Thoughtful Preparations: Media Spin Blog

Recently upgraded to Cleaner 6.5 and have enjoyed putting its batch video compression features to work gradually updating and adding to Media Spin’s online QuickTime movies. The most recent addition are an expanded assortment of 3-D animations done awhile back for a science series on The Five Senses.

The animation clips have no audio narrative tracks, so I’ve referred to online research sources such as Wikipedia to fill in some text description for each clip. I’ve had fun adding descriptions such as this one for taste,

“Our sense of taste according to an expert taste researcher, is to decide if food in the mouth should be swallowed or spit out.”

In case you missed the Super Bowl XL commercials, they are posted at Google’s video site. Budweiser sponsored enough ads to assure a couple of winners, and my favorite was the follow-up to the previously aired and beautifully photographed Clydesdale horses lining up for a football scrimmage and being referreed by a zebra. In this one, a shaved sheep bursts on the scene, interupting the game, and two cowpokes comment, “Streaker.” Silly pink lamb animation adds to the fun. Also good was the suburban Bud guys telling their wives they were working on the roof, and then setting up roof top parties. The Burger King “Whopperettes” was great silly fun. A couple of big monster CG ads by FedEx and Hummer were good, but more weird than funny. My worst ad choices are the Pepsi themed ads, especially the Hip Hop one. Really weak. The Cadillac Escalade fashion model runway mix should make anyonewho owns one who isn’t already embarrassed, truly ashamed. I suspect most Escalade owners lack shame anyway.

In the end I felt the luster of the Super Bowl ads had tarnished a bit. Less great ads, more blah blah car and TV promo ads. It looks like the Super Bowl is headed the way of the Miss America pageant, like who cares?

Google Maps Mania, an unofficial Google Maps blog, was recently covered in an NPR news story. The site has many cool links to individual interests based on locations.

A related site, Google Sightseeing, is themed around collecting eye catching satellite photographs.

Yahoo’s new Flash-based maps also have an API that can be accessed and customized, as seen at the Programmable Web blog. Yahoo is also developing a Local Events browser based on their maps, as described by a Yahoo! developer’s blog. Other Yahoo map users linked their videos to locations.