Cross-section of a Murderer

This video shows more than 1800 cross-sections of the body of an executed murderer. The body was put into gelatin before being frozen and slice into millimeter slices. Nice. It’s part of the Visible Human Project at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland.

Eco-Tube

Eco-Tube is a green focused video sharing and social networking site that aims to raise awareness of environmental issues and encourage debate. There are lots of clips filed under Product Reviews, Fun, Talk, Travel and Energy. Viewers are encouraged to comment and rate the videos – do it here. Chris Smith runs Eco-Tube and he’s […]

Realscreen Screening Room

Realscreen has come to the rescue if you couldn’t get to MIPTV  – you can see what you missed by watching highlights of some of the programmes and films showcased in Cannes in their Screening Room. Current clips include: Extinction Sucks – about two irreverent conservationists Kashmir: Journey to Freedom – the story of young […]

Smashing Telly

Smashing Telly is a website that has collected the best factual TV programmes and clips available on the web together in one place.  The video blog is run by David Galbraith who is an architect and co-founder of Yelp. You can find amongst other things: Lives Less Ordinary: Ian Shaw – the story of a […]

Phil Hansen – Showman Artist

Phil Hansen is an artist with some showmanship to rival Rolf Harris. Watch him build a picture of Jimi Hendrix out of coloured matches and then set fire to it: And here he paints the Mona Lisa using burger grease: And paints a picture of Lance Armstrong using… a tricycle… Visit his website to see […]

Thru You – Kutiman Mixes YouTube

Here’s something that couldn’t have been done a few years ago – an music video called Thru You that is mixed entirely from an eclectic mix of YouTube videos. Check it out: Watch Kutiman explain how he did it: Visit his website to see/hear more tracks. I wonder what could be achieved by mashing film […]

Get Yourself an Ivy League Education Online

Ever wish you had a better education? Now you can have an Ivy League education for free. Academic Earth is a website that is packed with 1000s of videos of university lectures – everything from astronomy, economics, entrepreneurship, physics, medicine and psychology to religion, from professors at Yale, Stanford, MIT,  Berkeley, Princeton and Harvard. Not […]

Something for When the Boss is Out of the Office

Here’s something to do when your boss is away…Watch the video to find out what to do. Hat tip to SixWise — a blog that wants to enhance your life.

Little Ethnic Girl – Helen Hong

Helen Hong is funny.  By day she’s a TV producer in NYC. By night she’s an adorable Little Ethnic Girl. Watch her do her stuff (you’ll need earphones if you are to do it safely at work) – and do it for no other reason than she references a UK TV production company…can you guess […]

How Benjamin Button Got His Face

Here’s a video that explains how Ed Ulbrich, from Digital Domain worked out how to age Brad Pitt as Benjamin Button – they started with and then soon rejected normal motion capture technology. They then captured a 3-D database of Brad’s face and used data analysis to transpose different ages onto Brad’s face to create a ‘digital puppet’ that could do anything Brad’s face could do. Obviously, it’s much more complicated than that – it took 155 people over two years to make it work. You’ll just have to watch the video:

Google Ocean Video

Explore Google Ocean with this trailer, presented by oceanographer Sylvia Earle:

Great Depression Cooking with Clara

Clara Cannucciari, 93, has an online cooking show that harks back to The Depression. As she cooks she recounts stories from her childhood. Watch her cook a Poorman’s meal, or visit her blog. If that whetted your appetite, you can watch the whole series here. If this inspired you, sign up for the TV Mole […]

Here’s a Quick Way to Have 20,000 TV Programme Ideas

TV is a visual medium, so sometimes it’s easier to have ideas for new programmes with a bit visual stimulation, and watching old archive can be a great way to spark ideas for history or science documentaries, or even list shows. Once upon a time, if you wanted to find rare footage you needed to hire an experienced archive researcher. Nowadays, you can find – and sometimes view – all kinds of fascinating archive material online. Here are some excellent resources, which contain more than 20,000 films, to get you started. (Photo by Joshua Davis under Attribution-Share Alike CC)

Folkstreams American Music Archive

Folkstreams is an US national archive of rare films that document American folk or roots cultures, and allows you to stream the films online.

