Robert Soloway
Robert Soloway, a man identified as one of the world's most prolific
Video removed
YouTube removed one of my videos today. It's unclear to me why. When I open the YouTube page it has a message that reads "This video has been removed due to terms of use violation." I scanned their "Terms of Use" and "Community Guidelines" and didn't see how I had violated either one of them. There's a lot of talk about how the mass media slants the media one way or the other. Some people believe that blogging (or vlogging) is a way to get information that is free from censorship. Unfortunately, the tools that people use for blogging (like blogger and YouTube) are not free from censorship. Dropping people's videos from YouTube is a perfect example of that. I went back through some of the videos that I've blogged about and discovered that there were quite a few that displayed "This video is no longer available."
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
From: Patrick Melo
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 3:46 PM
To: YouTube Service [mailto:service@youtube.com]
Subject: RE: Video Removed: Inappropriate Content
I belive the video is worth having online. Can you give me specific details on how the video is "inappropriate"?
-PatrickFrom: YouTube Service [mailto:service@youtube.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 1:13 PM
To: Patrick Melo
Subject: Video Removed: Inappropriate Content
YouTube | Broadcast Yourself™Dear Member:After being flagged by members of the YouTube community and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature.Please refer to our Terms of Use and the Community Guidelines for more information on what video material is not permitted on YouTube.— The YouTube TeamCopyright © 2007 YouTube, Inc.
CNN's
Google map
In the spirit of Google Developer Day (May 31) I've written this simple Google Map whosit. Enter an address (e.g. 94560) to have it mapped. You might have to zoom in or out to see the newly added address. Check out the google site for information on webcasts from Developer Day.
This is a pretty simple example but it demonstrates how you can take a list of addresses and integrate them with a web service like Google maps. Instead of accepting the addresses from a form, you could do it programatically. Here's what you have to do to add this to your own site. You won't need the form.
- View the source of this web page, copy the HTML between the comments that read START COPY and STOP COPY. You can include or omit the comments themselves, it doesn't matter.
- Paste the code wherever you want.
- Sign up for an API key. It's a no brainer, really. You enter your URL, accept the terms and voila.
- Replace the portion of the HTML that reads key= (mine starts with ABQ) with your own key.
- Find the line that reads showAddress("94545", "94545"); and replace it with your own address. Copy and paste as many of these lines.
Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface (previously Milan) brings us one step closer to those cool Sci-Fi-ish multitouch prototypes we've been seeing. Did they beat Apple to the punch on this one? The product is expected to hit the market in Winter 2007.
This is a pretty funny commercial.
Canon virtual plant
Canon has set up a Virtual Plant. You can watch a video to see how they make their lenses.
Elave
Elave commissioned this risqué ad to prove they have nothing to hide. Watch their video on YouTube.
UPDATE: The YouTube police removed my video, check out the nothing to hide site instead. You can see the video by clicking on the overhead projector. Sorry, the download is dramatically slower.
Street View
Google Maps has a new feature called "Street View". Click on a blue outlined street and you'll see the view of the location from street level.
UPDATE: Stan Schroeder has compiled the top 15 google street view sightings. The one with Cornelius Van Der Vies (#06) is particularly interesting. Also, here's a picture of the vehicle that does the pictures.
The Big Donor Show
BNN is airing a show titled De Grote Donorshow that pits contestants against each other Big Brother style. The winner the kidney of a 37-year old woman suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. Read more...
UPDATE: Apparently the show isn't real after. According to CBS it was a hox to get the government to reform its organ donor law. When I first heard about this I thought it was really strange that there weren't more sources of information on this story. Still, the hoax seems to have been perpetrated by BNN so it's surprising that more news agencies didn't pick up on it one way or another.
This is a funny video from
Movies over the web
Two sites mytheater and joox allow you to watch movies over the web.
UPDATE: These are cropping up left and right. Here's one called videohybrid. You'll find other movies at SlyFoxTV.
Fire safety
This is a pretty instense video on fire safety. I didn't notice the woman's face until someone pointed it out to me. The firekills website has several other videos as well. If you have trouble seeing any of them, let me know and I'll post them to YouTube.
Rosie v. Elisabeth
Is this a hand on the pulse of public opinion on the war in Iraq? It aired (05/23/07).
RvD2
OMG! This videos (RvD2: Ryan vs. Dorkman 2" is one of the coolest I've ever seen! Stop whatever you're doing and watch it.
The DIVX version has better resolution (if you can get it work). I didn't have much luck with it
If you liked that, you might try searching for star wars cut scenes or star wars fan film on youtube. You find things like Three In The Afternoon.
Also, it looks like the StarWars website is going to allow you make your own movie mashups.
