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Posts Tagged ‘dance’

Konami, you magnificent bastards. I’ve seen Wii fitness games before but this brings the idea to a whole new level. Walk It Out! is a game where the goal is to… wait for it… walk around

Read the rest here:
There’s a Wii game that’s just walking

DanceJam, a dance video startup founded by MC Hammer, Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young in April 2007, will soon be acquired by Purevideo Networks, we’ve heard from multiple sources. Note: I am a small stockholder in DanceJam, although the company won’t comment to me about this at all.

We don’t know the purchase price or other terms of the deal. Both companies are privately funded.

Earlier this year Purevideo Networks also acquired Sportnet, a site that controls a number of popular topical video sites.

DanceJam launched in November 2007 and has raised $4.5 million in venture capital.

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You need only one word to describe The Pirate Bay. It comes from the Ancient Greek, is six letters long, and entered the English language in 1884, some 120 years before the Web site’s founding.

See original here: 
It’s time for The Pirate Bay to die

The conventional wisdom out there on Web video advertising is that most advertisers don’t want to risk being associated with user-generated videos (i.e., the vast bulk of videos on YouTube). It is only the professionally-produced stuff on portions of YouTube and Hulu and Blip.tv where the advertising dollars are going. This is the conventional wisdom because it is mostly true.

But YouTube wants to change advertiser’s minds (because the vast bulk of its videos are audience-produced, did we mention that?). So in a blog post today, YouTube trots out a told-ya-so case study about the “JK Wedding Entrance Video” (embedded below) that has been spreading around like crazy. Since it was posted on July 19, it has been watched more than 12 million times. It’s even spawned its own (professionally-produced) faux sequel, the “JK Divorce Entrance Dance” (also embedded below).

In case you haven’t seen it, the original video shows an entire wedding party boogieing down the aisle in Minnesota. Instead of a traditional wedding march, the couple picked Chris Brown’s “Forever.” YouTube’s content fingerprinting system picked that up and the copyright holders were able to place click-to-buy ads on the video which linked to downloads of the song on iTunes and Amazon.

YouTube reports that the click-through rate on those ads was two times higher than the overall click-through rate for those types of ads on the site, and that there was even a spillover effect on official “Forever” music video, which also saw the click-through rate son the same ads go up 2.5 times the average. (It makes sense that would be higher since people going to the official video presumably are more interested in the song itself).

Not only that, but “Forever” climbed the music charts, reaching the No. 4 spot on iTunes (it is now No. 15) and No. 3 spot on Amazon’s MP3 top seller’s list (it is currently No. 4). Not bad for a song that was released a year ago.

YouTube presents this as proof that advertising works on viral videos even if they are audience produced. I’m not sure it proves anything other than that breakout videos are good advertising vehicles no matter where they come from. But YouTube needs to sell more of its video inventory to get to profitability, and the bulk of it is . . .

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Not to be outdone by Gamestop , Walmart is now offering one free Wii title (29 to choose from) with the purchase of a Wii system for $249. But are the games any good? • Game Party • Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz • Cars • M&M’s Kart Racing • Block Party • Circus Games • 30 Great Family Party Games • Summer Sports • Sega Superstars Tennis • Samba De Amigo • Rapala Tournament Fishing • Sonic and the Secret Rings • Namco Museum Remix • Dream Pinball 3D • Looney Tunes ACME Arsenal • Monster Jam • Cabelas Big Game Hunter • Naruto: Clash of Ninja Revolution • SpongeBob Atlantis Squarepantis • Ultimate Board Game Collection • AMF Bowling Pinbusters • Jenga World Tour • Indy 500 • Off Road Extreme • Bass Fishing • Winter Sports: The Ultimate Challenge • Deal or No Deal • Ferrari Challenge • Dancing with the Stars: Get Your Dance On I’d go with Namco’s Museum Remix, but that’s just me.

Excerpt from:
CrunchDeals: Walmart offers up one free game with purchase of a Wii

If you enjoy being frustrated and agitated first thing in the morning, then you’ll appreciate this DDR-style alarm clock that forces you to finger-dance various combinations on the built-in four-way pad in order to get the alarm to stop making noise. Product description: “If you love electronic dance mat games – the ones where you have to follow the onscreen pattern by dancing on different coloured lights - this alarm clock is a great way to get you out of bed as it incorporates a mini finger dance pad. When the alarm sounds, it can’t be turned off unless you do a little dance with your fingers to follow the sequence shown by the lights, just like on a full sized dance game.” Gee, sounds really great.

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DDR-style alarm clock forces you to finger-dance first thing in the morning

eBay has some red hot Palm Pres for about $320 - this one is ending in 28 minutes but I bet you could find more. I’m curious to know where these are coming from.

Here is the original: 
Headline: eBay selling Pres for $320

So I got up this morning, fired up Techmeme to see what was happening in tech and on top was this blog post from online video tracking company Visible Measures featuring a home-brewn list of the 18 most watched viral videos of all time.

It’s important to note that the video measurement startup didn’t simply analyze which videos got this total number of views on the 150+ video sharing sites it currently tracks, but also took into account views that were generated on other online properties where the videos were spread, like blogs and social networking services (a measurement method it refers to as True Reach).

I won’t bore you with the full list of very viral videos - check out the Visible Measures blog post to see who’s currently on top etc. - but there is a general observation I’d like to share and discuss with you.

Here’s what the company concludes after featuring the list:

As you can see, the list is a diverse collection of older and newer campaigns, and includes music videos, movie trailers, user-generated spots, and clips from TV shows. What they all have in common is a massive total audience.

I wouldn’t call it that diverse, actually. If you break the list down, you’ll note that it counts 8 music videos, 4 movie trailers, 2 TV show clips, and 4 user-generated clips. So out of the 18 online videos that amassed over 100,000,000 views according to Visible Measures, 14 are professionally produced videos that were arguably created for airing on television primarily, and certainly not specifically for online video sharing sites.

Furthermore, if you break down the list of 4 clips that were classified under ‘User Generated’, two of them are actually professional artist performances that were simply recorded and/or uploaded by a regular YouTube user (“Jeff Dunham: Achmed the Dead Terrorist” and “The Evolution of Dance”). Another one (“Lezberado: Revenge Fantasies”) features a woman talking about a professionally produced TV show (The L Word), and the video that Visible Measures links to on YouTube is actually one from the official channel of Showtime, where The L Word was aired on from 2004 to 2009.

So if you really want to be a pain about it, the only real user-generated video that was viewed over a 100 million times would be “Charlie bit my finger - again!”, a video featuring two cute kids that funnily enough I had never seen before.

This isn’t abnormal, of course: mainstream media are called mainstream for a reason, just as celebrities are celebrities for a reason (well, most of the time) and popular music artists, TV series and movies are popular for a reason (well, most of the time). You’d have to be pretty naieve to think YouTube (or any web service originally meant for amateurs to share videos on) isn’t always going to be used to massively spread professional music videos, movie trailers and clips from and about popular TV shows, and that they’ll overtake most if not all videos about dogs riding skateboards and whatnot.

This isn’t to say user-generated (amateur) content doesn’t have any value - it always does for at least one person - and could never be on par with professionally produced content, but looking at the list you’ve got to wonder we’re not all mostly craving for the latter on whichever medium we’re using at the moment we’re in the mood for it.

Your thoughts?

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