Häagen-Dazs, Burt's, buzzing over dying bees

Häagen-Dazs, nervous about the inexplicable death of huge numbers of honeybees, a phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder, has launched a campaign to raise awareness of -- and figure out -- the strange epidemic.

Häagen-Dazs is more than a little invested in the cause because, as one YouTuber points out: No Bees, No Ice Cream. Skin care manufacturer Burt's Bees has also gotten on the CCD video bandwagon.

The video below, where a bunch of "Bee boys" dance to buzzy music laid down by "DJ Honey" is actually pretty entertaining.

And from Burt's Bees:

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

In YouTube's first co-branded competition, the video site has partnered with People.com to launch its "Red Carpet Reporter" contest. 

YouTubers are invited to submit 2-ish-minute entries wherein the contestant interviews a friend or family member in the red carpet style. Like, hey, you and Dad have been seen making out in public a lot lately -- anything to that? 

Then whoever wins the contest gets to team up with People reportrix Michelle Beadle to grill celebrities at the Emmys in September. 

Maybe it's another sign that YouTube is infiltrating the established TV world. We're not quite to the point where YouTube shows are getting nominated for the prime-time Emmys, but getting a YouTuber right up next to the red carpet is pretty close.

The enterprise is sponsored by Revlon, the latest brand to find the value in the contest model, which is now the en vogue way to advertise.  Instead of plastering the Web with banner ads or buying expensive TV commercials, Revlon can step back and watch as YouTube and People drop the attention bomb (tonight, the contest's intro video will be on the YouTube homepage, a spot reportedly worth $175,000 a day) -- and young gossip reporters-to-be flock to a Web page with the Revlon logo in the center. (Plus blog posts like this one mention their name at least 3 times...)

But hey, if you're going to be on camera, you're probably going to need some makeup.

In a detailed analysis of YouTube's advertising potentials and pitfalls (sub. req.), the WSJ's Kevin Delaney explains that copyright concerns stemming largely from Viacom's lawsuit against Google are a big factor that's prevented YouTube from broadening its advertising base. 

According to Delaney, only about 4% of YouTube's 85 million+ videos have advertising associated with them. This sadly hilarious video of a narcopleptic dog is a good example -- someone has just peeled it off the air and reposted on YouTube, almost certainly without permission from the TV station that produced it. As you can see, there's no advertising on the page.

YouTube is working on multiple ways of solving this problem. The first is by inviting content producers into the "partner" fold, allowing them to post their own material and have control over which content comes with ads (and YouTube gets a cut of the revenue). The second is YouTube's video identification system, which lets partners search for any copied (slash unauthorized) versions of their clips. Once they locate the copied clips, they can choose whether they want to remove them, or 'monetize' them -- that is, sell ads against the pirated version.  Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. 

Someone call the producer of this narcoleptic dog story -- he could be making a few extra bucks.

You can watch Diggnation on iTunes, Viddler and Revision3's own website. Now the world's largest video site can be added to that list.

In an effort that is sure to net the online video distributor of tech-savvy shows like iFanboy and the Totally Rad Show more exposure, Revision3's lineup can now be watched on YouTube.

The company's YouTube channel hosts more than 600 videos from 21 shows, and more are being added, including videos for canceled shows, according to a Digg posting by Tyler Howarth, an intern at the company.

The run time for a Revision3 show aren't set in stone. Some total anywhere from a couple of minutes for an iFanboy Mini brief or up to an hour for some Diggnation episodes -- often the ones when hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get a little too sauced to stay on topic.

Now that YouTube has become more flexible with its 10-minute limit for videos, it has the potential to satisfy more than those looking for quick-fix clips, catering to indie filmmakers and now full-episode Web shows.

The Revision3 channel already has more than 600 subscribers. One video that was uploaded Monday (above) has about 2,000 hits, and Diggnation's many hours of shows have already been watched hundreds of times.

We'll have to wait to see if YouTube has any significant effect on the company's already impressive 4.2-million-per-month download average. But if a video of a baby laughing for nearly two minutes can get 54 million hits, my guess is Revision3 has a pretty good shot.

-- Mark Milian

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible' is a site-crashing success

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

In YouTube's first co-branded competition, the video site has partnered with People.com to launch its "Red Carpet Reporter" contest. 

YouTubers are invited to submit 2-ish-minute entries wherein the contestant interviews a friend or family member in the red carpet style. Like, hey, you and Dad have been seen making out in public a lot lately -- anything to that? 

Then whoever wins the contest gets to team up with People reportrix Michelle Beadle to grill celebrities at the Emmys in September. 

Maybe it's another sign that YouTube is infiltrating the established TV world. We're not quite to the point where YouTube shows are getting nominated for the prime-time Emmys, but getting a YouTuber right up next to the red carpet is pretty close.

The enterprise is sponsored by Revlon, the latest brand to find the value in the contest model, which is now the en vogue way to advertise.  Instead of plastering the Web with banner ads or buying expensive TV commercials, Revlon can step back and watch as YouTube and People drop the attention bomb (tonight, the contest's intro video will be on the YouTube homepage, a spot reportedly worth $175,000 a day) -- and young gossip reporters-to-be flock to a Web page with the Revlon logo in the center. (Plus blog posts like this one mention their name at least 3 times...)

But hey, if you're going to be on camera, you're probably going to need some makeup.

In a detailed analysis of YouTube's advertising potentials and pitfalls (sub. req.), the WSJ's Kevin Delaney explains that copyright concerns stemming largely from Viacom's lawsuit against Google are a big factor that's prevented YouTube from broadening its advertising base. 

