I just finished watching Act 1 of “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and had an absolute blast. Dr. Horrible is one of the latest projects by Joss Whedon, who you may know from Buffy, Angle, and Firefly (one of my favorites).
“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” is a web based mini series starring Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible and Nathan Fillion as his arch nemesis Captain Hammer. You can view Act 1 (of 3) now with the others releasing on July 17th and 19th.
So far this is an excellent light hearted series. I hope this sparks some interest so we see more like this in the future.
I will (attempt to) match Gary’s style and review this show as he does wine.
It is important to note that I am talking about the new Wine Library Reserve videos. These are a condensed version of the regular Wine Library TV episodes that roll in around 5 minutes. I am a huge fan of Wine Library TV and here are my thoughts about the new Reserve.
Wine Library Reserve 2008, $0
To begin with, the show is very watered down. In only 5 minutes it is hard to get the full flavor of Gary. The “nose” on this show is really tight and it is hard to get much out of it. We lose one of the most important aspects which is Gary’s unique personality. You get small hints of the flavor, but nothing special that will blow you away.
Additionally, they tried to spice up the show with some new fancy animations. In the end it is way to synthetic and forced. I get these fake flavors in my mouth. It feels like they were placed there after the fact for mere WOW effect. I will admit that some of these can be useful (showing the grape and country) but overall it brings a bad finish.
Like Gary says, trust your palette. This show may not agree with mine but it may be right up your alley. You may like this shorter snazzier version and there is no problem with that. Either way check out both Wine Library TV and the Reserve and make your own judgement. For ZERO bones, either show is worth a taste.
A couple weeks ago I posted about the new Weezer video Pork and Beans. I really liked the video since it brought back memories related to the various internet memes.
This week I stumbled upon a site that has conveniently gathered most of the YouTube videos that influenced the music video. This is a great chance to see some of these for the first time, or even just re-watch them for old times sake.
Here is a new feature I stumbled upon last night. Google Maps has added the street view feature to driving directions. Now you can get a glance at the route before you even get in the car. When you look up driving directions on Google Maps, a little camera icon will appear next to the streets. If you click on the icon the street view will pop up on the map. From here you can zoom in and pan around to get a good look at the surrounding area. If you don’t see the camera icon, street view may not be supported in your city.
Overall it is a great addition. However, I only see one real good use for it. Sometimes when you are driving, street signs can be hard to see. This can be especially true late at night in a poorly lit area. With this feature, you can get a look at the houses and landmarks surrounding the intersection. This will make it easier to recognize your turn on those easy to miss streets.
Google has provided some other great uses in this video. Some of them seem a little far fetched to me, but your millage may vary.
Starting today, you can enrich your social web with videos on flickr. This great new feature basically does what you would expect, it allows you to put video on your flickr account. However, the services does come with a few restrictions.
First, you must be a pro member in order to enjoy these benefits. Second, videos are limited to 90 sec and 150 mb. These limitation are trying to prevent it from being a youtube clone. Instead, it aims to help supplement your photos with self created video or “long photos”.
These videos can be played on your main page alongside your photos, or they can be viewed on their own page (just like photos). You even have the ability to embed them elsewhere on the web, like your blog.
Some people may dislike the limitations that flickr has imposed. I for one don’t mind them. They did get in the way with my first video (which was 3 min long), but I feel that this will help keep the sub-par content out. The limitations are similar to those that Twitter imposes. On Twitter, it is 140 characters and on flickr it is 90 seconds. The limitations should encourage people to edit their clips and only grab the best part, which would benefit everyone. If you want to put your entire *insert event here* video online, there are plenty of other mediadistributionservices.
Overall I think this is an excellent addition to flickr and hopefully we will see it grow and develop more in the future. By the way, I love the sleek clean interface for the video controls. I will be posting a video as soon as I can get it uploaded (probably in the morning) and you can check out my flickr site here.
EDIT: My video finished uploading sometime last night. It was put together by my girlfriend. You can find the video here (or below) and her flickr page here.
