This is pretty darned handy 

Embedded media HTML generator from UCSF. Worked a treat for me for a .wmv file for work I was flubbing up.

Eyeballs: the more the better? 

Stephan Tual got it right about Digg's audience in a comment on 1938 Media. (Yeah, I'm still watching; I don't want to like Feldman, but the guy's compelling.) "They chose their community a long time ago," Tual said in a comment. "They could have filtered out the pre-teens and the ‘me too’ crowd. They could have catered to the slashdot exiles instead, and deal a deadly blow to the leading tech sites. Instead they decided to go for ‘as many users as possible, as fast as possible.’"

I can see how it would have been painful to prune the traffic early on. Why mess with success and at the same time dampen the thrill of the big numbers. Kudos to Digg for doing something new (or at least creating a sharp new tangent to an established idea). I hope they'll be able to get some reward from their efforts and innovation, but that's not how it usually works. Future imitators got free lessons. They'll choose their audiences and probably cash in for more than the pioneers.

Astroturfing has come into its own! 

Speaking of videoblog stars, I notice Amanda Condgon's show lost its permanent place on the redesigned ABC News site's home page.

ABC is trying really hard to tap into the consumer-as-contributor vibe, but like so many companies jumping on the bandwagon, not just media companies, something feels artificial about it. True netizens have built-in radar for astroturfing. Yeah, astroturf has come of age, and into its own; it's not just for PR agencies any more!

When I see things like this I always wonder why a company like ABC doesn't just partner with an established grassroots site. When I look at the brochures about magazine conferences we can't afford to attend at work, I wonder the same thing. The panels for these conference sessions are always filled with magazine people telling other magazine people how to "engage the online user" when they could learn more from listening to and working with independent sites that have already done it authentically.

Is it arrogance? Partly, maybe. I don't like to join the chorus of those who sing "they don't get it," because that's arrogant in itself. Plus, the indictment is sung so often that I think it's becoming an instant turnoff to folks outside the choir. Nobody wants to listen to insults, and "you don't get it" is a pretty stinging and generalized insult. Like persuasive political writing, you don't effect progress by dissing the people whose minds you want to change. I need to remember that more myself when I get incensed about something and shoot off my keyboard/mouth. Unchecked indignation: that's both the charm of blogs and the blogger's Achilles heel.