In the clip above, Sam reads to us from the book currently at the top of his rotation - Judy Schachner’s Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones. The story of a misunderstood and imaginative Siamese cat who thinks he’s a Chihuahua, the series is full of a mish-mash of Spanish and English, great songs, and some very funny nicknames. Sam can’t get enough. Check out the video above. It’s my first posting from a spiffy gift I received, a Flip Video camera from puredigital. It’s a flash-based, very basic and simple camcorder, and the results are suprisingly good. Certainly good enough for YouTube. You tell me!
Well the first big day in Noah’s life (other than being born, of course) has come and gone. Last Sunday was the eighth day following Noah’s birth, so in keeping with the Jewish tradition of brit milah (בְּרִית מִילָה), the covenant of circumcision which began with Abraham’s circumcision of his son Isaac, some 30 of our closest friends and family joined us at our home.
The bris (the yiddish term) is a ceremony of ritual circumcision performed by a mohel in the presence of family and friends, followed by a celebratory meal. Fellow Brandeis alum and our Rabbi Hillel Norry of our synagogue Shearith Israel officiated. Dr. Daniel Goodman, who also performed the job admirably with Sam, was the mohel. And Joel Silverman provided a stupendously beautiful and impressive whole poached salmon. Anyway, here, in three parts (to get around Youtube’s 10-minute limit for single clips) is a video of the ceremony (shot by Johnny-on-the-spot Matt Simon, drafted at the last minute for the task) - note that no gore was captured whatsoever, so even the squeamish among us should be able to handle it! The words of Rabbi Norry are truly beautiful, Dr. Goodman also spoke eloquently on the subject and I rather like the tradition of reading aloud the letter Amy and I wrote to the newest member of our family. We will show him this video when he is old enough to understand our words.
This video gem, created in 1963 around the time of the opening of Rochester’s Midtown Plaza Mall, is a beautiful little time capsule that captures a rich time in the history of Amy’s hometown. There’s a brief glimpse here of Pittsford Plaza, too, which is just around the corner from Amy’s childhood home. Hat-tip to my friend John Mitchell, who’s wife also grew up in the thriving Rochester metropolis.
A really nice new product was released by Turner Classic Movies TCM.com yesterday (Reuters coverage here) - the Media Room. Very slick product with lots of classic movie material for your viewing pleasure. And see below - you can embed content off their site as well, like this intro by Otto Preminger for his film ‘In Harms Way’ starring John Wayne.
A colleague has pointed out that our hometown Atlanta Journal Constitution (free registration required) has a more in-depth story on Pipeline moving to a free product. Read ‘CNN’s Pipeline will Stream for Free.‘
In a story in today’s Wall Street Journal (free content) today that focuses on a new CNN initiative with Internet Broadcasting, a Minneapolis-based company that publishes the web sites for 70 local television stations, CNN has secured rights to use local stories from these affiliates, and will in turn provide content to them. As part of the deal, CNN is also taking a minority equity stake in the company. But an interesting tidbit can be found in the last paragraph of the article:
This summer, CNN also is planning to roll out a redesigned Web site that makes all its live and archived video content available free, shifting the subscription model to an advertising model.
And yes, my team has been working tirelessly on this effort for the last six months or more. I believe it’s a game-changer - the product formerly known as Pipeline (reviewed by PC Magazine at launch as ‘the most impressive video offering the Web has ever seen’) is moving to a free model, and when news is happening, I can’t imagine anyone not turning to this product if they don’t have direct access to a television but are online.
The article also talks at length about how much local market online advertising has grown relative to the overall interactive business, something on the order of 200% v. 70% over the last few years according to eMarketer stats cited in the story. This deal helps CNN in this area, and ideally increases traffic (and advertising rates) for both properties. By way of comparison, the article points out that IB has an audience of 13mm, versus CNN.com’s 27.9, and Yahoo and MSNBC.com’s 33.1mm.
Meant to post this a while back. I was in San Francisco for the recent Ad:Tech Conference. This was the view from the hallway of my hotel- an amazing panorama from the Golden Gate Bridge (far left, out of frame) to the Transamerica Building, Coit Tower, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge (far right, out of frame). A truly amazing view. The show was excellent as well, and I spoke to some very bright folks involved in the burgeoning ad business. DoubleClick was showing off their Exchange product and new logo (very Web 2.0 green), there were more ad networks than you could shake a stick at, and video ad syndication plays were everywhere.
Although it’s a somewhat soft launch today (shhh - don’t tell anybody), the Turner Broadcasting new venture I mentioned a few months ago when the splash page was posted has gone live today in all it’s UGC and comedic goodness. Get in there, check out the funny stuff (quite a bit NSFW), register and make some friends (I’m JoeBobATL). There are bits of coverage by members of the team (What do I know?), on Fark.com (one of the providers of content, and a great destination on it’s own) and by another one of the content providers, Olde English. Do check out this goofy woman-on-the-street vid (Making Friends by Chelsea Peretti) and the hilarious Sodom and Gomorrah by Brad Neely, pictured above in this screenshot from the launch. My team was involved in the advertising technology for this - and we’re pretty proud of how this came out. Share and Enjoy!
As noted last night, Sam progressed from the scoot to the walk last night, all for the benefit of the assembled media (that being Dad’s video camera). As you can see, his scoot of the last 4 months or so prepared him well to take to walking like a pro! Click on the right arrow in the video player above.
Can’t make it to the hinterlands of Tennessee? The good folks from AT&T are showing off their ability to show stuttering video via their high speed networks with a live video webcast of many of the acts from this year’s alt music festival and arts extravaganza happening about 200 miles north of Atlanta. Two of my faves - Ben Folds is on the air at 3pm ET today and Elvis Costello will be up at 6:30pm Saturday - will be featured. Unfortunately, neither Death Cab for Cutie or Radiohead will be streamed from the AT&T site. Link to AT&T’s ‘BlueRoom’ live streaming is here.
