January 18, 2007
I’ll be in LA next week for the Channel Frederator Awards Party, an event being thrown to celebrate one year of video podcasts featuring animators’ work from all over the world, and the winners of the Channel Frederator Awards which were voted on at the end of last year.
Channel Frederator is one of the podcasts that were the foundation for Next New Networks, and we’ve invited a lot of friends from the videoblogging and podcasting world to come hang with us. It should be a fun event and a nice celebration of independent online media. The Frederator crew has assembled a beautiful souvenir program for the event as well, with essays and art from a lot of interesting and talented people.
Please check out the revamped Channel Frederator website, too — still very much a work in progress, but we’ve made the episodes available for viewing online for the first time, and have a lot more planned in the coming months to expand the vision of an independent animation network on the web.
+January 09, 2007
So Emil and I were reading the coverage of the iPhone announcement on Engadget, and noticed in one of the shots that Steve’s iPhone number was visible in the iTunes interface.
We immediately called, but alas, the number was out of service. Our fantasy of interrupting the whole presentation was dashed. Those people at Apple think of everything!
January 04, 2007
Well, we had to say something at some point. We’ve been working on this company for a long time now, and starting today, we have some of those simple things like a website and an obligatory press release. So, for those of you who are interested, yes, I have a new job. Really excited about what we’re doing, and if there seems to be a lack of specifics from us what exactly that is, it’s not for lack of thought, it’s because the networks and shows, when they launch, really need to speak for themselves — and there are many more talented people than us involved at this point making them. I’d rather not talk endlessly about what we’re doing, but just let you see it instead and tell me what you think.
In the meantime, my main role on a daily basis is reaching out to all the people who will be creating shows with us and working on our networks, and I hope you’ll get in touch if you’d like to work with us in some way. For all my friends out there creating media on your own — blogging, podcasting, videoblogging or some other word that’s not yet in the dictionary — whom I’ve had countless hours of conversations about the kinds of opportunities that just weren’t out there yet, this company’s in large part a response to that. We’re making some opportunities available that really don’t seem to exist anywhere else in one place — a chance to get regularly paid, to learn and practice, to have access to the tools and resources you need, and maintain creative control of your work. And to make something different than TV, different than a podcast or videoblog — something in-between that’s new, and experimental, and fun.
I’m sorry this blog’s so old and neglected that I don’t even have comments enabled (it involved some particularly nasty spam and a lack of time to upgrade my MT and reblog installs), but I’ll fix that at some point, and there’s an “write me” link on the right if you’d like to email and ask me anything.
+December 23, 2006
Not sure why, but my thoughts always turn Beatlesque at Christmastime. All I ever really hope to get are books and music, probably from years of memories of many happy hours holed up listening to new records and reading when everyone else was turned in, wiped out or off being merry somewhere.
If I indulge at all this holidaytime, it might be an extended binge online, cruising the endless hours of free music up these days on YouTube and artists’ websites… and if I’m lucky, a long listen-through of a new album or two on one of my pairs of ludicrously overpriced and underused headphones.
Here, then, are a few things I’ve enjoyed over the past week as the spirit starts to kick in.
George Martin and his son recently did an album of Beatles mashups (the one without Dangermouse), and I’ve been scared to hear how it turned out. But this video’s a groovy mix of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and George Harrison’s vocals from “Within You Without You,” with a cheesy/cool fractaleidoscope effect using old Beatles clips.
It’s sad enough being reminded of John Lennon, but when someone reminds you of John Lennon and Elliott Smith at the same time, it just kills. Sean Lennon walked out onto the Letterman show a couple months ago and ripped into a beautiful new song that made comparisons pointless for a little while — it was simply good, despite the obvious influences. I sought it out again on YouTube tonight and found the recorded album version as well, but there was something special about the live performance. Until CBS takes it down, here it is for your consideration.
Of course, no one was like Elliott Smith. You can forget sometimes how incredible it was to see what he could do alone with a guitar. This clip of him playing Angeles says it all.
If there were a second coming of the Beatles today, it probably wouldn’t sound like a Britpop band — more likely hiphop. While we wait for that, I think the most electrifying, beautiful thing I saw all year was this performance from the instantly legendary Gorillaz show at the Apollo. I defy anyone to watch this and not grin and dance and cheer in happiness at least once.
I always get a kick listening to the Beatles Christmas records, which were often played on NPR this time of year when I was in school (way back at the end of the 20th century) and which I happily got from Buzz a few years ago. I probably post about them here every year, but rarely post them, so here they are. A little gift for you from the shey.net treasure trove, while supplies last. [sorry… all gone!]
December 18, 2006
It’s official (at least as far as we’re concerned): Kottke.org’s Celebrity Mii Contest is the most awesomest blog meme of 2006. (Pictured: David Foster Wallace, apparently playing doubles with himself, which is twice the awesome).
+December 17, 2006
shey.net favorites The Knife (previous mention) have recorded a weird little Christmas song, currently available as a free iTunes download or here in mp3 format. For the Jewish half of our family and friends, Happy Hanukkah — and here’s an eMusic list of cool Hanukkah music for the holidays.
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From the Bureau of Design Oversights: Bruce Sterling’s Flickr set of molten trash bins in Belgrade.
+December 16, 2006
Wow. Paul Pope is blogging. And seems to be on Flickr, too.
Hey, maybe we found our new blog crush today.
