Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Google Video and other stuff

I'm loving this ride on the technology roller-coaster. It may be easier to get addicted to video clips than candy or alcohol, so the reader is to be advised accordingly.

The You Tube phenomenon seems to be expanding a market that has Google salivating. Google video seems to have as many toys to play with as YouTube. I'm not much of a television person because I don't like the advertisements. But that's where the money comes from, they say, so it's the price you have to pay to keep current. They even have the Russian Climbing video.

Follow the links to see if there is anything of interest. Lots of stuff for sale, now. Video players are spreading like cell phones. I'm ready to read about an automobile accident with a video player listed as a contributing factor, along with a cell phone.

As an aside, I see that Abbas Raza from 3 Quarks is going to a conference in Finland to get his batteries recharged. These guys, along with Arts and Letters Daily, are at the forward edge of all that's happening on the internets. If I were younger I'd be jealous. Instead, I'm just proud and happy to see smart young people doing so much great stuff.

Speaking of which (boy, this post is getting out of hand) I am deeply impressed with Lindsay Beyerstein's reading assignments the other day, particularly the piece by James Wolcott looking at Margaret Talbot's profile of Oriana Fallaci in the New Yorker. To get the full impact of what is going on the reader has to wade through a takedown of both Talbot and the magazine by Horsefeathers as endorsed by Roger Simon. This is high drama of the literary type, not fit fixings for ordinary people who would rather watch judge shows on morning teevee, but I am impressed.

That's about enough for one morning.
I'll be glad when Scott Ferguson gets PunditDrome back up and running. I didn't realize how much that place had become part of my online community of interest until it went down. His blog homepage is down, too. I hope he's okay.

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