Slashdot Mirror

I was kind of glad I didn't find a bunch of Slashdot posts by me when I typed in Sesshomaru, just this video I did that one time in Paris.*

Other than that it's mostly relevant stuff...

---

*(OK, that's just a lie, my Sesshomaru cosplay costume isn't nearly as good, and I hardly ever get to go to Paris.)

This is old news, there are a BUNCH of Chinese made cell phones being sold on infomercials in China with solar charging capabilities. They've been selling these for years....Here's a nicer looking example I quickly found just searching...not a fair representation of the lot because there are quite a few very repulsive looking ones.

How good are they? I'm not sure as I've never used one but as far as I can tell from the ultra-cheesy infomercials, these phones are light years ahead of what the big cellphone makers are offering (heavy sarcasm). In fact, one ad I've seen mentioned 1 month standby time plus solar charging = no need for conventional wall charger!

Actually, for kicks please read the link I just posted, there's a claim of purporting 40 minutes of talk time when charged by candlelight!

For an example of how outlandish their infomercials are, check out this miracle vaginal cream. Contains English voice-over. I love China!

http://www.revver.com/video/38487/mongoose-eats-rat/

There is little to nothing you can do to convince clueless executives who can't see beyond J2EE. That is besides the point.

Also, a 1 year lead on something as new and fresh as RoR is huge, I mean, really friggin' huge. Fact is, it's taken about three years for Rail's hype to die down enough for people to realize that, just maybe it isn't "all that". It is at this point that development decisions become less starry-eyed and more pragmatic.

So perhaps that explains why Django is on the upswing now. That, and it's used for such excellent sites as:

Revver
Dpaste
curse.com
SuggestionBox
Lefora
Mixin

— all things that you can show a CEO/CIO to make clear that Django is a player. More are coming rapidly. As for business sites, there are a plethora of them that are beautiful and functional.

OK, the site has an "about" page with a Toronto address, and an address for a US office:

269 S. Beverly Drive, #1070
Beverly Hills, CA 90212

This turns out to be Beverly Hills Postal Place, a mail drop. It's in California, so they're subject to California law.

California has a right of publicity law: (a) Any person who knowingly uses another's name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person's prior consent, ... shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof. In addition, in any action brought under this section, the person who violated the section shall be liable to the injured party or parties in an amount equal to the greater of seven hundred fifty dollars ($750) or the actual damages suffered by him or her as a result of the unauthorized use, and any profits from the unauthorized use that are attributable to the use and are not taken into account in computing the actual damages.... Punitive damages may also be awarded to the injured party or parties. The prevailing party in any action under this section shall also be entitled to attorney's fees and costs.

That seems to apply here.

Small claims court would seem to be appropriate. Once you file a suit, you can send a subpoena to the mail drop company to get the actual name and address of the box owner.

"JLove" is supposedly a unit of "Only Media Group LLC" in Toronto, but neither JLove nor Only Media are listed with California corporation search or Dun and Bradstreet for the US or Canada. But a contact page for JLove affiliates leads to "Billing Provided By: Only Media UK LTD, 7 Petworth Road, Haslemere, Surrey, GU272JB". That doesn't match the address filed with Companies House (UK), but that address is an accountant and is also the contact for other companies. The address in Surrey leads to a secondhand furniture shop.

Everytime I read the word "fag" I have to think to this song.
It's funny how the meaning of the song might differ depending on the demography.

There is a video sharing site out there that uses relatively unobstrusive ads and shares revenue. It's called revver (http://www.revver.com/).

I can, on the other hand, highly recommend Wicket, its what we used to build Thoof, and so-far its scaling very well indeed.

I find it a little silly that we get news items about how YouTube will be implementing revenue sharing with contributors - like that makes them somehow amazing and benevolent. Other sites like metacafe and revver have been doing this for ages.

Case in point, my silly wii-mote fatality clip has earned me ~US$900 so far...

use a site that pays you to begin with, like revver ?

Revver has a link under their videos going to Project ReadOn, which is a user-requested captioning system. Users first request captioning for a video and Project ReadOn assigns the video to their staff to caption it. It's what Barack Obama uses on his site.

They announced it on their blog a few weeks back.

