Month: June 2007

I’m not sure how I missed noticing the fact that Tour de France champion Floyd Landis has been posting his defense documents to a Wiki. But today, I came across this article from the Columbia Journalism Review, which outlines the strategy.

The article is a bit dated, since Landis’ arbitration hearing (to decide whether he’ll be stripped of his title) happened last month. (Here’s some coverage from the New York Times.) It’s expected that a final decision may take another month to come down.

But I’m intrigued by Landis’ defense team’s imaginative use of Wikis. They’ve come up with a way to both “get around” the mainstream media to get your message out, and engage those same mainstream media to become interested in what you’re saying.

This should be of interest to the journalists who cover events, as well as those who try to get the journalist’s interested in the events – or more specifically, their side of the story.

It’s uncertain whether Landis will know his fate before this year’s Tour de France gets underway on July 8. But I know that I’ll be watching this year’s Tour on the Internet exclusively.

We decided not to get cable TV when we arrived here in Victoria and most of the time, that’s been just fine. But for the last few years, I’ve watched the Tour de France nearly wall-to-wall. Despite what you might think, I found the whole thing fascinating and fun to watch.

The doping scandals surrounding the bike racing world have tarnished the sport. But the fact remains that the Tour de France is one of the most amazing tests of endurance on the planet. I’ll still be watching. What about you?
Technorati Tags:
Tour de France, Wikis

Some video fare for you again this week. One to make you think, one to make you wonder and one to sit back and enjoy.

Here we go…

Kinetic sculpture

I’ve posted some of this type of work before, but not this particular chap. But the stuff about the beach and the wind and the sculptures sure does seem familiar. If you are interested, there’s a Wikipedia article on Kinetic sculpture, with lots of links. This video is not very good quality, but it is certainly intriguing. And worthwhile fun for a Friday, I’d say. Here’s an excerpt from the intro:

For the past fifteen years, Theo Jansen has been creating (growing?) “beach animals” made from commonly available tools like plastic tubing, cardboard boxes, plastic bottles, hose, tape, and all sorts of other stuff. Wired News did a pretty good article on Jansen earlier this year:

Here’s the link to the video

What if the world were reduced to a village of 100 people?

That’s the premise behind this video, presented on The Miniature Earth website. This is one of those links that might inspire you to start clicking through to plenty of other interesting places. It’s a wonderful mix of text, music (the song is called Mad World) and images. Here’s an excerpt from the start of the video, that explains what it’s about:

The text that originated this movie was published on May 29, 1990 with the title “State of the Village Report“. It was written by Donella Meadows, who passed away in February 2000. Nowadays, Sustainability Institute, through Donella’s Foundation, carries on her ideas and projects. The Miniature Earth project was first published in 2001, since then more than 2 million people have seen this website.

The statistics have been updated based on specialized publications, and mainly reports on the World’s population provided by difference resources, like UN publications, PRB.org and others. Bear in mind that these are only statistics, and consequently changes might occur after a few months or only after years.

Please see them only as a tendency, and not as accurate.

Here’s the link to the video

Just kick back and enjoy

If you’re tired of guitar videos, you might want to give this a pass. But I think it’s a great example of “user-generated content.” There’s just a guy who’s laid down some music tracks on a digital file for the background. Then he sits down, turns on the camera, picks up his guitar and starts winging it. And the results are impressive. For anyone else who’s sat down with the stereo on and played along to their favourite song, this will resonate.

Here’s the link to the video

Today’s Bonus video

It’s amazing what you find on YouTube. See if you can name the famous celebrities in this little-known home video!

Here’s the link

Enjoy the weekend!

Technorati Tags:
Friday fun