While visiting my usual online haunts I found a blog to blog about! Virginia Heffernan’s “Screens” blog discovered a new use of YouTube! And to think we had exhausted YouTube’s potential…

Heffernan reports on a YouTuber who found a way to make money: homemade advertisements for big corporations! The goal was to finance two months rent in San Francisco by scamming The Man. The unnamed YouTuber picked up a vintage Nike t-shirt, gave it to a friend to wear at a David Rodigan concert (D.J. RamJam), and film the whole thing. Next, he sent a letter to Nike explaining the project, and when the video received 15,000 hits, the user received a check for $1,815.88 from Nike. As Heffernan points out, the video didn’t attract viewers because it was an advertisement for Nike (at least not initially), it attracted viewers because of the DJ. After watching the video, it's pretty hard to miss the glaring Nike symbol in the background.

So, I was going to write about how Google is taking overe the world. A few weeks ago I had a discussion with some people in my hall about Google being Jesus, because the internet was "broken," except for Google! In any case, I got a bit caught up with Google buying YouTube but never got around to posting about it. People have posted YouTube links on here before, but I'm not sure that anyone discussed Google buying YouTube (at quite a hefty sum...)

But, just as I was going to post about it, I read this, which is slightly more relevant to our class. So, thoughts anyone? Are blogs doomed because they're bound to language? Are blogs-in-translation out of the question? And to what extend is a blog-in-translation the same as the original? While this video doesn't rely on language, it does rely on Western pop-culture references, so can it really be universal? Interesting to note that this commentary was posted in a NY Times blog...