The second in my series of Internet Videos from the VHS Era was contributed by James Burke. Here’s what he said about it:

“I enjoyed the Internet Power VHS tape and dug up an old VHS tape from my old school district. It’s a 20-minute video from June 1995 that discusses the district’s technology plan with lots of funny and archaic technology and it’s an interesting look at a school district that was on the cutting edge back in the mid nineties.”

After watching the whole film, it’s clear this public school district was way ahead of their time. Some of the video was a bit fluffy, so I edited the original video to focus on the technology and screen captures.

Josh Lake’s awesome homepage. Dig that big blue throbber on Netscape 1.0.

A breathless 3rd grader checks her email before learning about “Netscaping and writing our own homepages.”

Searching Webcrawler in Netscape 2.0.

The Clinton-era Whitehouse homepage in Netscape 1.0.

The sexy Netscape homepage, with interlaced GIF banner.

Telnet in Windows 3.1. The only PC in this video.

A pile of US Robotics modems jammed into holes in a cardboard box for dial-in network access.

Mildly-creepy student profiling application.

IP address as official URL. Charming!

“This is not language. This chart is a fucking lie.”
Anil Dash, Battledecks 2008

A few years ago, I wrote an entry about knee-jerk contrarians on the Internet: those delightful people who find fault in anything and everything, dismissing months or years of work with a few words.

This is nothing new. It’s as old as communication itself. I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, “Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.”

In the modern age, we’ve found a much more efficient way to express disdain, distilled into only four letters: FAIL. This usage as a standalone interjection has been around for years, since at least 2003, but its recent explosion in popularity comes from 4chan and the Lolcats memes. Dedicated blogs like FAIL Blog, Shipment of FAIL and Fail Dogs further spread the meme.

On Twitter, the conservation of space combined with a meme-savvy audience creates a perfect storm for spreading FAIL. With only 140 characters, it’s not surprising that people have taken to using this often as a shorthand for longer criticism.

Here’s a recent example from Chris Messina (who hopefully won’t mind me picking on him):

factoryjoe: @skitch Nice Twitter + Email integration, but where’s the OAuth?? FAIL!

Obviously, Chris adores Skitch. It’s the best screenshot application ever made, he uses it constantly, and evangelized it to friends (I found out about it from him, in fact). I’m sure he intended it as a gentle ribbing, but the message is pretty straightforward: Skitch has failed because it doesn’t support an emerging standard he feels strongly about. Pretend you’re one of the Skitch developers, and compare the original to this slight reworking:

@skitch Nice Twitter + Email integration! I’d love OAuth support, too.

Part of the problem is that “FAIL” implies objective truth, when it’s just your personal opinion. Tantek Çelik pointed out that, in LOLspeak, “DO NOT WANT” would be more appropriate since it clearly conveys a personal opinion.

I know many people who make stuff for the web, all of them very passionate about what they do. And every time I see a “FAIL” assigned to their work, it makes me sad. Yes, I know you’re trying to be funny. But I’m starting to see a trend away from the funny, and towards the angry, bitchy, or mean. So please, mind yer words.</missmanners>

24 Hours of FAIL on Twitter

The following is a small sampling of tweets mentioning “fail,” pulled from this Tweetscan search. Among the failures in the last day or so: Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Gmail, and Scrubs.

petroldarling: Oh my god. Metrotransit’s website is made of fail. In reality, the 84 stopped running an HOUR AGO. Now I am stuck in Midway.

nikete: facebook lacks a way to search the messages in your inbox. FAIL

jremsikjr: hulu.com FAIL! They cut out of full screen video to take me to the sponsors website at a commercial break 🙁

DjDATZ: skype = fail.

madpilot: Paypal development sandbox allows you to send payments to accounts that don’t exist. FAIL

93octane: top chef dumbass can’t follow directions. FAIL

rv510: San Francisco protest —–> FAIL

boyafraid: Twitter is currently looking broken. Word wrap/line breaking has experienced epic FAIL.

CocoaSamurai: I can’t rent “I am Legend”? iTMS FAIL

AndrewTerry: YouTube on iPod Touch; wotta lotta fail….

jkestr: you would think a movie called blackjack would come out on the 21st rather then the 28th. Marketing dept: fail.

nrturner: Safari 3.1 is *still* using the blue ‘RSS’ icon that looks like ‘ass’ in the address bar. Fail!

montythestrange: Google Mail spam filter in EPIC FAIL mode again.

px: BofA is really good at sales I suppose. But when it comes to training their employees in regards to the issues I am facing they FAIL.

rob_ballou: not allowing symbols in passwords = FAIL

sambrown: Billings only uses my System Preferences currency settings? I can’t change it per project? What a waste of time that was. *sigh* Major Fail.

aeoth: Oh I’m loving VicLink today. I want croydon -> mt waverley, it gives me Scorsby -> mt w. NOT EVEN CLOSE. EPIC FAIL

bobthecow: kronos webapp standards compliance FAIL.

tdcool: UK broadband = fail

ferhr: Used a 15 year old /usr/share/X11 over a 2007 one. Total FAIL. Gnome/gtk is really a fragile piece of software.

