I know there are videos out there that might be more irritating/annoying/ridiculous, but these are all videos that, at least in part, became as wildly popular as they are because they’re so annoying. It’s amazing how strong “word-of-mouth” is in a digital era.

I’m compiling these for a page that I’m working on to be the most annoying page in the world (maybe not the most annoying - that’s a big claim, but at least a very very annoying page). Why make the most annoying page in the world? Think office prank (a coworker leaves their computer unlocked and comes back to a new home page on their browser). Etc. Anyway, I wanted to find a list of those annoying YouTube videos everybody’s seen and couldn’t seem to find a good one online. So here are my top 6:

1) Never Gonna Give You A Chance

Sure other videos are annoying - but how many became the basis of a wildly popular online prank? (Please educate yourself on Rickrolling if you’re not already)

2) Fat Guy in a Little YouTube Video

Kickin’ it old-school with one of the pioneers in viral videos, Mr. Numa Numa himself. By the way, my 3-year-old loves this video (hope it’s not because he reminds her of her dad…. oh boy….). Still annoying. Makes the list.

3) Evolution of Viral Videos

I think the most annoying thing about this video is just how popular it is. I think it is mildly entertaining at best, but apparently that merits 100+ million views. I’m more irritated by the phenomenon of the video than the vid itself.

4) YouTube Meets America’s Funniest Home Videos

This video is symbolic of all funny cat videos, but the sound effects make it quite comfortably about the most annoying cat video ever. Yeah - wow. By far (it’s playing in another window right now… and… wow).

5) A Visual Charlie Horse (mind the pun)

Somehow, Charlie gets stuck in your head which increases its annoying factor 2,472%. Not to mention, little girls particularly like it for some reason. The annoying part of little girls, not the sweet part.

6) Accio Annoying Video!

Any of the Potter Puppet Pals videos are annoying to me, and I’m even a fan of the books (not the movies quite so much, but the books are wonderful). Oddly enough, the most popular Potter Puppet Pal video, the ticking noise one, seems to have just been pulled from YouTube. Odd.

There you have it. Feel free to agree or disagree, but I’m right on this one. Trust me.

In spite of what Google would like to determine an Internet user’s ad-clicking strategy (relevant ads, solid copy, action words, etc.), that’s not always what drives someone to click or not click on an ad. Let me tell you how I decide to click on an ad on a page or not. The algorithm is pretty simple and I’ll break it down by different situations.

1) Situation 1: I really like the page that I’ve visited. If I’m really impressed with the page I’m viewing, I’ll click an ad on the page, regardless of what it’s for. In fact, if I really like the page, I’ll even try to pick what I think is the highest CPC-bidding ad. Eg. I’ll click on “Sign up for the Capital One card today” rather than “Looking for US Capitols? Find it on eBay.”

2) Situation 2: The page is so-so, but there are interesting ads. This method probably most accurately reflects what Google would like to see in ad-clicking. If I see an interesting ad, sometimes I click it, but no guarantees.

3) Situation 3: The page is so-so, but I see an ad for a company I dislike. This will guarantee I click that ad. Why? It’s costing the advertising company, which I dislike, money. Simple enough.

4) Situation 4: Stinky page, either great or stinky ad. Will not click on an ad, no matter how interesting it is, simply because I do not want to reward the creator of a stinky page with ad revenue.

Now - I’m not preaching that everyone should go out and do this, by any means, just giving an observation on how I view paid ads on a web site. I think it could be beneficial information for Google, even, though the free market of online advertising will probably find that balance for them eventually.

I’ve always considered myself a Letterman guy. Leno never really tickled my funny bone. He seems like a decent enough guy, but I never thought he was funny enough for a late night talk show.

Regardless. He jumped up about 7 levels in my book when he featured the Tesla Roadster on his show ‘Jay Leno’s Garage.’ Very cool and it’s always great to see the Tesla in action.

http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/video/video_player.shtml?vid=229378

I do admit that this is by no means new news (I think the video was released in March and it’s Fall now). Still, I don’t get tired of finding Tesla vids.

