http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbBNqNaZVc8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmkVWuP_sO0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atHWASn_ygo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74cM-tF8-kY

http://www.measurementlab.net/

http://blog.wired.com/business/google/

This is my hometown.

From the New York Times:

Elkhart, near the Michigan border in an area known as Michiana, is the white-hot center of the meltdown of the American economy. Its main industries, the manufacturing of recreational vehicles and motor homes, have fallen apart over the last year because of high gasoline prices. That has taken down ancillary businesses like R.V. parts suppliers and storage warehouses.

The jobless rate in Elkhart has increased more than in any metropolitan area in the country; it rose over 4.8 percentage points from August 2007 to August 2008. According to labor statistics released this summer, nearly 10,000 people were out of work, a rate of 9.3 percent.

Full Story here

Multimedia story here

I’m currently typing this as I’m staring at the nbc peacock-turned-loading wheel symbol that tells me to “wait for a few minutes and if we’re not back, just wait longer.”

I don’t have cable. It’s expensive and Comcast, the only provider, clearly mistreats their subscribers. Plus TV would be a serious distraction. Instead I get wireless “broadband” from a different anti-consumer company, ATT (my only other choice). So I planned to watch the debate on MSNBC’s website. At first it was all good. I had to sit through one ad at the start, but I can handle that. After the ad, for 5 minutes the debate streamed beautifully, so then I got a little adventurous and clicked the full-screen button. Then, as if by some miracle, the picture got bigger, the resolution was decent, and the stream didn’t degrade.

I watched full-screen, live, streaming video for about 10 minutes. Clinton and Obama were even talking back and forth about specific issues regarding health care policy and not about Brian Williams’ empty horse race fluff.

It felt like I was peering into some glorious future. I was timid, but I dare not look away.

Then the video started to break up and the audio began to stutter. Quick as a flash I minimized, but to no avail. The audio began chirping. So I closed out and went back again. Watched another ad and got back to the debate. 5 minutes went by, and it started to break up again. I closed out, went back, watched ad. This ritual repeated every 5 to 10 minutes, but each time, somehow the ad managed to come through no problem.

Now I’m just watching the peacock twirl. In the middle of an Obama rebuttal, the stream just dried up, his movements slowed to crawl, and then … nothing. Ridiculous. There is no good reason why we shouldn’t be able to get decent broadband in this country. Is this the ISPs fault? Most likely. Is it the FCCs fault? Right again. Is it MSNBC’s fault? Not sure. Is it the consumers’ fault, as firms like Comcast and ATT would suggest, for “hogging bandwidth?” No it is not.

We need to get this problem fixed, because if we let the regulators and the providers continue to hold hands all the way to the bank, our service will never improve.

Wow, now its back. But the aspect ratio is off, the picture is stretched. The candidates heads look a little wide; Tim Russert’s takes up the entire window. : )

So Google didn’t pay $1.65b to continue providing ad-free content via YouTube? Check this article from Ars Technica (sort of) explaining YouTube’s plan to roll out advertising messages wrapped in video content for which they will “share revenues” with uploaders. No details of how this will work have been released, but the spin makes sense. I guess ads attached to your “football to the groin” video might seem a bit less ingratiating if you get a slice of the cash, but, as the article points out, there are still many questions left unanswered.

Here are a few highlights from the interesting (insightful?) prognostications from Wired News regarding the techscape of 2007:

A major newspaper gives up printing on paper to publish exclusively online.

Congress passes a law requiring internet service providers to keep logs of all web traffic and e-mail for three years.

The New York Times opens its archives from behind the paid firewall, realizing it’s more lucrative to be the internet’s paper of record than charging readers for individual stories. Thankfully, Thomas Friedman’s clichés and mixed metaphors remain behind the pay firewall for at least two weeks.

MySpace splinters as teens head for niche sites. New services that control profiles across multiple social networking sites begin to take off.

See the rest at Wired News

Last month, Bones, a punk band out of Baton Rouge received official notice from myspace.com that their url had been changed from http://myspace.com/bones to www.myspace.com/7483383. Apparently, the address was needed to promote the television drama Bones of the Fox network. Strangely enough, Fox is owned by News Corp., who last July purchased myspace for $580 million. Saucy forensic anthropologist Bones beats nerdy jazz punk Bones every time in the media synergy game. No surprises here.

Less than 24 hours after notification of the change, the band received this correspondence from Tom Anderson, co-creator and president of myspace. From the bands myspace blog:

“i heard about what happened with your URL. i gave it back to ya.. sorry about that! as we grow in size, sometimes people make decisions i don’t know about. this was obviously the wrong decision. the bones URL is yours once again.”

Even if this was an act of damage control, it reveals that for the time being, Anderson respects the independent net presences that helped him cash in. As of this inaugural post, Anderson has 140,515,252 user profiles listed as friends on his own myspace account. Among them remains Bones, punk band from Baton Rouge.

Tip: Cool’Eh editorial Vol.2, Issue 6.