inspiredworlds.com

First up is this one my buddy Will shared on facebook, which is a parody of Estelle’s American Boy.

It’s called “First Asian Boy”, and I’m digging his style:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ZQty7I1aw]

This guy has got 1.2 million views on youtube so its doing very well!

Second video I found whilst surfing the web called “Daft Bodies”. It’s Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”. It’s genuis!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6RJyZdBSU]

It listed in the Daft Punk Youtube Channel, but I don’t think its an official Daft Punk vid as I’ve seen the cartoon one (also very good). It’s more of a fan vid. Very simple, yet highly effective and creative!

If you are into Daft Punk, I would highly recommend this idaft. It has a console with different words. You tap the buttons on the console with your keyboard and recreate the song’s chorus. Very cool! 

I’m out like being an Asian Boy,

Matthew Ho.

Rarely do I come across something so funny and so well done. The fail blog is da bomb as it has pictures and videos of fail situations. It’s titled “FAIL Blog: Pictures and Videos of Owned, Pwnd and Fail Moments“. All it has is a very simple layout with pictures and vids, and a bunch of social media links to digg, stumbleupon, etc.. to rate it. It might be simple, but by golly does it do it well!

If you hadn’t realised, the word “fail” and “epic fail” has slowly crept into our vocab. I’m not sure where it came from, as well as the words “Owned”, “Pwnd”, but I recall friends using it ages ago when referring to computer games moments in Warcraft, Counterstrike, etc… So that could be the origin and now its in everyday use. Anyhow, prepare to ROFL with these pics from the fail blog. 

fail-owned-firetruck-fail

fail-owned-education-fail

I found this blog via the “top blogs today” section within wordpress. There was also “fastest growing blogs”, and top posts”, etc… I have seen them all the time, but I never looked at them or clicked through. I think I might start doing that now! It’s a form of social media recommendation similar to Digg or Stumbleupon as you can see what blogs are popular. 

I’m out like fail,

Matthew Ho.

NRL has started and is now in round 2, and the AFL is about to kick off. What better way than to show case both season launch ads. Now I’m not an AFL fan, other than a Sydney Swans supporter by virtue of being from Sydney. However, I do  think that the AFL ad is better. C’mon NRL, step yo game up!

AFL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oxpyRreruU]

NRL Season Launch Ad 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgxGWvaPz6w]

I’m out like the offseason, 

Matthew Ho

This is a good video about web design from SXSW (South by Southwest Festival). It’s all about the user – you need to start with them and end with them in your planning. This guy argues its not about the “elastic user” but rather its about the “specific user”, which kinda flies against the thinking of cloud computing. Because cloud computing suggests that the user can come from anywhere and you have to cater for anyone from anywhere.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIRbQB4O45M]

Another good video from SXSW is about designing community pages for the wisdom of crowds (yes, its that book!). It’s not the actual author but someone who is applying those ideas to online.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX-7xwPPY8I]

I’m out like everything you knew about web design,

Matthew Ho

I’ve been watching these videos for the past hour or so. They’re very interesting, particularly given the current financial climate.  There’s been a feud brewing between Jim Cramer, the host of CNBC’s “Mad Money” and Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show. 

I’ve actually got one of Jon Stewart’s books on my shelf (its brilliant!). FYI – Jon Stewart is a comedian. These two networks are supposedly sister networks as well. Watch these unedited & uncensored videos, they are very insightful – I was addicted! (note: the daily show posting these vids on their website)

Part 1

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYWwBG7RDfE]

Part 2

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyyOfAfrt9U]

Part 3

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7og_2XjrhI]

Based on what I have seen, Jim Cramer was pummeled by Jon Stewart. It was a three round knockout, that destroyed Cramer’s credibility. However, Cramer accepted too much blame. Could ANYONE have predicted some of these crisises and collapses?? If you put yourself out there and tell investors to buy Bear Stearns and then it crumbles, should you accept some of the blame? 

It reminds me of 5 – 7 years ago when people were recommending Enron, Worldcom, etc… and then they collapsed. I don’t think the CNBC network and Jim Cramer should be solely to blame, even though they made those recommendations. Yes, they could have done more due diligence, but it is a crazy stock market out there. Cramer should have stood up for himself more. Jon Stewart didn’t even give him much of a chance to respond either. He just kept knocking him down blow after blow.

The impact is once in a life time, however similar “shocks” have happened before. See Enron bust, Dot.com bust, Asian Crisis, and Black Monday 1987.