The Ask A Ninja videos tend to be captioned, here's an example one with captioning already done, just click the closed captioning link under the video.

Revver has a link under their videos going to Project ReadOn, which is a user-requested captioning system. Users first request captioning for a video and Project ReadOn assigns the video to their staff to caption it. It's what Barack Obama uses on his site.

They announced it on their blog a few weeks back.

The Ask A Ninja videos tend to be captioned, here's an example one with captioning already done, just click the closed captioning link under the video.

Revver has a link under their videos going to Project ReadOn, which is a user-requested captioning system. Users first request captioning for a video and Project ReadOn assigns the video to their staff to caption it. It's what Barack Obama uses on his site.

They announced it on their blog a few weeks back.

The Ask A Ninja videos tend to be captioned, here's an example one with captioning already done, just click the closed captioning link under the video.

ok, i won't pretend to know much about this event, but i'd hardly call it a riot...

http://www.gamejew.com/?q=node/67
http://one.revver.com/watch/254524

http://one.revver.com/watch/89096

she shouldn't mess with football.

http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56

Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!

http://revver.com/video/48391/ (WATCH IT!)

ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."

Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."

Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."

But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"

But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"

"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the inside

What is to stop the other "communities built around video" from doing the same and turning the thing into the "who'll pay more" type war they say they wanted to avoid?

It's an interesting move (I can't wait for the first "so now they'll pay me for my home pr0n" posts and the "this is /. therefore you are a virgin" replies), but if anyone else decides to pay their uploaders, how different is it going to be?

Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
http://revver.com/video/48391/ (WATCH IT!)

ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."

Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."

Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."

But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"

But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"

"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the pu

Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
http://revver.com/video/48391/ (WATCH IT!)

ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."

Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."

Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."

But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"

But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"

"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the insider pomo hipsters! Get with the gangsta-wanksta-pranksta CRANKSTER bling-bling program!!"

Ho

Brings up another (funny?) result...

Dude clocks another dude in head with wiimote (yeah its staged)

Yeah, it's staged...
http://one.revver.com/watch/121118

GoTVNetworks also has a good 4 part investigative report on this:

http://gotvnetworks.one.revver.com/collection/4252 9

http://revver.com/ thought of it...

I believe Archive.org does allow FTP uploading. http://ourmedia.org/ uses a proprietary uploader, or did when we used it earlier this year.

You could also look at http://blip.tv/ and http://revver.com./ Both provide RSS and hosting for free and with Revver you can actually make money.

We use http://libsyn.com/ for some of our media hosting as well. They are good, reliable and cheap. They have FTP and tools to create a blog onsite (though we use a drupal site for our main site).

Good luck and create good podcasts!

• Remember the crazy business about taxing CD burners and blank discs because they might be used to duplicate copyrighted material? In those cases the penalty is placed on the consumer, not the manufacturer. Nobody went and tried to shutdown Plextor.
• Assuming there are massive copyright issues with YouTube, this deal works out well for both parties, buying them time to figure out how to best deal with it. Google is a well respected company and there's no reason to suspect they won't handle it with good faith. Any judgement brought against them at this point would be stayed until they've had time to deal with it. Think about if you've even been pulled over for expired plates on your car. Even if you get a ticket they most often always clear it if you get your papers in order by the court date.
• YouTube already struck a deal with Warner Brothers and there is talk about the same thing happening with other major labels. Some expect YouTube to become MTV reborn online with labels providing their back catalog of music videos. Have you watched MTV lately? It's certainly not a venue for music videos anymore. And if the lables think they can get more added value from already produced material...
• 'You cannot monetize other people's content without their approval.' - That may be true, but approval is a minor detail. Throw an extra paragraph in the EULA. I don't think Google with take it that way, but it's not a big hump they have to get over. And anyway, take the revenue sharing idea of Revver and combine it with something like Google's adsense.

Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
http://physicsmathforums.com/showthread.php?t=56
http://revver.com/video/48391/ (WATCH IT!)

ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy.

"As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy."

Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for."

Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba."

But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made-
you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!"

But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!"

"Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public

Competitors to Microsoft exist: Apple, Linux

Competitors to Yahoo exist: Google, etc.

Competitors to MySpace exist: Facebook, etc.

