Keith and The Girl, the amazing incredible comedy podcast, close to starting their 5th year and 1200th episode are in the middle of doing a 76 hour marathon show. Last year they did the infamous 74 hour podcast where they broadcast live for 74 hours straight with all the best guests rotating in, prank calls, and awesome entertainment. Now they're doing it again for 76 hours straight. It ends March 3rd in the evening EST.

The reason for the marathon is that Keith and Chemda just got their relationship book published which you can and should pre-order on Amazon.com. They're trying to get onto the best seller list on Amazon, and are already 120th and moving up fast. Buy the book now from the American Amazon.com site to help push them over the edge. All the pre-orders count to their ranking and getting on the best seller's list. Keith and Chemda have literally done easily more than 1500 hours of high caliber hilarious content and it's all available free. An hour+ show every weekday, aftershows, and weekly video podcast, and so much more they deserve the world so buy the book and help them out.

A lot of hardcore fans are making deals if the book get's past certain rankings on the Amazon daily sales list. One guy promised to put up video of himself stapling his balls to his desk while ordering another book if they get to #1, and like the original 74 hour podcast a few hot fans agreed to strip down and post nude pictures if they pass certain books or get up to 100 on the list.

At 4pm EST today make sure you tweet with hashtag #whatdowedonow and #katg with everyone else to get them as a trending topic on Twitter, and continue to tweet, facebook, buzz, email, and tell everybody about the book. Order 5 copies now and give them out for birthdays and holidays.

Chemda just announced as I write this that they past the Twilight book in ranking, and one of the girls just sent in her racy pics to support the show. http://www.keithandthegirl.com/forums/f6/marathon-pictures-thread-14774/#post637821

Watch the marathon now at http://katg.com/chat, or at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/keith-and-the-girl. Listen in itunes http://liveshow.keithandthegirl.com:8004/. Download the Keith and The Girl iPhone app from the app store, or listen on the KATG Desktop App from here http://innovate.chalk-it-out.com/katg_desktop/download.php. Right now Chemda, the great Victor Varnado, Liam McEneaney, Newsy, Matt B, Jeremy, and McNally are live, go listen.

Digg: http://digg.com/comedy/What_Do_We_Do_Now_Keith_and_The_Girl

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/b87cc/what_do_we_do_now_keith_and_the_girls_smart/

StumbleUpon: http://www.stumbleupon.com/to/5OdDHH/www.keithandthegirl.com/book/t:4b8d05c59cbeb;src:all

Everything About The Book Here:  http://www.keithandthegirl.com/book/

They also put one of the chapters up for free that you can see at KATG.com/book

And like 12 commercials on youtube that are really funny, featuring Lauren Hennessy and Brother love. Watch them all here http://www.youtube.com/user/keithandthegirl

http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Visit the above link, a brilliant essay on productivity derived from programming.

It's strange thinking of how drastically my life has adapted to writing software over the years, especially the last year, compared to people I know who don't[read: everyone I know]. But this guy nails it. I guess there's something about programming that just moulds you into a certain behaviour set. It's like if I broke a chunk off Canada, floated it out into the middle of the Atlantic and started a civilization - leaving it for a few generations. Then mailed them an essay on small island civilizations they'd be like "Oh shit! Hey guys, someone wrote an essay about us," and you wouldn't actually have to visit the island to write about it.

What you should take from the essay is that it's all about context. The more context you can fit into your head about a given anything, the better you are at innovating. And when the technological advantage is even - meaning using a computer vs. using a typewriter, brilliance can only be judged on context.

via @AndrewWarner via news.ycombinator, via paulgraham

I want to start posting more regularly and using the read more button. Basically it let's me write a summary that shows up on the main page and then have the bulk of the content/videos/images on a dedicated post page. Sure it'll increase the amount of clicks needed to read the last few posts, but the front page will load faster, and it'll give me a better idea of what you cows like reading about. So this is the first of those posts.. just to test it out and give me an idea of how I want it to work. Some posts won't have a read more link, but this one does.

Ok enough of this crap, there's something interesting after the jump

(more...)

