other people she interviewed recently: Andru Edwards from Gear Live (nope, gadgets aren’t techie), Dave Sifry from Technorati (nobody following that site is a techie), Andy Beal on SEO (of course search engine optimization isn’t very technical either).

(guffaw)

Unfortunately that odd comment (difficult, I know) sets the tone for most of the interview, including the part where Gabe said he was waiting for the Techmeme.com domain to become available. Back when I suggested alternate domain names for tech.memeorandum.com (October 2005) he didn’t seem to have a name in mind yet, instead saying:

But given the costs of changing a name, I may need to wait for something incredibly apt and memorable to come along. I’m setting the bar rather high.

Why hasn’t someone bought Techmeme?
I like the name Techmeme.com and think Gabe’s service is one of the more valuable internet properties in the sea of hashed and rehashed ideas out there. It would really compliment a site like Google News (hint, hint). I’m surprised Google nobody has made him an offer (has someone?) as opposed to funding yet another video sharing or social networking site. I’ve also warmed up to Techmeme competitor Megite.

Techmeme has come under attack from people who say it’s too “A-List” and Gabe has indicated here before that he receives complaints regularly about those who feel slighted that their sites aren’t getting linked. He added some juice to sites that link to Techmeme (hint), so there’s one clue to the enigma. There are certain types of tech stories that seem to show up more frequently than others and there are definitely influencers (ahem, Scoble) that seem favored by the algorithm . That’s just a guess, not anything scientific. I’m curious if Gabe would admit some authors have more juice than others based on experience and reliability. Parsing a blog like this one that is all over the map at times is no easy task and I’m impressed that the Techmeme bot seems to figure out which ones are appropriate and which are not.

Should also point out that Gabe was somewhat upset with alleged and apparently completely unfounded “attacks” regarding his back and forth with Bad Behavior Wordpress plugin Michael Hampton over conflicts with the Techmeme bot. I’m not sure if those two ever made peace (did you, Gabe? Michael?) but I invited Hampton via email to stop by and address his allegation.

The fact that Hampton never showed up validates Gabe’s assertion that the allegation was bogus. Gabe seems like a pretty standup guy to me and the allegation didn’t smell right. At the time I also offered Gabe an audio interview opportunity which he politely declined (yes, there is a seldom used Hmm interviews section here too). Maybe he’s warming up to audio interviews or maybe it was just because it was me asking and not Jennifer Jones? Can’t blame him there. She’s got a better radio voice than me.

If Gabe ever does grant me an audio interview I’ll make sure to point out that this is for a tech audience.

Using blue food coloring, Pringles is using their potato chip space for Spider-man 3 trivia. I couldn’t help thinking how long before more advertisers and Pringles team up? It’s a curious place to advertise.

Spider-man 3 [official website] will be in theaters May 4.

Spring is supposed to be the time we think of life. Starting new projects, breathing fresh air into older ones, the smell of freshly mown grass, baseball, apple pie, the Easter bunny! It’s not October, not Fall, not Halloween. Not death. You wouldn’t know this by paying attention to the headlines for the top stories at Techmeme the last few weeks though. Word to fellow tech writers: can we please lighten up the premature death headlines a wee bit? I tried leaving a hint here.

Have you noticed an increase in headlines for top stories using death as more than a metaphor? Hyperbolic headlines are part of the business, I get that, but don’t understand the need to claim products, services and companies as “dead” until they are in fact dead. Maybe I should do that as a joke with every post for awhile? Just increase the number of things prematurely labeled dead.

Here’s a few recent headline examples taken at 9:50am every day at TechMeme and I’m sure more can be found:

April 7, 2007
Microsoft is dead. There are so many things dead wrong with Paul Graham’s post that I’m not going to even try listing them. Graham isn’t a dumb guy, he’s got an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard. Too bad this is the dumbest essay from smartest person I’ve read in a long time. Doubters should look at Microsoft’s bank account. As Jim Rome would say: scoreboard.

March 30, 2007
Death of the cell phone charger. The ability to send battery juice over the air is intriguing, but can we walk into the store and buy this technology yet?

March 26, 2007
Yahoo Mail goes to infinity and beyond. And then Google responds by saying Gmail will be “infinity + 1.” While this one admittedly isn’t about death, both these companies are trying to outduel each other by offering more free email hard disk space. How pointless is that? A neverending big penis contest between the two might as well inspire death headlines. This is one where creative metaphors would be welcomed. Even in the Spring.

March 25, 2007
How to save newspapers (Newspapers are dead). Newspapers aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Yes, they need to do a better job making their publications web-friendly. Geeks like me prefer to get news online (via RSS primarily), but there are plenty of people still getting their news offline. Plenty of people, my wife included, who enjoy reading on paper. Dead? Hardly. Print falling out favor? Yes. Dying? Can’t even go that far.

March 20, 2007
Web 2.0 over and out. It’s curious to see a venture capitalist calling for a pulse check on Web 2.0. Yes the term and a lot of the so called innovation was DOA, but there are still deals being made, sites being created, millions of dollars changing hands. Heartbeat detected.

March 14, 2007
Slacker, the real iPod killer. Huh, Slacker? I just love when writers declare something a “killer” when it’s brand new. Not. It’s only a killer after it’s killed something. Gein and Dahmer were killers, not Slacker. Yet.

March 8, 2007
Playstation Crushes Second Life with Superior Platform. Mashable’s “crushing” of Second Life when Sony hasn’t even released the beta of Home on the struggling PS3 must be metaphorical. ‘Superior platform’? Pete if you believe this then drop the happy grass already. We won’t know if it’s “superior” until people actually start using it. And as for Second Life comparisons? Can you build and sell your creations on HOME? No. Can you convert in world currency to real world dollars on HOME? No. Will any part of HOME be open source? Not based on Sony’s history of proprietary fixation. Premature declaring “crushing” Second Life because of Sony PS3 HOME? Extremely.

Let me see if I can recap the carnage. Microsoft is dead, cell phone chargers are dead, Newspapers are dead, the iPod is dead, Second Life is dead. A tech battlefield littered with corpses. Worse than the latest Romero flick. Night of the Living Tech Dead.

Want to be a top headline tech story at TechMeme? Evidence would suggest prematurely declaring something dead in Spring — at least this spring — could be a good strategy. Wait, no, stop please. I’m claiming death to proclaiming death prematurely in hyperbolic tech headlines.

Now where did I put that unused coffin, Easter Bunny?

Hmmcast #94 mp4

I’m busy in the coding mines today, but peeked out for a few to reflect on what day of the week it is.