Pistachio: Oh FAIL. Quickbooks online does not run on a mac. MUAH, Quicken. I love you too.

ourfounder: Valve software requires you to update your warez very very slowly before you delete them. “Fail!”

dosminos: Friday Night Lights pilot – win, Scrubs pilot – fail. Supernatural and One Tree Hill pilots – maybe.

mjjames: Visual studio doesnt use jsdoc it uses its xml way. Fail

stevefleischer: very hazy and smoggy in HK today. Air has an orangy tinge to it. Mainland fatctories EPIC FAIL.

muffinresearch: No seats what a pile of FAIL

ndw: The Scala beginner’s guide is a PDF? FAIL

knufflebunneh: I have a prediction for 2008: you fail.

After weeks of criticism from YouTube commenters, the creator of the popular fan-made “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” video finally pulled it offline. (It’s still mirrored here.)

On March 7, YouTube administrators removed it from its #1 spot on the rankings while they investigated it. Apparently, no foul play was detected and it was reinstated. Stephen Hutcheon from the Sydney Morning Herald has more on the story, including a screenshot from the leaderboard on the day it was removed.

It’s hard to get a sense of the scale, which roused suspicions in the first place. To put it in perspective, in the seven days from March 7-13, the CSS video gained 17 million new views. That’s more views than this week’s top 20 videos received, combined.

In one week, the CSS video got nearly as many views as the insanely huge Crank That (Souljah Boy) received in 7 months. It was six times as popular as Mariah Carey’s new video, in half the time. More popular in a week than the all-time views for Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab,” Tay Zonday’s “Chocolate Rain” or Chris Crocker’s “Leave Britney Alone.”

Assuming YouTube’s numbers are accurate, what was the mystery source of traffic? Now that the video is gone, I don’t think we’ll ever know. There have been a number of theories, but none of them really pan out.

• Popular search terms like “hot sex” and “obama.” Unlikely, since the video never ranked well with those queries. Searching for “sex” or “hot sex” didn’t return the video anywhere in the top 100 results.
• Social network embeds. It’s still possible that there’s a single source of traffic from an embedded video on an extraordinarily popular website on autoplay. If so, it’s managed to evade YouTube’s referral tracking, while still getting counted in views.
• Leaderboard traffic. Once in the top 10, could traffic have snowballed from people clicking from the all-time most viewed page? No, since the video gained an additional 25 million views in the week it was removed from the leaderboard. Also, other videos in the top 5 only saw a small fraction of the growth.
• Chinese users. Someone noted that Chinese users watch YouTube, but won’t (or can’t) sign in to rate/review/comment. Could they be coming from China?
• Buzz from the iPod Touch ad. That might make sense in the days following the original commercial’s release last October, but the video’s growth was highest in the last two months.

Rajeev Kadam from Divinity Metrics, a company that provides video metrics for media companies, got in touch with me and provided these historical stats for the CSS video for the last five weeks. Here’s a chart of that data, or you can see the spreadsheet.

Philip Rogosky asked Clarus Bartel why he removed the video. Clarus reminded Philip that he’d contemplated deleting it before, but his friends advised him to wait to see if it would reappear on the leaderboard, clearing his reputation. At that point, he decided to delete it only because of the critical comments he was receiving on his other videos.

Asked how he felt when he pressed “delete,” Bartel responded, “Sad but relieved! If only I’d earned a buck or two or a job offer, I’d feel different today.”

Lately, I’ve started collecting old VHS tapes about the Internet from the early- to mid-1990s. While most of these are pretty corny — think Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing — they also inadvertently captured pieces of the web that don’t exist anywhere else. The Internet Archive’s earliest snapshots were in late 1996, so anything before that is extremely sparse. The videos, silly as they are, still represent valuable documentation of the early web.

I spent most of the day yesterday working on a workflow to digitize VHS tapes, settling on VCR to MiniDV camera my Macbook Pro with Firewire. These tapes are pretty worn, so the quality’s not great, but that almost adds to their charm.

Here’s the result: the first volume of a two-tape collection called “Internet Power!” from 1995. I’ve included some select quotes and screenshots below.