I think it's appropriate, well it would have been appropriate at any time so now it is, to announce something very important. There have been lots of rumours floating around, most completely off base and contradictory to what I'm about to announce, but I think it's necessary that I set the record straight. By no stretch of the imagination did I ever intend to hide this, no, actually I've gone out of my way to illustrate the truth but it seems some people still don't get it. I'm a complete idiot. I'm filled with totally utterly ridiculously idiotic thoughts and those carry through into idiotic statements, actions, and behaviours. Everything I do, and have ever done, was conceived of and carried out with nothing but idiocy. It's only logical to suspect that going into the future this trend will continue and everyone I come into contact with should be aware - if it isn't instantly apparent, that I'm not capable of anything really when you think about it. It's amazing that I'm able to throw myself into a shirt and pants every other day and do things. If there weren't higher priorities on their list like HIV and Global Warming I would be studied, if only to determine whether I with no clear sign of intelligence could statistically manage to appear functional for as long as I have. It would be determined after some months of observation, and at least I've noticed, that my idiocy goes far beyond any statistical average which suggests - for those who haven't put in the time to think about this - it's not that I lack common sense or basic intelligence, but in fact am FULL of idiocy - the very definition of a complete idiot.

The internet is beginning to fold in onto itself, everything is integrating with everything else, and content is becoming redundantly accessible – in a good way. Rss, PubSubHubub, Wave, the Twitter Api, etc. Twitter is a great example because it's open and almost ahead of it's time in that respect. You can get Twitter data in many different formats using intermediate servers and networks, and you can use 100's of interfaces and devices not just to read content but publish and interact with your account. This is happening all over the web, from Google Wave to self hosted Wordpress blogs.

Web 2.0 was about web applications escaping the page refresh model, and having customized content aggregated for and pushed to you. The next big step moving forward is going to be about collaboration amongst users, which is going to skyrocket and permeate everything – if you think of Wikipedia as a seed the tree grown from it is about to release millions of spores, think social networks and comment systems everywhere, and other new forms of user created and collaborated content; and networks and web servers are going to collaborate with each other as well to make each other's content more available and redundantly rooted in the network. The integration between online and offline will be further refined so that the mainstream notion of connection is no longer binary, but rather a matter of time and network penetration. It'll be taken for granted that when connections are possible it will be made by the application and the user will be extracted from the process of managing or thinking about the connection.

You'll post to Twitter, if Twitter is unreachable the message will be queued while the application attempts a direct connection with your Twitter followers bypassing the central network until it's back online. Or it may push the message to a 2nd server, which will queue it up to be synced when Twitter comes back online allowing you to power off your device. The same way we use graceful degradation in Web design, we will adopt and apply the practice of graceful degradation to Networking.

Web 3.0 will be coloured by independent video and audio content and all that goes with it as a result of technology becoming cheaper and improving quality; and dinosaur mindset, ill-equipped organizations like the RIAA and traditional tv, news, and print networks having to open up or face a painful collapse. But the essence of Web 3.0 will be about collaborative abundance and ubiquitous-automatic-self healing-graceful degrading networks. Web 3.0 will also be about the soft walls of compatibility, language and connection dissolving.

Web 4.0 will be about hard walls dissolving. If you think of the mobile web browser as the seed – our phones, our desks, our wallpapers, the solar panels on our roofs, our cars, dishwashers, fishbowls, and house plants will be tightly integrated into the network. There are lots of products out already that do all of the above, but a mindset of the masses will need to be adopted of, "Well why shouldn't I have the time left till my dishes are ready, or the pH balance of my fish bowl accessible from my phone/laptop/bedroom/car, why shouldn't all my relevant data be pushed to me live wherever I am, and why shouldn't I be able to respond to the event using whatever interface I have handy?"

web 5.0 will be about redundancy of the physical nodes in the network. Having an instant message conversation with your neighbour won't require a round trip to your ISP. You'll just connect directly via the networking equipment local to your devices, homes, or apartment buildings. The physical network will adopt graceful degradation. If your iPhone switching from WiFi to 3G as you walk down the street is the seed – You'll be stuck in traffic out of cell phone range and instead of having no signal as it tries to ping a tower your device will connect to a device in the car behind you etc. in a relay to the central network, or bypassing the network entirely if the destination can be reached before or without the central nervous system of the network. This kind of ad-hoc relay tech is already being worked on by Cisco and others.

