If you haven’t seen this video clip of a dog that does some kind of quasi growl-bark that sounds like he’s saying "Obama" you need to stop and watch. Sure, the name is off and the dog’s owner is inserting his voice in with the dog’s for effect (he admits to doing so in the YT comments the very last time), but it’s still hilarious.
ROFLMAO! Needed to start the day out with a good laugh. Not sure if Obama will pick this type dog as the First Dog for his daughters, but got to love the spirit here.
CNN’s iReport has been taking some bashing lately over a false story submitted about Apple’s Steve Jobs, but don’t let one internet lamer keep you away from this cool site. Where else can you see a sandstorm engulf a city like this:
This happened in Omdurman, Sudan and the video was shot by Abdurrahman Jaafar Idris. Never make mother nature mad, she doesn’t care about the stock market, bailout plans what’s happening in America or abroad.
I’ve seen YouTube used by many people for many different reasons. Can honestly say it was a first this morning (credit James) seeing someone like William Shatner — it’s Captain Kirk, man! — using it to tell the world why he is not going to be in the next Star Trek motion picture.
Or maybe this is Shatner lobbying to be in the movie if there’s still time? I’ve heard plenty of stories that Mr. Shatner wasn’t the easiest guy in Star Trek to get along with (and that he hasn’t always handled his success with upmost humility) as told by other Star Trek OS cast members like George Takei on the Howard Stern Show. It might seem by him saying he wasn’t interested in a cameo — that could easily be axed on the cutting room floor — that this is him being difficult again. Tough call. Be in the movie as cameo or not be in at all? I think if he was offered a cameo he should have taken it.
Shatner says in the video that he wasn’t even offered a cameo. Here’s what J.J Abrams had to say:
We tried desperately to put him in the movie, but he was making it very clear that he wanted the movie to focus on him significantly, which, frankly, he deserves. The truth is, the story that we were telling required a certain adherence to the Trek canon and consistency of storytelling. It’s funny — a lot of the people who were proclaiming that he must be in this movie were the same people saying it must adhere to canon.
Then again, Leonard Nimoy seems to have gotten along pretty well with Shatner over the years. Whatever really happened off screen, history dictates that when the camera was rolling Captain Kirk was a major player in the Star Trek OS universe. I didn’t think all of the Star Trek motion pictures (like Star Trek V) were shining Kirk moments, but there were some really good ones like Wraith of Khan. I enjoyed The Next Generation phase too but will admit the final film was underwhelming.
I think bringing in J.J Abrams to pump some life back into the franchise is a great thing. I really enjoyed his work with Serenity.
So until I see what the new Star Trek movie is like, I’m going to reserve judgement on how this works without Shatner. I will admit as long as Shatner is still alive that having a Star Trek movie that goes back to the roots and doesn’t include him seems … sad.
Let’s not forget that miracle worker engineer Scotty (James Doohan) is alread gone and crotchety doctor Bones (Deforest Kelley) died in 1999. Spock (Leonard Nemoy) and Kirk (Shatner) are getting up there in age. Congrats to Sulu (George Takei) who just got married to his long time partner Brad. Haven’t heard too much about Chekov (Walter Koenig) or Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) but I believe both of them are still doing well, health-wise. They served as best man and best lady at Takei’s wedding. Congratulations!
The cruel, sweeping scythe of time is going to take all these actors away from us eventually, leaving only our memories in tact from the films they worked in year’s past. Call me greedy, but I’d like to see these actors as many more times as (good) story and their health will allow. And I like the whole Alfred Hitchcock cameo thing. Why wouldn’t this work in future Star Trek films?
While everybody and their tech brothers and sisters are writing about the iPhone 3G launch today — and the launch has overloaded Apple servers — I’ve been thinking about the Samsung Instinct. Turns out they are paying $20 for the first 1,000 YouTube users to upload a video with the Instinct in it.