According to Delaney, only about 4% of YouTube's 85 million+ videos have advertising associated with them. This sadly hilarious video of a narcopleptic dog is a good example -- someone has just peeled it off the air and reposted on YouTube, almost certainly without permission from the TV station that produced it. As you can see, there's no advertising on the page.

YouTube is working on multiple ways of solving this problem. The first is by inviting content producers into the "partner" fold, allowing them to post their own material and have control over which content comes with ads (and YouTube gets a cut of the revenue). The second is YouTube's video identification system, which lets partners search for any copied (slash unauthorized) versions of their clips. Once they locate the copied clips, they can choose whether they want to remove them, or 'monetize' them -- that is, sell ads against the pirated version.  Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. 

Someone call the producer of this narcoleptic dog story -- he could be making a few extra bucks.

You can watch Diggnation on iTunes, Viddler and Revision3's own website. Now the world's largest video site can be added to that list.

In an effort that is sure to net the online video distributor of tech-savvy shows like iFanboy and the Totally Rad Show more exposure, Revision3's lineup can now be watched on YouTube.

The company's YouTube channel hosts more than 600 videos from 21 shows, and more are being added, including videos for canceled shows, according to a Digg posting by Tyler Howarth, an intern at the company.

The run time for a Revision3 show aren't set in stone. Some total anywhere from a couple of minutes for an iFanboy Mini brief or up to an hour for some Diggnation episodes -- often the ones when hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get a little too sauced to stay on topic.

Now that YouTube has become more flexible with its 10-minute limit for videos, it has the potential to satisfy more than those looking for quick-fix clips, catering to indie filmmakers and now full-episode Web shows.

The Revision3 channel already has more than 600 subscribers. One video that was uploaded Monday (above) has about 2,000 hits, and Diggnation's many hours of shows have already been watched hundreds of times.

We'll have to wait to see if YouTube has any significant effect on the company's already impressive 4.2-million-per-month download average. But if a video of a baby laughing for nearly two minutes can get 54 million hits, my guess is Revision3 has a pretty good shot.

-- Mark Milian

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

YouTube, People.com contest will send a reporter to the Emmys

In YouTube's first co-branded competition, the video site has partnered with People.com to launch its "Red Carpet Reporter" contest. 

YouTubers are invited to submit 2-ish-minute entries wherein the contestant interviews a friend or family member in the red carpet style. Like, hey, you and Dad have been seen making out in public a lot lately -- anything to that? 

Then whoever wins the contest gets to team up with People reportrix Michelle Beadle to grill celebrities at the Emmys in September. 

Maybe it's another sign that YouTube is infiltrating the established TV world. We're not quite to the point where YouTube shows are getting nominated for the prime-time Emmys, but getting a YouTuber right up next to the red carpet is pretty close.

The enterprise is sponsored by Revlon, the latest brand to find the value in the contest model, which is now the en vogue way to advertise.  Instead of plastering the Web with banner ads or buying expensive TV commercials, Revlon can step back and watch as YouTube and People drop the attention bomb (tonight, the contest's intro video will be on the YouTube homepage, a spot reportedly worth $175,000 a day) -- and young gossip reporters-to-be flock to a Web page with the Revlon logo in the center. (Plus blog posts like this one mention their name at least 3 times...)

But hey, if you're going to be on camera, you're probably going to need some makeup.

In a detailed analysis of YouTube's advertising potentials and pitfalls (sub. req.), the WSJ's Kevin Delaney explains that copyright concerns stemming largely from Viacom's lawsuit against Google are a big factor that's prevented YouTube from broadening its advertising base. 

According to Delaney, only about 4% of YouTube's 85 million+ videos have advertising associated with them. This sadly hilarious video of a narcopleptic dog is a good example -- someone has just peeled it off the air and reposted on YouTube, almost certainly without permission from the TV station that produced it. As you can see, there's no advertising on the page.

YouTube is working on multiple ways of solving this problem. The first is by inviting content producers into the "partner" fold, allowing them to post their own material and have control over which content comes with ads (and YouTube gets a cut of the revenue). The second is YouTube's video identification system, which lets partners search for any copied (slash unauthorized) versions of their clips. Once they locate the copied clips, they can choose whether they want to remove them, or 'monetize' them -- that is, sell ads against the pirated version.  Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. 

Someone call the producer of this narcoleptic dog story -- he could be making a few extra bucks.

You can watch Diggnation on iTunes, Viddler and Revision3's own website. Now the world's largest video site can be added to that list.

In an effort that is sure to net the online video distributor of tech-savvy shows like iFanboy and the Totally Rad Show more exposure, Revision3's lineup can now be watched on YouTube.

The company's YouTube channel hosts more than 600 videos from 21 shows, and more are being added, including videos for canceled shows, according to a Digg posting by Tyler Howarth, an intern at the company.

The run time for a Revision3 show aren't set in stone. Some total anywhere from a couple of minutes for an iFanboy Mini brief or up to an hour for some Diggnation episodes -- often the ones when hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get a little too sauced to stay on topic.

Now that YouTube has become more flexible with its 10-minute limit for videos, it has the potential to satisfy more than those looking for quick-fix clips, catering to indie filmmakers and now full-episode Web shows.

The Revision3 channel already has more than 600 subscribers. One video that was uploaded Monday (above) has about 2,000 hits, and Diggnation's many hours of shows have already been watched hundreds of times.

We'll have to wait to see if YouTube has any significant effect on the company's already impressive 4.2-million-per-month download average. But if a video of a baby laughing for nearly two minutes can get 54 million hits, my guess is Revision3 has a pretty good shot.

-- Mark Milian

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

WSJ: Copyright concerns slowing YouTube ad growth

In a detailed analysis of YouTube's advertising potentials and pitfalls (sub. req.), the WSJ's Kevin Delaney explains that copyright concerns stemming largely from Viacom's lawsuit against Google are a big factor that's prevented YouTube from broadening its advertising base. 

