Almost two years ago I read this profile of game inventor Will Wright in The New Yorker. He was working on a new game for Electronic Arts called Spore, which was going to essentially be "Sim Everything"--you would have the chance to create unicellular creatures all the way up to whole civilizations and see how they did against other people's creations in a virtual world. After watching this 35-minute demo back then I thought this is going to turn kids into mini-Darwins or mini-creationists but either way, they are going to have fun.
If the enormous YouTube ad pictured above didn't tip you off (Has YouTube ever allowed such a huge ad that pushes the content down like that before? How much did that cost?), Spore is finally in stores today. If there were any video game I would play it would be this one, but I already have enough addictions, so I will avoid it. However, this video of Robin Williams playing it sure makes it look like fun.
The Muppets haven't had a TV series since 1998, and their last TV movie was 2005, but a series of viral videos featuring Beaker, the Swedish Chef, Animal, Gonzo, and Statler and Waldorf were posted to YouTube between June 27 and July 16 and they are taking off. Ever since Disney bought the rights to the Muppets in 2003, it seemed like they were just living off of royalties and lending out the characters to appear in Pizza Hut commercials rather than creating new shows. The fact that Beaker's video already has over a million hits makes it evident that these guys were sorely missed by a generation of 25 to 40 year olds.
Ode To Joy
Jason Segal, 28-year old star and writer of Forgetting Sarah Marshall, is a huge Muppets fan and will be penning the next Muppet movie. These YouTube vids seem like a good way to build up the Muppet brand again in anticipation of that, since I have a feeling most Millenials know only Sesame Street, not the characters from The Muppet Show. In fact, in another bid to raise the profile of the Muppets, Kermit, Miss Piggy and pals will appear alongside Disney teen idols this Sunday in a special called Studio DC: Almost Live.
Why Disney was just sitting on such a cash cow (and frog and pig) so long is unclear, but it's good they are back and it was genius to do this on YouTube. The short format and random humor of the Muppets is perfectly suited to this medium, plus, as with all economical web clips, all you really need are two or three people to produce each video. The snarky pair Statler and Waldorf, who go by the handle heckleu247, seem particularly at home on the internet despite their age. And Sam the Eagle was Stephen Colbert before there was a Stephen Colbert.
My husband dragged me to see Starship Troopers when it came out in 1997 and there was a scene of what media coverage would be like in the future. You would watch a news clip and click on the screen after the question "Would you like to know more?"(and yes, that really is Neil Patrick Harris, in one of his few roles between Doogie Howser MD and Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle)
In 1997, the internet was new, and there was this feeling that interactive TV was around the corner (WebTV anyone?). But it wasn't really. Yes, videos were soon embedded in web pages, with additional links to related videos. But nothing popped up in the middle of the screen during a broadcast that could be clicked for more information. (Both TiVo and Hulu kind of do this, but these generally link to ads)
Today, I was visiting Nate Dern's channel on YouTube and he had posted a Choose Your Own Adventure video series. Apparently, on June 4, YouTube announced on its blog that it had released an annotation feature to it's users, such that they could add pop up messages and links in a time and place of your choosing throughout your video.
For instance, here's a link to an interactive card trick. And here's a link to how to create annotated videos, from the card trick's producer (I'd embed these videos here, but if you do, the linking doesn't work).
In my last post wrote that if an alien were monitoring photos of what humans thought was important in our lives using flickrvision, they might feel we were a species worthy of survival; on the other hand, if they were monitoring our video posting on YouTube, they just might blow the planet up.
I may have spoken too soon. When I think of YouTube these days, I think of people uploading clips of dogs humping, people throwing up (and worse), the snips of nudity from TV shows and movies, and vloggers spouting inane comments on other's vlogs. It doesn't bode well for humanity if this is what we choose to watch.
And this remains true, but these are only the clips that have snowballed and broken through the noise. They are the clips that get forwarded and bookmarked and commented on, in the same way chain letters and urban legends get passed around. These are the most viewed, most commented, most "favorited" videos.
The ever-updated "Videos being watched right now" area on the YouTube homepage gives obscure videos slightly more attention, but still tends to reinforce the most popular videos.
