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The modern news consumer ignores Weblogs and online citizen journalism at his own peril. But not everyone has the time to keep track of what's going on the Web. With this blog we hope to track the highlights of what's being discussed online so when news breaks from the Web, we're ready.

Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

Send a message to Will at spotter@msnbc.com



That skydiver video

Posted: Monday, February 12, 2007 6:25 PM by Will Femia

If you had MSNBC on TV at all today you saw the video of the guy falling out of the sky when his parachute wouldn't open and then his back-up parachute wouldn't open.  The full footage from both the falling man and a guy following behind him (with functioning parachute) is on this UK newspaper site.  It's waaay better to see the original footage.  It's uncut and only has the original sound.  It's flash video with no counter and it feels a little long, maybe ten minutes, but if the TV version appealed to you, the original is much better.

ADDING:  For some reason it doesn't work in Firefox even though it's only Flash video.  Also, by the way, the guy lived.

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Comments

No video there

Brad Bradsher (Sent Monday, February 12, 2007 10:25 PM)

Site has no video

Estes (Sent Monday, February 12, 2007 10:38 PM)

If you click the main pane then you get a weird pop-up with an error, but you want to click the gray "play video" box. That calls up the play button. Hey, what do you want from a newspaper, clear video navigation?? :)

Will Femia (Sent Monday, February 12, 2007 10:49 PM)

Worked for me! Unbelievable! He should thank God!

Adrian (Sent Tuesday, February 13, 2007 12:45 AM)

That was insane, but it also appears to me that the 2nd guy hits the ground at roughly the same speed. So, was the impact on the 1st guy really all that unusual? Or was it the fact that he wasn't ready to land that caused all his problems?

C (Sent Tuesday, February 13, 2007 9:29 AM)

There is no way the second guy hit at the same speed. Michael estimated that he hit the ground at 80 mph. that would translate to an approximately 130ft fall. If his friend had hit the ground at the same speed he too would have needed a ride to the hospital. I would guess he tried to get down as quickly as possible, then slowed way down to land (I don't skydive).

Keith, Minneapolis (Sent Tuesday, February 13, 2007 12:41 PM)

I'm running FireFox (on an Ubuntu Linux box) and the video worked. I'm just surprised at how little he said. Had that been me I'm pretty sure my language would have made it NSFW!

Howlin' Hobbit, Seattle, WA (Sent Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:13 PM)

The second guy pulled the vent at the last minute to force his landing close to his friend. But, he was not going all that fast (the camera angle makes it look worse), and he also hit brambles (and he of course rolled a bit to absorb the impact shock).

Paul, Alamo, CA (Sent Tuesday, February 13, 2007 5:38 PM)



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