Virginia school district's screening of Eyes on the Prize shut down
— the copyright holder is as clueless as the copyright laws preventing its distribution #Wired News on folksonomies
— yet another in a long line of Terdiman articles quoting people I know #Coachella 2005 lineup announced
— strange that bands like Sloan and Spoon are buried in the lineup via Jason Cosper #Charting the sharing frequency of Del.icio.us links
— raises the question of researching Del.icio.us point of entry via Delicious #Video: Mashup of "Paperback Writer" and "I'm a Believer"
— fan-made music video matched to GHP’s flawless mashup #Register UK's interview with a comment spammer
— nothing new here, but it’s good to know thy enemy via Delicious #TiVo launches Home Media Engine SDK
— PVRBlog is hosting a gallery of apps, and TiVo is running a programming contest #Make a Life Poster with iPhoto
— a 20″x30″ collage of 98 photos, printed by Kodak for $29 via David Ely #Video: Gene Kelly breakdancing in VW Golf commercial
— great editing, but crass exploitation of the dead via Ben Hammersley #Video: IBM's The Information Machine
— animated film directed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1958, with an Elmer Bernstein score via Things Magazine #Steven Johnson's semantic research system
— desktop and web search tools need this functionality via Ethan Marcotte #Hands-on preview of Katamari Damacy 2
— with two videos of gameplay from the classroom demo via Delicious #Del tha Funkee Homosapien performs at the Dreamcast launch party in 1999
— don’t miss the video of Del performing the gaming-focused song “Proto Culture” via Delicious #Angie Hart on the bitter breakup and new reunion of Frente!
— there’s a new song up on Myspace, but it just doesn’t have the same sense of wonder #Matt Biddulph made two new Del.icio.us hacks
— a tool that detects similarly-named tags, and a Firefox extension that embeds Del.icio.us into the BBC website via Delicious #A9.com on The O.C.
If you’ve been following my Links page lately, you’ll know that I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the new Block View search for A9 and Amazon Yellow Pages. Amazon photographed virtually every street-level business in Los Angeles, among other cities, and it’s a very fun toy to play around with.
More recently, A9.com was mentioned in a small bit of awkward dialogue on Thursday night’s episode of The O.C. Waxy reader Eric Vaughan went to the trouble of finding and editing the clip. Watch it below, and judge for yourself:
theoc_a9com.avi (3.7MB, Windows Media)
Even though this appeared to be a clear example of paid product placement, A9.com’s CEO denies that it was paid for or that they knew anything about it.
This seems very unlikely, especially considering A9’s somewhat-obscure status in the non-geek world, the timing of the episode with recent publicity, and The O.C.’s use of the full domain name instead of simply “A9.” (Has anybody ever used/heard the term “A9.com’d” before?) I don’t even particularly care about the product placement, but I don’t like attempts at covering it up.
One way to settle the issue would be to contact Allan Heinberg, the writer of that episode, or any of the producers. I’ll try to do some research on Monday, but please e-mail me if you know anyone that might be able to help.
February 21, 2005: I have two reliable sources that confirm that A9 was not even aware of the O.C reference before its broadcast.