Spinvision is different. Also created by David Troy, it is essentially the same as flickrvision, only it shows any video that was uploaded to YouTube that same day, visualized as springing up from random locations on the globe. While the user base for Flickr tends to be English-speaking countries, Spinvision pulls from YouTube, which has a more global user base, so these videos are even more likely to show you what is going on in non-English speaking countries.
YouTube also seems to attract a younger audience than Flickr. Older folks invest in expensive cameras that take photos worthy of uploading to Flickr. Younger folks (and 30-40 year olds with kids) are the ones likely to post videos to YouTube that they took on their webcam or mobile phone.
So when viewed via spinvision, YouTube as a whole is slightly more tame than it's most popular videos, though at the same time, more quirky. Below are three clips from Japan, Portugal, and Romania that popped up in the last hour. After viewing, aliens might not want to blow us up, but they might want to collect us as oddities for their traveling zoo.
After all, how else would I have found that video at the top of this post? It only had 20 views and was uploaded a few hours ago. I do not know if "8uma" is just shy, really likes horses (uma is Japanese for horse), is doing a cover of a popular Japanese song called "First Love," or is performing an original composition for his girlfriend who really likes horses. I just want to know where he found that mask! This video's only English tag is "uma," the rest are japanese for horse, guitar, world, music. So unless there are Uma Thurman fans out there who accidentally stumble upon this while searching for video of her latest movie, there is no way this video is going to get the worldwide recognition it so clearly deserves.
I love the Edwin Hawkins Singer's song "Oh Happy Day," it makes me feel, well, happy. To hear it being performed by a Portuguese choir makes me even happier.
I've been scrounging voraciously for reading material ever since I quit TV and started this blog six days ago. In my foraging sessions, I managed to find an old Newsweek from December 17 that had gotten trapped under all the pre-holiday stuff. To my surprise, they had a brief write-up of a viral video by a local acapella group, The Richter Scales. I went to school with two of these guys (one of whom introduced me to my husband), took a computer science class from another, and did a crude website for the guy listed as their recording guy. However, I totally missed this very cool news last month!
Now the whole blogosphere knows about them. For those of you who haven't seen it, here is version 1.1 of "Here Comes Another Bubble," sung to the tune of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." I just watched it and, wow, they are just spot-on--and hilarious! (Favorite Funny/Sad/True line: "Make yourself a million bucks, partly skill mostly luck, now you can afford a payment on a small house; if you want a bigger one--Hillsborough, Atherton--better hope the same thing happened to your spouse.").
But why version 1.1? Version 1.0 went up on YouTube Tuesday, December 4th and got 600,000 hits by Saturday the 8th, the same day it was featured in the San Jose Mercury News. By Monday, they were getting an overwhelmingly positive response, but also some questions over credit for the photos used. The following day, a week from the original posting, YouTube pulled the video following a DMCA take-down notice; a photographer had filed a complaint.
Reading their blog, I thought they handled the fallout like the decent guys they are. They were humble and apologetic and relaunched version 1.1 a week after the takedown, this time with credits for all the photographs, which was a pretty painstaking thing to do. They also made pains to mention that they didn't make any money off of the video.
Ever since I started this blog, I've been really tempted to insert videos into this blog using the embed tags you see all over YouTube and similar sites, but got completely paranoid and didn't go through with it. I work in educational media publishing and we are used to seeking credit and permission for all photos and videos we use; we are also used to some confusion on the part of our customers as to what is fair use.
Working in an industry that creates content, I am especially sensitive to copyright issues and want to learn more about it before inserting videos into my blog; I know what we have to do at work, but this is new territory for me. For instance, I have to guess that if a user posts a video they own to YouTube and makes no money doing so (there are no ads there), that they are cool with you inserting their video in your site. In fact, if the video contains a link to their advert-driven site or is a teaser for their full-length show or content, I would think they want you embed it.
But until I figure that out, all you will see are links to videos, not embedded videos, in my blog. If anyone wants to point out helpful articles on this point, I would appreciate the feedback.
Almost two years ago I read this profile of game inventor Will Wright in The New Yorker. He was working on a new game for Electronic Arts called Spore, which was going to essentially be "Sim Everything"--you would have the chance to create unicellular creatures all the way up to whole civilizations and see how they did against other people's creations in a virtual world. After watching this 35-minute demo back then I thought this is going to turn kids into mini-Darwins or mini-creationists but either way, they are going to have fun. 
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