According to Delaney, only about 4% of YouTube's 85 million+ videos have advertising associated with them. This sadly hilarious video of a narcopleptic dog is a good example -- someone has just peeled it off the air and reposted on YouTube, almost certainly without permission from the TV station that produced it. As you can see, there's no advertising on the page.

YouTube is working on multiple ways of solving this problem. The first is by inviting content producers into the "partner" fold, allowing them to post their own material and have control over which content comes with ads (and YouTube gets a cut of the revenue). The second is YouTube's video identification system, which lets partners search for any copied (slash unauthorized) versions of their clips. Once they locate the copied clips, they can choose whether they want to remove them, or 'monetize' them -- that is, sell ads against the pirated version.  Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. 

Someone call the producer of this narcoleptic dog story -- he could be making a few extra bucks.

You can watch Diggnation on iTunes, Viddler and Revision3's own website. Now the world's largest video site can be added to that list.

In an effort that is sure to net the online video distributor of tech-savvy shows like iFanboy and the Totally Rad Show more exposure, Revision3's lineup can now be watched on YouTube.

The company's YouTube channel hosts more than 600 videos from 21 shows, and more are being added, including videos for canceled shows, according to a Digg posting by Tyler Howarth, an intern at the company.

The run time for a Revision3 show aren't set in stone. Some total anywhere from a couple of minutes for an iFanboy Mini brief or up to an hour for some Diggnation episodes -- often the ones when hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get a little too sauced to stay on topic.

Now that YouTube has become more flexible with its 10-minute limit for videos, it has the potential to satisfy more than those looking for quick-fix clips, catering to indie filmmakers and now full-episode Web shows.

The Revision3 channel already has more than 600 subscribers. One video that was uploaded Monday (above) has about 2,000 hits, and Diggnation's many hours of shows have already been watched hundreds of times.

We'll have to wait to see if YouTube has any significant effect on the company's already impressive 4.2-million-per-month download average. But if a video of a baby laughing for nearly two minutes can get 54 million hits, my guess is Revision3 has a pretty good shot.

-- Mark Milian

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Revision3 now on YouTube

You can watch Diggnation on iTunes, Viddler and Revision3's own website. Now the world's largest video site can be added to that list.

In an effort that is sure to net the online video distributor of tech-savvy shows like iFanboy and the Totally Rad Show more exposure, Revision3's lineup can now be watched on YouTube.

The company's YouTube channel hosts more than 600 videos from 21 shows, and more are being added, including videos for canceled shows, according to a Digg posting by Tyler Howarth, an intern at the company.

The run time for a Revision3 show aren't set in stone. Some total anywhere from a couple of minutes for an iFanboy Mini brief or up to an hour for some Diggnation episodes -- often the ones when hosts Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht get a little too sauced to stay on topic.

Now that YouTube has become more flexible with its 10-minute limit for videos, it has the potential to satisfy more than those looking for quick-fix clips, catering to indie filmmakers and now full-episode Web shows.

The Revision3 channel already has more than 600 subscribers. One video that was uploaded Monday (above) has about 2,000 hits, and Diggnation's many hours of shows have already been watched hundreds of times.

We'll have to wait to see if YouTube has any significant effect on the company's already impressive 4.2-million-per-month download average. But if a video of a baby laughing for nearly two minutes can get 54 million hits, my guess is Revision3 has a pretty good shot.

-- Mark Milian

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Viacom's Atom.com should be called Ad'em.com

Viacom has released Atom.com (CNET), a rebranding of longtime web video site AtomFilms. 

Atom's initial homepage is a potpourri of the kind of comedy on a shoestring not quite made famous by Heavy.com, SuperDeluxe.com, AtomicWedgieTV.com or FunnyOrDie.com. 

One would think that a new entrant into this stickily saturated field would want to distinguish itself immediately with some stunning new feature, angle or technology. But Atom is substantially similar to all other comedy sites, both in appearance and in content. 

Granted, I did not watch all 20,000 videos the site has available. I watched only a few, and that's because every one I looked at contained at least a 10-second pre-roll ad. I had to swallow the same 30-second Twix commercial three times and an ad for Verizon wireless the other seven. And this was all in the space of about five minutes. I can't think of a site that makes you watch a commercial before every single video, let alone the same two ads over and over. 

Ad blasting at that level verily screams at viewers not to come back -- and, worse, it makes the site look desperate for cash. Which we all are, because this is the Internet, but it's not necessarily the best first and repeated impression.

Still, perhaps we can chalk it up to a launch-time glitch or a bit of overeagerness on the part of Atom's ad sales team. The channel also has a set of six original Web comedies from Comedy Central, which I will watch as soon as the image of the Verizon phone fades from my retinas.

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Jack McBrayer gets funny for cancer

"30 Rock's" Jack McBrayer, aka Kenneth, the NBC Page, continues his streak of amusing FunnyOrDie videos with a new entry called "Cancer Isn't Cool."

In it, McBrayer plays a human manifestation of the disease, whose repulsiveness becomes evident when he tries to wedge himself into a conversation between two girls eating at a lunch counter. 

The video ends with a link to Standup2cancer.org, an initiative that launched a high-profile media campaign to raise awareness and funding in the fight against cancer. The nightly news anchors from ABC, NBC and CBS have collaborated to publicize the organization, which is producing a television event on Sept. 5.

It'd be great to see a bunch of celebrities making viral videos to promote this campaign. There's still no money in online videos, but maybe they'll do it anyway -- because if there's one thing stars like almost as much as money, it's a cause célèbre.

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Fred's YouTube channel is programming for kids by kids

Last week, someone in the online video business gave me a simple tip.

