Visible Technologies’ platform helps brands to monitor the millions of posts and conversations on blogs, forums, YouTube, Twitter and other online forums. “There is a world full of countries with people who are in online chat rooms,” Tighe says. “They may talk about something important to national security issues, or maybe someone becomes concerned about what they hear in one of these rooms.”
In celebration of this purchase I would like to say hello to the CIA: 9/11, RaHoWa, Building 7, JFK, Area 51.
Surveillance camera footage recently uploaded to YouTube shows a person allegedly trying to break into cars at the Milltown Lofts in Reynoldstown on Aug. 9. The first video, filmed around 3:30 a.m., shows a man moseying through the parking lot and unsuccessfully trying to enter a black Toyota 4Runner.
Three hours later, the same man returns. He peers into the same car and then walks behind a silver pick-up truck. Several minutes later, the man is seen strolling past the camera and rolling a keyboard.
How many CEOs in the 1970s really had a putting green in their offices? How many still do?
Here’s a good look at the federal government’s vaccination program that was rolled out when the last — first? — swine flu outbreak occurred in that glorious year. Here’s a review of the program released by the CDC.
I don’t think there’s a bigger productivity-killer/mood-enhancer than a serious YouTubing binge, and to celebrate our Happy Issue, the CL staff collected these classics to put a fat smile in your face. Enjoy :)
As part of its environmental study, Beltline officials are soliciting public input as to how the 22-mile loop of parks, trails and transit should take shape. A full list of meeting dates and locations is available in this post.
Officials last week released 14 short videos that show examples of the options under consideration for the project’s parks, trails and transit components, among other thing. They’re all in the player embedded below. To view the different videos, press play and move your mouse icon to the left or right along the bottom of the screen.
UPDATE: After the jump, the Beltline “fly-through” video.
In honor of Presidents Day, here are two clips in celebration of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. The first, an animated (and I use the term loosely) video about the awesomeness of the Father of our Country. It’s hilarious and very unsafe for work:
It’s difficult to imagine a person less suited to making important public policy decisions than state Rep. Charlice Byrd, R-Woodstock.
This is because Byrd, a former elementary school teacher, is 1. a poorly informed reactionary, 2. an ultra-partisan ideologue, and 3. a complete idiot.
I feel I can say all this with authority after watching her new YouTube diatribe, in which she duplicates a speech she delivered from the House well on Friday.
Like the Gilda Radner SNL character Roseanne Roseannadanna – only much, much sadder – Byrd has no idea what she’s talking about. She’s outraged that Georgia’s public universities offer “special-interest classes” on such topics as “male prostitution, queer theory and oral sex.”
First there was “Soulja Girl.” Now, meet “mugging gone wrong.”
A video in which a young man in a MARTA station appears to turn the tables on a would-be mugger is the latest slice of drama to hit YouTube. Early in the morning on May 3, 2008, a station security camera captured the following footage (I’ve loaded the victim’s video of the event, which includes his comments):
Steven Soderbergh’s four-and-a-half-hour film Che, starring Benicio del Toro as famed revolutionary Che Guevara, opens today. Much of the two-part film involves Guevara and his fellow rebels marching, fighting and training in the jungles of Cuba and Bolivia. It proves oddly reminiscent of this clip, which probably isn’t what Soderbergh and del Toro had in mind:
Late Saturday night, a Grant Park couple’s home burned for 25 minutes before firefighting crews arrived. Officials are probing why it took the City of Atlanta 911 call center so long to relay the message to fire crews. A computer malfunction has hindered the department’s ability to determine the exact time the 911 call was received.
Below is a video of the fire posted on YouTube by the couple’s neighbor.
<< Jennifer Aniston, in full on midlife crisis mode, poses nude for GQ. And, of course, talks about Brangelina again. Because, really, why else is she relevant?
Monday, The Daily Dish, The Vulture and Alejandro all drew my attention to A BeTaMaXMaS. I’m clearly behind the times to be posting it today (but yesterday I just had to plug Silent Night, Deadly Night). Anyway, dressed up to look like a basement rec room, the site uses Youtube to simulate different channels during the pre-cable era, and they’re all showing holiday programming (including vintage commercials). The attention to detail is spot-on: you can fiddle with the antennae to improve the “reception,” you can adjust the settings with the old-school remote control, and to find out what’s currently playing, when you click on the TV Guide logo, an exact imitation of a magazine’s program guide style pops up. While most holiday nostalgia tends to focus on entertainment from before the 1970s, the BetamaXmas aims primarily at the kitschy 1980s. It’s a great chance to randomly hear, say, Pee-Wee Herman exclaim, “Hey! It’s Little Richard on ice!” It also offers an opportunity to waste a massive, massive amount of time on the Internet. So check it out, won’t you?
Georgia Public Service Commission Democratic candidate Jim Powell — who faces Republican Lauren “Bubba” McDonald in the Dec. 2 runoff — has a new online-only ad up on YouTube. (If YouTube ain’t your thang, Grift has it on Vimeo.)
Gotta love the floating “Bubba” heads coming out of smokestacks.