Competitors to YouTube exist: Revver, Vobbo.

The network makes it difficult, but nobody's ever given up because something was difficult. There are always options, and yes - there can be significant barriers to entry, but it's never "impossible".

They should have called it Sandbox -- but then that reminds me of kitty litter. I think sites like http://www.flixya.com/ or http://www.revver.com/ make sense. I'm curious why the beta release from Soapbox is in 2007? How much time do you need? ;) It's like they just can't play in the same sand box without being the bully..

Sad? It'll take about a month for all the users to migrate to one of the dozens of alternative sites that act in the same way and have slightly different features.

Those that want DRM and community support will hit grouper. Those that want porn will hit pornotube. The people who just want to use their webcams and view amateur clips will use vobbo. The ones that want to open license their content will use ourmedia, and the ones that want revenue sharing will use revver.

Dozens of alternatives, just look at The list.

Actually, the entertainment industry has several decades of experience in making a profit from two products that can be infinitely reproduced with no marginal cost. Those products are called "TV" and "radio."

Think about it. The cost to broadcast The Jack Benny Show were the same whether one person had his radio turned on or a million--and once those listeners had bought their radios, they could listen to radio all day long without paying any additional costs.

So how did Jack Benny make a living? Advertising.

So the real difference between the pre-digital age and the post-digital age isn't the ability to make copies. It's the ability to fast forward. Seriously. If you couldn't skip the ads, then an additional million people watching Survivor over P2P would be just as profitable for CBS as an additional million people watching it on TV. (Obviously, CBS would need a way to measure the P2P viewership in order to charge advertisers, but they'd just pay Nielson to develop a way of doing it.)

And that's why product placement is the way of the future. I chose Survivor as a deliberate example because there's already a lot of built-in placement there. Reward challenges don't just involve food or money; they involve Fritos and Visa credit cards.

Now, there is still money to be made by interstitial ads, as evidenced by the fact that the broadcast networks still have them. But as more and more people get PVRs, or download shows via P2P with the ads already edited out, product placement is going to become a bigger and bigger percentage of media companies' profits. And at some point, we'll be back to the old days, when shows had titles like The Maxwell House Concert. (Yes, that really was the name of a show!)

People in the entertainment industry know this already, which is why (for example) the union representing TV and film writers made a major push to be included in conversations about product placement. The Writers Guild didn't pick this issue at random--it's the way of of the future.

An interesting question, though, is whether the networks and studios will own that future. I would argue that the most profitable entertainment product of the past several years didn't appear on TV or in the movie theaters. It appeared on Revver.com. I'm referring, of course, to the Eepybird Mentos Fountain video, which cost $300 to make and had already generated $15,000 in advertising revenue for its creators by June (as well as an additional $15,000 for Revver.) By my estimate, it has since earned an additional $15,000 for the Eepybird guys, bringing their total profit to $29,700. That's 99 times their initial investment. By way of comparison, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 cost about $225 million to make. To be as profitable as the Eepybird video, it will need to make more than $22 BILLION.

I don't think the major entertainment companies will vanish. Hollywood, as an institution, has proven remarkably resilient. But I do think that, 20 years from now, the entertainment industry is going to be a lot more decentralized, and a lot more driven by small groups of creators doing relatively low-budget stuff.

Actually, the entertainment industry has several decades of experience in making a profit from two products that can be infinitely reproduced with no marginal cost. Those products are called "TV" and "radio."

Think about it. The cost to broadcast The Jack Benny Show were the same whether one person had his radio turned on or a million--and once those listeners had bought their radios, they could listen to radio all day long without paying any additional costs.

So how did Jack Benny make a living? Advertising.

So the real difference between the pre-digital age and the post-digital age isn't the ability to make copies. It's the ability to fast forward. Seriously. If you couldn't skip the ads, then an additional million people watching Survivor over P2P would be just as profitable for CBS as an additional million people watching it on TV. (Obviously, CBS would need a way to measure the P2P viewership in order to charge advertisers, but they'd just pay Nielson to develop a way of doing it.)

And that's why product placement is the way of the future. I chose Survivor as a deliberate example because there's already a lot of built-in placement there. Reward challenges don't just involve food or money; they involve Fritos and Visa credit cards.