The web is the backbone that will provide the content, integration, and the motive to move through these cultural and infrastructural changes. Those that say Web 2.0 is about mere gradient designs, html specifications, and tags are missing the point. The web n.0 naming convention is about cultural shifts centered around the use of the web, and the 'web' is really just an affectionate term we use for an array of networking activities as they all become integrated with each other. www is now just another subdomain of the web.

I just saw the coolest trailer for a movie I've ever seen in my life. It's also really awesome cause the plot is based in my hometown. Watch the trailer here http://www.district9movie.com. I'd embed a youtube version but it's really worth going to the site.

What's even more amazing as a developer is Sony's gone all out creating elaborate websites for companies and organizations in the movie. There are buttons below the trailer to those sites.

My whole life I watched people getting really excited about movies that come out like Terminator or Harry Potter but I always thought they were shit and silly and never understood. Now I get it. I do, and I'm genuinely excited.

So much crap fell onto my lap at once, and I was about write this whole thing about some of the stuff I have to deal with that holds me back when I get an email with Tom Green's latest blog post, he said it better than I would have so here's an excerpt. Head over to his blog for the whole thing.

...

So yeah I have now built a TV studio in my living room.  It hasn't been easy.  The technology is new.  The business model is in flux.  But I am going to make this fun.  Even though it isn't easy, and there are roadblocks, and constant frustrations.  I am going to keep on gang.  And I want to set an example here to any and all of you who have been paying attention.  Things don't come easy in this world.  But if you work hard and are persistent and stubborn enough to keep going, you will succeed.  It is the quitters who fail.  If you never quit, then nobody can ever tell you that you failed.  So don't ever quit.  Figure out what you want to do and do it.  And know even this.  When you make it half way to your goal, there will be those around you that insist you have failed.  And they will make you want to quit.  Not everyone wants to see everyone else around them succeed.  There are many people among us who applaud failure.  It makes them feel better about their own mistakes.  What they don't know is this negativity holds them back.  It has held me in back in the past.  And I struggle with it often.  Staying positive isn't always easy in a world filled with hate.

...

Read the full post http://www.tomgreen.com/blog/?post=708

**Edit**

It looks like Iran has limited news networks to one story per day and banned them from the country. The #CNNFail hashtag on twitter and my own comments below criticizing the network for their near complete lack of coverage, even in that one story per day that they're currently allowed, may not be fair.

In CNN's defence if they did report more on the issue than asked by the Iranian higher-ups, it would only validate their claims that western media and interests are puppeting the Iranian people to protest and fuel the propaganda. That's the only rationalle I can conceive of for their odd behavior but then again back on the other hand there have been world events like geonocide, political turmoil, widespread disease, and mass refugee camps in recent history that CNN didn't cover that much either instead favouring things like planes landing successfully and celebrity deaths.

**Edit**

originally posted june 19, 2009 @ 2:35am

It's phenomenal to see that when reporters are banned, cell phones and internet disconnected, the two places to get news of Iran is the Comedy Network's Daily Show with John Stewart who 'accidentally' left one of their correspondents in Iran(episodes available online) and the internet ie: Twitter, Blogs, Youtube, etc., where are the news agencies? Where are the field agents broadcasting from a secure location?

So to compare, you have a news blog The Huffington Post, it's updated by the minute, all of what must be hundreds of thousands of readers are helping submit material and scour the internet for the voices of Iranians, it's full of video content, with deep and meaningful commentary. Then you have CNN who post an article about once a day on the subject, it's shorter than one of the Huffingtons liveblog updates which are happening constantly, they link to some of the Youtube videos as well, they link to images taken from other sites as well, and at the bottom there's a button to load blogs posts that linked to or talked about the article which tells you after clicking "hold on, while we get the good stuff".

The 20 blog posts it fetches aren't even organized and may have nothing to do with the elections. Judge for yourself, TV news is a dead horse, and they're incapable of keeping up with the evolution of the social web. As they try to they loose credibility. There aren't news anchors even, everyone on TV news is a pundit. You can't be a pundit and do what the Huffington Post is doing, you can't be an elitist character pundit and have your finger on the pulse without breaking character. They don't get that the internet isn't about the face of the person presenting the information it's about the meeting place. They don't get that it's organic and untied from Nielson ratings. TV news is like the Microsoft of news. They're trying to do a weird mix and compromise between their old business model and faking their participance in this internet revolution thing. This open sourcing of everything. A world where it's not the familiar names, or business deals, it's the quality that gets you viewers. Just because you're CNN doesn't mean you're anything special here on the web.