I’ve never doubted that there is manipulation in the stock market, some legal, and some illegal.  

Here’s the original video Jim Cramer did a few years ago, discussing how hedge funds manipulate the stock market:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M-OiXUhZNE]

I’m out like Jim Cramer’s career,

Matthew Ho.

Whilst trawling the net for some MC Hammer pictures, I thought why not check youtube? It’s the treasure chest of video content.

Most of the MC Hammer videos are pretty bad quality (since they are from the 80′s). Why don’t they re-release some of the videos in higher quality format? Or even do a remake – 2009 style. He’s obviously popular. One of the video’s with 9 million views has been banned by youtube. Youtube doesn’t actually “ban” the video and take it down these days if there’s a pending legal dispute. They actually just take away the sound. It’s pretty stupid.

So what the author did was replace it with a keyboard sound.

Anyhow, I came across this awesome mashup with Black Eyed Peas v MC Hammer: U Can’t Touch My Humps

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjP6QAobG24]

It’s brilliantly made and remixed.

And if you want the classic MC Hammer styles, check out the video below. It took me a while to find a decent version.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ2ZFVx6A4Q]

I’m out like MC Hammer mashups,

Matthew Ho

Blog Stats in the last 14 days

What is going on with my blog traffic ? I had 158 hits today and I’m averaging close to 130 hits a day in the last 5 days. And its all coming from the following search terms:

• mc hammer
• mc hammer pants
• m c hammer
• mc hammer cant touch this
• balloon pants

Obviously there is something going on with MC Hammer. I normally get like 10 – 50 hits a day, averaging like 30 hits daily. I’ve hit on something which I need to investigate. My most popular blog post is “MC Yammer: can’t touch this” with 500+ hits. It was actually was about Yammer, a software as a service that we use at work. It’s not about MC Hammer, though I saw the marketing connection with the name Yammer/Hammer. I started calling myself MC Yammer at work as a joke. I also posted up a lot of pictures of MC Hammer.

It’s clear to me that a) MC Hammer is a popular search term and b) My blog is getting a lot of traffic from using that keyword tag and c) MC Hammer must be back!!!!!!!!

MC Hammer & Dancejam

If you didn’t know already (Australian readers probably don’t), MC Hammer has a popular social networking site called dancejam. I first heard about it through Tech Crunch, because Michael Arrington the editor is one of the investors and he blogged about it.

Dancejam reminds me of So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) meets Youtube. People post up videos about  dancing, lessons, and their latest moves. it’s categorised into different styles for breaking, salsa, etc.. But the coolest feature is the dance off tournament style videos. MC Hammer chooses a style (e.g. popping, a style of breakdancing) and people face off against each other and users vote for the best. Its elimination style, so the winners proceed to the next round and eventually a winner is found.

I have to admit I don’t know any more about this website and will have to look into it. It’s clear to me that dance must also be huge now because of SYTYCD. It’s brought dance back into the mainstream and pique a lot of people’s interest. If you want to know more about the history of dancejam, read this. MC Hammer is also a huge star on twitter and uses it to tweet about latest videos and tournaments. He’s got 144,000 followers on twitter and clearly is one of the most popular tweeters out there. I think only Obama, Stephen Fry, and Chris Brogan have more followers.

I’m out like balloon pants!

Matthew Ho aka MC Yammer

Google never fails to impress me. I’ve been catching up on my reader feeds, and was reading the Youtube blog and came across the new Google Earth 5.0 features. It’s off the hook!

Now you can look at the ocean, go underneath the ocean, and also check out thing people have landmarked. Like videos of fish they have discovered at a certain point, websites about a certain location. It looks like a mashup feature with geo tagging (tagging the actual location on google earth). I won’t talk any more, and I’ll let the video do it justice.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSuJq4UzkIA&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/blog&feature=player_embedded]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ATw1f_qcEg&eurl=http://www.youtube.com/blog&feature=player_embedded]

I’m out like Google Ocean,

Matt

The availability of camera phones has made everyone a photographer and a movie producer. Now, we have a device that is with us 24/7, that can record just about anything. Sometimes, they record things we wish we couldn’t see with our own eyes.

On New Year’s eve in Oakland, 4 men were arrested by BART transit officers. BART officers are basically like CityRail officers in Sydney, Australia. Oscar Grant was one of the men that was put up against a wall and was sitting down. He has his hands up and is then forced to the ground, face first. One of the officers puts a knee against his head. Another officer jumps on top, pulls out his gun and then shoots him in the back.

