Time to make someone famous….

I have no words….

 

This is truly the most epic thing I've seen, since lunchtime.

The Neil Patrick Harris Card Trick

Here is NPH mystifying Jimmy Fallon with a card trick.

 

I don't know if there are many more ways i can love this man with out moving to a state that's made it legal…

Guillermo Del Toro Saves Vampires!!!

If there was ever a reason to love this man anymore, saving Vampires from the wussification that they have endured from crap like the Twilight series is definitely at the top of the list.

Apparently Del Toro, creator of such amazing films as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Orphanage is working on a Vampire book series that sounds like Dawn of the Dead Meets I Am Legend Meets Dracula. The first of which is called The Strain and is due in book stores on June 2nd

I really hope this takes off, because if its one thing i cant stand….

 

….its vampires who “sparkle” when they encounter sunlight….

Here is Del Toro commenting on his inspiration for the series

Comedian Spotlight – John Caparulo

First off, before i go into this post, let me just point out the Brilliant Youtube Symphony post below this one. Yes its 59 minutes long and yes normally most folks wont sit and watch a youtube video for that long…..but its worth it, seriously. Check it out.

The video above is from a 2006 Montreal Just for Laughs performance from John Caparulo. If you happened to catch Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show, you already know who John Caparulo is. But I figured I’d indulge with the performance above because i believe that this man will reach phenomenal levels of success in the coming years.

Proof Positive that comedy doesn't have to rely on shoddy one-pump bits to stay relevant in this day in age. Enjoy!

YouTube Symphony Orchestra: Tons Cooler Than It Sounds

Last week, several reviewers both from the tech and the music world gave their opinions of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.  I must admit, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to the whole event while it was going on, nor during the ramp up period.

I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why, but both Liz Gannes from NewTeeVee and Anthony Tommasini of the New York Times both called the performance and concept gimmicky.  I think that’s what the concept struck me as – gimmicky.

Still, something compelled me to hit the play button on the video this afternoon, and I’m glad I did.  It isn’t a gimmicky symphony at all.  Typically, with an online video, my trigger finger gets a little itchy a couple of minutes in. 

Such was not the case with this performance.  With musical selections ranging from the utterly esoteric to the emotionally touching, I was enraptured with the whole performance.

You will be to.  Give it a listen.

Queen’s Bohemiam Rhapsody [8Core]

Gizmodo had this earlier in the weekend, so chances are you’ve seen it already – if you haven’t, you deserve to take a six minute break and revel in the pure geekery here.

Before you even say anything about the slightly out of tune nature of some of the segments, heed the “conductor’s” warning:

the scanner and floppy drive are not musical instruments. These are mechancial devices whose frequencies tend to drift and can cause some notes to be out of tune.

Likely, if you’re anything like me, you’ll forget by the end of the clip that these are things not designed to be instruments… just sounds coming out in pretty decent harmony.

Stickman Exodus

Stickman Exodus, Ep. 1: Hangman

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Atom Originals | Stickman Exodus

This was in the Online Film category for the webby ballot that i featured yesterday. Aside from The Website is Down, it was the only thing that i found remotely entertaining enough to feature here.

Currently there are six episodes in the series, and I’m showcasing the first so you can get an idea of the irreverent  humor involved.

Video is NSFW due to language, you’ve been warned.

The Webby’s short list….Website Category!

The Webby Awards, the Oscars for the internet, are coming up soon and Mark took the time to send me a heads up regarding the event.

Today the nominees were announced and I've been piling through some of them trying to find some standouts for all of you to check out.

A personal favorite of mine is in the Weird category on the Website ballot. Failblog.org is a website specializing in “Fails”, or pictures of hilariously stupid things with quick two word captions to convey resonance. I have wasted countless hours rolling through pictures and video offered by this site. I encourage everyone to check it out

Another decent catch is Flock.com in the Social Networking category on the Website Ballot. According to the website, Flock touts itself as a variant of Firefox that effortlessly connects you to all your favorite social networking sites via the browsers GUI. Built in publishers for sites like Twitter and Blogger are the draw here.

On the Entertainment side, Destructoid and The Escapist are nominated in the Games-Related category. Destructoid is full of witty banter and unique and engaging feature articles, and the sheer amount of specialized content coming from The Escapist is definitely worth applauding. If I spent anymore time watching Zero Punctuation, I’d be maniacal, cynical, and I’d never get anything done.

 

Tomorrow ill try and get some stuff up from the Online Video and Film Category of the Webby Ballot.

And Now For Something Completely Different [Investigative Journalism]

This is a recommended media blog, and that includes journalism.  One of the ideas we had when we started this blog was to do media criticisms, calling out motards in the press that get it consistently wrong.

