"Topps," "TMI": When three minutes is not enough/too much

Dodger Andre Ethier appears on Randy and Jason Sklar’s “Back on Topps,” from Michael Eisner’s company. (Photo credit: The Tornante Co.)

Over the last half-decade, enterprising Web auteurs have created — and we’re ballparking, but this feels right — hundreds of original Internet TV series. There are production companies that churn them out, websites that warehouse them, and vast armies of amateurs who own a camera and aren’t afraid to use it. But from that crowded landscape of Web TV shows, who among us can name more than, we don’t know, two? Even the standouts — “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” “Pink,” “You Suck at Photoshop” — fade quick: When an entire season of a Web show adds up to fewer minutes than one episode of “True Blood,” the chance to make a lasting impression is fleeting indeed.

As time drags on and the genre remains chronically hitless, it’s fair to ask if perhaps the bite-size Web show is media’s version of Australopithecus afarensis, the short-lived hominid species that died off 3 million years ago to make way for humans.

So in 30 years, when Google archaeologists are exploring the era when television mated with the Internet, maybe they’ll dig up the digital fossils of these shows and have a quick laugh. Which is not to say there’s nothing good in Web TV — only that the genre itself might have evolved a little awkwardly. Its stumpy three-minute duration may simply be too short for it to survive. Still, some of the webisodes’ best traits will be no doubt be passed along on to future generations of this theoretical Intervision. And other traits won’t.

Double the fun with Sklar twins

Comedians Randy and Jason Sklar, the identical twin brothers who hosted ESPN’s sports comedy show “Cheap Seats,” are on their second Web series. “Back on Topps” is the story of Leyland and Leif Topps, baseball-card heirs whose father sold the ailing company out from under them. Threatened by an evil CEO, the Topps brothers are forced to come up with ever more hare-brained promotional schemes or face termination.

The show is the latest from Michael Eisner’s Tornante Co., which has produced a string of hyped Web series, starting with “Prom Queen” — and “Back on Topps” shows that Eisner is getting better at picking winners.

It so happens that Eisner owns the real Topps and that the branding of this series is part of his strategy to turn the card company into a media company. And Topps, it appears, has plenty to offer in terms of Web entertainment. The company used its sports connections to arrange for an endless parade of famous athletes to stop through “Back on Topps” for cameos.

Dodgers Andre Ethier and Russell Martin show up to be photographed by an artsy photographer as part of the brothers’ Avante Card series. Jordan Farmar submits to an interview on the Topps’ experimental and ill-fated talk show “60 Seconds.” And former UCLA center Kevin Love can be seen around the office changing lightbulbs (without a ladder).

The legitimately funny “Back on Topps” has adopted the manic, every-line’s-a-joke feel of shows like “Arrested Development” and “30 Rock” as a way to keep attention-challenged Web watchers interested. “If you just take the episode to a different place from where it started, and you tell one story well,” said Randy Sklar, “your viewers will be really happy.”

“That and if you can get two or three or four really big laughs in a couple minutes,” added Jason. “We wanted the pacing to be kind of ‘30 Rock’-esque and to have some of the corporate versus human element,” said Randy. “Fast pace, interesting cutaways, funny music — all those things are things we love and wanted to incorporate into the show.”

Shoes, guys, gadgets

As a plugged-in tech world personality — she Twitters, she blogs, she gets photographed at industry functions — Julia Allison has come to symbolize “Internet microcelebrity,” the condition of being extremely well known within a limited group of people (in Allison’s case, her blog gets about 30,000 page views a day, and about 3,000 people have made the more serious commitment to following her moment-to-moment activities via her Twitter feed). When Wired did a cover story in August on Allison and how she’s engineered her singular kind of fame, some expressed outrage that the magazine was even paying attention. (“Julia Allison is a terrible example of self-promotion, a warning of the missteps of public relations ... WIRED ought to be ashamed,” as one blog put it.)

 

Julia Allison, left, Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin are the hosts of “TMI Weekly.” (Photo credit: Pickettphoto.net.)