This is the reason why Net Neutrality is SO important. It levels the playing field. If Net Neutrality was not enforced, then even though a site like The Huffington Post was better at reporting on Iran they would have a slower connection and CNN would have a better connection just because they're CNN. Support Net Neutrality the future of the web depends on it, this is just one of many examples of it's necessity.

Here are the links to the latest from CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/18/iran.mourning.protest/index.html

and The Huffington Post liveblog which is already about 20 posts ahead and updating every 10 minutes: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html

Here's a couple of excerpts on the same topic for comparison:

CNN (One sentance)

Voices shouted "God is great!" from rooftops, from faces hidden in the dark.

Huffington (One update)

3:40 PM ET -- Allah o Akbar! It's just past 11PM in Iran right now, so one can imagine the chorus of chanting that's being sent through the night air. Take a listen, and then read the email I received last night from reader Nicholas.

I cannot in any way claim to know what people are thinking or meaning on the ground, but for centuries, 'Allahu Akbar' has been in the Muslim world a battlefield of meaning and ultimately of political legitimacy. They are five syllables pregnant in meaning, mutability and richness, not simply a ritualistic or fundamentalist dogmatic trope. Nor is 'Allahu Akbar' simply a prayer. In fact, despite all its negative, violent connotations in the West, 'Allahu Akbar' has been uttered by Muslims throughout history as a cry against oppression, against kings and monarchs, against tyrannical and despotic rule, reminding people that in the end, the disposer of affairs and ultimate holder of legitimacy is not any man, not any king or queen, not even any supreme leader, but ultimately a divine force out and above directing, caring and fighting for a more peaceful, rule-based, just and free world for people to live in. God is the one who is greatest, above each and every mortal human being whose station it is to pass away.

The fact that 'Allahu Akbar' is echoing through the Iranian night is not only an indication of the longing of people there to find a peaceful and just solution to this crisis. It also points to how deep the erosion of legitimacy is in whosoever acts against the will of the people, in whosoever claims to act on God's behalf to oppress his fellow human, including in this case some of the 'supreme' Islamic jurists themselves. This all goes to show that Islam, far from being merely an abode of repression and retrogression, has the capacity of being a fundamentally restorative and democratic force in human affairs. In the end, so it seems, at least in the Iranian context, 'Allahu Akbar', God is greatest, is a most profoundly democratic of political slogans. So deep is this call, that what is determined out of this liminal moment may very well set the terms for (or against) a lived, democratic Islamic reality for decades to come.

Woman illegally downloads 24 songs, fined to tune of $1.9 million - CNN.com.

The RIAA has bribed yet another jury and fined a woman $1.9 million for 'illegally' downloading 24 songs. Do people still pirate individual songs? Since I discovered torrenting I find it easier to pirate by the discography. I've been busy with other stuff but this article reminds me I haven't downloaded any music recently, and I have a long list of artists I wanna listen to. Download all the music you can, spread it around, share it with your friends and family, and support artists directly by going to their shows. Buy indapendent music.

With that said how much would you have had to pay the RIAA?

Here's a screenshot of my Itunes Music folder song count:

MATH: $1,900,000 / 24 songs = $80,000 per song

I have a bunch of podcasts and my own music in there, but according to bribed juries everywhere I currently owe the RIAA about $1,136,000,000, which for the other dyslexics out there is 1.136 billion dollars.

The RIAA suing people who barely pirate obsene amounts of money that they will never actually receive. It doesn't make sense why they're not more outraged at companies that make things like ipods. The current Ipod model has 120GB capacity, that's about 30,000 songs. WHY DOESN'T AN IPOD COST 2 BILLION DOLLARS THEN? Obviously most that music is pirated, millions of people have ipods and very few people in the world have spent $30,000 at 99c/song from the itunes store to fill it up. In case I haven't said it yet in this post, FUCK the RIAA.