If every person on our blue Earth watched this video, the world would be a much better place. At least for a few minutes. Listen closely to Carl Sagan’s words till the end. It won’t fail to get you teary.-JD More »

Bowloftoast sez, “This is a short animation that takes the viewer through a progressive description of all (and all possible) dimensions, up to and including the 10th. It is an elegant introduction to the fundamentals of string theory and a mind-blowing toe-dip into the pool of the metaphysical.”

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

(Thanks, Bowloftoast!)

Dig this vintage clip of the late Carl Sagan explaining the 4th dimension with a trip through “Flatland.” And it is a trip. Of course, the weird realm of Flatland was first proposed by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. (via The Daily Grail)

This episode of Cool Hunting Video surveys the fashion and people at São Paulo Fasion Week's Winter 2009 shows. With commentary from designers and writers, as well as plenty of runway looks and peeks backstage, it’s a snapshot of what’s happening in Brazilian fashion now.

Bonnie sez, “Everyone has at least one friend who has seen parts of the Star Wars original trilogy but can’t quite tell you every plot point in order. Joe Nicolosi recorded his friend Amanda as she retells the story from the tiny amount she’s seen with hilarious results.”

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it)

(Thanks, Bonnie!)

I enjoyed this Funny or Die video about Prop. 8. (Thanks, Shawn!)

Imagine if three minutes of video could save your career. That’s what happened to OK Go when the group produced its own film clip after its label threatened to let them go. Gone are the days of multi-million dollar music videos; today they are all produced with love on small budgets by a committed group of creative people.

Below are 60+ original music videos to inspire you and get you excited about the medium again. Some old, some new, but I guarantee you haven’t seen all of them before. Note: these are presented in random order. Just something to relax on a rainy sunday. Please be patient: the page may need some time to load.

You may also want to take a look at the following related post:

• 29 Brilliant Music Videos

The Music Videos

1: TISM: Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

2: Mansun: Taxloss

3: Queens of the Stone Age: Go With the Flow

4: Aphex Twin: Windowlicker (NSFW)

5: Aphex Twin: Come to Daddy

6: Lenny Kravitz: Are You Gonna Go My Way

7: Prodigy: Smack My Bitch Up (NSFW)

Watch in high quality on YouTube

8: A-ha: Take On Me

9: Beck: Girl

Get Quicktimes here

10: Pharcycle: Drop

11: Blur: Coffee & TV

12: Junior Senior: Move Your Feet

13: Royksopp: Remind Me

14: Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer

15: White Strips: Fell In Love With a Girl

Watch in high quality on YouTube

16: Daft Punk: Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (fan made)

17: Daft Punk: Around the World

18: Daft Punk: Interstellar 555 Clips

19: Tenacious D: Fuck Her Gently (NSFW)

Watch original Flash animation here
More info here

20: Michael Jackson: Thriller

21: Lemon Jelly: The Shouty Track

22: Justice: D.A.N.C.E.

23: Justice: Stress

24: Justice vs. Simian: We Are Your Friends

25: Justice: DVNO

26: Beastie Boys: Sabotage

27: Radiohead: House of Cards

Get The Code and more info on Google Code

28: Coldcut: Timber

29: Eels: Novocain for the Soul

30: Gorillaz: Clint Eastwood, and Dirty Harry

31: Chemical Brothers: Star Guitar

32: Chemical Brothers, featuring K-OS: Get Yourself High

33: Weezer: Buddy Holly

Full version here.

34: Weezer: Pork and Beans

Pork and Beans – Weezer

35: Coldplay: The Hardest Part

36: Bjork: Wanderlust

Official website for the video here

37: Gotye: Hearts a Mess

38: Funstorung: Sleeping Beauty

39: OK Go: Here It Goes Again

40: Metallica: One

41: Verve: Bittersweet Symphony

42: Supergrass: Pumping on Your Stereo

43: Santogold, Julian Casablancas, N.E.R.D: My Drive Thru for Converse

44: Bjork: All is Full of Love

45: Alex Gopher: The Child

46: Paula Abdul: Opposites Attract

C’mon, this was a classic when it came out! Don’t judge me.

