Entertainment

YouTube sucks: 4 sites that do video better

YouTube may be the best-known mainstream video-hosting site on the Web, but it's certainly not winning any awards for the visual quality of its content. YouTube's creators have said higher-resolution videos are on the way, but until then, there are a handful of other services that do a much better job at making your uploaded video look a little less Webby.

There's another problem at hand: size. Video files are big, and a lot of the most popular services place tedious size restrictions. Those restrictions mean that you are either going to have to compress your video through third-party software before uploading or make smaller, lower-quality source recordings to begin with.

We've handpicked four services that have pretty lenient size limits and that don't force you to download software clients just to graduate up to the higher caps. To be fair, we're also comparing all four to the YouTube status quo.

So here's the deal. We took a source video of just less than 2 minutes at full VGA quality at 30 frames per second. It came off a recent-model Canon digital camera that saved it as an approximately 200MB AVI file. Your results for source material may vary, but based on the popularity charts on Flickr, Canons rule the roost both overall and in the point-and-shoot camera category, so we felt that it was a good control.

It's worth noting that Casio has several models of digital cameras with "YouTube capture" modes, though these are simply recording video in MPEG-4 H.264 at smaller resolutions, which takes up less space. You can accomplish a similar feat, albeit using a different video codec, if your camera has a "compact" or "e-mail ready" video-capturing mode.… Read more

Guy in a mouse suit wins Super Bowl (ad, that is)

Doritos parent company Frito-Lay has been a proponent of the user-generated TV ad for some time now. Last year, it kicked off its "Crash the Super Bowl" advertising campaign, in which ordinary people (OK, ordinary people with nice cameras and video-editing skills) created ads for the cheesy chips and submitted them to the company, where they were promptly posted on YouTube.

For Super Bowl XLII, in which many of the game's high-profile ads turned out to be disappointing or downright stupid (at least in my opinion--but the Budweiser ads were pretty good this year), the second annual &… Read more

A design week in NYC: friendlier cabs, greener gadgets, thick crusts, and disco balls

Having just returned from New York City, I wonder whether I find it so intense because that's just how it is or because I tend to overbook my schedule, trying to squeeze in an ambitious number of meetings, rushing back and forth between midtown and downtown. In almost every cab ride I took on this trip, I noticed that many cabs now have a touch screen infotainment system that lets you pay with a credit card, watch TV, or access local city info (including a GPS tracker). I like the credit card option and the GPS but had mixed … Read more

Proxy marketing: It's the (other) product!

In this new age of " radical transparency," British firm Garlik has unveiled a new way to gauge popularity on the internet. The "QDOS" digital status rating system factors in how many times a person's name appears in a search, as well as a person's popularity, impact, and activity, among other criteria. Garlik's system plays on the phenomenon of "vanity searches:" googling" and comparing oneself to others. I couldn't resist the temptation: My QDOS score is Q3176 -- that's less than Nelson Mandela (Q6624) and Woody Allen (Q7764) but … Read more

Why Sony Imageworks got an Oscar nod for 'Surf's Up'

CULVER CITY, Calif.--One of the things that struck me towards the end of the animated surfing penguin mockumentary, Surf's Up, is that I had forgotten that every bit of water in the film--mainly loads of lovingly rendered surfing waves--was digitally animated.

Even after that realization, I looked at the water in the film and thought the animators had done a remarkable job at recreating one of the things that, like making human hair look realistic, has always been hardest to recreate.

Others must agree, because last month, Surf's Up was chosen as one three nominees for … Read more

On this day in history, remember the Mooninites

Fellow Americans, on January 31, we celebrate the anniversary of what was undoubtedly one of the most hilarious faux-pas in homeland security: the 2007 Boston Bomb Scare.

For those who stepped in late, on January 31, 2007, the city devolved into mass hysteria (well, kind of) when police were alerted to a number of suspicious electronic devices scattered around the city.

Before long, the city realized that the light-up displays were actually promotions for the upcoming film version of the cartoon show Aqua Teen Hunger Force--light-emitting diode (LED) circuit boards shaped like the show's "Mooninite" characters. But … Read more

Chowder Bowl

There's more at stake than usual in the Super Bowl this Sunday. There's bragging rights for not only Giants and Patriots fans, but also between Manhattan and New England clam chowder lovers nationwide. In other words, it's "chowder vs. chowda." There's even a friendly wager between New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino where the loser will donate local foods (such as pizza, Dunkin' Donuts, and chowder) to charity in the other mayor's city. So, may the best team/soup win! To get in the spirit, here's a free playlist … Read more

Mr. Potato Head-like game has fruity personality

Parents on the lookout for carefree, unintimidating ways to urge the sprout of their young kids' creativity ought to take a look at Ten Amazing Fruits. As the product name suggests, Ten Amazing Fruits stars a sampling of botanical characters, including the frequently miscast tomato (hurrah!) These are not, however, your garden-variety fruits. Each outsize organic possesses arms, feet, and a blank face upon which children can attach, Mr. Potato Head-style, a variety of digital features and appendages. A posh voice recites object names when the cursor mouses by, but a quick trip to the options can put an end … Read more

U2's turn for Internet thrashing

Looks like it's U2's turn to take a pounding from the bloggerati.

A speech on Monday by Paul McGuinness, manager of the band U2, was a call to arms against piracy. He wants to fight file sharing by forcing Internet service providers to ban people who pirate music. He suggested that Apple and other makers of digital music players were wrongly profiting from their "burglary kits."

McGuinness told a gathering of music insiders at the Midem music conference in Cannes, France, that music is making lots of people lots of money. Unfortunately, that money isn't … Read more

AlwaysOn favorites: Play-Doh bunnies, sunglasses, and a blender

NEW YORK--Will it blend? This innovative ad campaign sure did.

A lot of Madison Avenue types have packed into midtown Manhattan's upscale Mandarin Oriental hotel for the annual OnMedia NYC conference, a sort of Silicon-Valley-meets-the-ad-industry event. The conference, which started Monday and ends Wednesday, is presented by new-media trade publication AlwaysOn. At the end of the day on Tuesday, AlwaysOn founder Tony Perkins announced 2007's "Best of Broadband (BOB) Awards," a hand-picked list of the top Web video ads that achieved viral success and actually worked.

Gimmicky? Of course. But after a day of panels and … Read more