The films date from the 1960s and focus on the arts and culture of underrepresented American people. Transcripts are also available. Films are catalogued into subjects such as: Aging, Children, Dance. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Sports/Hunting, Urban Life and Women.

Watch clips from:

Afro-American Work Songs in ta Texas Prison (1966) – surviving life in Huntsville prison, Texas

Jazz Parades: Feet Don’t Fail Me Now (1990) – about Sunday parades of New Orleans.

Fishing All My Days: Florida Shrimping Traditions (1986) – Florida fishing traditions and superstitions.

Medicine Fiddle (1991) – a musical tradition passed down from the first American settlers, “learned from the woods, from the trees”.

Steppin’ (1992) – about a black fraternity and sorority dance style.

Landscapes From a Truck

Shaun Irving built a camera out of a submarine periscope lens, a piece of scrap paper, a cardboard box and a truck bought off eBay. He develops his photographs using a length of hose, a sponge and a couple of buckets, producing images 3,000 times bigger than normal 35mm prints. Watch the video to see […]

Siftables

MIT grad student David Merrill has developed a clever matchbox-sized computer that is designed to be used in multiples, like building bricks, and can be programmed to do sums, spell words, tell a story or compose music. Watch the video to see a demonstration:

Multiplatform Sites You Should Know (or at least visit once…but you could be there some time).

Producer Nicola Colley very generously offered to share her top interactive websites for inspiring ideas, multiplatform or otherwise. Get a cup of tea and sit down to explore a kind of photographic mind-mapping, an interactive dolls house, a scary hotel, a kitchen sink drama, the US Airforce view of the world and if you have enough energy, you can build yourself a monster. (Photo by faeryboots)

Catalogue of a Relationship Gone Wrong

Leanne Shapton is an artist who has  just published a book Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry that catalogues – literally in the form of an auction catalogue – the failure of a relationship. It contains all the ephemera and trinkets […]

Bear Meets Dog

See a surprising encounter between a polar bear and a husky dog: Visit sixwise.com to see more polar bear/dog interactions.

Dog Saves Dog Story

A stray dog got knocked over on the busy Costanera Norte highway in Santiago, Chile, and another dog ran into the traffic and dragged injured dog to the side of the road. Watch as it uses its paws to drag the dog out of danger. Eventually a rescue service arrives and gets rescues the dog, […]

Word Nude Day

Get your kit off to win $10,000 in gold. All you have to do is film yourself doing something funny – think You’ve Been Framed. But naked. World Nude Day is on Friday 6th Feb, so get stripping and shooting. If you are stuck for ideas, you could try naked motorcycle stunts:

What Happens in Bed

Watch this beautiful and mellow video from Oren Lavie – an Israeli songwriter, playwright, director and ‘writer of funny books for sad children.” He also keeps his socks on in bed. Typical. The video was constructed from 3225 still photographs,  four weeks to create an animated CG storyboard, and two days of shooting – read […]

Now the Animals are Tooling Up

Read Wired’s blog to find out how animals are using tools to outsmart their prey, make life easier or pass a little time: elephants painting, mole rats making face masks (protective rather than spa), Egyptian vultures opening eggs with hammers, birds using rods to fish for bugs, gorillas using walking sticks to cross rivers and […]

TED Conference Speakers 2009

TED (tagline: Ideas Worth Spreading) have just announced some of their returning speakers at their 2009 conference. In the meantime browse the site for inspirational talks and expert/talent spotting. 2009 conference speakers include: Biochemist Kary Mullins, Biologist Robert Full, Mathemagician Arthur Benjamin, Founding director of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project, Juan Enriquez, Marketing guru […]

Urban Landscapes in Transition

For the past five years, NYC photographer Nathan Kensiger has been documenting the abandoned industrial spaces around Brooklyn’s waterfront. Much of the landscape he’s photographed has disappeared under swanky new condominiums as artists living on the fringe give way to hipsters who in turn give way to young, moneyed professionals. Abandoned Brooklyn is a photographic […]

Animation

After the award-winning success of animated documentary Waltz with Bashir, you might fancy using animation to tell a factual story. But where to look for up-and-coming animators? You’d do worse than visit Aniboom which is the home of online animation. Last year they ran a competition which asked people to create animated videos for Radiohead’s […]

Trendhunter Videos – Tech

Check out the latest Trendhunter tech trends, including: Futuristic Shopping Experiences, 23 Viral Must-Have iPhone Apps, Ads That Age You, Politics from Space and Bad Breath Detectors.