"Fred," the guy said.

"Fred?" I said.

"Yes," he said. "Kids love Fred."

I had not heard of Fred, much less known that kids loved him. But that would swiftly end. As soon as I could, I searched for Fred on YouTube and found his video channel. There were plenty of videos, and I hunkered down to watch.

A warning before I continue: Fred is for immature audiences only. The following article may contain themes and language that are unsuitable for anyone over 16.

The first thing about Fred is that he brings new meaning to the word hyper. The fictional 6-year-old, invented and played by 14-year-old Nebraskan Lucas Cruikshank, is a fast-talking tyke with "temper problems," an absentee father and a propensity to screech if things don't go his way. If those traits aren't enough to dissuade you, Fred's voice is 'chipmunked,' raising it several octaves above Cruikshank's own to achieve, if not maximum verisimilitude, then certainly maximum annoyingness. Try to imagine a shrill, halting super-soprano bleating these lines from an episode called "Fred Goes Swimming":

"I'm ready to go inside the pool! Oh my God, it's cold. I love swimming. I love swimming! This pool is small. On TV I saw a pool that was really big . . . oh my God, there's a shark! I'm scared. Just kidding, it's just a toy shark. I got you!"

Doesn't sound like your cup of tea? That makes two of us. Let us say we are outnumbered; with nearly 250,000 subscribers, Fred's YouTube channel is the fourth most subscribed in the site's history. Meaning every time he posts a new video, nearly a quarter of a million people get notified.

Since he created his channel less than two months ago, Fred has racked up more subscribers than almost all of YouTube's old guard, passing up lonelygirl15, LisaNova, kevjumba, and sxephil. He's also got more subscribers than the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Soulja Boy, and oh yeah, CBS.
   

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

David Spade and Tim Meadows in 'Carpet Brothers'

David Spade as evil carpetmonger Raymond Davies Allen

Web production house 60Frames Entertainment has added a celeb-encrusted show to its roster with "Carpet Brothers*," starring David Spade and Tim Meadows as dueling floor-coverings salesman in the 1970s. 

The show, created by SNL-alum Matt Piedmont, is set in Rancho Cucamonga and leans heavily on leisure suits, afros, and cheesy music. 

But the look and feel of "Carpet Brothers" crowds out the story and dialog, which are thin and too reliant on what seems like mediocre ad-libbing from its sketch-seasoned jokesters.

This dynamic occasionally yields a comedic gem (as when Meadows riffs on 'air quotes' in the second episode), but in general the writing takes a backseat to the acting, and many of the lines thump dully.  This ain't "SNL," in which an episode where 50% of the jokes hit would be one of the season's best. Online, you need to be batting .900 or your audience will open a new screen before the end of minute two.

Still, seeing more big names deign to experiment with the tiny screen is a hopeful sign for the medium, and though "Carpet Brothers" misses the cigar, it's close enough that you have to wonder if the breakout web comedy series we've all been waiting for isn't far behind.

*Can't link, iffy language

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Viacom goes after AllSP.com, unauthorized 'South Park' site

Viacom International Inc. has sent a threat letter alleging trademark infringement to AllSP.com, one of several popular but unauthorized video sites that offers full-length, commercial-free episodes of Comedy Central's "South Park."

AllSP.com has been operating since mid-2006 and has largely evaded copyright claims from Viacom, possibly because AllSP's servers are located in Malaysia, and according the site's owner, are therefore beyond the reach of U.S. intellectual property laws.

However, AllSP's domain name is registered with GoDaddy.com, a U.S.-based company -- meaning trademark claims are fair game. Yesterday, GoDaddy received a letter from Viacom requesting that they divulge the identity and contact information for AllSP's owner -- who goes by "Max" but stays otherwise anonymous for situations just like this. The letter notes Viacom's plans to file a complaint with ICANN -- the nonprofit body that handle's domain name disputes.  Here is part of the letter:

As you may know, SOUTH PARK is a registered trademark owned by Viacom International Inc., and, thus, the domain name creates a likelihood of confusion with the SOUTH PARK mark as to the source, sponsorship affiliation, or endorsement of the website... [more]

At first blush, it seems odd that Viacom would specifically target AllSP's domain name -- AllSP.com -- as a phrase that is likely to confuse consumers into thinking it's actually from Viacom. This isn't the kind of clear trademark rip-off you sometimes see when, say, a tissue company calls itself "Cleanex," or a toy company names itself "Toys Are We."

In cases such as those, the trademark in question is highly similar to the original and would almost certainly confuse most people -- possibly into buying from a company you didn't intend to. But it's hard to see how the name AllSP.com -- and remember, it's the name itself, not the content of the site, that's at issue -- is going to trick people into thinking they've found a Comedy Central-sponsored site. Such a claim would make more sense for a site such as SouthParkZone.com -- another big South Park pirate -- whose name actually contains the entire trademark. 

Just in case, however, 'Max' has changed the logo of AllSP.com so that on its home page, SP now stands for "streaming programs":

In March, Viacom and Comedy Central broke ground by posting the entire library of "South Park" online at SouthParkStudios.com. Those episodes are streamed in higher quality video than those shown on unauthorized sites such as AllSP.

"I think they were hoping that by opening their own site with streaming 'South Park' episodes, they would force my site to eventually close due to loss in traffic," said AllSP's Max. But, he added, "it seems since they started doing that it has had no impact on my traffic."

One factor in AllSP's continued viability is that its episodes have no commercials, whereas Viacom's officials episodes contain three 30-second ads each.

Another roadblock that Viacom faces is that its official channel is not yet accessible to viewers in England, Canada, Australia or New Zealand -- "for legal reasons." But you can watch AllSP.com from anywhere.

Max says he plans to switch from GoDaddy.com to a Malaysian domain registrar in the hopes of sidestepping any trademark issues. 

No word yet on whether SouthParkZone.com has received a similar trademark notice. But if they haven't yet, you can bet Kenny's life they will soon.

Of note: SouthParkZone's videos are not available, and a message informs viewers that it is temporarily "performing maintenance."

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

April's Web video dip: Where have all the eyeballs gone?

As NewTeeVee notices, comScore latest video metrics show that U.S. Internet denizens watched half a billion fewer videos in April than they did in March. 

Total videos watched dropped 4%, from 11.5 billion to 11 billion -- perhaps not a catastrophic dip, but certainly one worth wondering about. 

April was when TV began to recover from the  strike and new episodes began filtering in again. Plus you had "American Idol" reaching a crescendo and the NBA playoffs starting. Add the wall-to-wall election coverage from the cable news networks, and TV had a pretty good stretch.

But it's only a guess that TV accounted for the Web declines. It could also have been the improving weather. I know I went outside a few times in April. Or even that people are finally getting bored of YouTube, the Internet, their computers, and this cramped-up, claustrophobic and impersonal modern situation. Somehow I doubt it, though. ...

Photo from flickr user spoon

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

"Raymond" star Brad Garrett wants to date you, online

Sony's Crackle.com announced* a 10-episode Web series today where the Emmy-winning actor and former "Everybody Loves Raymond" star Brad Garrett will go on a bunch of blind dates in a last-ditch effort to find a mate.

"Look, I'm no Cary Grant," says Garrett in the first episode (below).  "I don't bring a lot to the party.  My social life mirrors my movie career: I'm picky and not in demand."

Garrett's dry self-effacement makes for entertaining video snacking. It's not clear if this series is going to be mostly a comedy stunt or if Garrett needs companionship enough to drop his act and play the straight man.

*CLARIFICATION: Originally I wrote that the series "launched" today, when what Crackle posted was the first pre-episode, soliciting ladies that are interested in giving Brad a try.  The series proper launches in the fall.

From Crackle: Dating Brad Garrett:  Episode 1  Call To Action

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Hulu hulks up, gets "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report"

Missed this yesterday, but TechCrunch didn't: 

Though it may seem to betray a lack of objectivity, Michael Arrington's blanket recanting of all the bad things he's ever said about Hulu, just because they now carry full episodes of the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," is actually understandable.  And not because Arrington likes the Stale-y Show. 

For as long as anyone can remember (or three years, whichever is longer), the "Daily Show" has been the TV program that people like to watch on the Internet.  It's even a major reason for YouTube's climb to cultural prominence.

Though Comedy Central has been streaming the show on its website for some time, the fact that Viacom would license its show to Fox and NBC Universal-owned Hulu is not just a major slap in the face to YouTube, but a giant boon to Hulu. Advertisers may still be finicky about online video, but the conventional wisdom is they don't mind paying for ads in full-length premium content. 

Hulu's still just a Lilliputian compared with YouTube, but as it grows its library of full-length TV, it may be be staking out the one corner of the online video market that has real profit potential.

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

A Web Scout demo of YouTube's new annotation feature

With its new annotation feature, the site is allowing makers to tag their clips with running commentary, a la VH1's Pop Up Video. You can add text boxes to explain what's happening, put in 'spotlights' to point the viewer's eye to one place on the screen and perhaps most interestingly, you can add links. Linking inside the clip will allow people to connect strings of videos to one another. 

The obvious application is as a kind of choose your own adventure, in which you can make decisions about where to go next (see this annotated card trick). My guess is people will find plenty of inventive uses for in-video linking -- it's a nice way to direct viewers to other material, or to the video which your video is referring. 

Here's my little attempt at using annotations (you have to click through to YouTube to watch it--the annotations don't work if the video is embedded on a different site--15 demerits for that oversight, YouTube).

The other Google Visualizer post is here.

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Tay Zonday of Chocolate Rain sings 'Pork and Beans' with Weezer

I'm breaking a promise I made in my previous "Pork and Beans"-related entry not to post any more "Pork and Beans"-related posts. I feel duty bound on this one, however, given that it features the one and only Tay Zonday, he of Chocolate Rain fame, and arguably the Internet's greatest all-time viral star. He does a not-bad job with the vocals here too, considering he probably didn't have much practice time -- you can see him glance down at the lyrics a couple of times -- but who wouldn't? 

Am I the only one that thinks Tay would make a pretty good vice presidential candidate -- for either party?

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

KTLA's Marcia and Dr. Rick give good ... advice

Over at KTLA.com (also, of course, owned by LAT owner Tribune Co.), Marcia Brandwynne and Dr. Rick Shuman are running a snappy and engaging Webisodic advice show called, what else, "Sound Advice."

Brandwynne, a former reporter and anchorperson who's now a life coach, and Shuman, a dashing psychotherapist, have a crackling sort of chemistry that allows them to give a fresh spin to age-old agony aunt questions ("What is happiness?" "Should I date her even though she's overweight?" and of course, "My co-worker smells.").

Each 3-4 minute episode (there are about 70) addresses one viewer question, and allows just enough time for Branwynne and Shuman to spar a little bit ("men are pigs" Brandwynne jokes after he reveals he wouldn't date a big woman) before coming to a friendly consensus about how to answer the letter.  It's always good to see savvy Web media emerge from unexpected places.

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Wii Fit girl was 'FURIOUS' at her boyfriend

After Giovanny Gutierrez recorded a lithe, undie-clad brunette playing the Wii Fit hula hoop game, the video scored a lightning-quick 500,000 views on YouTube, and racked up a monstrous 9,000 Diggs.

