Film | Writing on Life

It’s been a long week, sports fans… and now that the iPhone 4 has finally been released, there’s pretty much nothing vital or interesting on the horizon. You know, unless you have other stuff going on in your life, like relationships with friends and loved ones.

For those of you recovering from the stress of waiting in line — or the stress of being PO’d at those who waited in line — we’ve collected a cadre of thoroughly entertaining YouTube vids that are sure to keep you going until those last tremors of PTSD dissipate.

Jeopardy! Alex Trebek Auto-tune

Stephanie Marcus: Best use of AutoTune ever…. and I have a crush on Alex Trebek.

Amazing Child Racing: Babies Crawl to Victory

Zachary Sniderman: I’m sure this is illegal. At very least unethical. But boy is it cute.

NINJA KITTEN gatito de ninja

Jehangir Irani: Ninja Kitten is no joke! Feel free to laugh at this video, though.

JavaZone Trailer: Java 4-ever

Josh Catone: Brilliant. Just brilliant.

YouTube – Beckett Eats Pop Rocks

Tamar Weinberg: Apparently the original video uploaded by the parents was removed, and I assume it was due to harsh criticism, but hey, no babies were harmed in the making of the video, and as a parent of a similarly aged baby boy, I actually do think it’s funny (and super cute!) I’ll admit, I haven’t tried it myself though.

World Premiere: 20 Nao Robots Dancing in Synchronized Harmony

Barb Dybwad: It’s like the next great boy band. Except with robots!

Fully Epic Rapsody – The Fully Sick Rapper

Brenna Ehrlich: Since Zach STOLE my video this week, I was forced to look elsewhere. This one goes out to Christiaan Van Vuuren (a.k.a. The Fully Sick Rapper), who I interviewed back in March. Christiaan has been in quarantine for six months, during which he’s made some awesome viral vids. Now he’s set to go home on Monday. I picture his homecoming being much like a scene out of Mel Gibson’s Forever Young. Or Mad Max. Whatever. Welcome home, dude.

Reviews: YouTube

More About: Film, music, viral video, youtube

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Tags: viral video, youtube

Enjoy a Stream of Short-Form Videos with New Site and iPad App

June 24, 2010 in Film, Making it Count, Music, Sports, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, facebook, mashable, pop culture, video by Brenna Ehrlich View Comments

Mashable’s Spark of Genius series highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, see details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: ShortForm.TV [Warning: Videos are set to autoplay]

Quick Pitch: Snack on an endless stream of short-form video.

Genius Idea: With more than 24 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube alone, it can be hard to find something to watch when you’re after a quick hit of humor or whimsy. That’s where Shortform.TV comes in.

Shortform.tv is a website and iPad, iPhone and iPod touch app [iTunes link] that launched today. It allows viewers to surf through a variety of channels housing a selection of short videos, which have been sorted and collected by both real-live human curators and aggregation software. Said software aggregates videos from sources such as Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo, and it categorizes videos based on criteria defined by the curators.

The playlist generator then organizes the videos based on trending data and user feedback — you can nix vids by clicking on the “thumbs-down” button next to the player, and you can save videos to “My Channel” by clicking “thumbs-up.”

To formulate your channel, you’ll have to sign in to the site via Facebook Connect. After doing so, you can share videos with your friends by posting them to your Facebook profile, and you can add videos you’ve viewed on Facebook and YouTube to your channel on Shortform.tv. You can also choose to share your channel with other users and friends. As more and more users makes their way to the site, the founder says you will be able to compete to have your channel featured on the main page, which should be an incentive for hardcore viral-video fans to join.

Shortform.tv is a great little time-waster in the tradition of sites like Redux and yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah, but it’s exclusively for video content — which makes it perfect for anyone who enjoys watching or sharing the latest viral flick.

Right now, the site has around six categories — Facebook Hits, HaHa Funny, Super Cute, Totally Weird, Feel Good and So Hollywood — which seems a little sparse. We would love to see them add more specialized channels, i.e. music videos, parodies, commercials and the like. Still, this platform is meant to entertain, and it has achieved that goal.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, marcoscisetti

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Bing Dives into Entertainment with New Search Vertical

June 23, 2010 in Film, Making it Count, Music, News, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World by Barb Dybwad View Comments

Microsoft’s search engine just got a whole lot more media-focused with the launch of Bing Entertainment, a new vertical centering on music, movies, TV and games. The goal behind the new destination at bing.com/entertainment is to make it easier to find what movie to watch, what music to listen to, what casual games to play: “Spend less time searching for entertainment and more time doing the stuff you love.”

New features within each content section aim to connect searchers with answers more quickly. In Bing Music, users will now be able to preview entire songs from the 5+ million song library, plus get lyrics, artist profiles, upcoming concerts and events, and purchase tracks with one click from iTunes, Zune or Amazon. Bing Movies brings together visual search results with customer reviews, showtimes, in-line movie trailers, one-click purchasing, related Facebook and Twitter updates, plus Bing Maps integration for planning an evening out.

Bing TV collates more than 1,500 shows and 20,000 full TV episodes from partners including Hulu, CBS, Viacom and others. Along with access to episodes and reviews, users can also socialize search results and episodes via Facebook, Twitter, instant messenger or e-mail. Bing Games aggregates reviews, cheats and walkthroughs for console and PC titles as well as providing 100 playable casual games right in-line.

The new vertical represents a significant push into entertainment territory and furthers Bing’s efforts to actually compete with Google in the search arena. It’s essentially welcome competition for consumers, some of whom will undoubtedly find Bing’s search vertical approach a refreshing way to find information by context.

What do you think of Bing’s new Entertainment vertical? If you get a chance to try it out, be sure to let us know your impressions in the comments.

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Reviews: Bing, Facebook, Google, Hulu, Twitter

Tags: bing, entertainment, games, microsoft, Movies, music, Search, tv

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Tags: bing, Entertainment, Games, microsoft, Movies, search, Television, tv

Watch “Avatar” Porn In 3D, Courtesy of Hustler

June 19, 2010 in Film, Making it Count, News, Top Stories, Writing on Life: Social Media and the World, mashable, video by Samuel Axon View Comments

Why are we not surprised? Hustler has announced This Ain’t Avatar XXX, a porn film featuring stars in blue, Na’vi-like makeup in the style of Avatar, shot in (probably not-so-glorious in this case) 3D and high definition.

The movie will be released on DVD and Blu-ray this September, but we don’t know much about it aside from the title and the DVD cover, featured below.

Before you say, “Wait, won’t the studio behind Avatar sue Hustler for this?” note that the film is probably safe from legal trouble because it’s pitched as a parody, just as the “Hitler Finds Out” Downfall YouTube videos are. Convenient, isn’t it?

Avatar was the most successful film of all time, and some viewers have lamented that they don’t actually live in the science fantasy world it portrays. It only makes sense that some of those people would want to watch a porn film, though it’s a safe bet that most of the people who watch this one will be doing it for laughs.

Roger Ebert spoke harshly of 3D cinema in the wake of Avatar’s success, but will porn viewers agree? Just don’t say “we’ll find out come September,” because many of us will respond with “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemosabe?”