YouTube is for dummies
Perhaps nothing quite captures the Zeitgeist like this cartoon found via Digg. The title of the cartoon is perhaps one of the most keen observations I’ve ever heard: “The Internet has always had dumb, loud people but I’ve never seen anything as bad as the people who comment on YouTube videos.” Go check out the cartoon for yourself (replete with bad Internet grammar and dreadful names like Crackmonkey74).
Why are the most opinionated people on YouTube such brain-dead zombies? Maybe it’s because the most popular video of the day tends to be “Man gets whacked by toddler in the goolies” or “Dog wears hat, hilarity ensues.”
YouTube beats Google?
Speaking of the bringer of dog videos, the waster of work hours, according to TechCrunch, Web metrics firm Alexa is erroneously reporting that YouTube is pulling in bigger numbers than Google. Professional snarky tech guy Michael Arrington (the voice behind TechCrunch) is quite correct to lambaste Alexa for such a sloppy measuring job, seeing as they’re off by a factor of about 84 billion page views. Measuring Internet traffic is kind of like nailing Jello to the wall (fun for a while, but it makes your fingers sticky), but hopefully we can count on counting than this.
High-tech Viking ship washes up in Ireland
The Vikings were known for a lot of things (groovy helmets, nasty axes, pillaging, setting fire to stuff), but GPS units and radar probably wasn’t among them. That hasn’t stopped a modern-day crew from Denmark from equipping a replica ship with that gear and more. The original plan was to row and sail from Roskilde to Dublin but high winds intervened and the vessel was towed into port. Hardly likely to instil fear into the hearts of landlubbers, but the purpose of this voyage was to heal rather than hurt. In a distinctly un-Viking fashion, the Danish cultural minister used to occasion to apologize for his nation’s history of plundering Irish and British folk. Somewhere in Valhalla, the Danes of yore are groaning.