Month: December 2006 Page 1 of 2

By now, I’m sure you’ve realized that I like to find funny and interesting videos on the Web. But there are a lot of videos out there, and you can end up burning a lot of time trying to find the good ones. So this week, I’m going to point you to a cool application I “stumbled” upon recently.

It’s called, appropriately, StumbleUpon.

It works in a couple of ways. First, it’s yet another online social network, which lets you register a profile and search for like-minded friends. But the site uses a unique way of presenting interesting sites, videos, etc. to you that it thinks you will like, based on the preferences you’ve put in.

Note that if you don’t want to give the site a lot of your personal info, it still works just fine. You can either open the site’s webpage, or for real convenience, you can download a toolbar for your browser that makes stumbling as easy as one click.

And while you stumble through the choices offered, you can tell the site whether you like the selections or not, so it learns what kind of content you like.

To be honest, I haven’t used that part of the site very much, although it seems to work just fine.

But its the second option, called Stumble Video, that I’ve been using and really enjoying.

You just sign up and start clicking. Once you’ve entered a list of topics you’re interested in, the site will start serving up video clips from all over the Web that it thinks you might like. Again, you rate them while you watch and if you don’t like it, just click again to serve up a new one.

It’s very addictive and a lot of fun.

For example, here are three sites that I Stumbled Upon in one sitting:

— How to Reach 100,000 People for $1 – Highway Blogger

— Internet from the old days — This is a fascinating report by the CBC’s Bill Cameron about the Internet phenomenon, from the 1980’s, I’d guess.

— Pumpcast News — People pumping gas at a self-serve suddenly realize the video monitor they’re watching is talking directly to them.

And, of course, no collection of video clips would be complete without at least one cool guitar video…

Before we start the weekend fun edition, a personal update.

I’m in Regina this week to visit with my Mom, who’s getting ready for another one of those major life transitions that we all have to deal with at some point.

She’s been living in Qu’Appelle House for several years now. The people there are wonderful and it’s like being part of a wonderful, caring family. Unfortunately, to live there, you have to be able to get up on your own and get down to the dining room for meals.

My Mom has suffered a series of small strokes, called TIA’s over the years and while she’s been able to come back from each of them, this last one seems to have hurt her ability to control her legs. So now, at unexpected moments, her legs just give out on her. And it’s not getting better.

So, I’m here to help get her organized for a move to another home where she can get the level of care she needs now. But it will be sad for her to leave her “family” and start over again at a new facility.

My story is certainly not unique. Since I’ve arrived here, I’ve run into several people who are either going through or have gone through or are expecting to go through something similar. I guess it’s all a part of living, isn’t it? Something else for my kids to look forward to.

OK, this is supposed to be fun, right?

Right.

So as you know, I’ve been busy the last couple of days, so I’ve only got one video for you this week. But it’s a good one.

Here’s a very clever look back at the year 2006, through the eyes of some kids in a school holiday concert. It was put together by the comedy site JibJab. It’s funny, but be warned — you need a sense of humour to enjoy it!

Thanks to TechCrunch for pointing me here.