Examples from Hulu's embedded video player.

Below is the movie Sideways.

And a clip from SNL:

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviantART

This is a quick and very dirty demo of the user interface and experience of the Opera Browser trial that you can download for the Nintendo Wii.

The video quality isn't great. I could have run the Wii through my Eye TV to get better quality, but can't waste my time with that. At some point, this is the kind of thing that I'd like to be able to capture with the Sling Box and the Clip And Sling technology they'll be releasing.

Michael Wesch is an Asst. Proffessor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. He created the video entitlted, "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us," presumably for his students. Ignore the title for now and just make it through. Imagine that you're a student, not a web designer or developer, and that this is your anthropology teacher talking about something you're pretty familiar with, using the web and sites like flickr and youtube. Now go...

Did you pretend to be an undergrad? What did you think? Do you recall any teachers investing this kind of effort to instruct? I know I haven't.

The video is well executed and is cleverly self referential, as is the title itself. This is such an effective method for education because he's using the medium, the object of his lesson, to demonstrate the point of the message. On a number of levels he's referencing the participatory nature of web services to teach about the phenomenon of the participatory/mashed-up web (web 2.0). Educators should strive to think about teaching this way. It's active and engaging and is the kind of stuff that just might inspire students to do more with what they get out of school. Very cool.

Thanks, Tina

I don't watch TV too much these days, especially not popular TV, but when I was younger I watched a hell of a lot. Growing up back in the days when MTV showed music, it was always on for me. I've been a little out of it when it comes to popular music in the last 5 years or so because of the many events and circumstances in life that have demanded my attention. So when I had an evening to myself with no one at home and no movies to watch, I found myself watching the second half MTV Video Music Awards. I haven't watched one of these in at least 15 years maybe. The whole time I was just shocked at how much Hip Hop has taken over the music industry and eclipsed a lot of the other genres. This assumes that you can use the MTV VMA as a water mark for popular music, of course. I like Hip Hop, but I was wondering where all the other good music went.

I was underwhelmed. I saw lots of popular stuff that didn't inspire me. Oh, well, actually there was Christina Aguillera. I'm always floored by her voice. She blew everyone else away. I was convinced at that point that she was the only performer on that stage -- or among the nominees -- that had the kind of exceptional talent that can make music survive past a week's pop chart. It seemed the show was over and I was unmoved by any of what I saw except for Aguillera. I accepted that that was the current state of pop music through the lens of MTV. Then Axl Rose came on and introduced the Killers.

Now, I'm not a musician, but if I was and all I had been listening to on the radio was every other song they played during that VMA show, and then all of a sudden the Killers dropped "When You Were Young" on my lap, I would know what I wanted to do with my life. Alright, so maybe this wasn't exactly a moment like that, but the Killers' performance was epic -- to me anyway as a non-musician. I've actually heard some of their stuff before, but never paid much attention. Maybe it was the live performance that did it. The light and video was just amazing. Maybe it's the fusion of all their influences, who I grew up listening to -- New Order, The Cure, The Smiths/Morrisey and the like. Maybe it's that the song is simple but builds up like a massive ocean wave swelling to take over every thing in it's way. I just got sucked into it like that and it hasn't gotten out of my head since then.

I haven't been into Britpop so I don't know enough about what bands came before the Killers that may be more important to the rock landscape than they are. They're from Las Vegas, by the way, not England, but they appear to also be influenced by bands like Oasis and are compared with that wave of Britpop. So I could just be clueless here. The Killers' "When You Were Young" is now in heavy rotation on my iPod.