Twenty Four Hours in Art

A Month in Art

THE VOWS

General Motors, please repeat after me:

We, General Motors take you The United States of America to be our number one producer of wealth, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.


The United States of America, please repeat after me:

We, The United States of America, take you General Motors to be our number one source of wealth, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.

The moral of the story...

It's a lot easier to make a commitment, than it is to keep one.

2008 Bailout

Another Brick in the Wall

klehrke@gmail.com sent you something!

Hey! klehrke@gmail.com has sent you an audio postcard. You can get it here: http://postcard.fm/48df45

April 23, 2008

Making Money, the How-To Way

By MIGUEL HELFT

Learning how to turn a flashlight into a laser is not a top priority for most people. Yet Kip Kedersha's step-by-step instructional video that teaches how to do just that has been seen online by more people (1.88 million) than live in Manhattan (about 1.6 million).

Mr. Kedersha's online library of 94 videos includes tips on how to chill a Coke in two minutes, simulate a gunshot wound and start up a PC quickly.

Many of the clips have been played hundreds of thousands of times, turning Mr. Kedersha into the top earner on Metacafe, a video-sharing Web site that pays the makers of popular videos. In little more than a year, the site has written him checks totaling $102,000.

That puts Mr. Kedersha, a 50-year-old video producer from St. Petersburg, Fla., near the front of the latest online stampede: the rush to capitalize on the popularity of how-to videos on the Web.

"You never know when something like this is going to go away," Mr. Kedersha said. "I better ride the wave."

Some 25 years after "Jane Fonda's Workout" topped the home-video charts in the United States, Americans' fascination with instructional videos has shifted to the Internet, where a virtually unlimited amount of shelf space guarantees there is something for everyone.

Do-it-yourself tips, self-help, cooking and beauty advice, sports and musical instruction are all available in a smorgasbord that offers the serious alongside the satirical, the humorous and the esoteric. Viewers can learn how to swaddle a baby, grow plants hydroponically or teach their cat to use the toilet.

"Almost everything we sell requires education and explanation and instruction," said Richard Revis, the co-owner of Black Jungle Terrarium Supply in Turners Falls, Mass., who is featured in more than 30 videos on how to feed, breed and care for poison dart frogs.

Most clips tend to run a few minutes or less — but not all. In a series of videos running a total of more than five hours, an Australian veteran of the Vietnam War demonstrates in minute detail how to build a replica of a working Sherman tank at two-fifths its original scale.

Plenty of entrepreneurs and financiers are hoping that the wave Mr. Kedersha has begun to ride is a long way from cresting. In the last two years, investors have put tens of millions of dollars into start-up companies with names like WonderHowTo.com, VideoJug, Howcast, ExpertVillage and Graspr, which are all hoping to become the YouTube of how-to video clips. Of course, a good share of these videos are on YouTube itself. And traditional media companies like Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and Scripps Network are putting much of their own how-to content online.

These start-ups have attracted former television executives and veterans of Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and MySpace. Most of them readily admit that, as with many Internet fads, profits remain elusive for now.

Scores of independent video producers, experts and self-styled experts are, meanwhile, vying to make a name for themselves in hopes of sharing in the expected profits. Plenty of others are making how-to clips just for fun or for a few minutes of Internet fame.

For Meghan Carter, 23, how-to videos offer the chance to turn her love of home decorating into a career. Early last year, she began driving around the country to conduct on-camera interviews with experts on subjects ranging from concrete countertops to green homes. Gradually, she grew more comfortable in front of the camera and began taking on the role of expert herself.

In April, she began posting her "girl next door meets Martha Stewart" videos on YouTube under the name AskTheDecorator, and the clicks started coming. Her 87 tutorials include how to make a bow (81,000 views) and how to fold towels so they look just so (43,000 views).

"That one really surprised me," Ms. Carter said of the towel folding video. "We were playing with new cameras and did it for fun. Out of nowhere, it skyrocketed in popularity."

Ms. Carter is following in the footsteps of her father, Tim Carter. Mr. Carter's Ask The Builder franchise, which is more than a decade old, includes a nationally syndicated newspaper column, TV appearances and a popular Web site. Ms. Carter has a long way to go to catch up, but she is upbeat about her prospects.

"It's not a real income kind of money," Ms. Carter said of the advertising revenue that YouTube shares with her. "But I have no doubt it is going to take off at some point. We hope that in three years we will have a critical mass of videos that will help us turn a substantial profit."

Sites like ExpertVillage and Howcast are approaching the production of how-to videos as something of a manufacturing process. Working with hundreds of independent video producers around the country, ExpertVillage has created 90,000 how-to videos and is adding about 12,000 every month. Its "channel" on YouTube has 73,000 videos, far more than any other.