And so the natural next step is her own Web series, which launches Wenesday and is called “TMI Weekly.” But before you accuse her of being a social media climber, Allison swears she’s not in the market for a TV deal. On the phone Monday, the New York-based Allison insisted that the three-minute, three-times-a-week talk show was not some kind of steppingstone to Hollywood. “I’ve done TV,” Allison said on a conference call with her co-hosts and friends Meghan Asha and Mary Rambin. “I did 400 segments over the last year and a half on every major network. But I get so much more out of this! I can say what I really think.”

As long as what she really thinks fits into the show’s three-minute format, that is. The show, produced by Web network NextNewNetworks is being marketed as “‘The View’ meets ‘Digg Nation,’” the influential technology focused talk show on rival Web network Revision3. Inevitably, all involved with “TMI Weekly” also refer to “Sex and the City” to describe the demographic they’re aiming at — but it’s an iPhone/Twitter era, post-television “Sex and the City” crowd. In Allison’s world, there are no moody Carrie Bradshaw-esque stabs at literary depth, no storytelling. She and her friends cut right to the chase: the shoes, the guys, the gadgets.

Or as Tim Shey, NextNewNetworks’ head of entertainment programming, described the audience, “We see it as an underserved community — young women who aren’t really reached by television. They’re watching a lot of YouTube. They care about style, tech, iPhones — how do they balance their career, their life and their relationship?”

Each episode has a topic (to text or not when you’re stood up for a date?; cool new iPhone apps; is this outfit working?) and the hosts each have an area of focus: dating (Allison), gadgets and tech culture (Asha) and fashion and style (Rambin). Viewers can chime in too, of course, as part of the show’s built-in community.

Unlike “The View,” there are no guests from the outside world, and no debating politics or the issues of the day. “We don’t pretend to be a talk show,” Allison said. “We are a new iteration of that.” Their goal is to be more “real” than traditional TV: “With us when the camera is on and off, you get the same conversation,” Allison said.

That conversation feels a bit airless, though. The three hosts don’t agree on everything, but they seem like slight variations on the same personality: flirty, confident, interested in their topics only to the extent that the topics affect them personally; upbeat and “positive” no matter what. “We want to inspire our demographic to really kind of go outside and create their own lives, create their own destiny, they don’t have to get the MRS degree or work at a job they hate, really the sky’s the limit,”  Asha said. That’s a tall order for a three-minute show most likely seen on a computer. There’s a reason inspirational speakers like to play vast arenas.

Over at another NextNewNetworks show, the popular DIY sewing channel “Threadbanger,” a recent episode handily demonstrated how to make the feather hair accessories that were on a “Project Runway” episode. It zipped right along and actually felt useful. That show’s goals are perhaps more realistically tailored to what a three-minute Web show can do for you.

— David Sarno and Maria Russo

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont, hosts of "Tekzilla." (Photo credit: Dave Getzschman / For the Los Angeles Times.)

I've a feeling we’re not in Hollywood anymore.

But you might like it here too, Toto. This is Dogpatch, the bayside sliver of east San Francisco that’s home to the Internet TV start-up Revision3. Through the doors of this old brick warehouse and up the stairs, there’s a roomful of people who make a point of ignoring the old rules of the television business. Starting with the TV part. Revision3 is home to 19 original shows, 10 of which are filmed weekly in its on-site studio. But you won’t find any of them by flipping channels.

You see, here in Dogpatch, they’re setting television free — releasing the concept from its poison prison of glass and metal, so it can return to its native meaning: watching from anywhere.

And so far, people are. Revision3 was started in 2005 by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the guys behind Digg.com, the popular site where users vote on the best news stories of the day. Rose co-hosts the show “Diggnation,” a weekly rundown of the site’s top stories, which Revision3 beams out to about 200,000 viewers per 40-minute episode. He has become a model for the kind of smart celebrity the technology scene loves — people who are entertaining while the camera’s rolling, and enterprising when it isn’t.

“What’s working are these host-driven shows,” said Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback. “The ones where you’ve got an engaging host with a proven ability to aggregate social networks around them online, and who are great at talking about their passions.”

