A few weeks ago my wife deciding to try cleaning your laptop keyboard without me around. A simple enough task, we have canned air in my office to get dust and dirt out of the keyboard. Well she had one key, the N key that had some dirt she couldn’t get to without taking it off. So she took the key off but ended up breaking in plastic hinges when she tried putting it back on. I came home to a “Babe I think I broke a key on my laptop.” So I was thinking , “Great do I need to buy a know keyboard now?”

A quick google search brought me to LaptopKey.com where they will sell you any key for any laptop (I’m not sure about any but they have a lot). Just did a search on their site for Acer Aspire 5536 and TADA yes we have that keyboard. You just specify which key you need and its $4.99 per key. It ended up being $7.67 total with shipping. Hooray!

So I decided to do a little video of my experience putting the new key in place. It was relatively easy and LaptopKey.com has a video tutorial for every type of keyboard they carry.

Lady Gaga or just plain gaga as she likes to be called, has always been a provocative one and her latest video, Alejandro is no exception. The references in this video are off the wall. I will attempt to describe the video via screen captures and the various innuendo included.

Hmm where to begin….by the way this subject matter is not very kid friendly. If there are kids in the room, you may want to shut them eyes. Continue reading, if you dare.

Fish Nets and high heels on a man with a gun!

Boy Toys dressed as Nazi at the biker bar

Ah yes. Ethnic looking soldiers with bowl cuts practicing Tai Chi

Let’s not forget the Gothic look with the steam punk glasses

Lets play some Mafioso music and make it look like Evita/madonna/“take a bow”

Ahhh Spiky Hat and a Golden Gun…WTF!

Shiny Happy Bowl Cuts!

Alot going on here. Best way to describe it: Vogue Disco Fashion Show.

Don’t forget the blatant religious overtones. So provocative.

Wow! Fembot gun bra!

Finally Lady Gaga showing off her trademark S&M look.

As you can see there is no cohesive story line when it comes to a Lady Gaga video. She likes to go all over the place. This is part of her mystique and what draws people to her. This is has more a dance track theme to it and doesn’t shock as much as her last video, Telephone.  Gaga definitely went for a more militant vibe with this video and less of the sexy vibe then in previous videos. I take it back “Fembot” machine gun bras are pretty sexy. Overall a pretty entertaining video from a true pioneer in the music business.

I’ve included some notable screen grabs below. Enjoy.

And of course the official Alejandro music video.

Inspiration for this post: http://onemansblog.com/gaga

“I’ve never liked the word podcast. It causes confusion…people have told me that they can’t listen to my shows because they ‘don’t own an iPod’.”

Speaking of netcasts, that is his tagline on the bumpers to his shows “Netcasts you love, from people you trust.”

The documentary below is done by Michael Sean Wright and Marc Ostrick where they traveled to the “TWIT cottage” in Petuluma, CA. This is part of The Spark Series for eGuiders. They are exploring what makes Leo stand out in this new frontier of media. Leo Laporte has a huge following on the internet and he is doing this with a small staff and a modest budget compared to his TechTV days where it used to cost millions to do what he’s doing today. Leo also give his take on technology in general, Net Neutrality, and explains the joys of doing his show now versus what he did with traditional media. You will also get a small look behind the scenes of TWIT is run. I have always been a huge fan of Leo and the ex-TechTV personalities. A great little film about a tech culture icon.

Last night U2 broadcasted their concert at the Rose Bowl via YouTube. It was a huge event and pretty impressive show. The video quality was surprisingly good for a webcast. It seemed to be a space themed concert with an a little David Bowe “Ground control to Major Tom” to start off the show. They even had a moment where an interview played from one of the astronauts from the International Space Station played over their “Bubble Screen.”

This is yet another example of a musical group embracing technology and its many advantages to reach a huge audience. Millions of fans were able to access U2 from across the globe for FREE! You were able to experience one of your favorite bands from the comfort of your home and planted to seed for new fans in the process.

Besides just YouTube, they used the power of social media to get the word out with the help of twitter and facebook. Their page contained “crawlers” similar to other sites like ustream where people could tweet straight from the YouTube page about the show bringing in a global audience. I know this because I watched this twitter crawler go across the screen as I watched and noticed people from Israel, Japan, Mexico, Philippines etc posting in.

It was a great concert. Alot of the favorites were played along with songs from the new album. Don’t worry if you missed the live broadcast I’m sure it will be rebroadcast at least another day. I can’t wait to hear the stats on how many people were reached worldwide when YouTube stops the rebroadcast and we tally all of the status updates from Twitter and Facebook. I’m sure some records were broken last night.

U2 is already a huge worldwide band but they maintained or increased their elite status. I hope that more artists follow this path of broadcasting live for free like this. It won’t replace the act of really being at the concert but its a great complement and a good way to build followers and increase music sales.