Check out the footage below, in its raw form (there’s a long comment at 0.11 seconds).

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=idJAr6NUy3E]

That is just incredible footage of a man who was wrongly shot. He was not struggling, he was co-operating with the police and then he was shot for no apparent reason. There’s also another angle which has emerged from another girl who also shot it with her camera phone. I have no words to describe this, other than shocking. if you watch the officer he actually put his hands on his head as if thinking “What have I done?”.

The family is now suing for wrongful death and the BART officer in question has resigned.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=IKy-WSZMklc&feature=related]

I came across this incident via Flickr. I subscribe to the Flickr blog which highlights interesting photos. In the aftermath of the shooting, there was a memorial service and a protest against police brutality (sidenote: BART officers are not police officers). The protest then turned into a riot ala the Rodney King beatings which happened like 2 decades ago, and this was captured by a Flickr user who has uploaded the photos.

A colleague of mine suggested using the search engine Mahalo, so I thought I would give it a whirl. It gives you blended search results with a mixture of wikipedia style facts, video, and results from google, yahoo, live, flickr and youtube. One of the video’s I came across was a personal account of the riots, which show how dangerous it was and also the frustration of the youths at the end.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=5_U77PMgy90]

The availability of camera phones, the internet, the various platforms from flickr, youtube, and google, have made news so much more viral. It also allows us to see things from a different perspective. Without camera phones, we would not have visual evidence of what happened, other than the oral accounts of eye witnesses. User generated content now plays an important role in the dissemination of news items and to provide greater depth, angles, and storylines which we previously never had.

The camera phone recordings will also be crucial in the legal proceedings in finding justice for the family and perhaps to prevent incidents like this occurring in the future.

I’m out like the riots in Oakland,

Matthew Ho.

www.inspiredworlds.wordpress.com

Mashups are some of my favourite music. Essentially, a  mashup is a remix which puts together two or more styles of music. DJ’s mix the music in ways you never even thought of, making an old song sound totally different by mixing it with another style.

One mashup that has been sweeping the internet is Jaydiohead, a mashup of Jay Z & Radiohead by DJ Minty Fresh Beats. It’s growing on me. I probably like it because it’s a Jay-Z mashup, and I’m a huge Jay-Z fan.

Jay Z v Radiohead

Mashups have become really popular in the last couple of years. Dangermouse’s Grey Album, a mix of Jay Z’s “Black” album and the Beatles “white” album is one of the more famous & controversial ones.  Mashups have become so viral because of the internet – they spread so fast now as they can be downloaded and shared on peer to peer networks. DJ Minty Fresh Beats and his website has gotten publicity on Digg, Delicious (where I originally found it), MTV, and the Carson Daly Show (see below).

But don’t just listen to Carson & me hyping it up, check it out here and download the torrent for free!

Mashups -  The law and opportunities

Mashups are changing the way we consume music. We are hearing sounds which the original artists and the record companies did not even fatom. Their are legal issues as well, because the DJ’s are using music belonging to other artists, which the music labels would probably never clear. But, the music labels and the artists – they should be embracing it as the music is being introduced to new fans and markets. For example, I don’t even listen to Radiohead, but I might get their albums now.

Record labels and artists should be encouraging mashups, and letting them be downloaded for free. It is innovative, creative and the public love it.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=nBpgik8BkPE]

Change of the music industry business model

The music industry itself has been turned upside down with the internet. It’s totally changed their business model.  I watched a video on the American Express forums where the Editor for Wired stated that “we are growing up in a generation of free”. We are able to download what we want for free. Some artists are embracing it, while some music companies take their official videos down from youtube.

I found it a bit strange that a rap artist I saw on the weekend, MURS, actually had his album available for as a free download. That’s awesome. He gave his album out for free before he signed with a major record label, to encourage and spread his music. The effect is so that he could draw more people to his concerts and it allows his fans to connect with him in a deeper way as they have access to more of his music. It will be interesting to see how the music industry and the artists also respond to Apple iTunes giving up the DRM (digital rights management). These are topics for another post.

I’m out like Jay-Z v Radiohead,

Matthew Ho

p.s. Check out this track by Jay-Z & Santos Gold “Brooklyn We Go Hard” from the Notorious B.I.G soundtrack. I’m feelin it