47: Unkle: Rabbit in your Headlights

48: DJ Format: We Know Something You Don’t Know

49: Telemetry Orchestra: Suburban Harmony

50: The Bumblebeez: Dr. Love

Directed by my favorite director, Tom Kuntz. A true genius.

51: Jamiroquai: Virtual Insanity

52: Tool: Stinkfist

53: Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give It Away

54: Weird Al Yankovic: Bedrock Anthem

55: The Avalanches: Frontier Psychiatrist

Also directed by Tom Kuntz

56: Basement Jaxx: Where’s Your Head At

57: Wu-Tang Clan: Triumph

Directed by Brett Ratner!

58: Battles: Tonto

59: Sia: Buttons

60: Fatboy Slim: Praise You, and Weapon of Choice

61: Architecture in Helsinki: Do the Whirlwind

62: Softlightes: Heart Made Of Sound

63: Fujiya & Miyagi: Ankle Injuries

64: Yuki: Sentimental Journey

Last Click

Here are three music videos that will get stuck in your head.

Related Posts

You may also want to take a look at the following related post:

• 29 Brilliant Music Videos

(al)

This is a guide that, if followed, will unchain your Apple TV from its cruel iTunes tether, turning it into the useful living room conduit of music, video and web-based content it should have been all along via the media center software Boxee. Boxee can be installed fairly easily via the ATV’s USB port to bring Hulu and Comedy Central streaming, playback of any video or music file anywhere on your network in virtually any file type imagineable, and a bevy of internet A/V sources like Flickr, Last.fm, NPR and BBC podcasts and tons of others—all upping the usefulness and fun of Apple’s notoriously underachieving box by a factor of 10, easily. If you have an ATV, Boxee is a must-install, and it’s 100% free. Let’s get started.

The stock Apple TV has never been able to decide what it’s supposed to do. Is it a device to store all your videos? Its built-in hard drive would suggest yes, but the fact that everything needs to be piped through iTunes makes this a hassle if you store your videos in any other way. And why are we downloading and storing anyway? Streaming is the way things are headed, and for streaming, Apple TV doesn’t make a ton of sense, especially when a box a quarter its size and a less than half its price can bring Netflix’s massive library into your living room with zero download delays and zero added cost, soon in HD, even.

Aside from adding the golden goose of Hulu streaming, Boxee’s other main advantage is freeing your Apple TV from its direct connection with your iTunes library. No longer will it be necessary to convert all of your video files into iTunes compatible formats to get them to your TV—Boxee will let your Apple TV read just about any video codec you can throw at it (full list of codecs here – only thing it chokes on is 1080p video; 720p works fine) from any computer or network-attached storage device on your network, or read files off the Apple TV’s own hard disk—all while leaving the default OS untouched and 100% functional. So let’s do this.

What You’ll Need:

• Apple TV with software version 2.0 or higher

• A USB flash drive 512MB or larger

• ATV USB Creator [download: 1.0.b7 version - Mac only, for now]

• An invite into Boxee’s semi-public alpha (use this link especially for Giz readers to jump the line a bit)

Prepare Your USB Drive

Just like the iPhone, the Apple TV is basically an OS X computer (running a 1GHz Intel processor), so Boxee installs just like a regular desktop app in the Applications folder, which is hidden normally. Why Apple hasn’t opened up the Apple TV to third party developers is anyone’s guess, but thankfully, with a prepared USB stick it’s all pretty painless.

1. After unpacking the ATV USB Creator application, start it up with the USB flash drive you intend to use mounted. Select “ATV-Patchstic” as your installation option and “Boxee for Mac” as the installation type. At the bottom, select the BSD location of your flash disk. You can find this with System Profiler under the USB section (probably a good idea to unmount any other USB drives so you don’t accidentally wipe them).

