Screenhead : Internet teevee

Something to Be Desired

Here's an amusing web series following the exploits of Pittsburgh radio station WANT FM. Sorta feels like a mashup of WKRP and The Office, but not nearly as sucky as that unfortunate description which we just pulled out of our asses actually makes us picture. Ongoing since the summer of 2003, it's currently in the last half of its third season. If it's new to you, there are pretty well stocked archives you can go back through to catch up.

Something to Be Desired

"Make peace with your god and report to the transporter room."

A 4 minute "mini-sitcom" centered around goofing off at work. If this amuses you and use it to shirk your own job and goof off, the snake head then bites the tail, and the Ouroboros of fucking off becomes complete, thus facilitating the utter takeover of the west by China.
The latest episode goes all Star Trek. Enjoy.

Power Loafing with Cubical Carl

NerdTV 2.0

We're a couple of days late on this one, but PBS.org technology scribe/ persona/ set of glasses Robert Cringely's web show NerdTV is back on the pipe for it's second "season." It fired up on Monday, starting its new run interviewing Bob Kahn, the Inventor of TCP/IP. We love their yogurt.

NerdTV

EarthCam's 25 Most Interesting Webcams of 2005

The seventh annual yearly compendium of "the most unique and compelling webcams" from EarthCam, this year including the Eiffel Tower Cam, the Graceland Cam, the JailCam, and for masochists, the Alaska DMV Cam -- "For the first time a webcam perfectly captures the ennui, boredom and tedium we�ve all experienced waiting in line at a local department of motor vehicles. Now you can experience it all over again as a vicarious spectator." Yikes.

EarthCam's 25 Most Interesting Webcams of 2005

Rocketboom'd

We don't link to a lot of purely text stuff, but this quick ponder on Rocketboom's acquisition by Tivo and what it means as model for independent video shows jumping from the net to a larger venue is a fast and necessary read.

Indie TV Movement Is Here [Beatbox Giant]
Via Waxy

Your source for IPTVshows!!

They're pretty fond of the double exclamation mark over at IPTVshows.org; reading the site feels like getting a seven year old's breakdown of the latest Harry Potter after a few snorts out of a bag of powdered sugar with a rolled up dollar bill, however their list of "IPTV shows", by which they seem to mean the major geek-ish net casts like Diggnation and Packet Sniffers, is pretty comprehensive. A good place to start looking if you're feeling a little dry for nerds speaking to you in a hastily recorded fashion.

IPTVshows.org

Hurra Torpedo taps into America

Norwegian appliance bashers, visionaries, guys in blue track suits Hurra Torpedo (remember Total Eclipse of the Heart? How can you not?) have documentary filmmaker Pip Simon detailing their current invasion of the USA with a nicely produced vlog The Crushing Blow which updates quite frequently. The videos are funny and the site is a fairly good read as well. Finally, the internet is good for something besides porn and figuring out which Sony CDs to not buy.

The Crushing Blow

GBStv opens the doors for a bit

GBStv, the "internet-only television station" based on (Something Awful's) community-submitted content is offering open registartion until the 15th, after which an SA membership will be once more required to join. GBStv offers up streaming video clips a go-go, sort of like Current TV but fun and without the burning sense of disappointment. So far it's all benign stuff- as we write this they're showing Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Goon Broadcast System Television
GBSTV[ytmnd]
Via Linkfilter

Tiki Bar TV

We're not sophisticates, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the doings going down at the Tiki Bar TV, as far as we can tell:

"A video podcast made by sophisticated misfits in a bachelor pad. An apartment turned into a bar; no need to ever leave. There is a strange van parked outside that might be the FCC. We're not coming out without a fight."

A fine site to get drunk by.

Tiki Bar TV
Seen @ Cynical-C Blog

Japan a la carte

Taka Yamada's Brovision.com features a huge collection of photo galleries and streaming videos which serve as an introduction of the details of Japanese culture. One of the few Flash based streaming video sites that actually manages to smoothly play video.
Also, Video-link Japan, same concept but slightly more loose in tone and design.

· Brovision
· Video Link Japan - Video Blog From Tokyo

Both sites from this Metafilter thread

Saddam Hussein trial

Seems the best way for most people to watch the Saddam Hussein trial is on the internet, and the most simple presentation of that appears to be at the BBC website, which is forgoing the usual media second guessing / arm chair quarterbacking and instead simply running a feed with a 20 minute time delay. We're not sure this counts as "funny shit," but we guess if you're one of the surviving Shi'a it's probably kind of a laugh.

Saddam Hussein trial: Continuing coverage [BBC]

Filefarmer's Tech Shows

Filefarmer offers up a fine list of the major internet video shows going on right now. Most of these have trampled through our halls before, but its nice to have a handy list, particularly as we still somehow lack a search feature. While most are tech and gamer orriented, Rocketboom is more general culture and The Scene is a scripted drama.

Tech Shows [filefarmer]
Via Linkfilter

Andy Hertzfeld on Nerd TV

Consumed with crushing beer cans on our foreheads and not giving our hot pent-up sorority house girlfriend the love she really deserves, we neglected to do much more than mention Nerd pundit Robert Cringely's "open source" Nerd TV show on PBS a couple of months ago, letting the show's premiere cruise past without a peep. We're not giant fans of Robert particularly, but the show, at least this first episode in which he interviews Apple Macintosh proto-mind Andy Hertzfeld is good stuff, and we like the wise delineation made between "juicy bits" and the "nerd bits." If you skiped it, check it out.

Nerd TV episode one

OnTheServer

The pilot episode of Nology's nerd skit humor/ review show. Includes a "useless" movie review of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Family Guy Reenactments Gone Wrong, how to beat a kid at Halo, and a look at japanese film Kairo.

OnTheServer [nology media]

Live TV through Bit Torrent

"This is amazing. Look at what they are doing the Asia. This program provides LIVE TV (yes I mean live TV) feed to the masses using bit torrent technology. I know, I know, what they are doing might not be the most legal thing, but I think this technology has great potential. Check it out."

PPLive offers shaky performance depending on your setup, but it seems to work for most. Some of the comments in the Digg thread we're linking to offer up some alternatives as well.

· PPLive

· Sopcast

Via Digg