Internet Power – Discover the World of Online Entertainment (00:36)

“The explosive growth in the number of people who have discovered the power of the Internet for learning, marketing and just plain having fun has been incredible. The Internet is changing the way we learn, work, and play forever. Today, some 35 to 40 million people from around the world are linked together through the Internet, the world’s largest computer network. Students of all ages are discovering the online power of the Internet as the ultimate tool for learning. Whether you’re in grade school or college or beyond, or you just want to be entertained and have a good time, the Internet has something for everyone.”

I love the Windows 3.1 references, and that they used 8-Ball Pool for Windows to demonstrate the power of the Internet.

“But before we go too far, let’s take a moment and have a look at just what the Internet is and what it takes to start surfing through Cyberspace. You may already be a net surfer and you may want to skip this section, but if you’re just starting out, we suggest you spend a few minutes getting familiar with some of the most common Internet terms.”

Dig that mid-1990s design aesthetic. Grey background, huge 3D rendered header graphic, Times New Roman italic, centered text… It’s 1995, all right.

“You’ll need a device to access the online world. That device is a Computer, with at least 386 power and 8 megabytes of RAM and has a modem installed that has 14.4 or greater speed or ‘baud rate.’ And of course, access to a phone line. If you have a slower modem, you will not be able to enjoy the growing multimedia aspects of the Internet, such as graphics, sound, and video.”

“You will also need a connection to the Internet that connects your computer to the millions of other computers that make up this Superhighway of Information.”

A number of vintage ISPs and screenshots are included, followed by an interview with a Microsoft tech named Bret Arsenault. Bret’s the only person interviewed in the video, as the resident expert.

“Any of the online services, such as America Online, will provide you with a connection to the Internet, along with a navigation tool called a Browser which enables you to move from location to location anywhere in the world.”

The browser pictured is AIR Mosaic, provided with Spry’s Internet in a Box.

“Parents concerned about unwanted content may want to sign up with a major online service where you can be assured that their own content is filtered, and then have your child advise you when they’re going directly onto the World Wide Web and provide parental supervision as required. There are software packages in development that will assist parents in locking out unwanted Internet content in the future.”

“The Internet has been around since the 1960s, but it was the development of the Mosaic browser in 1933 at the University of Illinois that made it possible to simply point and click your way to information that not only contained text, but also graphics. Now the average person can enjoy the full potential of the Internet, and especially, the fastest-growing part of the Internet called the World Wide Web.”

Yes, he said 1933. Apparently, the launch of Mosaic ushered in the Great Depression. Some nice shots of the original Smithsonian site, and a basic explanation of the Web by Arsenault and the narrator. How did you describe the Web in 1995?

“A Web site is like a book that is divided into chapters. By clicking on the hypertext links, you choose which pages you want to view in the book. A Home Page is like the first page of the book, with a Table of Contents and general introduction into what is contained in the site.”

Next comes a brief introduction to domain names, FTP, Usenet, Gopher, and email, before launching into the next section: Search Engines.

“When it comes to fun and entertainment, the power of the Internet is unlimited!”

Search Engines (08:04)

“To get started, we have to sift through the vast amounts of information on the Internet and find what we need. The best way to do this is by using one of the many Search Engines available. These sites gather the information that is out there and categorize it so we can narrow our search. One popular site to do this is called Yahoo!”

The list of search engines on the slide is a great flashback. “Web Crawler, Lycos, Einet, WWW Worm, Yahoo, Info Seek, Savvy Search… and More”

“Normally, these sites would take a few seconds to load to your computer, but in the interest of time, we’re cutting to them through editing for the purposes of this video.”

Later, they cover a long-lost site called “The Weatherman,” where you email your trip profile and a nice guy named George Gatto emails you a weather forecast by hand. I can’t imagine that’d scale very well.

Gopher (12:04)

“Gophers can be a one-stop source for finding information on the Internet. This particular site has many categories to choose from. Let’s keep our same subject, weather, to see how this differs from our Yahoo! search.”

Shopping (13:20)

“The Internet has thousands of sites for shopping and many of them are grouped together in large Internet Malls… Let’s try a different search engine this time. We’ll use another popular one called Webcrawler.”

“Let’s choose one… The Mega Internet Shopping List sounds promising!”

I could go on all night. Later, they cover Online Games (16:36) and Online Entertainment (20:42), but the Online Magazines section (25:35) is my favorite, with screengrabs of Hotwired, Nintendo Power, and the craziest sitemap ever from a very early Time.com.

“You’ve got a lot of exploring to do, so surf wisely and have a great time!”

