Today is International Men’s Day! A day for men to rejoice in their man-ness; to chest bump, beer drink, and barbecue to their heart’s content. Apparently the IMD website has other ideas about what International Men’s Day should be about, BUT they do have informative links about the “Development of Manhood” (don’t tell me you didn’t giggle when you saw that. You did.)
Really though, men are super awesome, and so handy! I would probably have eaten only a third of the pickles in my lifetime if it hadn’t been for some of the men in my life. (Sidenote: is it really necessary to vacuum seal those jars to the point of nearly cracking in on themselves from the pressure?)
However, if you don’t think helping ladies who lack in upper body strength is what being a man is all about, there is… Movember! Ah, the month of mustache and a socially acceptable excuse to look uber creepy/sleazy for an entire month. And hey, you’re raising money for prostate cancer, so if anyone gives you flack about your ‘mo you get to make them look like a total jerk.
And since we’re on the subject of awesomely hairy men, I leave you with this wonderful Rotten Tomatoes Show ditty, Ode to Chest Hair.
Astronomy nerds rejoice! 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy (yes, I’m kind of late on this one, but pjacobs51 was all over this, and in a timely manner, thanks for posting that video! and JanforGore linked to some phenomenal pictures too) commemorating “the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope to study the skies” along with a few other neat events.
Not doing a fist pump for this fun fact? Well, on the 17th the Leonid Meteor Shower should be a fun treat for those with clear skies (sorry Northwest, better luck never) and the word “doozie” was thrown around to describe this year’s shooting star display. That’s right, doozie. For those living in the US, the peak of the shower is expected to be at roughly 12:30 AM PST. And on November 17th at 12:30 AM I will be on my street corner in a bathrobe, popcorn in hand, staring up at the sky. (Don’t worry, I live in San Francisco, I’ll blend right it.)
Still being a hard to please grouch and don’t think the meteor shower is cool either? Well, there are plans to open a space hotel by 2012, guests would pay $4.4 million for a 3 night stay, no big deal. I could make some snarky comment about this, but really, as outrageous as this idea is, I think we can all agree it would be pretty awesome.
And hey, if you’re still not excited about all this cool astronomy stuff, at the very least you could use IYA as an excuse to drink- “Oh, why am I having this delicious beer at 2pm? I’m just celebrating International Year of Astronomy.” See? Totally legit. You just went from the person drinking during the day to the person drinking during the day with fun facts.
It should come as no surprise that as someone whose job is to trawl Current.com, I’ve come across some pretty weird, icky and just plain odd stuff on the site. Luckily, my cringing, eep-ing and outbursts of profanity as a result of this seems to amuse those who work near me.
Today was no exception. I came across “Germany’s bald bears: Fur disease afflicts Dolores and baffles vets” that Trypnotik posted, and promptly choked on my coffee. I seriously thought it was a picture from some new movie with a horrible, scary killer animal thing. Upon closer inspection I learned that it was a bear that had lost all it’s hair. The nice, compassionate reaction would have been something like, “Oh, that’s terrible. Poor bear.” Mine was “Ah! Groooooss!” Not wanting to be the only one freaked out, I made the rest of the Online Community Team look at too. That does NOT look like a bear. It’s all leathery, wrinkled skin, horn-like ears, bulgey eyes and ginormous claws. I’m sorry bear, that really sucks, but EW.
This got us talking about what other animals would look really odd without hair. Naturally, we Googled it. Whoa man, let it be known that it’s not big, round eyes or floppy ears or little tails that make animals cute, it’s fur. Trust.
So for your twisted curiosity I’ve included some pictures of normally-hairy-hairless-animals. You’re welcome…and I’m sorry.
Hello Current blog readers! By now most of you are getting used to the new release and the updates to the Current.com submission tool. There’s a lot of new ways to do things (check Mario’s blog post for a really good overview of the new goods), so today I’m gonna give a quick rundown of what I have hastily named ‘multi-clipping’ (if you have a better name for it please email me at bdorries@current.com).
What is multi-clipping?