2. Click "Create Using ->" and your USB stick will be formatted and loaded up with the appropriate software.

3. Power off your Apple TV (by unplugging it), drop your USB patchstick into the ATV’s USB slot, and plug it back in. You’ll see Tux and a bunch of code streaming on your screen as the software installs.

4. When it’s done, remove the USB stick and restart the ATV.

Download Boxee via the Boxee Launcher

5. The USB patchstick installs a launcher that can then pull down the latest version of Boxee from the web. The first thing you’ll want to do, then, to ensure you have the latest version, is update the launcher itself. Go to the new option “Boxee” in the ATV menu, choose “Update” and then update the Launcher.

6. Now, go to the new Boxee menu and choose "Update" -> "Boxee alpha…" to pull down and install Boxee itself. Once it installs, select "Boxee" from the new menu "Boxee/XBMC" menu to start it up.

Configure Boxee

7. Enter the user account you registered on boxee.tv (via our invite link above). Boxee also adds some nifty social networking features—if you have any buddies also using it, you can see what they’ve recently watched, added to their collections, or recommended to you via Boxee’s home screen.

8. First thing you’ll want to do once you’re in is make sure Boxee displays perfectly on your screen. Settings are accessible by pressing “left” on the ATV remote at any time, so go to “Settings – Appearance – Video Calibration…” to set overscan and sizing options.

Add Your Sources

Right now, under the “Videos” menu, you can browse and stream the complete offerings from Hulu, Comedy Central, Revision3, and a ton of other web video sources. But Boxee really shines when it can play your media files from anywhere on your network.

Add an SMB Share

This can be a network attached storage drive (you’ve read our guide for getting the best NAS setup, right?) or simply a shared folder on a Mac or PC on your network (to share a folder in OS X, enable File Sharing in your Sharing settings, enable SMB shares under “Options” and add your media folder. Boxee will then auto detect your shares.

9. In Boxee's Settings menu, select "Media Sources and Applications -> Network Sources" and choose "Add New Source." Select your share in the menu that comes up and mark it wither Video, Music or Photos. Boxee will now monitor this folder and add any TV shows and movies it recognizes (complete with cover art, episode descriptions, and the like) to the main videos menu (Boxee's full of little surprises like this). It won't catch everything though, so you can always access your added folders manually by choosing "Sources" under the main Video menu.

Access Apple TV via SSH For Copying Media Files

Aside from streaming from SMB shares, Boxee can also of course play files stored locally in its own file system. You can connect to the Apple TV via SSH/SFTP for copying files directly over your network and accessing your Apple TV’s main file system.

10. In an FTP program like Transmit or Cyberduck (but using SFTP), connect to appletv.local with the username and password both set to “frontrow” – this will log you in to your Apple TV’s file system, which has a structure exactly like OS X’s. You can also connect via SSH from the terminal if you prefer the geekier side.

11. In the folder /Users/frontrow you will find folders labeled Movies, Music and Pictures. Any media added to these folders will be automatically recognized and playable after copying.

Torrent RSS

Yeah, Boxee can also download Torrents. It comes with a listing of public domain movie and TV Torrents under the “Public Torrents” source, but you can also have your Apple TV download whatever Torrents you want.

12. To add a Torrent to Boxee’s download manager, simply copy the .torrent file to the Users/frontrow/Library/Application Support/BOXEE/UserData/Torrents folder using the SFTP technique above and it will immediately begin downloading. Awesome.

Uninstalling All Traces of Boxee

Should you want to wipe your machine totally clean of any Boxee related tinkering, it’s easy. Fire up a Terminal and type in the following commands, each on their own line:

ssh frontrow@appletv.local

sudo rm -rf /Applications/Boxee.app/

sudo rm -rf /Applications/XBMC.app/

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/PlugIns/XBMCLauncher.frappliance/

rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/BOXEE/

rm -rf /Users/frontrow/Library/Application\ Support/XBMC/

What’s Next For Boxee

Boxee is on the move. Over the course of three alphas I’ve used (I can’t believe this is alpha software) over only the last month or so, this thing has improved by incredible bounds—interface is getting better, weirdness and inconsistencies getting less common, all good signs.