Revision3 owes that approach to another pioneering enterprise of which it’s a genetic descendant. The now-defunct cable network TechTV built a loyal audience earlier in the decade and minted many of the technology world’s best-known stars. A half-dozen TechTV alumni, including Rose and Louderback, currently fill Revision3’s roster.

But even with the overlap and the similar programming philosophy, it’s a lot different this time, said Patrick Norton, who got his television start at TechTV and now co-hosts Revision3’s popular techno-variety show “Tekzilla.”

“It’s incredibly expensive to launch a new cable channel,” Norton said. “Even if you do spend an enormous amount of money these days, you’re probably going to end up in the nosebleed sections of digital cable. “Our studio cost nothing by comparison,” Norton said of Revision3’s state-of-the-art, high-definition setup. “And by being online, we can target anyone with a broadband connection, which gives us huge potential audience all across the United States without having to sign a single distribution deal.”

But Revision3’s biggest asset is its stable of Web personalities who — even if they’re not familiar to the general public — are ubiquitous in tech circles. Louderback points to a website called Twitterholic, which tracks the 100 most popular users on the messaging service Twitter.

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.

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

Kid in Palin hack fuss gets a digital hit-and-run

Was David Kernell the hacker in the Palin case? (Photo credit: Emily Spence / Associated Press.)

The still-hazy story of the hacker who broke into Sarah Palin’s e-mail account is an excellent case study in the powers and perils of digital communities and why it can be hard to tell them apart. I for one got caught up in the whirl of hype and slippery half-truths that surrounded this story, so I’m counting it as a teachable moment.

Much of what we know — or think we know — about this story comes to us from its only primary source: a semi-anonymous written confession the hacker may have posted on an underground Web bulletin board. I say “may” because the note is long gone. 4chan.org, the hormonal birthplace of Web pranks designed to get a rise out normal Web folks, conveniently drops all discussion threads older than a few minutes.

But in the case of the Palin-hacking confession, someone appears to have rescued it before it was pushed off the plank. An anonymous source forwarded the message to conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who posted it for all the blogosphere to see. Among the most intriguing parts of the message was the writer’s explanation of how he unlocked the Alaska governor’s account by using the “password recover” feature — which allows users who have lost their password to create a new one if they can answer a few “security questions”:

“It took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info,” read the statement. “Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes.

“The second was somewhat harder, the question was ‘where did you meet your spouse?’” wrote the culprit. “I found out later though [sic] more research that they met at high school, so I did variations of that, high, high school, eventually hit on “Wasilla high” I promptly changed the password to popcorn and took a cold shower ... ”

And just like that, the world discovers that a vice presidential nominee’s standards for data security are no more canny than hiding a key under a doormat. (Moreover, anyone who’s created much of a biographical footprint online ought to realize that they’re not much safer.)

But it appears that Palin’s lack of security awareness was equaled  by that of the supposed hacker, who left an e-mail address on his mea culpa that crafty bloggers quickly connected to various social networking profiles of a University of Tennessee student named David Kernell — who also happened to be the son of a Tennessee Democratic legislator. Web sleuths built a profile of Kernell based on online clues — a 20-year-old avid chess player, and self-described “Obamacrat.”

Well, with a name, a political affiliation, and a connection to a Democratic politican, conservative bloggers had enough fuel to light their torches and begin a trial by firelight. It wasn’t long before the conviction was handed down in headlines: “FATHER OF HACKER Is Tennessee Dem State Rep!!!!!” screamed a blog post at Gateway Pundit. “Student claims responsibility for Palin e-mail hack,” declared a British technology magazine called PC Pro, which seemed to think the Kernell had himself admitted guilt. Even the New York Post got in on the action when it concluded, “Dem Pol’s son was ‘hacker.’”

“Your name is Mudd,” wrote the Ace of Spades HQ blog. “And every derogatory tip I get about your background, I will publish.” He finished with a request for anyone who’d been in a relationship with Kernell to contact him.

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont, hosts of "Tekzilla." (Photo credit: Dave Getzschman / For the Los Angeles Times.)

