Category: YouTube

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Slow invasion of Home Depot

I caught word of this via a post on Wired, but imagine this. 225 people walk into a Home Depot. All of their watches are syncronized, and at a determined time, everyone starts moving in slow motion for five minutes. After that, shop normally for another five minutes. And then, freeze for another five minutes.

Improv Everywhere are the folks behind this, but don’t call them a flash mob. Their brand of organized fun is a little more than that. Be sure to check out the page for this “mission” on their website for a great write-up, as well as pictures and videos.

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YouTube goes down; people discover a world outside

I find things like this interesting.  I had bandwidth problems most of today, meaning Shaw was sucking big time, but YouTube is something I pass by once and a while.  For others, I bet there were some people going through withdrawl.

YouTube, the popular video hosting site, was hit with an outage four almost five hours Tuesday as a result of database troubles.

The site, which allows viewers to tune into uploaded videos ranging from seniors making their homespun video debut to polished user-submitted film clips, went down at 7:30 a.m. (PST) leaving viewers with a tongue-in-cheek graphic of the company’s database woes. Although the notice stated that new features were being added to the site, it turns out that wasn’t the case.

“There are no new features being added today. This page went up mistakenly,” said company spokeswoman Julie Supan.  [cnet]

This takes me back to an episode of the DSC a short time ago where the Curry’s were talking about how their daughter popped out of her bedroom one night while MySpace disappeared for some hours.  She was forced away from an online world and into the kitchen with her mom.  According to the podcast, the daughter was helpful and sweet.  At the same time, she had nothing better to do.

When we saw Douglas Coupland at CBC’s Studio One Book Club a few months ago[post], even he stated how he could and would spend all day on YouTube, probably absorbing ideas for his writing projects.  I bet there were some offices that experienced an increase in productivity today as well.   Oh yeah, that’s what Google Video is for.

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Blogging from inside Lebanon

Blog: Back to Iraq [Christopher Allbritton]There’s been a lot of discussion about the war in the southern region of Lebanon being different from any other conflict that we have ever experienced, especially in this Web 2.0 world.  People are blogging about it and posting videos on YouTube as everything unfolds, offering a unique, personal observation of what is going on there.

I’ve been paying attention to a blog, Back to Iraq, for some months, and this guy seems to have a knack for finding himself in, or even seeking out, tight situations.  In fact, Christopher Allbritton is a freelance journalist who reports for numerous news organizations, Time Magazine being one of the more well known ones.  After living in Iraq for about two years, he relocated to Beirut, well before the recent conflict.

His recent post is an amazing summary of the hardship that the civilians are eduring through all of this fighting.  I’m sure this won’t be the last time something like this will be said.

The Israelis have started shelling or bombing Dahiye again. While writing this, a massive blast rattled my windows. I can only hope that something can be done to stop this.  [back-to-iraq]

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All your content belongs to YouTube

I know I’m a little late to the news here, but any thought I had in the back of my mind to upload anything to YouTube, especially any of my video podcasts, is gone now.

The video site YouTube constitutes an equal or larger threat to small content producers. Before you upload that video of your 19-person indie rocker reggae band, for instance, you may want to read the fine print.  YouTube’s “new” Terms & Conditions allow them to sell whatever you uploaded however they want:

“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”

Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD.  Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get “edgy”; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky’s still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video.  [wired]

It’s a shame that this had to happen as I am sure people will have the same thought as me.  I also caught this blog post saying that person will remove all the content they have on YouTube, citing the change in their policy as the reason.  Will that be another trend?

I’ll go as far to say that I hope it won’t infringe on the popularity of the site.  I could spend all day watching stuff that’s posted there.

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Jose + 10

I’m still caught up in the midst of World Cup action.  Everytime the Adidas commercials come on, no matter how many times I have seen them already, I stop to watch.  The two little kids remind me of something I would do when I was their age, although it would have been with futbol players.  Probably something more like baseball or American football stars.  The tune in this commerical gets stuck in my head all the time.

Check out the first part of the series as well as the making of.