I surfed YouTube for ‘Samsung Instinct‘ videos and there were 334 as of this writing. You don’t have to actually own an Instinct phone, but do have to feature it in your video. Don’t forget your video camera as you head into the store to check out an Instinct if you’re interested in the deal. There are numerous unboxing videos like the one shown below:
Obvious comparisons are being made to the iPhone and Geek.com reviewed and compared to the iPhone:
Sprint has been aggressively pitching the Instinct, long before its arrival, as an iPhone killer. After using it for more than two weeks, and putting it through its paces, including surfing the Web, sending and receiving texts and e-mails, using it as a GPS navigator, and more, I can say that it’s not an iPhone killer, per se, but does offer a nice challenge to what the iPhone is known for delivering.
I have nothing against Apple or the iPhone, but cannot stand AT&T. I’m not that thrilled about any of the cell phone carriers, but Sprint has treated us ok with our EVDO and two phone accounts for our teenagers. Adding a third account for the Instinct which costs $229 ($129 if you count the $100 mail-in rebate) and switching to their Everything Plan would cost us $40/month more than we’re paying. Not bad.
Any readers try or buy the Instinct yet? Would be curious what your thoughts are as we continue to mull this over.
Being a videoblog/podcast host is a transitory profession. Don’t sign any long leases.
Remember Amanda Congdon who had a popular gig at Rocketboom and then went onto presumably bigger, better things at ABC, only to last less than a year. Enter example two, Veronica Belmont, the initial video host of Jason Calacanis’ current video brainchild: Mahalo Daily. Belmont ditched Mahalo Daily awhile back and is starting June 5 as the new videoblog host for Qore, a paid subscription-based videoblog show which sounds to me like paying to watch commercials for games on the Sony Playstaton 3.
In fairness, let’s review what the official PS3 blog says will be part of the Qore subscription:
Qore has been developed to give PS3 users early access to game related content at a level of quality, interactivity and depth. Everything is filmed in HD. Qore will feature exclusive news, developer interviews, in-depth game previews and behind-the-scenes looks at PlayStation games and special access to game demos, special beta invitations, game add-ons and other downloadable game-related content.
Calacanis was smart enough not to charge viewers for his paid advertorial for Mahalo, what is Sony smoking? Why are they are charging for “special access” to game demos? Some commenters on the PS3 blog post are rightfully complaining while at least one commenter says this is in line with print game magazines which charge too much for information you can usually find on the web already. Nevermind that many of these print game mags are struggling to stay afloat. This is 2008, not 1998.
Shooting the video in all HD is smart and the game add-on part might be worth paying for if they are giving away songs to games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero but my guess is most of these add-ons will be lame things like different characters or backgrounds. Yeah, yeah, maybe it will be only [sarcasm] $24.99 a year for a Qore subscription of 13 episodes, but I’m skeptical that it will be worth $2.99 (single episode price) per episode. For Sony’s and fellow gamer’s sake I hope I’m wrong. I will happily buy in if they put some good exclusive add-on content in there.
Let me throw Sony a bone. Get us access to HOME — for free. Quit delaying and give us more games in the Playstation store. I’ve only been saying this since launch day and doubt any gamers will disagree. Sony could have bought Atari (ATAR stock had been floundering) dirt cheap and put all of their games in the PlayStation store and didn’t do it. No, instead they want to charge us for the privilege of being teased about some bright gaming future (Look at what’s coming in months … years). Advice to Belmont: don’t put all your eggs in the Qore basket. As popular as the Wii is (where can one buy Wii Fit at anyway? Sold out everywhere), she would have been better doing a Nintendo Wii show — perhaps an exercise show to go along with Wii Fit — that was offered for the special price of — drumroll please — free. Strike that, horny gamers would pay $2.99 to see a good looking girl doing Wii Fit workouts.
Mixing Star Wars and politics in a video entitled The Empire Strikes Barack? Funny.
On a serious note, I would like to see the “battle” if you will between these two end, as it’s getting closer to November and will leave voters minds clouded if this goes on too long. This will give the advantage to McCain who has to want this to continue as long as possible.
