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.

While researching the meteoric rise of the fan-made Hot Hot Sex video to the top of YouTube’s charts, I tried to get in touch with its creator, Italian writer Clarus Bartel.

I sent him a message through his Flickr account, but he responded that he didn’t speak English, so I asked Philip Rogosky to do the honors. Here’s the first published interview with Clarus Bartel about his #1 video.

Translated from Italian

It all started with the Qoob music channel’s video contest. I didn’t participate in the contest, I just downloaded the footage in order to edit it and I added a different track. I cut out some scenes where they were singing, added some effects to the background, and then I uploaded it to YouTube.

Never would I have imagined that such an ugly video, made on a whim, would make it to the top of the charts. Believe me, even taking the iPod commercial effect into account, nothing can explain the absurd number of views. I get constant messages accusing me of being a hacker, when i barely know how to turn a computer on and off. Some people call me a genius, because I beat the system. Everyone is free to imagine me as they choose, however they prefer. Like the kid from Rome who keeps writing me because he’s convinced it’s all some kind of conspiracy!

The discrepancy between the number of comments and the views has to do with the fact that I’m deleting hundreds of insults I receive every day. But for the rest of this absurd occurrence, I have no explanation. I have as much of a clue as you do!

His original response:

Tutto nasce da un “Video Contest” del canale musicale QOOB Io no ho partecipato al concorso, ho solo scaricato le sequenze per il montaggio inserendo un’altra canzone. Ho fatto dei tagli eliminando le scene in cui cantavano, poi ho aggiunto qualche effetto per lo sfondo e di seguito ho inserito il video su youtube. Mai mi sarei aspettato che un video così orribile e creato in un momento di svago, arrivasse al numero uno della classifica.

Credimi, anche se fosse stato aiutato dalla pubblicità dell’Ipod, questo non spiega il suo impressionante numero di visualizzazioni. Mi arrivano continuamente messaggi di accuse perchè vengo scambiato per un Hacker, io che a malapena so accendere e spegnere il Computer. Alcuni pensano che io sia un genio che ha fregato il sistema. Ognuno mi vede è mi immagina come vuole, a suo piacimente, come quel ragazzo di Roma che mi scrive continuamente e che crede in una cospirazione!

La discrepanza del numero dei commenti e il numero di visualizzazioni e dovuto al fatto che ogni giorno devo cancellare un centinaio di insulti indirizzati a me.

Il resto di questa assurda vicenda non so spiegarla.

Ne so quanto te!

Strangeness

He definitely seems sincere. Though I still don’t believe that the video’s been viewed 4.2 million times in the last 24 hours, I doubt that he had anything to do with it. (This Google cache from 1am yesterday showed 84,883,762 views. At the time I published my post early this morning, it was at 89,174,590.) That growth seems extremely unlikely for a video that’s been around for 11 months, but who knows? It’s always possible that 65% of Brazil’s broadband users viewed it yesterday, but I doubt it.

Also, I noticed Clarus disabled ratings on the video this morning. This makes it difficult to discover how many ratings he’s received, which I can’t help but wonder about. I can understand why someone would turn off comments (moderating them can be a nightmare), but why turn off ratings? I can only think of two reasons why someone would turn off ratings: they’re unhappy with the ratings they’re receiving, or they don’t want the rating counts tracked.

Update: In a followup email, Clarus confirms that he disabled ratings by mistake, and he’ll turn them back on once YouTube ends their maintenance period tonight. Here’s the second part of the interview, translated into English:

What do you do for a living? Some of your photos are very good.

Thanks so much for your appreciation of my photos! I make my livelihood working in a factory. In my free time I listen to music, watch movies, and I take photos. For fun, I recut films and music videos, re-editing my versions.

You’ve been adding and removing references to Barack Obama in the CSS video title and description. Why?

I took advantage of the video’s visibility and added in “Vote Obama” because, even though I’m Italian, I’m following the American primaries closely and I hope to see an African-American in the White House.

I deleted the phrase because the primary voting is suspended for the moment. If, when another vote comes up, the video is still there at its rank, I’ll continue my support for Obama, adding the phrase back in if necessary.

When did you decide to turn off ratings?

I read the article on Waxy.org. I see there are still (legitimate) doubts about me. I disabled ratings by mistake, and only noticed late because for a while there YouTube was doing maintenance.

It bothers me to see that in this article, I’m passed off as a hacker.

Before disabling comments there had been 486 of them in 5 or 6 hours, almost all of them with the usual accusations of hacking, and some with variations such as black bastard, gay bastard, Brasilian bastard, and similar crap.

I started to seriously consider deleting this goddamned video, when finally this article came to my rescue, calming me down some (unless my crappy translation is fooling me).

Thank you, Clarus!

Yesterday, YouTube refreshed their leaderboards and a strange new video became the Most Viewed Video of All-Time, topping the world-famous Evolution of Dance video. With 89 million views, the new winner is a fan-made music video. But did it get there legitimately?

In early 2007, a popular Italian music community called Qoob.tv announced a contest for the Brazilian band CSS, in which fans could remix green-screen footage created by the band to create their own video for their song “Alcohol.” Instead, an Italian music blogger and photographer named Clarus Bartel remixed the “Alcohol” footage for a different song, Music Is My Hot Hot Sex, the song made famous by the iPod Touch ad. Update: See our interview with the video’s creator.

Since he uploaded the video to YouTube, it’s accumulated a staggering 89 million views, at an average 265,500 views per day. (Though, as you’ll see below, most of those viewers were in the last two months.) Not only would this make his video the most-viewed of all time, defeating runner-up The Evolution of Dance by over 12 million views, but it’s also added more views-per-day than any video but Britney’s latest single.

The commenters on the CSS video are baffled, many of them accusing foul play. I decided to look into it, to see if there was a method to determine if the number of views were somehow false.

One method of detecting suspicious view counts on YouTube would be to compare the ratio of social activity to the view count. If the number of ratings, comments, and favorites are much lower than other videos with similar views, then it’s possible that the numbers have been artificially inflated.

Using the YouTube API, I retrieved statistics for the top 500 videos. I chose to compare the number of ratings, because comments can be turned off or removed by video owners and the number of favorites was unavailable in the API. The spreadsheet is below.

Continue reading “New Video Overtakes "Evolution of Dance" for #1 Spot on YouTube” →

If you’re going to be in Austin this weekend for SXSW Interactive, you should come to “Worst Website Ever,” the session I’m leading on Saturday 5pm. Eight smart people will be proposing their worst possible web startup ideas in short 5-minute presentations, punctuated by questions and heckling by yours truly.

When it comes to geek conferences, I’m not a huge fan of panels and I have a very short attention span. So I proposed something unorthodox, and the voters apparently liked it. (With ten people speaking, I’m pretty sure this is the largest SXSW session ever.)

The speakers are some of the most interesting and/or talented people I know: Lane Becker, Jeffery Bennett, Ben Brown, Katie Spence, Michael Buffington, Lia Bulaong, David Friedman, and Merlin Mann. I’ll be playing ringmaster and badass MC, accompanied by August Capital’s David Hornik as honorary judge.

Did I mention it’s not a panel?

As for the rest of SXSW, my picks for daytime programming at the Interactive/Film conference are on Sched.org, and you’ll find many more unofficial parties and gatherings on Upcoming (mine here). Naturally, you can stalk me on Twitter. If you see me, say hi. Don’t be shy, life’s too short.

I’ll see you in Austin.