It has been a long time, to long, since we last visited the NPR Radio Expeditions site. I used to head over there quite often to listen to the numerous audio bios they’ve got posted of various well-known (and a few rather obscure) explorers and scientists. But I more or less heard them all, so I kind of went on to other things. But they are always producing new stuff, so it behooves us to check in every once in a while. To wit: I offer you today this excellent piece on a conservationist named Bruce Beehler who is wandering the mysterious cannibal-inhabited jungles of Papua New Guinea in search of a mysterious and poisonous bird native to the region called the pitohui. In typical NPR fashion, you really get a feel for the heat and the exoticness of the location, and as you follow Beehler and the local shaman that he befriends, you can’t help wonder, how did I end up in a damn office?
Yahoo’s New Video Travel Site
We’re all disappointed with Yahoo’s recent decision to cancel their Richard Bangs online travelogue and have blogged about it a couple of times here at Gadling. Tears will not be shed for long, however, as Yahoo has launched another travel project that partially redeems themself.
Inspired by the popularity of YouTube, Yahoo Current Traveler invites the public to submit their favorite travel related video clips to be aired on the site. The defining difference, however, is that every week the very best clip will be awarded a prize of $600.
The site is currently divided into five categories, North America, South America, Asia, Middle East & Africa, and Europe. As of yesterday, there were only 75 videos listed but this will surely change as the site is still very new.
So what kind of talent is this $600 prize attracting, you ask?
I clicked into the Europe section and watched a two-minute video about the caves in Cappadocia, Turkey. The video was nicely shot and edited and included some amateur voiceover by the college student who filmed it. Yahoo inserted their own campy introduction as well as a couple of informative pop-ups. In short, it was very professionally put together and entertaining in the way a travel piece should be.
The site also has content produced by Yahoo itself. For example, they got Bono to film The Edge walking around Miami Beach and strumming a guitar with a local lifeguard. Other similarly produced segments ensure that the slew of semi-professional work submitted by the masses is supplemented with some very good quality pieces to round out the mix.
So, hats off to Yahoo for putting together an impressive travel site that leaves us asking the perennial question: why didn’t I think of that?
Good job, guys!
Friday Funny: Treadmill Dancing
Once again, it’s time for the Friday funny, and once again the FF has absolutely NOTHING to do with travel. BUT that said, you have to really admire the creativity and practice that went into this bloody brilliant dance routine on a treadmill.
Simply called “Treadmill Dance” (on Youtube anyway), this is one of those things I wish I’d thought of and shot with my friends. From the uber-hipster look these guys are sporting, to the perfectly-choreographed routine, this is truly great.
BT Blogger Blab Redux
OK, so I have to finish up from my last post about the Budget Travel blogger roundtable I participated in last week at the Tribeca Cinemas here in New York City. So, yes, it was all very interesting and informative and I was able to chat with lots of folks who, in some form or another, have made travel part of their jobs. The BT folks did a marvelous job making us feel important and learned, even if nothing could be further from the truth. But I want to talk about my dinner after the event. You see, at the bloggers blab session, I spoke with a nice young lady who happened to work for one of my favorite outfitter companies around: Mountain Travel Sobek.
Over the years I’ve received through the mail several Sobek catalogs, and let me tell you, if you’ve ever wanted to be inspired and beaten down depressed at the same time, get your hands on one. The catalog is filled with the most wanderlust-inducing photos and trips you will ever see. Sadly, you will probably not find the time or the money to do many of them. But anyway, the company was started over 30 years ago by a group of guys who wanted to help people see the world, to EXPERIENCE it. One of these guys is named Richard Bangs
Bangs went on to do many other notable things with his career, and I’ve followed several of them over the years. First of all, he founded Terra Quest and then went on to become a founding executive at Microsoft’s Expedia, the online travel site that was sold off to (I believe) Barry Diller’s Interactive Corp. Then he started what I still regard as one of the best online travel magazines ever put together: Mungo Park. What’s sad is that the site no longer seems to be available and instead links to the Expedia site. Tragedy that, because the stories would still be lovely to read now. Mungo Park did some killer trips and pioneering Web journalism: they went riding motorcycles with Lyle Lovett in Chile, to the Triobriand Islands with Dr. Ruth, to Newfoundland with Martha Stewart. Oh, how we might long for the days when Microsoft threw money at online content.
Anyhow, Bangs then, or at some point thereafter, went on to do many other things, but most recently he hosted one of the first multi-media-based travel shows on Yahoo. This was at the time when Yahoo was all about original content and their newly-hired TV exec Lloyd Braun headed up a couple of Web-only programs. Kevin Sites’ Hot Zones was one of them, and the other was Richard Bangs’s Adventures. We’ve blogged about the show a bunch of times here. Why? Because it was great, absolutely great. But there was a problem with it: you couldn’t see it on a Mac. The Yahoo yahoos for some impossible-to-comprehend reason didn’t support Macs. Retarded! And then just recently, as we dutifully reported, they pulled the plug on Bangs’s show in part because it wasn’t getting the traffic they expected.
Double-retarded.
So anyway that is a LONG way to go (if you’re still reading) to discover that I arrived at dinner that night, and who is seated next to me at the table, but Richard Bangs. Imagine my delight. Honestly, this was like meeting Jay-Z or Steve jobs for some people. And there I was for the whole evening, quaffing beer and talking about travel, the Internet and all manner of other things with Bangs. A real treat, let me tell you.
Well, I’ve gone on long enough, but I have to say it was exciting for me and if you’ve read this far, well, thanks a lot. And do me a favor and send Yahoo a nasty note telling them how lame they are.
World TV
Video is exploding on the Web, but unless you’re really interested in Chinese lip-synche rappers, fake teen diaries or monkeys touching themselves, it’s hard to find anything of much depth. Well, here’s a possible solution. If you haven’t seen it before Jump TV, is a rather interesting online subscription service will allows media fanatics to have channels from around the globe beamed directly to your computer.
From Thai TV Global to some British programming to Nepal 1 in India and TRT Int’l in Turkey, you can watch a snapshot of global programming as it unfolds. Apparently there is a cost for each channel, especially groupings of channnels like the “Romanian Package”, but perhaps that’s a small price to pay for global enlightenment.