Swoopo is an interesting find for me. The basic idea is that of an auction site. They feature primarily tech stuff/video games/personal electronics. OK, nothing new there.

However, they boast that these items are selling at ridiculously low prices. An xBox 360 just went for sub $20, most items are 50-80% off retail. How do they have such good bargains? Is it just that nobody’s heard of them yet so they’re getting away with a steal?

Not exactly.

For one, this isn’t “peer to peer” auctioning where consumers sell to consumers. The products being auctioned are actually posted by Swoopo. Then how do they keep the prices so low? Simple. They sell the right to bid. Every bid you submit sets you back $1. Well, that could be quite the bargain, right? I mean, you bid $1 and get a Wii for $70 (a $250 value for about $80 shipped). Not bad indeed. But then the caveats come crashing in:

First, every time you bid you extend the clock. That means no swooping in at the last second on an auction so you avoid the bidding war. eBay has us trained to believe that when there’s only a few minutes left and the price on an auction is still low, that’s the time to strike a bargain. Well, the time remaining on Swoopo is always low, encouraging bidding. The bids then extend the length of the auction up to a month or so from the time listed, meaning an auction can have less than a minute left for days, in theory.

Second, you don’t have the option of placing a high bid (but one that would still be a good bargain). For example, let’s say I want to bid $200 in a single bid at the last second for a Wii that’s currently listed at $45. Not so fast. Bid increments are set at $0.15. What? Well, yeah, that keeps the prices ridiculously low on expensive items. Meanwhile, remember that every time somebody bids, Swoopo gets $1. Not going to be around for the end of an auction? They have an automatic bidding tool that will take care of it for you. The problem? If somebody else has that tool, they will, in just a matter of seconds, burn through all the bids (remember, each worth $1) they’ve been allotted.

Some quick math for you (numbers may not be exact, but the principle’s the same). Let’s suppose they sell a Nintendo Wii for $45. At 15 cents/bid, that’s 300 bids. At 1 dollar / bid, that’s $300. Add that to the $45 plus about $10 shipping and they get $355 for a system they could buy retail for $250. One person gets a good deal on a Wii, but lots of people lose money in the process.

The long and short of it? Swoopo’s going to make bank. It’s a clever setup. It appears to feed on human competition and bargain hunters. I just hope whoever’s behind it has completely shrugged off their conscience so they can sleep at night in their bed of bid-bought-booty.

Update:
This is a little delayed, but Gadgetell posted an interesting interview with Chris Bauman. It kind of reminds me of ‘Thank You For Smoking’ - if Swoopo does get sued out of existence, I think Chris might make a great lobbyist for the tobacco industry. Just my opinion.

I just finished working on an early-release version of TheBestHumanEver.com, it’s basically a good way to control your own destiny on vanity searches for your name. It’s very simple idea and process (I hope). You create your own profile page (just a couple paragraphs about why you’re the best human ever) and hit submit. Basically, the site is structured in such a way that the profile pages are very SEO friendly (meaning they’ll show up well in search engines, like Google).

The result? People who search for your name (provided it’s not overly-common or shared by someone famous) will find out more about you… and exactly why you are the best human ever.

Enjoy.

TheBestHumanEver.com

So recently I’ve been playing with a couple different hosting options. The two services I’ve tried so far are GoDaddy and Dreamhost. Let me tell you a little about likes and dislikes of each.

GoDaddy Likes

• Quick, 24/7 customer service - I’ve called at 11 PM, I’ve called at 1 PM, I’ve called at 10 AM and the longest wait time I’ve had so far has been about 2 minutes. Very impressive. Only once was I less than impressed on the help, I got, too. Their guys really seem to know what they’re talking about.
• Easy to integrate existing domains registered w/ GoDaddy. - Makes sense that it would be - and it is.
• Affordable Pricing