Gutierrez has said that even though he works at an advertising firm, the video wasn't a viral ad for Wii, even if it really should have been. 

No, it was just a surreptitious video of his girlfriend. "She loves Wii Fit — and even more," he wrote to me in an e-mail, she "looks hot doing it." 

How did she react when she found out that he'd posted the video without telling her, and that hundreds of thousands of Wii fans were now drooling over her? 

"She was FURIOUS," wrote Gutierrez, who said she "called me on the phone screaming her head off and then hung up on me."

"But now [she] finds herself actually laughing about it and enjoying her 15 minutes of fame."

Why stop at 15 minutes? Maybe she's got a future doing virtual underwear hula-hooping...

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Mathew Cullen, director of Weezer's 'Pork and Beans,' shares some secrets

(Weezer is flanked by the Daft Punk Bodies, Liam "Kelly" Sullivan, Tay Zonday, Charlie the Unicorn and 3D Disney and King Kong. Photo by Jack Green ASC, DGC/Interscope)

Weezer's Pork and Beans, now at more than 4 million views on YouTube, is a seminal homage to viral video, integrating dozens of viral stars, references, nods and winks -- enough to make it a valuable cultural, maybe even literary, document of YouTube's viral roots.

Mathew Cullen of the Motion Theory production studio in Venice, Calif., directed the video. He shared some thoughts with me yesterday -- and a couple of the video's secrets.

What's "Pork and Beans" about?

The song is about the idea of being yourself, of being happy with who you are: "I’m gonna do the things that I wanna do/| I ain't got a thing to prove to you...| I'm fine and dandy with the me inside."

When did you realize that viral video stars fit in with that message?

Almost immediately. I wanted to put a spotlight on what was going on now with people being their own brands and channels. I wanted it to be a celebration of the creativity and individuality that’s being expressed through that. And on the opposite side, I wanted it to be a redemption for those that had been unintentionally embarrassed by it.

Like Mark Hicks, the Afro Ninja (who landed really badly in a botched backflip attempt), and Miss Teen South Carolina, and Chris Crocker who -- regardless of what people think, is putting himself out there to the world and just being himself.

The video is like the next chapter of the Afro Ninja -- you get to see Mark Hicks sort of get his revenge (by beating up some ninjas). Miss Teen South Carolina gets to blend the questions she was asked in the pageant in a BlendTec blender. And Chris Crocker gets a hug from Rivers. (Cullen noted that the hug was also a nod to the mega-viral Free Hugs Campaign.)

There were a lot of stars in the video -- anyone that couldn't make it?

Yeah, we reached out to the Star Wars Kid. But he doesn’t do any appearances or anything.  He’s unfortunately -- his life has been negatively impacted by the power of the Internet. But that doesn’t mean... hopefully there’s still some redeeming qualities in the video for him.

There are so many memes and references in here -- must have been quite a project to catalog them all.

There’re only a handful of clips left on YouTube that I haven’t seen [laughs]. It definitely became my main form of entertainment for the past month.

It was very hard to get everything that we wanted to get in there, just because of time. We tried to get in as much of the ones we love and the people we love.

For those people that don’t have a computer or haven’t been on the Internet in a while, this video is like a web Cliff Notes to Internet pop culture. I think of the video as a living thing -- it'll be changed and mashed up over the years. People will do their own versions and mashups of it -– just like we did our own mashup of YouTube.

Are there any obscure references that no one's picked up on yet?

The GI Joe parody:  Gung Ho has a Charlie the Unicorn tattoo. And the kids in the shot are the band (meaning, Weezer). It’s also a hybrid of the Ray Ban catching-the-glasses on the face viral –- I don’t think many people have picked up that the kids are actually the band.

There’s probably a dozen more like that, easily.

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Hulu vs. YouTube II: 'Family Guy' Takeover

A few weeks ago we saw that Hulu, the web video site from NBC Universal and Fox, had opened a promotional front on competitor YouTube.  Hulu simply said that they were using YouTube to showcase some of the material available on their home site, so what's the big deal?  Everyone else does it. 

But this week, Hulu's YouTube channel was one of the most viewed channels on the site, and last night, Hulu clips accounted for eight of YouTube's top 16 most viewed clips, including the top two.  Some have theorized that Hulu's 'Tube incursion is a result of disappointing post-launch traffic at Hulu itself, but if you believe Alexa, the site has in fact been riding a gentle traffic increase for several weeks now.  The truth is surely much simpler: more people want to watch "Family Guy" clips online than have heard of Hulu -- a lot more.  From that perspective, using the short YouTube "Family Guy" videos as breadcrumbs that lead back to Hulu, where viewers can watch full episodes, might be a winning strategy. 

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Scripps takes lifestyle programming to YouTube

Scripps, the owner of HGTV, and the Food Network, DIY Network and the Fine Living Network, has partnered with YouTube to create an online channel for each of their on-air channels.  While none of the first 200 or so Scripps clips was actually produced specifically for the web, segments from these kinds of lifestyle shows do tend to be inherently bite-sized--and Scripps has even sped up the slower ones for the YouTube attention span.

Cooking show fans will be happy that they can now make "chocolate gooey butter cookies" with Paula Deen or, for you calorie-averse treat-o-phobes, "fresh fruit stack sticks" with Rachel Ray.

How-to and instructional videos are becoming an important commodity online, so these clips could well be stumbled upon by someone searching for "custom home" or "Chorizo burger w/pimento mayonnaise."  Scripps has already begun selling advertising against their YouTube content--commercials for a brand of baked beans pop up a few seconds into every clip.  And while the revenue from that may not amount to much more than a hill of beans now, with a large enough library and a stable of sponsors, this approach could make sense for TV companies looking to give their short-form content a second life.

