The ads among us
Posted: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 11:10 PM by Will Femia
Why is this guy's list of the most viewed YouTube clips of all time not the same as the "most viral" clips of all time listed on the Countdown Web site? The Countdown list comes from a company called The Viral Factory that makes videos with the intention of seeing them go viral. I don't know how The Viral Factory tracks videos across different sites and platforms, but I'm amazed that I recognize every one of their sample videos. I didn't realize that Fingerskilz video was an ad for HP. I might have checked the URL in the video to make sure it wasn't obscene, but I didn't look that closely. Have I been subliminally influenced to favor HP computers? The Viral Factory site is agonizingly slow so you may find yourself not playing many of the videos there, but be forewarned (by which I mean, NOTE:), Trojan, Dream Team, and Remington have nudity in them.
Speaking of the advertisements in our midst, Marketers' Websites Outdraw Those of Major Media Players - While we've seen the prediction that the future will see more aggregators to help people discover the good stuff online, the role of the middle man in advertising looks like it could suffer some serious erosion if consumers are going directly to the product sites.
Speaking of shaking the foundation of advertising, The Imminent Demise of the Page View - I like the idea of measuring unique visitors against time spent on the site and doing away with page views as a metric. I'm not sure if that can be extended to RSS readers, but it's bound to encourage more engaging content and stop rewarding all that annoying excess pagination we run into all the time.
Speaking of marketing that stays with you, 50 greatest commercials of the 80s.
77 design gifts under $77 - Some hits and some misses, but with a list of 77 you're bound to find something that piques your interest.
DIY Holiday Contest: The homemade stocking - Holiday contests seem to be another new online holiday tradition.
Virtual Shopping Malls Making a Comeback? I played with the one mentioned in the article and I don't think it's better than designing a site that looks like a catalog. I suppose there's an argument to be made that people are already familiar with shopping in a store, so imitating that online will be comfortable for users, but I think replicating the catalog experience is better than replicating the mall experience.
Andrew Sullivan unearths an AT&T ad from 1993 that makes some pretty accurate predictions of the future. Bonus quiz: Name that voiceover guy.
Remember Mystery Science Theater 3000 with the little silhouettes at the bottom of the TV screen heckling the movie? The guy from that, Mike, offers commentary as a download now that you can play synchronously with a DVD.
Have you ever watched an octopus video that didn't leave you marveling at their nature? This one gives me a bit of a headache though.
The story of James Kim and his family is so horribly scary I can hardly bare to read the news of it. P.S. Since he's a CNet employee, I'm keeping an eye there for updates.
Map of the Star Trek Federation - Kind of hard to read. It looks like someone took pictures of a poster and tried to piece them together online.
Richard Dawkins, author and campaigning atheist answers your questions, such as 'What would you say at the gates of heaven?' Just about everything this guy does spreads across the Web like wildfire. I don't know if he's a bigger celebrity in the UK than I realize or if there are a lot of frustrated atheists online or if it's just his style of argument that is so appealing.
Is road skating really a thing?
What happens when you strike a flaming can of WD-40 with a stick. NOTE: Cameraman shouts F-bomb. Clip works just as well on mute.
Here's the beta launch of the Yahoo/Reuters "You Witness" citizen journalism site. Of course, with Yahoo owning Flickr, the photos are pretty much a gimme. In fact, it seems silly to separate that and try to rebrand it for news purposes. Also, it's a little concerning to see their main photo is a picture of a citizen standing in the path of a huge storm, risking her life so Yahoo can have free footage.
22 Ways To Overclock Your Brain - Another nice list to ways to keep your mind spry. I think we'll see a lot of this kind of advice as boomers start to panic about their aging brains. By all accounts I've read, the brain is very much a use-it-or-lose-it kind of organ.
"The popular BitTorrent client, Azureus has announced its long awaited 3.0 release together with the launch of its new video sharing site Zudeo.com." I played with this a little and got it to work, but some parts are a little mysterious to me - like trying to figure out where the app puts the files it downloads. I'm listening to a big FLAC of Willie Nelson solo in 1997 playing live in Maui, which turns out to be a pretty good surfing soundtrack.
Defining a racist - Malcolm Gladwell tries to solidify the definition of racist to apply it to recent news events.
Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading - Disclosure: This blogger is a colleague here at MSNBC.com.
IRS taxation of online game virtual assets inevitable - I never really thought about it, but it does seem likely. Virtual assets are worth real money after all. For that matter, crime writers looking for a way for your character to fence money or otherwise hide a transaction? Consider a virtual middle man.
"A baseball player answers his fan mail 15 years later." Cute story. I once dated a girl who would find the press address for obscure heavy metal bands and write to them for autographed photos. I never really got into autographs, but I do have a small collection that includes Blackie Lawless from WASP, Joan Baez, and an almost Jim Jarmusch (he signed Abraham Lincoln's name). (This link was also submitted by Lia to the mailbag. Thanks Lia.)
"Unsuggester takes "people who like this also like that" and turns it on its head."
I'm not really clear how it knows what books are the opposite of each other.
"The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations."
And so... How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged
EnglishRussia offers a translation of what is ostensibly a Russian pilot's description of first hand photos taken from the air on 9/11.
While I understand the point Dave Neiwert is making about non-Muslim terrorists not getting the same media hysteria treatment, I'm glad that we didn't have to endure another round of fretting, hand wringing and empty political gestures about the threat of terrorism.
Carved crayons - Check out his other stuff too.