Below are more pics and screen captures from the YouTube stream:

Ten Artists will interpret the element of time found in an immersive space that allows for varying yet simultaneous moments of presence.

That is the description from their website. A friend of mine, Kyle Kondas is one of the video artists participating in this exhibition. To see the works of these video artists, head over to www.seesmic.com and check out the featured videos on the right hand side. There you will see a link to Timeframe Exhibition. If you are new to seesmic, you will see the videos in a timeline on the left hand column. There are scrolls button on the bottom. Just scroll through the different videos as well as people’s video comments.

This is a new and inventive way to use seesmic which is primarily a video social network. The nice part is the instant feedback you can get from the viewers. Kudos to Christi Nielson, the curator, for coming up with a new way to display art.

I posted a few of the videos that have been submitted so far. Just click the “read more” click below. Also keep checking back to seesmic since this lasts from 09/25 – 09/27.

Here are some of the works already displayed

TimeFrame Exhibition Kyle Kondas
TimeFrame Exhibition : Fidler Video 1
TimeFrame Exhibition Kyle Kondas
TimeFrame Exhibition Christi Nielsen
Re: TimeFrame Exhibition Tiil

Most of the podcasts I listen to are tech-heavy. Just a warning. I will list each one and give a short description of each an whether its an audio or video podcasts. I have 3 categories: Tech, Gaming, and Misc. I personally use a 30GB Zune (Brown) to listen  or watch my podcasts only because it was such a good deal. I purchased it for $85 on woot.com! The podcast list is shown after the break.

TECH SHOWS

SYSTM [Video]

SYSTM is a hand-on tech show created for the hardcore DIY Hardware crowd. It’s also hosted by Patrick Norton but the show was originally started by Kevin Rose back when he worked for TechTV and G4. You will learn such things as Building your own NAS, DIY WiFi Antennas, and DIY Power Packs.

Diggnation [Video]

Diggnation is a weekly tech/web culture show based on the top digg.com social bookmarking news stories. The hosts are Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht who are both G4 Screensavers alumni. Kevin Rose started the Digg.com website as a news site where users “digg” or vote for the stories they like the most and the most popular hit the frontpage. Well Kevin and Alex review the top stories while drinking tasty beer beverages out of their houses which make for some colorful commentary. You can see why their show is so popular LoL. Recently they have been branching out of their California homes and starting going to areas around the country to meet their fans. Their show usually ranges from 30 minutes to 1 hour. They have a email answer segment at the end of the show and usually show fans in Digg shirts around the country.

GAMING

1UP Yours [Audio]

1UP Yours is the premier videogames podcast where hosts Garnett Lee, Shane Bettenhausen and John Davison report on the videogame industry and the community that surrounds it. This is a really long podcast and it can range from 1:30 hours to 2:30 hours. This is a casual gaming podcast and they stray sometimes from their own format to talking on a variety of subjects. The hosts are editors and game testers from some of the popular gaming publications like EGM, 1Up, GameVideos.com, etc. You will hear them talk about game current on the market as well as those still in production. One of the best segments is “What are you playing?” where the hosts and guests talk about what games they are into at the moment.

1UP Show [Video]

Each week, the editors of 1UP cover new titles and discuss the latest topics in gaming – all the while giving you a behind the scenes look at the on goings at the offices of 1UP, Electronic Gaming Monthly, and Games for Windows magazine. The show gives some great insight into the games they review by doing interviews with the staff of 1up while showing you game footage. They also have some great interviews with game developers as well. You can also see great field reporting from such places as E3, Quakecon, and Comicon.

MISC

The Totally Rad Show [Video or Audio]

The Totally Rad Show is the summer blockbuster of geek news shows. Every week, hosts Alex Albrecht, Dan Trachtenberg, and Jeff Cannata rip into the world of movies, video games, tv, comics, and more and pull out what’s rad. Most shows last 1 to 1:30 hours. They have either a audio or video feed. They have a quirky and fun approach to their reviews. Every show is started with the guys recreating a scene from one of their favorite movies of the past.

NPR Fresh Air [Audio]

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio’s most popular programs. The show gives interviews as much time as needed, and complements them with comments from well-known critics and commentators.

This American Life [Audio]

The radio and TV shows follow the same format. There’s a theme to each episode, and a variety of stories on that theme. It’s mostly true stories of everyday people, though not always. There’s lots more to the show, but it’s sort of hard to describe. Ten Commandents was the last program I listened to and Ira Glass goes over the real ten commandents by personal interviews with each person’s account of one of the ten.

Here are additional links to Google Code Pages that show the a behind the scenes making of and even an interactive 3D viewer model of some of the effects.

Check out my other story on Radiohead about “Scotch Mist” a video which was released on New Year’s Eve this year and it features every song from In Rainbows to coincide with the “official” release of the album.

This video is in two parts so make sure and keep watching till after 2:49. Trust me it gets funnier.