But somehow, and this surprises me as much as anyone, a blog that I’m supposedly in charge of is taking on a mostly positive tone. 

This post is no exception – what is exceptional is that I’m pointing to the best bit of investigative journalism I’ve seen in some time – and it’s coming from a fairly unknown blog entitled “Music Machinery,” by Paul Lamere.

The post, entitled “Inside the precision hack,” looks delves into great detail via first hand reports how 4chan rigged Time’s poll to decide the most influential people in “government, science, technology and the arts.”

 

It’s definitely worth reading.

Go check it out.

Recomedia…The First Album you will purchase this year.

Manchester Orchestra – “The Only One”

This is the first video of an 11 part series of video’s by a band called Manchester Orchestra. And quite frankly it sounds amazing.

Mean Everything to Nothing is the title of the album to be released by the band on April 21st.

When i heard this just a few moments ago, i knew i had to post it to Recomedia. This is definitely something you want to check out.

Xbox 360….The Errors Continue!

Not content with frustrating customers over the RRoD, or Red Ring of Death, a common problem found when general hardware failures brick an Xbox 360 gaming console. Now Microsoft have expanded the warranty on so called E 47 Errors. Apparently the console has “general hardware failure that is associated with three flashing red lights error on the console.”

I had a similar problem and i actually looked up various technical manuals and ripped open my 360 to repair it. Realizing that it was nothing more than thermal expansion and a fault in the securing of screws in and around the GPU of the device, i fixed the issue within a day or two. The only problem i had was that i bought it used, so the offending company and Microsoft didnt see a reason to cover my console under warranty….leaving me to do the dirty work myself.

You would think after thousands of hardware issues that someone would have fixed these specifications on the production side. Apparently consoles are shipping out with more advanced chips than those at launch, making the errors less frequent, but in this day and age it would seem to be a more viable option to just fix the issue all together.

If you are experiencing an E47 error, please visit the Microsoft Xbox 360 support site for more details on what you can do to correct this issue.

We Didn’t Start the Flamewar [Your a Fag]

John and I were chatting about the finer points of URL shorteners this afternoon, and he asked me if I had seen this yet.

I hadn’t.  I have now. And now you need to see it.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Lucian from Underworld movies goes Vamp again for Twilight Sequel?

What. The. Hell.

Apparently Michael Sheen has signed on to play “Aro” in the next Twilight Movie….

Now ill give the guy credit for busting ass and making the Underworld movies a slight bit more enjoyable (a difficult task when you are given cutoff dialog and short Mad-Science scenes), but isnt this the definition of typecasting?

According to the Twilight Wiki, which i actually had to visit to research this post, Aro is a vampire who leads “The Volturi”, and his sister, after being turned into a vampire by him, gains the ability to make people happy…

Wow, not only is this movie gonna suck, its gonna suck and ruin a decent actor’s career. Its like some sort of bizzaro-universe need to ruin Vampire mythos as a whole.

In related news, Stephanie Meyer apparently single-handedly kept the book industry afloat last quarter. Her four twilight books were the four best selling books of Fiscal First Quarter 2009, with her Sci-Fi body snatcher book The Host placing 14th on the list.

Normally id take the stance that its good that people are actually reading, but when what they are reading is tainting the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre with shit like how vampires Sparkle in the Sun….i loose what little faith i have.

To all Twilight Fans

For the love of god, go buy a William Gibson book.

Digg Dialogg with Trent Reznor

I make no secret of my unbridled love for the band Nine Inch Nails. I can remember the moment my friend Josh let me have The Fragile and how i would play it over and over in my truck on the way to high school. I can remember listening to The Downward Spiral and the Broken EP with friends while hanging out playing Goldeneye on the N64, and when Year Zero came out, i was constantly scouring blogs and forum posts looking for the latest clues in the ARG that accompanied it.

Diggnation is also a fun little diversion that i catch from time to time. Back in the early days of RantTV, i would watch the broken with friends who came over to my house and show them all the cool tech stuff you could do with just a few bucks and a little ingenuity.

So what happens when the two things meet? You get the above video, which is a collection of questions posed to the NIN mastermind from the digg community. Want to know what the most embarrassing thing Reznor keeps on his Ipod? Want to know how he feels about the current state of the music industry? And which classic arcade cabinet does Reznor own just to get away from the monotony of life, the universe, and everything?

Find out in the Digg Dialogg Interview with Trent Reznor.

Just dont tell John Malm….

Thanks to Revision 3 for the embed.

Twitter Founder Evan Williams on Tekzilla

Twitter, the social networking app that has taken the world by storm, is at the forefront of emerging tech news. Almost every day you can see a placement from a news channel or celeb on their latest thoughts and musings via the text-blogging phenomenon. Some companies have even seen an upturn in product advertisement via the service, making a simple app one of the most sought after marketing resources in recent years.

