I can already hear the collective groan from gadling readers who are going to be unhappy that I am choosing something this cheesy for my Friday Funny. Normally, I select items from places like McSweeneys or The Onion. But today, just because I’m feeling kind of loopy, lazy and, well, fond of animals, I am posting this video of a scuba diving cat. OK, I take full responsibility…but some on! He’s cute. And I hvaen’t done a diving post here in a while. So please, first forgive me….then watch.
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Today’s Friday Funny some to us via YouTube, courtesy of Jaunted, and is a marvelously campy old commercial done for TWA featuring the late, great Peter Sellers. If this doesn’t make you laugh out loud and close your eyes for a moment of silence for the prodigious talent of Sellers, well, something’s wrong with you. Marvelous.
I have to say, this is really quite a bummer. It looks like after just a single year from launch, that Yahoo is canceling Richard Bangs Adventures, a great online video travelogue that we blogged about a few times here.
They said that the program, which featured Bangs, a hardened veteran explorer, travel writer and business person, had failed to build “a large and loyal audience”. The reason cited was that there were roughly month-long gaps between new installments and this turned people away.
Um, hello. Can I also raise my hand here?! No one in my building could see video on Yahoo for some stupid reason on their end (we can see YouTube, Google video and most other types). The video would just stop there and turn and nothing would ever come up, so to enjoy the program I’d always have to watch it at home. But you can be sure if I was having this problem, so were thousands of others. Maybe Yahoo should have done a bit more beta testing.
Anyway, it’s a big loss for several reason, but tops is that it makes it less likely that big companies will experiment with original content…I mean nicely produced funded stuff. And that is a huge shame. Anyway, I wave a fond farewell to Bangs and Company and only wish they’d figured out the technical probs before they went and pulled the plug.
Y’all might remember the series of audio slide shows I did for my recent trip to Newfoundland. They were fun to do. it’s great to have a digital camera these days and to be able to take a gazillion photos and then select the two or three that really popped. Well, as happy as I am with these slide show, I could have done better, and how much better is a question that is answered in part here, over at the AP (the specialize in photos, after all) where a wonderful audio slide show on following the Silk Route puts my measly effort to shame. But seriously, the photos are luscious and the music and VO all come together very nicely. The VO (voiceover) could have been better produced, but that’s nit picking. Anyway, really nicely done.
This isn’t exactly the kind of trip you’re going to want to take with the family, but it is a worthy trip to make online, at least.
This fine interactive over at the Chicago Tribune, takes a long, interactive and video look at where a gallon of gas comes from .The reporter, Pulitzer-Prize winner Paul Salopek, traversed the globe to find out where our gas comes from, how we’re able to drive those SUVs, what is that stuff, exactly that comes out of the pump .It is a superb piece of travel/issue-oriented journalism and is worth spending a lunchtime watching. In addition to the video interactive, there is also a series of articles.
I give this a big thumbs up.