I've a feeling we’re not in Hollywood anymore.

But you might like it here too, Toto. This is Dogpatch, the bayside sliver of east San Francisco that’s home to the Internet TV start-up Revision3. Through the doors of this old brick warehouse and up the stairs, there’s a roomful of people who make a point of ignoring the old rules of the television business. Starting with the TV part. Revision3 is home to 19 original shows, 10 of which are filmed weekly in its on-site studio. But you won’t find any of them by flipping channels.

You see, here in Dogpatch, they’re setting television free — releasing the concept from its poison prison of glass and metal, so it can return to its native meaning: watching from anywhere.

And so far, people are. Revision3 was started in 2005 by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the guys behind Digg.com, the popular site where users vote on the best news stories of the day. Rose co-hosts the show “Diggnation,” a weekly rundown of the site’s top stories, which Revision3 beams out to about 200,000 viewers per 40-minute episode. He has become a model for the kind of smart celebrity the technology scene loves — people who are entertaining while the camera’s rolling, and enterprising when it isn’t.

“What’s working are these host-driven shows,” said Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback. “The ones where you’ve got an engaging host with a proven ability to aggregate social networks around them online, and who are great at talking about their passions.”

Revision3 owes that approach to another pioneering enterprise of which it’s a genetic descendant. The now-defunct cable network TechTV built a loyal audience earlier in the decade and minted many of the technology world’s best-known stars. A half-dozen TechTV alumni, including Rose and Louderback, currently fill Revision3’s roster.

But even with the overlap and the similar programming philosophy, it’s a lot different this time, said Patrick Norton, who got his television start at TechTV and now co-hosts Revision3’s popular techno-variety show “Tekzilla.”

“It’s incredibly expensive to launch a new cable channel,” Norton said. “Even if you do spend an enormous amount of money these days, you’re probably going to end up in the nosebleed sections of digital cable. “Our studio cost nothing by comparison,” Norton said of Revision3’s state-of-the-art, high-definition setup. “And by being online, we can target anyone with a broadband connection, which gives us huge potential audience all across the United States without having to sign a single distribution deal.”

But Revision3’s biggest asset is its stable of Web personalities who — even if they’re not familiar to the general public — are ubiquitous in tech circles. Louderback points to a website called Twitterholic, which tracks the 100 most popular users on the messaging service Twitter.

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.

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

The old WB and the online future

Last week, Warner Bros. brought back the defunct WB channel in a new form: an online-only network, the first one with a name inherited from Hollywood. You can watch august old WB shows on TheWB.com, along with raggedy new Web-only video series, and the effect, so far, is something like those professional dog walkers who have a Great Dane, two chihuahuas and a bulldog on the same leash. You know they're all the same species but -- wow, did the Creator really intend for them to be out strolling together?

But that's a little bit like Warner Bros. television. There's the studio itself, which is massive and traditional, defined by shows like "ER" and "The West Wing." Then there was, for a decade, the WB network, which, through independent-minded shows like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek," created iconic teen worlds in which beautiful people also suffered, and outsiders' obsession with social status could somehow look like social justice.

TheWB.com blends those two corporate identities into what they're calling a "curated experience" -- much in the spirt of an old-school TV network, in fact. With its attempt to be something unified in spirit, it goes a few sprightly steps further than sites like NBC and News Corp.'s more catch-all Hulu.com toward fusing the old TV model with the new one that's emerging on the Web.

Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont, hosts of "Tekzilla." (Photo credit: Dave Getzschman / For the Los Angeles Times.)

I've a feeling we’re not in Hollywood anymore.

But you might like it here too, Toto. This is Dogpatch, the bayside sliver of east San Francisco that’s home to the Internet TV start-up Revision3. Through the doors of this old brick warehouse and up the stairs, there’s a roomful of people who make a point of ignoring the old rules of the television business. Starting with the TV part. Revision3 is home to 19 original shows, 10 of which are filmed weekly in its on-site studio. But you won’t find any of them by flipping channels.

