It's a holiday in transition here. I took the kids out and walked around in the twilight - (it's getting to be summer, with longer days). People here seem to be aware of the holiday- but fight it in many households- by turning out the lights and hiding.

Even houses that were decked out with jack-o-lanterns and looked to be safe bets were cringingly embarrassing. A guy comes out with no shirt on - "what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to give you something?" Meanwhile his young costumed daughter- works in the background scooping up lollies to drop in the bags. Maybe it's a generational thing.

I've been watching Glee on Hulu- and I can't stop. See, I was in the Chugiak High School Swing Choir- and I love a good show tune. The episodes are actually laugh out loud, darkly funny in some parts - and the singing, though very studio polished is not shabby at all.

Most advertising networks have clauses in their agreements that prevent disclosing how much income a site receives- I'm not doing dollar figures. I am opening the doors a little to share how VideoSift pays the bills.... more inside ...

Quite possibly. I am on a Kate Bush appreciation tear at the moment. I just learned to play a very nicely transposed chordie version on guitar and that red dress and dance moves hit me in the sweet spot.

In 1993, as I was finishing at university, I had absolutely no job prospects. I didn't go to any of the job fairs and was moping around San Diego after breaking up with my girlfriend of three years. I was thinking about going to graduate school- for lack of a job, and because I hadn't defaulted on my Alaska Student Loans (yet).
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I will avoid this mishap

It's amazing to me that the unsupported rumour of poor undocumented labourers getting free health care - would cause a well-insured white man to arc up in front of a joint session of congress.

Joe Wilson wants to make very sure that people like this get no healthcare within US borders.


Don't worry, Joe - they will be denied healthcare as usual in the US, rounded up by border patrol thugs, handcuffed, treated like cattle and thrown over the border - as per usual.

I see you are an active member of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, SC. Jesus loves you, I'm sure.

We're off to our old stomping grounds for a family vacation in the Osaka/Kyoto area. Persephone and I met and got married there in the early 90s - we were both teaching English in the same school. (her the Australian variety, me the yankee doodle type).

I usually would spend the hour lesson playing games - wherein the kids competed against each other for points up on the whiteboard. We did have fun- but I'm not sure how much English was learned.

Anyway, we've got 4 rail passes and we're going to tour around and meet up with some old '90s friends- eating okonomiyaki and soaking it all in at some hotsprings.

Tickets were incredibly cheap. We're getting the 4 of us from the Gold Coast (just south of Brisbane) to Osaka and back for less than $1,800 US. Thanks JetStar.

We'll be gone for 2 weeks in total - and my presence here will be light. I debated trying to go without a laptop - but that's just crazy, so laptop and iPhone are both coming- though my connection will be dependent on the whims of WiFi.

I signed up with Hotmail soon after launch in the late 90s- I can't even remember my address now, it might have been "bhouston@hotmail.com" which was a pretty good one I thought.

We moved countries from Japan to the US, and it was invaluable to have an email address that was not tied to an ISP - a real innovation at the time.

Microsoft bought Hotmail while I was living in LA. I was using my work email as my primary email and sometimes didn't log into my Hotmail account for a week or so. Around the time that MS came up with the wonderful "Passport" feature of Hotmail- they decided to delete Hotmail accounts that have not been accessed for more than 14 days. I went over that limit.

We're planning a holiday to Japan now- I have friends there that I've lost because their address was in Hotmail - safe I thought.

I curse you Microsoft and your short-sighted corporate wankery. A pox on your software house.

I really like what a recent Ted Talk had to say about snobbery- and it made me think of my own run-in with it yesterday.

On my way to work I usually get off my bus in central Brisbane, get a coffee and walk the 15 minutes into Fortitude Valley. My brew of choice is a Starbucks Grande filter coffee with just a splash of milk. I get my coffee at Starbucks because it's just about the only place in Brisbane where you can get filter coffee (except McDonalds). Espresso rules Australia- I don't mind it, but I find all the milk of a latte or cappuccino too heavy. Brewed coffee suits me just right.

Anyway, I was feeling a bit peckish, so after getting my coffee, I stopped at this trendy little German bakery near Central Station called "Brot: Wicked European Bread" for a croissant to carry with me.

I put my Starbucks cup on the counter to get my money out and an older lady, who looked like an office worker in her 50s said - "Oh, Starbucks - don't let him set that there, it's the McDonalds of coffee".