I still believe these two are fused at the hip and it will be an Obama-Clinton ticket or Clinton-Obama ticket in November for the Dems, despite what Ted Kennedy said recently about Obama not going to pick Clinton as a running mate if he wins the nomination.
It’s a live video with chat service (pictured above). You can view it below live, maybe, if I’m still broadcasting live when you read this.
One of the things that I like about this service is that it’s easy to setup. I set everything up that you see above in less than five minutes. One of my favorite features is the scripting function for overlays. You can insert RSS feeds which if you click through when it’s still live you’ll see tech headlines from the Google News RSS feed.
Auto-pilot when your show isn’t live
You can also arrange clips that you record live to show in the “auto-pilot” when your show isn’t live. Even if you missed when I was on there live you can see the recorded segment in rotation. I could go in there and add some Hmmcast videos as well. I’m going to play around with this more.
I didn’t like how the embed default code worked onload so I changed the variable on=false. This way you have to implicitly click the “on” button inside the post rather than just visiting the page and having it work.
The following site keeps drawing me back. Imagine if this was a video game; something like the Wii could probably pull this off.
At the Cinekid Festival in the Netherlands kidscan explore the Funky Forest where they can create a virtual tree and then try to divert water to the tree to make it grow.
Funky Forest uses openFrameworks, a C++ library that is “heading towards a public release.”
The Cinekid Festival is an annual event for kids held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It’s a Film, Television and New Media Festival. Kids only festival? Heck, this looks like something grown up kids could get into.
Last night my Hulu.com beta invite arrived. Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp’s online video. Immediately I logged in and created a new password and started poking around. You mean I can use Hulu to legally watch full episodes of shows like The Simpsons? Right on!
As I write this post, I’m watching Treehouse of Horror XVIII from this year’s season, something I can’t do anywhere else online (legally). Offline we don’t have cable, satellite or even an over the air antenna setup, so even the free channels aren’t an option in our household. For the last 500+ days, our only form of television has been through DVDs purchased of seasons. We just finished watching the first seasons of Benson and Silver Spoons, for example.
The two major problems with Joost I have is that the content doesn’t appeal to me and it’s P2P based. I’ve tried a couple different times to get into Joost but it’s like watching most of the channels on TV: there’s a lot of channels but very little of interest to me. Maybe some others reading love all the Joost content and can tell me what I’m missing? Shortly after launching Joost I’m already ready to shut it down.
Not the case for Hulu where I could instantly scan the available choices and start watching.
Hulu offers professional content from: Bravo, E! Entertainment, FOX, IGN, NBC Universal, Sci Fi, FX, Sundance Channel, Sony, USA, Universal Pictures, Comedy Time, MGM, Fight Networks, Ford Models, Fuel TV, G4, GameSpot, Golf Channel, Movieola, WWE, National Geographic, Oxygen, Speed Channel, TVG, TV.com, TV Guide, Versus, X17, LX.TV, Rehearsals, Reveille, Style Network and TVG Horse Racing.
This includes some of our newer favorite shows like: 24, Cops, Las Vegas, Prison Break, My Name is Earl and The Simpsons as well as some classics like The A-Team, Night Gallery and WKRP in Cincinatti. Also there are some new shows we haven’t seen like: Bionic Woman. Some of the shows listed are only clips like Saturday Night Live, which is kind of lame.
The first thing I tried to do was run Hulu on the PS3 through our 1080p HDTV. No dice in the Playstation browser, so my next test will be to see if I can pipe the Hulu video experience through the Xbox 360 and Vista version of Media Center. I’d much prefer to watch this on the TV, even if it’s still in a browser type setup.
Confined by the browser (F11 still doesn’t cut it)
One strength Joost has over Hulu is not being confined to the browser. If there’s a workaround for this, please let me know in the comments. TV and movies are best enjoyed on a television or decent-sized monitor, not in a browser.
I know the F11 trick in Firefox, but it still leaves remnants of the browser on screen. When you go full screen through Hulu you get large black blocky space around the frame, not truly stretched full screen video as shown in the video screenshot to the right below. In Joost you can get a better true full screen experience than Hulu.
