YouTube is certainly a company that has plenty of resources at their disposal: so why do they feel the need to so closely emulate Pixelodeon with both their site design and video elements for their new Project: Direct video competition? Take a look at the examples below:

Steve Woolf has a great writeup about the whole thing over on his blog. As a curator for this past year’s Pixelodeon, it irks me to see a company like YouTube stick it to the people who have gone to great lengths to support and promote online video talent. As Steve says:

…I find it hard to believe that the YouTube designers were not aware of Pixelodeon, since we had a number of prominent YouTubers attend, and in fact we had an entire screening dedicated to YouTube (embedded above).

We created a strong brand, and YouTube appears to be “borrowing” concepts that can potentially create confusion between the two events. The chances are very remote that this is a coincidence.

I don’t know, it seems pretty jerky. This kind of thing does happens on the web pretty often from a design and concept standpoint, but not usually in a situation where two entities aren’t competing in any way. Pixelodeon promoted YouTubers; they shouldn’t get ripped off because of it.

Maybe they’re spending so much of Google’s money on legal fees that they couldn’t afford a good design team.

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Apparently while I was gone, eMusic started selling DRM-free audiobooks from Random House. This is fantastic news, considering the vice-like grib that Audible has on the audiobook market, both on their own site and via iTunes. I discovered this when I went to eMusic to kill some of my 40 downloads a month, and attempted to get Carl Hiaasen’s Nature Girl (I loved his last book, Skinny Dip).

Then the big “BUT” hit me (hehe…): You have to add an additional $9.99 audiobook subscription to your account to get them, and it’s only good for one book a month! I’m already paying $15 a month for my downloads, why can’t they just subtract 20 or 30 downloads from me for the book and call it a day? Can’t I even have that as an option? I don’t usually use all my music downloads and I would love to try some of their books, but I’m not ready to fork over another $10 a month.

It’s still a better deal than iTunes, where most books are anywhere from $10-$25, but I don’t want to be locked into a subscription for books when frankly I won’t be downloading one every month. Maybe I’m missing some vital piece of information, or a trick to have it taken from my current downloads, but I don’t think so.

As an aside, I used the audiobook of iWoz to help me fall asleep on the plane back from Tokyo. Not because I find it boring, but Steve Wozniak’s Patrick Lawlor’s (thanks Fats Vernon!) voice is just so soothing!

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Now playing: Chromeo - Bonafied Lovin’ (Tough Guys)
via FoxyTunes

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I was thrilled to co-host DL.TV today with Roger Chang (Robet Heron was out at CEDIA), and we had a really good time. Roger is a riot, and I’ve been on his and Tom Merritt’s podcast East Meets West a few times, so I knew it would be a lot of fun. I’d love to do it again some time (hint, hint). We talked about Apple, Terminal hacks (they’re not really hacks, just some fun tips) and dragons. Lots and lots of dragons. So basically, it was my perfect afternoon.

Also, I was taking a look at my referrers this afternoon after all the iPhone rebate hoohah, and I noticed that I was linked to from the CNET News.com blog! That was exciting to me, anyway.

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I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the relationships that we form online, and how they affect our lives. We interact with hundreds (in some cases, thousands) of people online everyday, but rarely do you know more about a person than a first name, handle, or icon. Regardless, oftentimes an emotional attachment is made (for better or for worse) because you know someone through their opinions and words. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for some time, but I don’t know if I can find the right words to express how I feel on the matter, so stick with me.

This past month, two people whom I knew through online communities passed away. The first was Bruce Galloway, a member of my guild. He fell sick very suddenly, and the entire guild banded together to support him. It was a wonderful thing to see at the time, and when he passed away we shared in our grief together. Only a few of us had actually met him in person, but the feelings of sadness and loss were no less painful because of that.

The second person was Ben High, a listener and contributor to ExtraLife Radio, a podcast that I’ve listened to for a long time. He had a great segment that he would send in to those guys almost every week where he would showcase a new indie band. He was only 19, and he also died very suddenly and unexpectedly. When I learned about it, it broke my heart to think that someone so young and with so much potential was gone.

And when James Kim, my good friend and coworker at CNET, passed away this last December it was astonishing to see the outpouring of support from the online community. As the Internet becomes such so intertwined with our daily lives, it seems like we find new ways to share emotion about the loss of someone important to all of us. When someone dies in a community they come together for the wake, to grieve, to discuss the person’s life and accomplishment. Online we do the same thing, but we’re oftentimes separated from one another by thousands of miles.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post was. The internet is a wonderful way to meet new people, but at the same time the reality often hits that there are real people on the other side of the screen who can get sick, or have an accident, or die. Trying to understand how to deal with the feelings of losing someone you know but have never actually met is a task that we’re all going to have to become more familiar with as time goes on, and as we become ever more absorbed in the online world.

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