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

YouTuber LisaNova fighting corporate tide

LisaNova has picked up the gauntlet, declaring war against the smut peddlers and corporate hegemons that have taken over YouTube (see today's Playboy post and last week's post about iPower). 

In her current chart topper," LisaNova will Collab Your Face Off!" (CLBW*), Lisa asks viewers in her best infomercial imitation, "Are you sick of all the sexy thumbnails and mainstream media videos that now dominate all the lists on this web site, keeping your videos from getting the exposure they deserve?"

No doubt the answer for many YouTubers is a resounding "yes!" Then all you have to do, instructs Lisa, is insert her brand-new LisaNova collab clips into your videos. 

Lisa has produced a series of 10-second videos designed to be popped into other videos like hats onto a paper doll. Her characters, she says, can fit into any story. There's Emo LisaNova, Salacious Librarian LisaNova, Naughty Nurse LisaNova, Kim Kardashian LisaNova, and others in the pipeline. Enterprising YouTubers are simply to pop the appropriate Lisa into their clips, and bam! YouTube will be won back for the masses (or at least, Lisa's name, face and chest area will get a lot of exposure).  

At this point, this idea exists at the gimmick level -- you can't very well use Lisa's clips to make anything but a jokey video blog of your own ("What The Buck" has already done so (CLBW*)). Still, this is a catchy idea. What could be more viral than getting tons of people to replicate your video by inserting it into the middle of their video?  If the crowd can figure out how to run with this, maybe there will be a user-generated resurgence.

*Can't link, bad words

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

VIDEO: "Athene," "Furious" tell mummy they're in the LA Times

Yesterday  I wrote about iPower, the group that's become a YouTube sensation with it's pseudo-reality show "Athene."  Here's a little excerpt:

For the last several months, iPower, as the group is called, has had a constant presence on the site's most-viewed list, with a strange, twice-weekly video series starring 27-year-old Chiren Boumaaza as a video game "expert" who has spent so many thousands of hours playing World of Warcraft that his game avatar, Athene, has become invincibly powerful. Other players fear and even revere her (this is role-playing nerd-dom, remember).

The show's central joke, then, is that Boumaaza has become so obsessed with his character's game-world fame that he adopts the character's pugnacious, trash-talking identity even when he's not playing. His silent, sullen, hot-looking girlfriend, Tania, is always dutifully by his side, getting verbal abuse and occasional affection from him. Adding a layer of hilarity is the shirtless, scowling Furious, who wears a black cap and a trim blond beard, and whom Athene always introduces as "my boyfriend," even though neither of the characters is intended to be gay.

So wow, a little mainstream media attention can really go to a guy's head!  He just sent me a video of him walking to his mummy's house to tell her the news, which is that now that the article's out, he's going to be famous in Hollywood.  That's right people, Athene may be closing movie deals by the end of the week. 

For his poor mummy's sake, we can only hope things work out.  Anyway, check out the video, and if your GPS unit, CDs or wallet got ripped off last time you were in Antwerp, well, you may have a lead.

(Translation tip: Athene says "pwn" a lot -- which means to 'kick the butt of' in geekspeak)

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Groundlings Improv gets on Sony's bandwagon

The Groundlings, L.A.'s marquee improv troupe and incubator of luminaries including Phil Hartman, Pee-wee Herman, Elvira and Will Ferrell, is teaming with Sony Pictures Television to start their own slate of 50 webisodes. 

Groundling Mitch Silpa got the viral ball rolling (ignore mixed metaphor) last year with "David Blaine Street Magic," an amusing series in which Silpa-Blaine harasses a pair of boy towners by constantly performing weird magic tricks on them (one instance of the unlinkable video scored 16M views on YouTube).

Sony launched its own web comedy channel, C-Spot, last month.

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Sexy sexy sex videos on sexy sexual health

Check out YouTube's daily most viewed and you'll find two videos from illumistream.com, a self-described producer of "expert video content" featuring "leading professionals who provide valuable and relevant expert information in an engaging format." 

If your attention has been piqued, it's about to get double-piqued once you read the videos' titles. 

Sex: It Makes Sense (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #7), a 30-second video, begins with no less a hyperbole than: "Ready for the best news of the decade?"

Granted, this hasn't exactly been the most feel-good decade in human history, but when we found out that the Earth-shattering news is that sex can be good for you, you have to wonder if whoever made the video really has their finger on the pulse of world affairs. 

Or is it on a different pulse? The comely host of the video, identified as "Coach Kendra" delivers the deets: "Recent findings show that men who orgasm three or more times a week are 50% less likely to die of coronary heart disease."

Coach doesn't cite the study she's referring to, or speculate on whether it's actually the sex that's keeping men healthy, or just that healthy dudes have more sex. What we do know, though, is that this video has jacked itself up to the top of YouTube with the good ole' trick of using a risqué thumbnail and a headline with more uses of the word sex in it than the title of any self-respecting porn movie. 

The bait-and-switch has, until now, been the province of tricksters and charlatans looking to goose their video view numbers. But now, apparently, health experts are playing the game, too. (What would Dr. Ruth say?)

Just below that is an even more amusing clip. Sex: Medical Benefits of Sex (Healthy Sex, Sexy Sex #5) features expert Brooke Bennis, a Certified Fitness Trainer, apparently explicating the anatomical benefits of sexual relations.

I say apparently because the video has no sound, a new kind of frustrating tease...gah! Torture! 260,000 and counting of us are dying to know why sex is a good thing.  Does anyone have any idea?

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Lonelygirl15 and KateModern guys get $5 million

At the risk of turning into an all Lonelygirl, all the time news source, I'll pass along the news that LG15 creators Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried formed a "social entertainment" company called EQAL, which has been given a hot capital infusion of more than $5 million by Boston's Web-TV-friendly Spark Capital. 