The guy behind the counter replied "Yes, I call Starbucks 'The Crematorium'". They both had a good chuckle and I went away without saying anything witty, because I hadn't had my coffee yet.

But now I have the perfect reply to that old hag- I would say "I like women like you, the same way I like my coffee - cheap, bitter and operating in a predatory manner to destroy local coffee shops for greater corporate profits".

That would have showed her.

via

Finally got the new iPhone. I went for the 32 gig 3GS. I absolutely love it - but that was a forgone conclusion.

I need Apps recommendations. I can't stop downloading Apps until I personally finance Steve Jobs home renovation.

Google Analytics tells me we have reached 1.5 million visits a month - which is a level we've never hit before.

Total "Visits" is a little different from total "unique visits" which are just the total number of unique IP addresses for the month. I think a single visitor can have a few visits- based on an arbitrary time limit. So if you access at 9AM and then again at 2 PM - that's counted as two visits. Total number of unique visitors is now 1,195,000. Total number of pageviews is 3,117,558.

I recognise that humans don't like change as a general rule. It definitely holds true for me. The pathways in my gray matter are deeply etched, why would I want to un-etch them?

I have a particular way that I use VideoSift too- I bookmark most of the pages I frequent and go directly there.

In the next few weeks some significant changes will be brought in with 4.0. Although they may make VideoSift look pretty different from the community you love - I hope you'll give them a chance - and let new interesting grooves form in your brain. As I've always said VideoSift is about the people - and that's not changing.

We'll be taking feedback from testers and then everyone else after the general release. This community will continue to evolve and change with everyone's input and creative juices. I love that everyone who has ever worked on this site has bubbled up from the community - and that's no different for 4.0. It's going to be great.

In light of the current (yet eternal) flamewar- I wanted to confess the depth of my affiliation. Apple ][ 4ever.

Website traffic reading is fun and sometimes mysterious. Today alone, this post - received over 10K visits- but when I look at the sources of the traffic - it all looks like this:

mail.google.com
webmail.aol.com
facebook.com
us.mg2.mail.yahoo.com
us.mg4.mail.yahoo.com
us.mg201.mail.yahoo.com
webmail.att.net
co117w.col117.mail.live.com

Or, it shows in Google Analytics as "direct" traffic - which just means that it can't tell where it comes from.

My deduction is that it's from one of those mass forwarded email chains - and the "direct" would be from non-web mail clients like Outlook that don't supply a referrer.

For the month, this page alone has done 70k+ pageviews.



But it doesn't compare to this post which has done 94K pageviews for the month and has similar mail client source page stats.

Has anyone received one of these - what I can only assume are mass chain emails with VideoSift content? If so please let me know - I'd be curious to see what it's about.

I don't know about you - but I have never seen a Youtube overlay ad that I wanted to click on. The topics are often completely unrelated to the video - annnnd - I'm watching a video damn it - why I am going to click on this in the middle of my watching?

YouTube will be forced to start running 10-15 second post-roll video based "commercials". Mark my words - it's coming - and while it will be annoying for most of us, it will be much more effective from an advertising standpoint.

I don't own an iPhone and believe it or not I've never owned an iPod. However, my phone contract expires at the end of June and I'm looking forward to jumping in with both feet. Here's what I'm looking forward to the most:

Turn by turn GPS. Anyone who has driven with me knows that my sense of direction is poor. A couple of months ago I actually started driving on the wrong side of the road- honking at people assuming that they were on the wrong side. Silly American.

Decent video. I'm also poor at documenting those parental events. If it's not a birthday or Christmas- the chances of it being caught on video by me are slim. I'm hoping it will have good integration with Vimeo- as that's my video host of choice.

Decent photos. See above - I use Flickr.

Gmail / Google Docs / Analytics integration. I could ditch the laptop if I had good access to this.

VideoSift 4.0 integration - er, maybe. Though I know Flash video still hasn't happened. Anyone have any news on when it will? Seems weird as it's available on most other smartphones. I can only think that Apple is worried that it would cut into App store revenue.

An iPod. Seriously- never had one.

We've flirted around with the idea before- but I still like the idea of a 30 minute sift show that highlights the big posts of the week and other things going on around the Sift. With a roundtable panel of Sifters new and old.

First off, does anyone know of a good software solution for group video podcasts?

Secondly would you be interested in participating?

Here are the browser stats from Analytics for the month of May. Nice to see that Firefox has taken over from Internet Explorer - at least here on VideoSift.

And Ant, way to represent with Seamonkey, coming in at #10.