GoDaddy Dislikes

• One click install feature is cool, but pretty buggy. I’ve fallen in love with Drupal as of late and can’t really imagine building a site without it from here out. I’ll post about that, too. Anyway. GoDaddy has a one-click install. However, it’s weird. It takes some tweaking to get certain modules (like a very important ‘clean urls’ module) to work. Why save trouble with the install when it takes more time to configure later? I wound up doing a clean install by just FTPing the files and using Drupal’s built-in install method.
• Confusing interface at time and excessive windows. Opening hosting manager opens a new window. Opening phpMyAdmin opens a new window. It gets cluttery quick. And you can’t find certain stuff you’re looking for (like the domainhost location for the DBs you set up).
• Limited MySQL databases and domains hosted on basic plan.
• (This was the clincher for switching to DreamHost) Slow. Just slow. I build my Drupal sites live, which means you’re loading a page every time you save a change or navigate the changes you can make. That means a LOT of wasted time spent on the aggregate. It’s not just inefficient, it’s very frustrating.

DreamHost Likes

• Much faster
• Affordable with the right coupon (I got 1 year hosting for about $70)
• Plenty of space - 500 GB and like, 2 TB transfer - way more than I’ll use
• Free domain with purchase ($1.99 w/ Godaddy hosting purchase)
• Smooth interface
• 24/7 Email Support

DreamHost Dislikes

• Right now the only thing I’m not crazy about is that you don’t get the 24/7 phone support. But the email support so far has been pretty quick, so I’m happy.

So, right now, looks like, as my friend gthing says, it’s Dreamhost ftw.

So, for work we put together a pretty sweet (well, I may be biased) video on how to use the USB to DVI I’ve mentioned before. We hosted it on addamonitor.com, my little brainchild. I have to give props to MJI Jackson for the great looking shadowbox effect. Anyway, I’d recommend you check it out.

AddAMonitor.com

Has it been a while? Yes, yes it has. So it should say something that I’m coming out of the woodworks to write again. It should indicate that I’m pretty stoked about something and think it’s worth mentioning.

The big news? Tesla’s regular production on their roadster begins today. The timing is perfect, with oil hitting record-high prices and global warming becoming a greater threat. Tesla represents a fueling force in the paradigm shift that needs to happen for people to progress technologically. It’s what I love to see.

Their full press release on the production can be found here.

Oh, you can get Singles on iTunes. But most of them are songs. I guess there’s an artist or some person named ‘Adele’ - and apparently Apple is out to get her hooked up. The image and text implied to me that this boy-haircutted and poorly-makeuped artist is looking for a date, is completely ‘FREE’, and is iTunes’ “SINGLE OF THE WEEK.” Congrats Adele and good luck on your date!!

So I just got back from an exhausting trip to CES. CES is always fun, but my feet will be mad at me for a week. A lot of what you see is kind of the same old same old and some stuff has a high propensity of becoming vaporware (stuff that’s cool to talk about but never really comes to fruition) (like a charging device that doesn’t use wires, but who knows…).

Somewhere in between, though, there are products that are both very cool and very practical. I’d classify Polaroid’s new Freescape Digital Media Exchange as one of these. Polaroid probably doesn’t see the same attention as one of the big exhibitors (like Panasonic, who was highlighting a 150″ flat screen TV - just gaudy), but I think they had a product that, if word gets out, should be a hot seller.

The Freescape system is a DVR that records TV shows in high def. It stands out from similar products, though, in three main ways.

First, it will do near-instant synchronization to an iPod or your PC (via WiFi). The iPod conversion idea is amazingly clever. In under 1 minute, it can encode and transfer a 1 hour TV show to your iPod through a built-in iPod dock. That means you can watch *any* of your shows you record and are no longer at the mercy of whether or not Apple has your favorite show. Plus, you’re not paying $2/episode for shows you get for free. Genius.

Second, remote access via the Internet. The unit gives you the ability to connect to it from anywhere you have an Internet connection. It also does a fast MPEG4 compression at VGA resolutions (which still looks like a standard TV signal) that lets you download your recorded TV shows from anywhere in the World. It’s kind of like TiVo and Slingbox hooked up and had a kid.

Third, no monthly fees. At an MSRP of about $500, it’ll take a while to pay for itself, but it’s still neat. The Freescape system uses an open directory of show listings that is 100% free. That means you never pay that $5 to $20/month subscription fee like with other DVRs.

Pictures below courtesy of Polaroid: