Generalized Blog Propagation

I recently discovered Jonathan Yedidia’s blog through this post by T. As with T, his is a particularly meaningful name for me. Especially after working for a while on my most recent project. Its pretty cool when you realize that there is a real person behind a name. I laughed heartily at the videos that he posted, especially HappySlip’s ballad. If you scroll down to his “Personal Technical Web-sites” sidebar section, you will find an impressively thorough list of who’s who in machine learning/computer science/… (probably theoretical physics too, I wouldn’t really know)

At least it won’t be too annoying

Starting tomorrow, YouTube will include advertising within videos. My initial reaction to this news was one of much dismay. I generally find advertising to be intolerable. I rarely watch tv largely because I hate to sit through commercials. Most tv shows would barely be worth sitting through without the commercials. Similarly, I generally get annoyed watching music videos on sites like Rhapsody because they show the same annoying commercials before every video. This is especially frustrating because I pay to use Rhapsody to listen to music.

However, as I read more about YouTube’s new plan my dismay was slightly reduced. The ads will not be short videos that play before the video that the user chooses to watch. They will be banner type ads that show up during the video. They will last for 15 seconds and only take up 20% of the video player. If YouTube feels like it must include advertisements within videos, I think this is so much better than “pre-roll” ads. It still kind of sucks though.

[By the way, I discovered this news through a tweet made by Jeremiah Owyang.]

The Young Black Northerner vs. The Elderly Southerner

Early in Barack Obama’s “The Audacity of Hope” Obama mentions an encounter that he had with Zell Miller. Despite the fact that they are both Democrats, the contrast between these two individuals is fascinating. As Obama puts it, “the elderly Southerner on his way out, the young black Northerner on his way in.” However, one might not think to even compare these two individuals had they not adopted opposing roles during the 2004 presidential election. Barack Obama and Zell Miller had been the keynote speakers at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, respectively. I had not been aware of this at the time, but now it seems to me that that was a momentous situation (not to mention a very pertinent situation to examine given the current build-up to the 2008 presidential election). Watch the videos of the speeches (Zell Miller wrote that Obama’s speech was one of the best he’d ever heard) and read some of my thoughts after the jump.