You see, here in Dogpatch, they’re setting television free — releasing the concept from its poison prison of glass and metal, so it can return to its native meaning: watching from anywhere.

And so far, people are. Revision3 was started in 2005 by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the guys behind Digg.com, the popular site where users vote on the best news stories of the day. Rose co-hosts the show “Diggnation,” a weekly rundown of the site’s top stories, which Revision3 beams out to about 200,000 viewers per 40-minute episode. He has become a model for the kind of smart celebrity the technology scene loves — people who are entertaining while the camera’s rolling, and enterprising when it isn’t.

“What’s working are these host-driven shows,” said Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback. “The ones where you’ve got an engaging host with a proven ability to aggregate social networks around them online, and who are great at talking about their passions.”

Revision3 owes that approach to another pioneering enterprise of which it’s a genetic descendant. The now-defunct cable network TechTV built a loyal audience earlier in the decade and minted many of the technology world’s best-known stars. A half-dozen TechTV alumni, including Rose and Louderback, currently fill Revision3’s roster.

But even with the overlap and the similar programming philosophy, it’s a lot different this time, said Patrick Norton, who got his television start at TechTV and now co-hosts Revision3’s popular techno-variety show “Tekzilla.”

“It’s incredibly expensive to launch a new cable channel,” Norton said. “Even if you do spend an enormous amount of money these days, you’re probably going to end up in the nosebleed sections of digital cable. “Our studio cost nothing by comparison,” Norton said of Revision3’s state-of-the-art, high-definition setup. “And by being online, we can target anyone with a broadband connection, which gives us huge potential audience all across the United States without having to sign a single distribution deal.”

But Revision3’s biggest asset is its stable of Web personalities who — even if they’re not familiar to the general public — are ubiquitous in tech circles. Louderback points to a website called Twitterholic, which tracks the 100 most popular users on the messaging service Twitter.

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.

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

Revision3's web TV runs on star power

Patrick Norton and Veronica Belmont, hosts of "Tekzilla." (Photo credit: Dave Getzschman / For the Los Angeles Times.)

I've a feeling we’re not in Hollywood anymore.

But you might like it here too, Toto. This is Dogpatch, the bayside sliver of east San Francisco that’s home to the Internet TV start-up Revision3. Through the doors of this old brick warehouse and up the stairs, there’s a roomful of people who make a point of ignoring the old rules of the television business. Starting with the TV part. Revision3 is home to 19 original shows, 10 of which are filmed weekly in its on-site studio. But you won’t find any of them by flipping channels.

You see, here in Dogpatch, they’re setting television free — releasing the concept from its poison prison of glass and metal, so it can return to its native meaning: watching from anywhere.

And so far, people are. Revision3 was started in 2005 by Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson, the guys behind Digg.com, the popular site where users vote on the best news stories of the day. Rose co-hosts the show “Diggnation,” a weekly rundown of the site’s top stories, which Revision3 beams out to about 200,000 viewers per 40-minute episode. He has become a model for the kind of smart celebrity the technology scene loves — people who are entertaining while the camera’s rolling, and enterprising when it isn’t.

“What’s working are these host-driven shows,” said Revision3 Chief Executive Jim Louderback. “The ones where you’ve got an engaging host with a proven ability to aggregate social networks around them online, and who are great at talking about their passions.”

Revision3 owes that approach to another pioneering enterprise of which it’s a genetic descendant. The now-defunct cable network TechTV built a loyal audience earlier in the decade and minted many of the technology world’s best-known stars. A half-dozen TechTV alumni, including Rose and Louderback, currently fill Revision3’s roster.

But even with the overlap and the similar programming philosophy, it’s a lot different this time, said Patrick Norton, who got his television start at TechTV and now co-hosts Revision3’s popular techno-variety show “Tekzilla.”

“It’s incredibly expensive to launch a new cable channel,” Norton said. “Even if you do spend an enormous amount of money these days, you’re probably going to end up in the nosebleed sections of digital cable. “Our studio cost nothing by comparison,” Norton said of Revision3’s state-of-the-art, high-definition setup. “And by being online, we can target anyone with a broadband connection, which gives us huge potential audience all across the United States without having to sign a single distribution deal.”