Evan Williams is the founder of Twitter and in the video above, he shares his thoughts on the future of Twitter with Revision 3’s Tekzilla vodcast correspondent Veronica Belmont. @Ev, as he is known on his website, talks about the monetization aspect of twitter and some of the companies, such as Twitpic and Exectwits, that are using the Twitter system to drive revenue higher and higher.

He also talks about future plans of twitter including incorporating image and video sharing as part of the system. It appears that Williams would rather let other companies focus their efforts on working with Twitter to develop the appropriate system for such services on their own, instead of letting Twitter absorb those services as a part of normal functions of the Twitter website.

Its a worthwhile interview to check out if you have a little bit of time. The video embed should seek direct to the appropriate time when Williams is interviewed during the program, but if it doesn't, check it out at about 13 minutes in.

-Jon

What’s Going On with Drama 2.0?

Drama 2.0 is was(?) one of my very favorite foils on the web. Now it seems that the mysteriously anonymous blogger that we only know lives overseas, is employed by eMarketer, and hates almost everyone in Web 2.0 punditry, has stopped blogging tech.

Does anyone know what’s going on with him?  I admit I haven’t done any deep digging on this yet, but the last thing even remotely tech related was posted April 4th, and was a video mostly centering around Twitter and the Hudson plane crash.

The last update from Drama 2.0.

The blog has been completely re-designed, now.  It’s named the same thing, but now with the tagline “Celebrity drama has never been this sexy.”

Most posts are about female celebs, with teaser photo galleries leading into a “premium membership area,” that promises uncensored photography.

The new site seems too well planned and thought out to be another one of his gags.  Are we to assume that Drama has hung up his hat in terms of poking fun at us?

Unfortunate, if true.

Dollhouse Isn’t Dead Yet [Twitter Trends]

Earlier this afternoon, I noticed that Dollhouse, one of my favorite shows on TV right now, was trending as the number one Twitter topic.

Rather than do any research myself on the hubbub, I told Sean about it, and he broke it down over at his personal blog.

- Fox Television Network ordered, produced and paid for 13 episodes.  This includes the pilot and 12 normal episodes.  The pilot was trashed, and parts of it reused.

- Fox Television Studio (different than the network) needs 13 episodes for the DVD release, so they commissioned a stand-alone episode entitled “Epitaph One”.  This brings the total number of episodes produced to 14.

- Fox Television Network has no interest in “Epitaph One” as it is stand alone and they did not commission it.  They are under no obligation to air the episode, although people would like to see them do so.

- Fox Television Studio will put “Epitaph One” on the DVD release for season one regardless if it airs on television or not.

So there you go.  Bottom line – the show’s not out of jeopardy yet, but it definitely hasn’t been openly cancelled yet.

Billy Bob Thornton is a musical genius….just kidding.

The above video details Q TV’s Jian Ghomeshi having a minor spat with one Billy Bob Thornton over mentioning his previous acting career during an interview for his “Boxmasters” music project. Apparently the boxmasters are a “rockabilly-meets-brit-invasion hybrid band” that are doing pretty well on the circuit.

Normally i would describe in detail what happened, but its easier and far more satisfying if you watch the video.

Meet Billy Bob Thornton, this month’s Joaquin Phoenix!

-Jon

View2Gether.com – Playstation Home for the web?

Mark took the time to send me a press release a day or so ago from the ABC Family marketing team regarding view2gether.com, an “Online Viewing Platform” for ABC Family shows. Apparently fans of a television show on the network called “Greek” (yes your guess is as good as mine) will be able to log on to the view2gether website and host online “Viewing Parties” where they can watch and discuss their favorite episodes through a synched up online streaming platform. Just like watching Television with a bunch of friends at your house, except not on your television, and no where near any of your friends.

Now don't get me wrong, viewing parties are fun and all. The Oscar viewing party was like being a part of an MST3k Episode when i went. But i much preferred the idea Sony put in motion with their Home software. See, supposedly at some point in the lifetime of Home, any media content you have saved to the PLAYSTATION 3 (yes, that is the way you write it) hard drive can be queued up and streamed to your friends via your personal space big screen. You and your friends’ avatars then can sit, press a button, and bring the movie up full screen for everyone in the party. Now thats a cool idea. It creates some sort of normality in a virtual world environment.

Now considering that this is ABC Family using the platform, i highly doubt any shenanigans on the level of say, AICN’s Talkbacks, but quite simply its a chat room with a video that plays at the same interval for all people in the room….which is not necessarily the coolest thing since sliced bread. Time will tell if this website ends up working out. Maybe if they get some more shows available other than “ABC Family’s Hit Show Greeks!” (their words, not mine), then this just might have a chance.

-Jon