Eventually, Boxee wants to be in set top boxes and on every platform (Windows is coming before the end of the year)—since it supports practically every audio and video codec known, it’s aiming to be the Firefox of multi-platform connected AV setups, featuring plug-ins and add-ons of its own. It doesn’t support DRM of any kind, so don’t hold your breath for Boxee to be picked up by any of the majors. Fine with me.

Feature wise, Netflix streaming (yessss) and ABC.com are first on the Boxee folks’ list.

Boxee’s an open source app, so its forums are a lively place to ask for help and suggest more features to the main developers, who hang out there often. If you run into any bumps, that’s the place.

Among the notable new video API entries are:

Vodpod is a video sharing site, and with the Vodpod API you can programmatically do most of the same things that you can with the site. Use the API to create a video widget, get a video list complete with metadata and player, upload videos, get thumbnails, and retrieve your activity list.

Ustream.tv is a live video broadcasting and video chat room site, and its Ustream.tv API allows broadcasters and end-users to share, show, or browse the video database. A developer can search broadcasters for a specific name, retrieve a popular show, and start streaming a show.

Medioh.tv is also a video search and sharing site, and the Medioh.tv API lets a developer search, filter, and sort the video database, give users custom channels, and access titles, descriptions, tags, and other video information.

Permission.tv is a software-as-a-service video delivery platform aimed more at organizations and businesses that mange their own video. Its Permission.tv API gives developers a way to prepare and manage videos, create players, reports, utilities, and web components.

The video meme also pops up in related services like the Palbee enterprise videoconferencing API and the GamesRadar videogame database that includes videos of the games.

It’s clear that the proliferation of ways to access video – traditional mainstream video, user-generated content, marketing video, internal corporate communications, and personal lifestreaming – will continue apace, and it’s also looking like having an API is becoming a requirement for any online video service today.

Keep tabs on the fast-moving space with our video mashups dashboard. Here are all the APIs tagged with video that we have to date – if you see any missing, use our API Share page to add it.

• AOL Video API: AOL Truveo Video Search
• AOL Video Upload API: Video upload and sharing service
• Blinkx API: Video search service
• Blip.tv API: Video upload and sharing service
• Cellblock API: Real-time Multimedia File Sharing
• Dave.TV API: Video distribution network
• ffwd API: Video sharing and discovery
• Flickr API: Photo sharing service
• Flixya API: Video, photo, and blog sharing platform
• GamesRadar API: Video game cheats and guides services
• Grouper Video API: Video sharing service
• HeyWatch API: Video encoding services
• Internet Video Archive API: Movie trailers, music videos, and game trailers service
• Ipernity API: Media sharing service
• Joost API: Online television
• Kyte API: Streaming interactive television service
• LiveVideo API: Video repository and user community
• Medioh API: Video search service
• Meebo API: Web based messaging platform
• Mefeedia API: Video feeds and community
• Nirvanix API: Internet storage service
• Opensubtitles API: Movie subtitles service
• Orb API: Digital media remote access and management
• PalBee Mashup API: Conferencing and collaboration services
• Pando API: File delivery and management services
• PermissionTV API: Video distribution platform
• Phanfare API: Photo and video sharing service
• Revver API: Video services
• Seesmic API: Video dashboard and community
• SesameVault API: Video sharing service
• Skype API: Internet communication
• Userplane API: Communication software for online communities
• Ustream.TV API: Live video streaming service
• Veoh API: Internet television, video, and social platform
• Videodetective API: Film trailers, cast, images, and related information
• Vimeo API: Video sharing service
• Vodpod API: Video sharing and discovery
• Yahoo Live API: Live video streaming service
• Yahoo Music API: Music and musician info and videos
• Yahoo Video Search API: Video search
• YouTube API: Video sharing and search

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