Hulu options available include: a small popout window, full screen (with browser remnants), lower lights which dims frame colors around the viewing area and the ability to rate the shows from 1-5 stars. I’d trade all these options for a single fully stretched, high quality picture. Let me pay a few bucks and get HD and I’ll be reaching for my wallet.
With the new shows you can watch the four most recent episodes which is a bit of a bummer if you’re just now getting invited and the episodes start at #3 or #4. With WKRP in Cincinatti the entire first season was available. Wow, that’s quite a value considering we paid $20 for the DVD! Night Gallery, however only had four episodes from the first season, so not every series is complete. Still, there’s enough content to watch at Hulu to keep one busy for weeks, if not months.
The quality of the video is merely OK. It’s equal to or better than the quality of other TV in browser implementations but it’s not DVD-quality and a far cry from HD quality. When you resize the windows, the video will resize. At full screen you’ll see some pixelation and artifacts.
No, not commercial free like DVDs
At Hulu you will have to endure 30 second commercial breaks that you can’t fast forward through, but these seem less intrusive than commercials on television. In the Simpsons episode I counted three 30 second commercial breaks. No problem.
Summary and grade
With the wide variety and quality content offered through Hulu for free (there are commercials, again), this is easily my favorite TV video site available on the web. Sadly, it’s not available outside the United States at this time but according to a post on the Hulu blog:
Today, the service is a U.S. service only. That said, our intention is to make Hulu’s growing content lineup available worldwide. Given that this requires clearing the rights for each show or film in each specific geography, it will take time. In no uncertain terms, the Hulu team is committed to making great programming available across the globe. I’ve been very encouraged by how many content providers have already been working along these lines so that their programs can be available over the internet to a much larger, global audience.
Hulu doesn’t really compare to user-generated sites like YouTube. You can’t upload your own videos to Hulu and you are kind of an island as far as an individual user (no social features that I can see yet), but you can embed clips from your favorite shows in your site/blog like say Opera Man from Saturday Night Live:
All in all, I’m very impressed and surprised by how much I liked Hulu on a first look. We’ll be spending a good amount of time at Hulu over the next few weeks. If/when they expand this to a global audience and add some more features like videoblogs and user-created content, work on higher quality (yes, even it’s for a fee), they’ll have a serious competitor in the online video sector. They already do with the content alone. Grade: B
Remember Hall & Oates? A variation on the “Kiss is on My list” lyrics represent the badly hacked title.
Hall & Oates sold over 60 million albums and Daryl Hall loves the internet. He was on the Howard Stern show this morning promoting his free webcast Live From Daryl’s House with performances of him with his friends in his living room, “an intimate setting.”
Daryl’s website describes the event as:
“This is straight from me to the audience. It gives me the freedom to allow a glimpse into my creative process and work with different musicians. And I feel more comfortable doing it this way. The Internet is a refreshing opportunity to reach people.”
Now this is the kind of refreshing artist view that the RIAA would be wise to understand and embrace. Assuming it’s not too late, which I think it is. The artists can come directly to their fans.
Daryl Hall is divorced from the Sara in the song “Sara Smile” but played a nice acoustic version of the song with T-Bone on guitar during the Stern show this morning. It sounds like this webcast could be a free every month downloadable deal and available via Bubbleup.net service.
These webcasts won’t be streamed live, which would be taking it even a step further, but hey, I’m suddenly more interested in Daryl Hall than I’ve been since the 80s. I might even go out and buy a Hall & Oates CD or two, imagine that?
You can show support for what Daryl is doing starting at 8pm EST tomorrow, November 15.
At the Cinekid Festival in the Netherlands kidscan explore the 
Hulu options available include: a small popout window, full screen (with browser remnants), lower lights which dims frame colors around the viewing area and the ability to rate the shows from 1-5 stars. I’d trade all these options for a single fully stretched, high quality picture. Let me pay a few bucks and get HD and I’ll be reaching for my wallet.