"It's what the Internet screams for," said Byron Reese, founder of ExpertVillage. "People get up in the morning and type, 'how do I treat a sprained ankle?' 'how do I get a bee sting out of a kid's arm?' "

Last year, ExpertVillage was acquired by Demand Media, a Los Angeles-based company whose chief executive, Richard Rosenblatt, was the chairman of MySpace's parent company before it was sold to the News Corporation.

Freelance video producers, like Paul Muller of Miami, sign up for assignments on ExpertVillage's Web site. Mr. Miller's favorite topics are performing arts, martial arts and fitness. He said he often used Google to find experts on any subject. Since he earns $20 a clip, the trick to making money is figuring out how to do multiple clips quickly. "I prepare the expert ahead of time," he said. "It is crucial that they have a list of 15 to 20 short segments."

The qualifications of the so-called experts vary widely. Michael Sanchez, a 34-year-old stand-up comedian and video producer from Chicago, found out about Howcast on Craigslist. He picked up a handful of assignments to earn "a little extra cash here or there," he said.

Mr. Sanchez says he does not drink and does not cook much, but that did not stop him from creating clips on how to cure a hangover (25,000 views on YouTube and 1,000 on Howcast) and how to make brown rice (only 465 views). He also enlisted his girlfriend for a video on how to kiss with passion (227,000 views on YouTube and 4,600 on Howcast).

"I'd be curious to know why people are clicking on them," Mr. Sanchez said. "I would never go to a Web site to watch how to do things. I'm more apt to read about it."

But Stephen Chao, the chief executive of WonderHowTo, a site that aggregates instructional videos from across the Internet, says many of the clips are as much for entertainment as they are for instruction.

"To me, it is a window into something I never thought about," said Mr. Chao, who helped create shows like "America's Most Wanted" and "Cops" when he was a top executive at Fox. "I find it the most thrilling combination of video that I can find." For Mary Leon, 35, of Salinas, Calif., ExpertVillage has become a source of both entertainment and instruction. She said she had used the site to learn new hair-cutting techniques, crocheting, how to decorate and paint her new home, how to set a table and how not to overpack for a trip to Spain.

"Oh my gosh, I've watched a lot of videos," Ms. Leon said. "They are not trying to sell you anything. It's just how-to. That's what I love about it."

It is not clear that the genre will turn into big business. But some media executives suggest that how-to videos may be just the thing in a slowing economy.

"People want to do more things for themselves," said Wenda Harris Millard, president for media at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. "It is kind of timely."

Michigan Beer Tax...Man

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Coming to your city

Postcards from over seas

The real Slim Shadey

Paved Paradise

Cubes too

In the Cube

A Funky kind of Fiesta

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Animoto

2007 a year in Art.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

CONGRATULATIONS!

PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ARTHUR HOCHSTEIN, WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY SPENCER JONES—GLASSHOUSE Posted Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006 The "Great Man" theory of history is usually attributed to the Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle, who wrote that "the history of the world is but the biography of great men." He believed that it is the few, the powerful and the famous who shape our collective destiny as a species. That theory took a serious beating this year. To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the Bomb, and the President of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn't make enough PlayStation3s. But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution. And we are so ready for it. We're ready to balance our diet of predigested news with raw feeds from Baghdad and Boston and Beijing. You can learn more about how Americans live just by looking at the backgrounds of YouTube videos—those rumpled bedrooms and toy-strewn basement rec rooms—than you could from 1,000 hours of network television. And we didn't just watch, we also worked. Like crazy. We made Facebook profiles and Second Life avatars and reviewed books at Amazon and recorded podcasts. We blogged about our candidates losing and wrote songs about getting dumped. We camcordered bombing runs and built open-source software. America loves its solitary geniuses—its Einsteins, its Edisons, its Jobses—but those lonely dreamers may have to learn to play with others. Car companies are running open design contests. Reuters is carrying blog postings alongside its regular news feed. Microsoft is working overtime to fend off user-created Linux. We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy. Who are these people? Seriously, who actually sits down after a long day at work and says, I'm not going to watch Loststeak-frites at the new bistro down the street? Who has that time and that energy and that passion? tonight. I'm going to turn on my computer and make a movie starring my pet iguana? I'm going to mash up 50 Cent's vocals with Queen's instrumentals? I'm going to blog about my state of mind or the state of the nation or the The answer is, you do. And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you. Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred. But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious. From the Dec. 25, 2006 issue of TIME magazine

It's true what they say... you never know when your entertaining an angel. They appear when you least expect it, but you have to be prepared, and you have to be aware. You must be in the moment. Not an easy thing to do when the world is constantly in motion.

Thank you for my first sale.

Hi sister:

Looks like the beginning of something very interesting is going on here. I will be looking foward to making some kind of contribution to the whole. If you would be so kind please give me administrative capabilities (check box in settings / members) so that I can interact with "postings." I will revisit soon and make some contirbutions, suggestions, etc.

Best, luv

Jim