Now, there is still money to be made by interstitial ads, as evidenced by the fact that the broadcast networks still have them. But as more and more people get PVRs, or download shows via P2P with the ads already edited out, product placement is going to become a bigger and bigger percentage of media companies' profits. And at some point, we'll be back to the old days, when shows had titles like The Maxwell House Concert. (Yes, that really was the name of a show!)

People in the entertainment industry know this already, which is why (for example) the union representing TV and film writers made a major push to be included in conversations about product placement. The Writers Guild didn't pick this issue at random--it's the way of of the future.

An interesting question, though, is whether the networks and studios will own that future. I would argue that the most profitable entertainment product of the past several years didn't appear on TV or in the movie theaters. It appeared on Revver.com. I'm referring, of course, to the Eepybird Mentos Fountain video, which cost $300 to make and had already generated $15,000 in advertising revenue for its creators by June (as well as an additional $15,000 for Revver.) By my estimate, it has since earned an additional $15,000 for the Eepybird guys, bringing their total profit to $29,700. That's 99 times their initial investment. By way of comparison, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 cost about $225 million to make. To be as profitable as the Eepybird video, it will need to make more than $22 BILLION.

I don't think the major entertainment companies will vanish. Hollywood, as an institution, has proven remarkably resilient. But I do think that, 20 years from now, the entertainment industry is going to be a lot more decentralized, and a lot more driven by small groups of creators doing relatively low-budget stuff.

Here ya go!

It's small but it is about 30 mins after the doors opened. Please ignore the stuff in my teeth. I'll try to upload some more later.

For pics, I got three:

Tycho and Gabe
One half of one of the LAN rooms at PAX
Me + Frag Dolls

The entire con was a blast. Jerry and Mike were EXTREMELY polite. They got mobbed everywhere that they went and they did everything that they could to try to spend a few minutes speaking with as many people as possible. The Enforcers were incredibly cool and very helpful. If you get the chance to go next year, DO IT.

THE END OF STRING THEORY: Calling the String Theorists' Bluff: All Tied Up & Strung Along--Hollywood String Theory Movie Tied Up & Strung Out: Hollywood String Theory Movie!!! Looking For Extras!!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: ALL TIED UP & STRUNG ALONG, a movie about String Theorists and their expansive theories which extend human ignorance, pomposity, and frailty into higher dimensions, is set to start filming this fall. Jessica Alba, John Cleese, Eugene Levie, Jackie Chan, and David Duchovney of X-files fame have all signed on to the $700 million Hollywood project, which is still cheaper than String Theory itself, and will likely displace less physicists from the academy. "As contemporary physics is about money, hype, mythology, and chicks," Ed Witten explained from his offices at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, "The next logical step was Hollywood, although I thought Burt Reynolds should play me instead of Eugene Levy." Brian Greene, the famous String Theorist who will be played by David "the truth is out there" Duchovney, explained the plot: "String theory's muddled, contorted theories that lack postulates, laws, and experimentally-verified equations have Einstein spinning so fast in his grave that it creates a black hole. In order to save the world, we String Theorists have to stop reformulating String Theory faster than the speed of light. We are called upon to stop violating the conservation of energy by mining higher dimensions to publish more BS than can accounted for with the Big Bang alone, and I win the Nobel prize for showing that M-Theory is in fact the dark matter it has been searching for." Greene continues: "At first my character is reluctant to stop theorizing and start postulating, but when my love interest Jessica Alba is sucked into the black hole, I search my soul and find Paul Davies there, played by John Cleese. I ask him what he's doing in my soul, and he explains that the answer is contained in the mind of God, which only he is privy too, but for a small fee, some tax and tuition dollars, a couple grants here and there, and an all-expense-paid book tour with stops in Zurich and Honolulu, he can let me in on it. And he shows me God in all her greater glory, as he points out that we can make more money in Hollywood than writing coffee-table books that recycle Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Feynman, and Wheeler. I am quickly converted, and I agree to turn my back on String Theory's hoax and save Jessica Alba." But it's not that easy, as standing in Greene's way is Michio "king of pop-theory-hipster-irony-the-theory-of-everything- or-anything-made- you-read-this" Kaku, played by Jackie Chan. Kaku beats the crap out of Greene for alomst blowing the "ironic" pretense his salary, benefits, and all-expense paid trips depend on. "WE MUST HOLD BACK THE YOUNG SCIENTISTS WITH OUR NON-THEORIES!! WE MUST FILL THE ACADEMY WITH THE POMO DARK MATTER THAT IS STRING THEORY TO KEEP OUR UNIVERSE FROM FLYING APART, OUR PYRAMID SCHEMES FROM TOPPLING, AND OUR PERPETUAL-MOTION NSF MONEY MACHINE FROM STOPPING!!" Kaku argues as he delivers a flying back-kick, "There can be ony ONE! I WILL be String Theory's GODFATHER as referenced on my web page!! I have better hair!" But Greene fights back as he signs his seventeenth book deal to make the hand-waving incoherence of String Theory accessible to the South Park generation, senior citizens, and starving chirldren around the world. "Kaku! Kaku! (pronounced Ka-Kaw! Ka-Kaw! like Owen Wilson did in Bottle Rocket)," Greene shouts. "It is theoretically impossible to build a coffee tables strong enough to support any more coffee-table physics books!!!" "Time travel is also theoretically impossible, but there's a helluva lot more money for us in flushing physics down a wormhole. Nobody knows what the #&#%&$ M stands for in M theory ya hand-waving, TV-hogging crank!!! Get it?? Ha Ha Ha! We're laughing at the public! We're the insider pomo

[Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of Revver]

It looks like several are doing this. The NYT has a story about Lulu.tv today. And it mentions revver.com is doing something similar.

Revver has been doing this for some time already - just with much less intrusive ads. That diet coke and mentos experiment linked on Slashdot was using Revver and made over $20,000 for the creators in two weeks (according to various news reports).

Revver splits the ad revenue 50-50 with creators - or if there is a syndicator involved 20%(syndicator) - 40% (creator) - 40% (Revver).

May 8th show and May 15th show

May 8th show and May 15th show

http://media.revver.com/broadcast/27335/video.mov/ 13970

Here's the direct link if you want to download it, or you don't have/want a QT plugin: http://media.revver.com/broadcast/27335/video.mov
(Might have to copy/paste that, I'm not sure)

Here's the link to the video file:

http://www.revver.com/video/27335/

And here are some of their other experiments:

http://www.revver.com/tags/eepybird/

Here's the link to the video file:

http://www.revver.com/video/27335/

And here are some of their other experiments:

http://www.revver.com/tags/eepybird/

there are more site than just those there are http://www.stickam.com/, http://vsocial.com/, http://www.gofish.com/ http://grouper.comhttp//www.blip.tv/, http://eyespot.com/, http://www.bolt.com/, http://jumpcut.com/, http://ourmedia.org/, http://revver.com/ http://vimeo.com/, http://www.videoegg.com/, http://clipshack.com/, http://www.dailymotion.com/, http://castpost.com/, http://www.blinkx.com/ now what do u say about google video, youtube and the new yahoo one i say there is plent of them ou there for competitions tell us what one you like and if you thnk any of them compair to the three in the artical

One simple question: How does YouTube plan to make any money? Right now they're making $0 and spending tons on bandwidth. The main reason people visit the site in the first place is for content that's infringing on someone's copyright: TV shows, commercials and similar fare. There are a few user-created videos that actually draw traffic, but still, that traffic is pure loss. The only thing of value they have is the brand name. Everyone at my college talks about wasting time on YouTube, but their technology itself is worth next to nothing because it's so easy to build. That's my YouTube has so many competitors. If they don't get bought by anyone, they're screwed.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's a good time to be living off of VC money. It's fairly clear that many of them are being advised by underpants gnomes.

Daredevil
Wheee!
Fox Fever
This is hot
Give me the soap

Daredevil
Wheee!
Fox Fever
This is hot
Give me the soap

Daredevil
Wheee!
Fox Fever
This is hot
Give me the soap

Daredevil
Wheee!
Fox Fever
This is hot
Give me the soap

Daredevil
Wheee!
Fox Fever
This is hot
Give me the soap