Burglars, beware. Big Brother — or at least a fancy surveillance system — is watching.
Atlantans are fighting back against break-ins by publicizing videos of the culprits. The latest: A brief snippet of a guy who attempted to break into an Adair Park home using two shovels. The man is believed to be responsible for a dozen burglaries in the neighborhood.
The Internets can be an effective crime-fighting tool for those who can’t wait for John Walsh to call.
On Monday, Dan and Alyssa Kopp of Grant Park were victims of a break-in that cost them their flat-screen TV, a laptop and a digital camera. However, their home security camera had caught the entire burglary on video, showing the three thieves and their SUV in high definition.
They posted the video to YouTube on Tuesday, alerted some friends and within a few hours they’d received calls from us, the AJC and several TV news crews. By 5 p.m., the video of the smash-and-grab burglary had been watched by more than 5,000 people, some of whom posted tips.
On Thursday, according to the AJC, police acting on one such tip raided a house in South DeKalb, where they found eight stolen flat-screen televisions, three laptop computers and several digital cameras. Six suspects, all in their 20s, were arrested.
With just days left before votes are to be counted, Barack Obama is rolling out a new ad about the economy that’s slated to air in Georgia and North Dakota .
Earlier today, a friend sent me a YouTube link that scared the crap outa me. In the 90-second video, an SUV pulls up to a house, three guys come onto the back porch, peer through the windows, and then one of them kicks in the door. A few seconds later, they carry a large flat-screen TV out to the SUV and take off.
The reason I had such a strong reaction to the video is because it was taken by surveillance camera at a house in Grant Park a few blocks from mine. I’ve been hearing about these smash-and-grab robberies around the neighborhood for months now, but it’s unnerving to actually watch one in action.
Imagine, then, how unnerving the event was for Dan and Alyssa Kopp, the owners of the burglarized home.
Alyssa says the couple decided to install the video surveillance system when their house was unoccupied during a lengthy renovation earlier this year. Dan, a computer engineer, pulled the burglary footage off a hard drive and edited it down from four minutes.
The couple posted the video online and sent it to friends. As of late afternoon, it had been seen by nearly 2,000 YouTube visitors. So far, the Kopps have been contacted by us, the AJC and several local TV stations. Such is the power of the internets.
Alyssa has been pleasantly surprised by the speed of the response. Even as we talked on the phone, friends were sending her messages about a similar burglary video from East Atlanta, also on YouTube. Website visitors have posted comments speculating on the identity of the thieves.
The crime occurred around 10 a.m. Monday. The burglars were in the house for less than 30 seconds. In addition to the TV, they stole a laptop and a digital camera, Alyssa says. The police dusted for prints and took a report, but Alyssa sounds more optimistic about leads coming out of the video posting.
“I’d rather not get our stuff back, and have them catch these guys so they stop terrorizing the neighborhood,” she says.
— The final debate between Johnny Mac and “that one” is in our rear-view mirror and Amy at Georgia Women Vote agrees with scores of pundits who think J-Mac came across as a pissed-off old codger.
— And Paula at Blog For Democracy has the best, and funniest, analogy I’ve yet to see. Plus a cool video to bring it home.
— DownRight makes the observation that conservatives are wondering how Obama is managing to pull ahead or pull close in most of the battleground states. One reason is J-Mac has run a bad campaign. But it’s also because the media has a man crush on Obama.
— Duane Moody usually writes about his favorite songs of the week on Fridays, and often includes a YouTube video. He’s angry because record labels are making YouTube take a lot of the music videos down, which is wrong-headed greed at work. One report I saw talked about a couple who videoed their three-year-old dancing to a song, and posted a 30-second snippet so their friends and family could check it out. The record label claimed the video violated copyrights. Now that’s just dumb.
— Speaking of which, Left On Lanier writes about a “pro-life day of silent solidarity” that was allowed in several local high schools this week. Essentially, if you’re against abortion, you don’t say a word all day. But what if the teacher calls on you to read your English essay to the class?
Today’s Air Loaf features CL’s Chanté LaGon and Curt Holman chatting about online cinema, including the documentary Slacker Uprising and the YouTube flick The Princess of Nebraska.
Air Loaf is broadcast weekdays on 1690 WMLB-AM at approximately 8:10 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 6:20 p.m.
Andisheh just pointed out to me that Sarah Palin told Katie Couric the other day that she reads Creative Loafing. I’m excited that a potential vice president “established her worldview” by reading our paper, as well as by reading dailies like the New York Times and Pravda.
I don’t think Abbott and Costello were Creative Loafing employees back in the day. But at least they understood the confusion that our name can create:
In my time here, CL’s been mistaken for a bakers’ magazine and furniture periodical. When I was a reporter, I had a hard time explaining the name to, say, serious business or political sources in New York or Washington; they’d start cracking up and wouldn’t take me seriously. But Roger Brown, a former writer here who started the Blotter, used to tell the best story of anyone: He swears that a farmer he was interviewing heard the name and translated it in his mind to “the Casual Relaxer.”