But Revision3’s biggest asset is its stable of Web personalities who — even if they’re not familiar to the general public — are ubiquitous in tech circles. Louderback points to a website called Twitterholic, which tracks the 100 most popular users on the messaging service Twitter.

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.

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

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.

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

A parting thought on Boing Boing Blue

Last stop on the BoingBoing highway 
Image adapted from a work by Stupid Dingo

This story has definitely entered dead horse-hood, but having chewed it over for a couple of more days, I think there's one last morsel on the carcass.

Picking up where John Battelle left off in the last post:

The long-standing rule, said Battelle, was that the site's bloggers "can post anything they want, about anything they want, whenever they want without asking permission, and if they want to change those posts or take them down, they can do that too."

"Our learning from this is that we need to step back and have a conversation, listening to all the feedback we've been getting, and see if we need to review this approach and change it. And that's exactly what we're doing."

Well, but the thing is, I'm not sure about the framing of this as an educational experience, wherein the naive bloggers learned a tough lesson. Boing Boing's archives are home to more than 42,000 blog posts, and its writers are some of the most experienced on the Internet, not to mention vehement backers of fairness and transparency in the blogosphere. Removal of even one post without notice has long been verboten among online journalists and professional bloggers.

And so it's striking that neither Jardin nor Boing Boing issued a real apology or note of contrition about this regrettable act -- which, because it was motivated by something personal in nature, would seem more forgivable if there was a simple apology, rather than a fancy rationalization.

Growing into an established media source would seem to come with its own set of grown-up responsibilities. When you make a mistake, you have to 'fess up -- fast, and publicly. Anyone who's made a mistake in public (search "web scout") knows admitting it can sting. But hey Boing Boing, I think you'd bounce back.

Previously:

BoingBoing bloggers talk about Violet Blue controversy's implications
BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin on unpublishing the Violet Blue posts
BoingBoing and Violet Blue: Game Frakkin' Over
Violet Blue still in the dark about her 'behavior'
Regarding BoingBoing's factual dispute on Monday's Violet Blue post
Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

Filmmakers finding new action online

Enter a cineplex this summer and you're basically wandering into a giant circus. Each tent pole -- the biz term for a colossally expensive movie -- is sure to include at least one outlandish, or even freakish, main character. Step right up. On your left, watch an old man -- incredibly! -- age in reverse. On your right, a demon in a raincoat wields a revolver as big as a car. And up ahead, a man in a bat suit faces off with a murderous, cackling clown.

No room for nuance in these parts. Nuance has too much to do with reality and is therefore not awesome! Hippie-bohemians seeking boring reality-based "films" will have to look in the phone book for sour-smelling old movie houses with bad sound. Or you could try the Internet.

Yes. The independent movie, banished from theaters for its fiscal transgressions, is confusedly trying to find some purchase online. (Purchase as in not falling off a cliff, and decidedly not in the sense of money changing hands.) And yet there it is -- traces of an inchoate digital film industry, a tiny but growing counterpart to brick-and-mortar Hollywood, where small filmmakers can likewise find help developing, producing and ultimately distributing their work.

YouTube, that bastion of the uncinematic, took a surprising jump into the indie world two weeks ago when it launched its "Screening Room," a fancy section of the site with a nice big screen, framed by an image of red velvet curtains and surrounded by a kind of virtual cordon, which prohibits the work of YouTube's moviemaking masses from gaining entry. In the Room, you'll find only jury-selected, independent short films (four new ones every two weeks). Each film on the first slate has attracted more than a quarter of a million views, a robust audience for small films that would otherwise be lucky to fill a few theaters with festival-goers before being perma-shelved.

But movie-watching sites like YouTube, Jaman.com and Indieflix.com are just the top layer. There's now a growing number of movie-making websites that enable creators to gather and exchange ideas and expertise with each other and hired mentors -- not unlike the traditional apprenticeship you'd get in film school. 

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.
   

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.