Multi-clipping occurs when you to add multiple sources to the description field of your story. Instead of only getting to choose media from one source, you now get to browse all the media from each available source. All you have to do is copy/paste the URL of your sources (as many as you want) into the bottom of your description text and the submission tool will do the rest.
Why so many sources?
Submitting multiple sources has two (that we’ve discovered so far) really beneficial and distinct applications.
Keep us updated. Let’s say a story breaks at 10:00 AM about jellyfish capsizing a Japanese fishing boat. It’s a really awesome story, it gets featured on the homepage and lots of people are commenting on it. Two hours later at 12:00 PM another source reports that it wasn’t a Jellyfish at all but a Giant Squid – this is when you need to multi-clip. Instead of going through all the trouble of changing the source article and finding an appropriate image, simply post the URL of the updated story in the description field. After that just add some text updating your readers about the break in the story – and boom goes the dynamite – we’re up to date.
Let us know what you’re thinking (my favorite). Just like before, a jellyfish has capsized a Japanese fishing boat. This reminds you of an article you read a couple years ago about a killer jellyfish population explosion as well as an article that gave some insight into possible causes and effects of the jellyfish population explosion. It’s time for multi-clipping. Copy/paste the sources, choose your media and let us know what you’re thinking!
Those are just two possible applications for multi-clipping, if you find any more please let me know about them. And as always please let us know how it’s going on our Get Satisfaction page. We’ll have plenty more tips and tricks about the submission tool and other updates coming up in days to come – so check back often!
Thanks,
-Ben
bdorries@current.com
P.S. Here’s a great example of multi-clipping from Current online-producer Andrew Fitzgerald :
Ah, Halloween. Time to break out the skeleteons, ghosts, and witches hats and gorge on candy. Halloween is hands-down my favorite holiday of the year, and one of the best things about it? A great excuse to scare yourself senseless!
Allow me, for a moment, to take a brief detour. Halloween has it’s roots in the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), which was principally a harvest festival. Samhain is, however, also a festival of the dead and considered to be a time when the veil between the world’s is at it’s thinnest, a time when the spirits of ancestors and other spiritual beings to walk among us mere mortals…
Which, if you ask me, also makes it a really great time for ghost stories. I’m gonna let y’all in on a little secret: I love ghost stories. The creepier the better–the kind that make you get that chill down your spine, when you want to spin around real quick to catch whoever (or whatever) it is you can feel watching you.
In the spirit of Halloween (and Samhain) I want to hear your ghost stories! We’ve had a few creep up on Current–some of my favorites include this look at the haunted Moss Beach Distillery in Half Moon Bay (alas, I didn’t see any ghosts when I was there) or this possible video of a ghost from my own alma matter, Asheville High School. (Which was, as far as I could tell, was not haunted while I was a student. Shame, really, it would have made things far more interesting.)
You might also want to check out this video on the haunted Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky for inspiration:
But enough from me–what about you? Have you had any brushes with ghosts or other supernatural entities? Leave a webcam or a comment, and we’ll post the spookiest responses on the Current.com blog!
Earlier today one of our community members raised a question that immediately reminded me of a drafted post sitting in my to-do pile. So I dusted this sucker off and refreshed it with some new information for all to read.
“You guys never put my submissions up at all. It would seem as though a plan were afoot to force only designated providers – while the promise is held as Bullshit.”
This isn’t a anything new; in general people get a little confused when it comes to what gets featured on Current.com. It’s not uncommon to find out that people either don’t understand, or worse, their misunderstanding leads them to believe that there is a secret agenda conspiring against them behind-the-scenes.
Trust me, this is just not the case.
Our editorial team is relatively small on Current.com, especially in comparison with some of the more editorially driven sites out there. We see Current.com as a joint partnership between our internal team, and the community that frequents the site. While we produce content for TV, the amount of content we produce for the web is fairly small in comparison with what our community produces on a daily basis.