URL Addresses for Websites We Visited (27:35)

The Smithsonian, http://www.si.edu/

The Discovery Channel Online, http://www.discovery.com

The Weatherman, http://pixi.com/~gattoga/index.html

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Online, http://rockhall.com

Hollywood Online, http://www.hollywood.com

America Online, http://www.aol.com

Yahoo!, http://www.yahoo.com

The Internet Mall, http://www.mecklerweb.com:80/imall

The Toystore, http://www.toystore.com

Nintendo of America Online, http://www.nintendo.com

Happy Puppy Game Site, http://www.happypuppy.com

3D Riddler, http://cvs.anu.edu.au/andy/rid/riddle.html

CBS, http://www.cbs.com

NBC, http://www.nbc.com

PBS, http://www.pbs.com

ESPN, http://www.espnet.sportszone.com

Hotwired, http://www.hotwired.com

Time, http://www.timeinc.com

Price Costco Online, http://www.pricecostco.com

Credits (28:15)

Where are they now? Paul Barnett was Internet Power’s executive producer and it was produced, directed, and edited by Steve Ducharme — they later co-founded another company, the Internet broadcaster iShow. Bret Arsenault, originally an “Architectural Engineer, Internet Technology,” is now Microsoft’s Chief Security Advisor. (Here’s a recent webcast featuring Bret.)

Fun with VHS

Now that I’ve nailed the workflow, I’m going to be digitizing more of my collection. If you have any other classic Internet goodness locked up on VHS, get in touch. I’ll happily put it online for you.

Yesterday’s Worst Website Ever session was standing-room only and judging from the response, it was a hit.

Once I can get a copy of the audio from the talk, I’ll upload a screencast of the entire session with the original slides. Until then, here are the descriptions of each pitch.

Jeffery Bennett, Image Search for the Blind

Image search is fundamentally broken, only allowing sighted people to use it for entertainment and research. But what about those who can’t see? Jeffery shows how harnessing the collective vision of users can describe and annotate images for use by the blind.

Michael Buffington, Pressca.st

Bloggers have been used as a powerful promotional tool, but finding bloggers willing to sell themselves out for cash takes too long! Michael demonstrates a better way that combines the worst of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and PayPerPost. Upload your press release, deposit funds with Paypal, and Turkers around the globe will instantly blog about your crappy product for pennies on the dollar. Evil!

Ben Brown & Katie Spence, Happy Net Box

Facebook broke new ground in allowing developers to create applications for their website, and the OpenSocial effort took it to the next level by allowing anyone to embed applications anywhere. Ben & Katie propose a groundbreaking new open platform: allowing developers to embed the entire Internet in your webpage with a single line of code. Don’t settle for a single application — embed the whole damn thing.

David Friedman, PeopleIPO

Take yourself public with an Individual Public Offering through PeopleIPO, allowing anyone to buy or sell shares in you! Watch as your personal life events affect your stock price, but be careful not to sell a majority stake in yourself — or you might become a slave to your shareholders.

Lia Bulaong, Sickr

The social network for contagious diseases, where online communities go viral. See who’s spread chlamydia, clap, or the common cold to their social network using a convenient Facebook badge, or just try to get to the top of the leaderboard with poor hygiene and/or risky sex. Fun for the whole family!

Merlin Mann, FlockdUp

FlockdUp.com is a best-of-breed hosted solution for networking Thought Leaders. Our Enterprise-class suite of tools empowers Topic Experts, Blog Consultants, Marketing Minds, and Social Mediapreneurs to tag, profile, remix, mash-up, *and* monetize every person that they know (or claim to know — we’re not here to judge). We understand that your career is hard to explain, and most people wouldn’t understand it anyway. That’s why FlockdUp does the heavy lifting with robust, integrated applications for connecting you directly to the thousands of enterprising mavericks whose email addresses you’ve collected. That’s right: Leading with Thoughts(tm). Sign-up today for very limited, private pre-Alpha at FlockdUp.com.

Lane Becker, MMOmmerce

The next generation of shopping, from the comfort of your very own fully immersive fantasy universe. Think Kozmo meets World of Warcraft: from clicks and mortar to clicks and Mordor, rampant consumerism becomes rampaging consumerism. All without leaving your desk!

The winner, as decided by guest VC/judge David Hornik, was Merlin Mann’s FlockdUp, followed closely by Jeffery Bennett’s Image Search for the Blind. Here’s a video of Merlin’s talk, courtesy of Roo Reynolds. Thank you so much to all the presenters and everybody who attended.

April 15: Jeffery Bennett’s footage from the audience is now available on Vimeo. I’m waiting for the official podcast audio from SXSW, and I’ll edit together a presentation with the original slides.