Beckett and Goodfried have been ahead of the curve on Web TV innovation since their original hoax-de-force. They were also early on the interactive elements of webisodes, including letting viewers communicate with the characters, planting clues at Northern California bowling alleys and other physical locations, and bringing product placement to absurd new levels by doing things like writing a "Neutrogena scientist" into the plot. 

Both KateModern, the pair's London-based Lonelygirl-esque thrillerama, and Lonelygirl15 itself have been nominated for 2007 Webby Awards, so it will certainly be interesting to see what EQAL does with enough money to make a few legitimately medium-budget series.

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

How long till Marilyn Monroe's sex tape hits the Internet?

(New York Post)

In a strange and lurid tale more befitting one of those Hollywood movies that fictionalize 1950s Hollywood  than something that actually happened, the New York Post is reporting that a 15-minute sex-reel starring Marilyn Monroe not only exists, but was just sold to a New York collector for $1.5M.  It gets weirder: the NYC businessman who now owns the footage bought it from the son of a dead FBI informant.  And sorry, you're not going to get to see it on YouTube ... yet.

"The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he's not going to make a joke of it and put it on the Internet and try to exploit her," Keya Morgan, the memorabilia man who brokered the sale, told Reuters.

"He said, 'I'm not going to make a Paris Hilton out of her. I'm not going to sell it, out of respect.' "

You'd have to ask, then, that if the buyer's intentions are so altruistic, why let the story out of the bag? Surely the knowledge of its existence will do nothing but stoke the public's desire for historic sex footage that no number of highly paid paparazzi could capture?

Especially with all the sordid details around it.  The Post's story says that J. Edgar Hoover spent weeks trying to show that the man in the "still FBI-classified" footage was either JFK or RFK.  Add in some G-men, Joe DiMaggio, and a film reel that's been locked in a vault for 50 years and--seriously--do we really think this thing's going to stay secret for much longer?

Celebrity sex tapes want to be free.  And this isn't just any sex tape: there is actual historic value to this footage because it involves America's most famous and controversial on-screen beauty. Now that we know it's out there, we might as well see it, right?  Otherwise we're just collectively going along with the buyer's plan to keep her image artificially unsullied.  Which would be one thing for someone still living, but this is a world-famous Hollywood icon who  died almost 50 years ago.

The only remaining question is, how long before the tape gets leaked or sold?  If anyone wants to start a bet with me on Long Bets, let me know.  I'm thinking the over/under is 3 years....

UPDATE:  And in light of the first comment below, I'll probably take the over.  As I was getting at earlier, it's just too strange that the buyer wants to keep the tape secret, but has still allowed the broker to swirl up a media frenzy about the story. The Post didn't get a quote from the buyer or, apparently, confirm his identity or existence.  Who is this strange businessman that "wants to keep this unseemly part of Monroe's past buried?"  Sounds like quite a character...

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Flickr revolt: namby-pambiest NIMBY ever!

To catch up the uninitiated, there is a revolt afoot on Flickr, one of the Internet's most popular — and zealously guarded — photo-sharing sites. 

You see, earlier this week, Flickr gave its users the ability to upload 90-second videos to their accounts.  Since most newer digital cameras can also act as video recorders, the folks at Flickr thought their user base would appreciate the ability to store all of their camera's contents in one place. Or, in Flickr's more poetic coinage, the 90-second snippets can be seen as "long photos."

In one of the most perplexing uproars I've seen online, a large swath of Flickrites has united in protest: against the video feature. They are saying, in essence, that introducing this lower form of art (video) will tarnish the site's reputation as a bastion of "fine photography."

The mission statement of the 25,000-member group "We Say No to Videos on Flickr" offers the following timeless (and slightly unpolished) proclamation against video oppression:

I love Flickr, and I think it should stay the same way it has always been. It should just be for Photos!

We don't need another YouTube! I have nothing against YouTube, I just don't want to see all the $*#% that on there to wind up on here!

Fair enough. Open a site up to any new kind of content and you're bound to get a flood of mediocre stuff. You have to give it to Flickr: Along with a few photos of debatable interest value, it has indeed managed to attract a community of skilled and enthusiastic photographers. It would be a shame if that community was destroyed by wanton video uploading.

My question is: OK, you've got all these good photographers sharing their still images. In the clamor and chaos the video feature is obviously going to bring, are these people suddenly going to lose their artistic eye? Or is it that good photographers make bad videographers? All right, now I'm just being sarcastic, so I should stop. 

You know what I think, though (before I stop)? I think the Internet has given rise to a petition-happy culture, where we love to make a stink about various and sundry causes, because it reminds us we're alive. But when it comes to actually going to that mat — getting up in those trees or lying down in front of that tractor — well, someone else can do that.

A couple of months ago I heard that an old burger joint was closing in my college town — a real fixture of the community.  So I started a Facebook petition and got a few thousand signatures to save it. Great! But then I realized that a petition doesn't save a bankrupt hamburger place. Money, effort and organization does. And I don't know about you people, but I don't have much of any of those in the first place, let alone some to spare.

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.

Al Gore is back with global warming slide show 2.0

The folks at TED have posted a new video of Al Gore debuting his latest climate-change slide show, updated from the one he toured with in 2006's "An Inconvenient Truth." (He said he presented the old slide show about 2,000 times.)

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to solve the democracy crisis," he says, before restating his point from "Truth" that all the technology and know-how necessary to solve the climate crisis is already available. 

Gore's slide show, as before, features sobering images and analysis. How about the fact that the part of Antarctica that's melting is the size of California? Or that in 2005, we blew 6.2 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- as an animation in the video illustrates, that's the weight of 1.2 billion elephants.