+December 13, 2006
Last night Rachel and I went to a panel here in Manhattan with Stephen Colbert (or, as he was billed, “Dr. Stephen Colbert, DFA”), his senior producers and writers Richard Dahm, Allison Silverman, and Jeff Cooperman, and writer Eric Drysdale (who often appears on the show as a target of abuse). There’s almost no trace of the event online yet, but they’re planning to put up a webcast in a week or so at emmys.tv - will add a link here if we see it.
The panel was a treat for any number of reasons — hearing how they think about and put together the show each day, watching Colbert play off the moderator, Stone Phillips (his original on-air delivery inspiration, and first guest on the show), and most of all seeing genuine nice guy Stephen Colbert out of character — but it was especially interesting to hear Colbert and the writers refer consistently to the Colbert we see on the show as “The Character,” and how much that well-developed character and point of view informs their writing of the show each day.
For a while now, I’ve also been holding up The Colbert Report as one of the few shows on television that’s really involving itself in a regular conversation with its viewers and challenging them to get involved — the way that some of the best online shows, like Ze Frank’s, do. This was a centerpiece of the evening’s conversation, which they kicked off by playing a compilation reel of the Green Screen Challenge that turned out so brilliantly. As it turned out, the whole interaction evolved fairly naturally: they had shot the green screen segment as a joke when they were profiling a congressperson from Marin County, where Lucasfilm is located. The day after it aired, one of their writers suggested in the morning meeting that they actually post the greenscreen segment online to see if Lucasfilm might do something with it, and another writer casually checked out YouTube to see if any of their viewers had. When they saw that two viewers had already posted mashups of the segment with CGI graphics, they decided to roll with it, and before long, things were pretty out of control.
Interestingly, Dr. Stephen mentioned that at this point, the audience has become another character on the show — the Colbert Nation — with a voice that they write for as well. That’s a pretty stunning concept when you think about it (not unlike The League of Awesomeness), and as the writers were discussing it up on stage, it was clear they had no idea where things were going. Drysdale, who worked previously with Colbert and Silverman for Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, said that Stewart always says that the Colbert Report is in “open field running” right now, and he’s encouraging them daily to take it as far as they can possibly go.
You can argue that this sort of thing is nothing new — talk shows in particular on the radio and daytime and late night TV have been bringing the audience into the show since the beginning of broadcasting — but the internet, and the ability for the audience to more easily create and send in artwork, video, and music, is causing an acceleration that’s pretty incredible. Right now, it’s most often a gimmick, but the networks are learning. The Late Show recently launched the absurd HornyManatee.com, which according to Conan on last night’s show received over three million hits last week, and he’s now regularly featuring fan art that people are posting to the site in the show. For all that Conan’s pushed the envelope playing against the late night format, his first steps at playing with the audience online look a bit simplistic compared to the mastery Colbert’s starting to develop, but you have to imagine that in a pretty short time, it’s going to all be very weird, and very fun. Today also marked the launch of Amanda Congdon’s new show on ABC, and for anyone hoping she’d push the envelope more, I’d just say be patient. In just one episode, she’s already dissed her own employer’s Javascript-based video player and closed with the bizarro video stylings of William Hung Cooking Show (whom she also featured on Amanda Across America and Rocketboom). She’s asked the audience straight out to send in videos and hometown pics, and assuming she integrates them next week, this will be a first for any show featuring a shiny abcnews logo. Out of the Rocketboom playbook? Sure, but Amanda co-wrote that playbook, and thanks to them, Ze, and more and more good shows, that playbook’s all of ours now, too.
update: The New York Times devotes over 800 words to the Horny Manatee story (continuing to further the tradition and legacy of journalism).
+December 08, 2006
Stop me (oh stop me) if you’ve seen this one before, but we hadn’t… and we love it. Four minutes of wonderfully inventive animation, produced with a whiteboard, a pen, and some shareware. We love the internet.
+December 07, 2006
Here’s a funny promo for the Spike VGAs. Watch… if you don’t get it, just google the last spoken line in the video.
+The latest Mac ad tells you to Buy a PC instead. (alternate link: YouTube)
+November 18, 2006
Playing today on shey.net: “Mr. Fortune,” part of Eric Lerner’s Mr. CityMen series (based on the Mr. Men books), where Lerner artfully combines his CGI characters with live action footage. Fantastic… via Drawn.
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If you’re in NYC before December 22, try not to miss “Deluxe,” the show of new works by British painter Jason Brooks at Stellan Holm Gallery. Large-scale, incredibly detailed, beautiful oil canvases (as well as one stunning ochre drawing on paper) of those who have made their bodies a canvas. We love the recursive art.
+November 16, 2006
There’s a really long essay up on Andrew Baron’s personal website, dembot.com, right now (no comment this time, other than TL;DR) that currently has a bunch of Google trends graphs comparing Ze Frank and Rocketboom searches.
Most of it probably has the intended effect (though he would have had a tougher fight against the mighty shey search, which I rule!) except for this one image, which makes it look like Ze is huge with the Dutch.
(red are google searches for ze frank, blue are searches for rocketboom)
The funny thing is, I noticed this too, way back in May, when I typed Ze’s name into Google Trends. I asked him then about his wild popularity in the land of wooden shoes and smoke shops, and his response:
I think that its because “ze” is the word for “the.” its not my site…
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