The cultural heritage of the music video

I posted earlier about OK Go’s fantastic Rube Goldberg music video. I had assumed that because that video is embeddable the band had made inroads in convincing EMI to reverse their prohibition on video embeds. It turns out that OK Go decided to drop their label and form their own. From Fast Company:

OK Go rocketed up through the indie rock world in large measure due to the band’s brilliant, lo-fi music videos, which have spread like wildfire on YouTube. But EMI, in a misguided attempt to wring every penny out of the band’s success, decided to block embedding on the YouTube videos — meaning the videos were unable to disseminate out through music and pop culture blogs, news sites, and personal blogs the way they did before the restriction. And that’s not a minor detail: the band saw a 90% drop in views when that restriction went into effect. As in, 100,000 views one day, 10,000 views the next.

It’s obvious what the bands have at stake in this situation: more people watching their music videos translate into more exposure. Which means more income for the band. One would assume that what’s good for the band is also good for the record labels. Why would they undermine their own success?

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Roger Ebert’s new voice

Apparently he revealed his new voice during an Oprah taping. His wife Chaz is hearing it for the first time in this video clip. It’s heartwarming and the guy is obviously very brave for going this route, but it also feels to me like an intrusion on their private moment.

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How To Speak

Patrick Winston is a professor at Harvard who gave a great lecture on how to give a great lecture.

He emphasizes how to start a lecture, cycling in on the material, using verbal punctuation to indicate transitions, describing “near misses” that strengthen the intended concept, and asking questions. He also talks about using the blackboard, overhead projections, props, and “how to stop.”

I was reminded of this after seeing some 404 errors in my server logs to a podcast version of the videos I put together, but forgot to transfer to my new server. To download these into iTunes (and onto your video-enabled iPod), go to the Advanced menu, choose Subscribe to Podcast and enter: http://phiffer.org/etc/how-to-speak.xml

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Videos of dogs howling along with the Law & Order theme song

I’m so glad that nasty nets is back! From the comments:

If it’s something peculiar to Law & Order, two theories:
1. The show comes on at canine dinnertime
2. That wah-wah guitar sounds like barking.

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