Trendhunter Videos – Eco

Check out the latest Trendhunter green trends, including: 30 Homes for Nature Lovers, 62 Creative Ways to Contend with Garbage, AV-Inspired Innovations, Self-Powered Tech Homes, Wooden Scooters.

Trendhunter Videos – Science

Watch the latest Trendhunter videos on science: puzzle-solving robots, plasticized human bodies, cyborg contact lenses, cold-resistant string instruments and bizarre medical anomalies.

World Super Hero Registry – Coming Out of the Phone Booth

The World Superhero Registry is a register of ordinary people who do good deeds or fight crime whilst wearing costume. Active superheroes include: Foxfire, patrols the streets of Michigan; Entomo, a crime-fighting environmentalist in Naples; and Ghost who fights crime in Salt Lake City, Utah. Inclusion in the register is generally by invitation only; if […]

The $100,000 Experiment

The Ladders, an executive recruitment agency staged a filmed stunt to advertise their services, in which they left $100K in a clear box in the middle of a public park and waited to see what happened. Watch what did happen. The $100K Experiment – The Ladders Commercial – The best bloopers are here

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading

TED is an annual conference that brings together the world’s best thinkers.  It started in 1984, bringing together people from technology, entertainment and design, who are challenged to give their best ever presentation in 18 minutes. TED’s mission is to spread ideas, believing in “the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the […]

See the Invisible with Magnetic Movie

Magnetic Movie is a short film currently showing at Sundance the reveals the secret life of magnetic fields. Shot at the NASA Space Science laboratories, scientists explain the science, as primary-coloured magnetic fields dance and crackle around lab benches and down corridors. Visit the website for the backstory, which starts in 1744 with a Swedish experiment to reproduce the Aurora Borealis.

A Boy Wearing Make Up Gets His Own TV Show

Mathieu Francis, is A Boy Wearing Make Up. He’s a “crazy/energetic boy who enjoys wearing makeup and showing you how-to(ots).”  After building up a following online, he was signed up to do his own show – equal parts make up and current affairs – on www.thewb.com (unfortunately only viewable in the US – but you can see  him on […]

Bringing Dry Subjects to Life with Animation

Realscreen has a profile of NYC-based Asterisk Animation, who have been busy producing work for PBS, WNET and National Geographic programmes. They caught the eye of Sundance who wanted to air their shorts that featured political illustrator Steve Brodner, during the US election campaign. Next, they’re planning to tackle the economy. They’ve previously won an […]

Pretty Loaded – “short-attention span theatre”

Brooklyn digital creative agency Big Spaceship have curated a gorgeous slide show of animated preloaders – the animated images that you have to stare at when a slow internet connection forces you to wait for your page to load. With the advent of faster internet connections, Big Spaceship are worried that preloaders are an endangered species, so they’re collecting them Noah’s Ark style – contribute yours to the cause.

Google Street View Performance

Google Street View has revolutionised the way people search for accommodation in the US – get the address and then cruise around the streets to get a good 360 view of your prospective neighbourhood without leaving the comfort of your home.

Now it’s been taken a stage further. Pittsburgh folk staged a number of events to be captured on the 360-degree cameras of the Street View cars, including a 17th century sword fight, a parade and a heroic rescue.

Dad Labs

Dad Labs – “Dads tackle issues of the day”, and present multimedia information with the help of “guy-colored lenses” – watch videos to learn how to react when you find out she’s pregnant, how to tame your teen driver and soothing savage babes…

Interrogate This: Psychologists Take on Terror

Filmmaker, and practicing forensic psychologist, Maryanne Galvin has made a feature documentary, Interrogate This that asks: “Should psychologists help the military interrogate national security detainees?”