Doug’s World

4 comments posted:

1. on August 10, 2007 at 5:58 pm The Aunt wrote:

   strange that I would be the one to comment—or even visit the blog this particular day.
   I am rarely offended, which is not so great a thing, of course (NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT!–for my Moo if he’s “listening”), but, was just sorry that the video fell off so quickly on the black tech scenario. I agree w/ Diego (?) on the accent going awry, but, frankly—I laughed at the beginning and was so looking forward to an increase in laughter to come. Alas, short lived laughter ’twas..

   Not too loudly, and not for too long–but, I take em where I can get em these days.

   Where do you find the time to find these things, Doug? You still work?

2. on August 11, 2007 at 9:02 am Tom wrote:

   Actually, I’ve started about three comments to this one and deleted them. I’m with you — it started out pretty funny and then just kept going until it completely stopped being amusing. It’s amazing how much of the video on the web is like that (er, not that I spend a lot of time on it …)

   Anyhow, I didn’t know how to respond to it, and kept deciding to scrap what I was saying (lest I make a boob of myself). But I just did a bit of reading on the 1938media.com site, and Loren Feldman (the guy in the video) is the head of production. They seem to want corporate clients to use the site to post videos about their companies. That’s where this video becomes highly questionable, in my opinion — I can’t imagine sending a prospective client to a site to watch a video about me when they could easily click on something in the sidebar and get that video, too. Whether I’m offended or not is immaterial — how my potential client will react is another story. I’m not sure I’d hire anyone to produce my web video who is that short-sighted.

   And Doug, do you know what Scoble’s involvement in this is? There seems to be a common set of characters (Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, Dare, and so on) peppered throughout the comments (either from them or about them). Is 1938media somehow related to either Microsoft or PodTech?

3. on August 11, 2007 at 11:10 am Doug wrote:

   Yeah, Marsha, you’re not the only one disappointed in how unfunny that was. That’s a recurring sentiment I’ve heard. As for how I find these things: this IS my job! Well, seriously … I was checking my RSS feeds for all things XML, and came across Dare Obasanjo’s post linking to that video. And the other one about Pearl Jam was also from my XML-related RSS feeds, since that guy is an O’Reilly tech writer.

   Tom, I don’t know details, but Scoble and Feldman are buddies and widely seen as “A-list” bloggers. I had started a post about all the standard advice for building an A-list bloggers (speaking of which, time for some cat photos again soon, a perennial A-list no-no), and wanted to work in that video as an example of what one needs to do to join their ranks, but I gave up because I couldn’t find a good punch line. “Remember, when you make fun of racial stereotypes, don’t be funny because people hate it when others laugh at them — – be lame instead!” Just doesn’t ring, you know?

4. on August 13, 2007 at 11:05 am Megan wrote:

   I’m constantly amazed at how breathtakingly lame so many tech (or “tech”… as the case may be) bloggers are.