Onion News Network Web Video
We’ve been loyal fans for years, and wondered when they’d make the leap.. finally seems the Onion News Network of internet video will be coming online soon.. Ya!
Via: Steve Garfield
Archive for the 'Editors Choice' Category
Skype Launches New Prime Beta
Via the Skype Developers Journal:
In short, it enables paid Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls. You can charge other people for calling you either a one-off fee or by the minute. Conversely, if you are the caller, you can call experts who charge for their services, and you can then pay the fee and access the expertise that the other call party provides.
When you call someone who is a Skype Prime call provider, and you both have the new version of Skype, the provider can initiate what we call a “payment request”. That is, all calls start as free, but you can then switch to the paid calling, charging either by the minute or a one-off fixed fee. The call then proceeds as a paid Skype Prime call and your Skype Credit is deducted by the appropriate amount that then goes to the receiver’s account. The provider does not get the call fees directly as Skype Credit — rather, they go into a special holding “box”. The provider then receives the revenue via PayPal.
Another way how Skype Prime is “more than a phone” is that you can also have paid video calls. This has not really been possible previously in the regular phone system. Since we first launched the free Skype Video feature, we have received many moving stories about how it has really made a difference, for example from family members living on different continents who have been able to see each other’s faces again after being separated for years. We believe that Video coupled with Prime will similarly boost many services that were previously unfeasible.
This could well spawn a whole new meaning to the call-girls industry!
Totally Empowered Display - TED
Jeff Han is a research scientist for NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here at TED he demonstrates — for the first time publicly — his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. Steve Jobs.. take notes..
Damn.. we’re def. gonna get one of those units for the home-office!
Giant Aquarium with Whale Sharks!
The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the biggest fish tank in the whole world with a plaque from Guinness to prove it. They also have three whale sharks, the largest and one of the rarest fish species known to man, in that gigantic ocean zoo!
Check out this quick video [.wmv], to get an idea of how massive that aquaruim really is with 7,500 tons of water behind 5ft thick acrylic glass wall.
Thank Tokyo Mango for the tip.
Doc Searls NPR Presentation Video Link
We were hoping he’d pull a Doc Vader move with that fan in the foreground.. lol
The Machine is Us/ing Us
Last Wednesday, Michael Wesch posted this five-minute clip, set to techno music, to help explain Web 2.0. As part of an article that is intended to appear in a journal of anthropology, Wesch created the video to appear on the publication’s Web site. “I was trying to explain this stuff in the traditional paper format, and I thought, ‘This is ironic,’ I can illustrate this much better in a video.”
The difference between HTML and XML, the formation of blogs and the nonlinear quality of digital text are topics addressed in Wesch’s piece. The title, “The Machine is Us/ing Us,” is a reference to a point made in the video — that we are teaching our computer new ideas every time we click on a link. As Wesch says: “The more we are aware of the machine, the better we can make it serve us.” And as he writes in the video, “Digital text is no longer just linking information. The Web is no longer just linking information. The Web is linking people.”
Via: Inside Higher Ed.
Ze Frank Goes Hollywood - Thanks for the Ducks
Hey Ze Man.. Congrats on making it to the reeeeeally big show! 
We saw the news on Steve Garfields site last week and thought it was an early April fools trick. We’ve been loyal Sports Racers since even before the full-time March 2006 launch.. all the best in yer new digs. Don’t forget us little people sleeping under your bed who loved you long-time!
Last summer, Sharon Sheinwold, a partner at United Talent Agency, arrived at zefrank.com via scobleizer.com and spent the next three days “getting lost” in the site. Soon after, she and U.T.A. owner Nick Stevens flew out to New York to meet Ze Frank in person.
The power meeting went down at the East Village eatery Zum Schneider on Sept. 10. During the courtship, Mr. Frank was struck by Mr. Stevens’ energy as well as his language. “He was like, ‘We’ll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll pump that area.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, did you just say you’ll ‘pump that area’?” said Mr. Frank. “In a way, it was my best expectation of Hollywood. In and of itself, it was such a creative statement, I definitely felt like I could work with this guy.”
Full article Here.
Video-Links to 20 Classic Rock Guitar Solos
Guitar World has complied a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Solos. Over the last few days Howard Stern has been playing clips from the list. CityRags found listening to these great classics such a moving experience, they took it a step further and dug up a video link for each of the top 20! Listen And Watch the musical genius that made these classics famous!
1. Stairway To Heaven - Jimmy Page
2. Eruption - Edward Van Halen
3. Freebird -Collins/Rossington
4. Comfortably Numb - David Gilmour
5. All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
6. November Rain - Slash
7. One - Kirk Hammet/Metallica
8. Hotel California - Don Felder/Joe Walsh
9. Crazy Train - Randy Rhoads
10. Crossroads - Eric Clapton
11. Voodo Chile - Jimi Hendrix
12. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
13. Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan
14. Layla - Clapton/Allman
15. Floods - Dimebag Darrel
16. Heartbreaker - Jimmy Page
17. Cliffs Of Dover - Eric Johnson
18. Little Wing - Jimi Hendrix
19. Highway Star - Ritchie Blackmore
20. Bohemian Rhapsody - Brian May