USB drive adapters
If you've ever wanted to plug a regular IDE drives into your PC's USB port, here are some devices that might help. I use these things to buy myself cheap (but slow) disk storage. I've purchased about half a dozen of them. They're sold at
Meritline.com (11.99),
and
PCMicrostore ($15.00).
TheTechGeek ($17.99) sells a simliar item for SATA drives.
You should know that these cables don't provide any cooling for your drives so you shouldn't use them for extended periods of time without some sort of cooling system. IF you're not looking for a solution you can carry with you, then you might consider a USB hard drive case. You can buy those at most computer stores.
Feeling sexy
Crestock.com (a stock photo site) is offering a Cannon EOS 1Ds Mark II to the winners of their photo
contests.
They've already found a winner to the first round (The Meaning of Life). Rounds 2 (Feeling Sexy?) and 3 (Speed Demon) are still open.
If you don't want to rifle through the whole list you can check out the highlights. Check out their contest page to find out more about entering.
Brood XIII
A group of insects known as
Brood XIII are expected to emerge this month in parts of the midwest after spending 17 years underground. The roman numerals label broods that live in particular area. They are one of 15 separate 'broods' that appear regularly throughout the midwestern US.
OK I've probably just pissed off every person who knows anything about insects by ignoring or replacing words that have special significance in your world. Where I come from, the word "brood" while sounding very cool, doesn't fit nicely in casual conversation; nor does the term "periodical cicadas". Sorry.
Pimped out nutcracker
These days you can pimp just about anything. Pimp my nutracker dot com goes farther than anyone expected this to go.
Joe is Japanese
Joe Is Japanese dot com has clips from the cool biography of Joe, who is Japanese, more or less.
Girls Gone Wild doesn't exactly live up to its name as well as this parody.
Sand castles
Harrison Hot Springs just had its Tournament of champions. The world Champtionships competition starts the Tuesday after Labor Day. The final judging is on Sunday afternoon and the Exhibition of finished sculpture continues until Canadian Thanksgiving/Columbus Day in October. You can see pictures from the competitions on their site (
1
2
3
4
5
6
). Jeff Rense has some on his site but it's unclear whether they're from the same event.
Marvel and DC
ItsJustSomeRandomGuy made some parodies of based on the MAC/PC commercials. These are for Marvel/DC.
Someecards
Looking for that unique card that says exactly what you're thinking? The cards at someecards
fill in where Hallmark leaves off with cards like "Sorry for asking you to get a boob job" and "If masturbating in my office is wrong, I don't want to be right".
This is a funny
Joost
There's been a lot of buzz around Joost, a service from the people who gave you Kazaa and Skype. The new technology uses peer to peer technology to bring television to your desktop. SFGate
wrote an article on it yesterday. I downloaded/installed it and tried four different videos. None of them worked. Let me know if you want an invite. This technology would be really cool if they allowed you to create your own channels like YouTube.
Puppy snatcher
The real mother of these pups didn't interested in taking care of them so the cat took matters into her own hands. Please forgive the cheesy announcer.
A friend of mine is leaving for NY, we're going to miss her.
Pink
Jacob's friends turned his apartment into an art installation by wrapping everything in pink. The pictures are funny, don't bother with the video.
Moveable heads
Do you remember the Scissor Sisters 
DIVX 6
I finally agreed to let the DIVX player on my laptop do it's upgrade. I'm not sure why I procrastinated as long as I did. I'm usually really good about doing upgrades. This time though I'm really disappointed in the results. I was just raving about their product the other day, pointing out its ability to open multiple windows at the same time. Would you believe they took that out of the new version? They did it to resolve a problem with the download manager. Are you kidding me? Download managers are a dime a dozen. In fact I have one built into my browser (Firefox) already. Why would I want another download manager? They took their best feature (multiple instances) and traded it in for a feature I have no interest in (download manager). Now I have to go digging around for an older version of the software and pray that I don't get stung by any sploits that might be luring around. I give the DIVX upgrade (version 6) a definite thumbs down.
Director's mother's cut
In this contest, artists take horror movie's and make posters for the child-safe versions of the movie.
Jimmy Kimmel is on the street asking women "What's in my pants?"
This poor guy gets powned in this funny practical joke.
Breakdancer
The original
"Patada subte Times Square" video featuring the kid getting nailed by a breakdancer in Times Square is spreading like wildfire but this remixes are even funnier.
asketchymess from gawker.com writes: Lesson Learned. Next time that kid steps out on the dancefloor, she is going to BRING IT!
What would happen if lolcats took over a TV channel? Read 
Somebody made a funny compilation of people sleeping.
Pearls before swine
Stephan Pastis writes a funny comic called pearls before swine.