[UPDATE: Please note that when posting a story you should leave source links in your description text if you intend to include them or pull media from those links for your story. It does not matter where in the description they appear, just note that the link closest to the top of the description text will be your primary source, and you can pull media from up to five other sources. Thanks!]
While news of our new Fall episodes has been at the forefront these days, that doesn’t mean that our dev team has been twiddling their thumbs. To the contrary, we’re happy to announce that there is a new release hitting Current.com today, and we can’t wait to hear what you think of it.
Let’s face it, contributing to Current.com has never been the easiest thing to do — a refresh of this workflow has been long overdue. With this new release, clicking the “Post a Story” button (located in the green navigation bar) will now produce a submission tool overlaid on whichever page you’re on.
We’ve streamlined the process, here’s a walkthrough:
If you’ve checked out the Music channel on Current.com lately, you might have noticed things are looking a little different. Here are some things to take note of on the new page layout:
So what’s up with all these changes?
Current is always evolving and changing, and we’re testing out a new layout for some of our top channel pages. Music is first, but we’ll be tweaking this layout, and will eventually roll it out for all six of Current’s top channels.
Where’s the most popular stories list?
The top five stories from Music are listed on the left — just click the “popular stories” link to see the full list, beginning with number five.
Where do I find all of the new music stories?
Want to see all the music stories submitted to Current Music? No problem! You can find them by clicking on the “new stories” link underneath the top 5 popular stories list.
Are there still featured stories?
Yep! The playlist at the top of the page will still be updated with a combination of community submitted stories and videos from our Current Music special, Embedded.
It’s been a while since we’ve made a significant update to our TV Schedule on Current.com. Our previous version of the schedule focused on what is airing right now. We collected feedback and are proud to present the latest version of the Current TV Schedule.
The list view let’s you see what is on Current, one day at a time. When you land on the new schedule, the grid will automagically jump to what is on Current TV right now. In addition, you can scroll back to see what you missed, or jump ahead through the next six days to find out what is coming up.
There are still a few more things we plan to roll out in our next release (scheduled for Wednesday). Here’s the list:
Grid view: This will let you look at an entire week’s worth of Current TV scheduling in one go. For those of you who like to plan out your week, this will be the way to go.
List view time zones: We squashed a bug from the previous release that left out time zones on the list view. Those will make their triumphant return.
Homepage schedule: Our new schedule page is nice, but sometimes you’ll want to know what’s coming up on Current TV from the comfort of the Current.com homepage. With this new feature, that problem is solved.
Some of you may know this already, but one of the thing the community team does here at Current is to answer the questions you send in. Sometimes this is easy, but sometimes? Not so much. A lot of people are channel surfing late at night when they stumble upon Current and see an amazing piece that changes your life…but you just can’t remember what it is.
Normally, we’re pretty good at this kind of thing. Personally, I pride myself on being able to locate videos based on descriptions like “there was a guy on a stool playing harmonica” or “it was about a group of female soldiers, maybe in Iraq?” but sometimes y’all have me stumped.
That’s when it’s time to reach out to the pool of producers, talent, editors, and developers here at Current to see if we can track down your requests. It’s always interesting to see what videos people are asking about, so I wanted to share the latest batch of head-scratchers with all of you.
Al wrote:
I am looking for information on a segment aired on Current TV this morning (Friday, 9-25-9 @ about 6:25 am PST) regarding a gentleman from India who started an internet sales business @ 16, then sold it and started another internet sales business and sold it. He lives in a penthouse in San Francisco now. The name “G” was stated in the story. Raphael House and “Whatever Works” was also stated in the segment.
Alexander was looking for “the wonderful video of the French people with wigs who turn off lights at night to save energy!”
Many thanks to Ryan M., Toby, and Mer for helping find the be-wigged Neon Pirates.
Michael wanted to find the video “…about a shop or boutique in london. The shop took your old clothes and remade them into something new and hip. In the segment the interviewer had some items of his own clothing made into a jacket.”
I remember seeing a pod on current nearly a year ago about some guys that put together this machine that makes music by precisely shooting out little ball thingys at drums and different stuff.
If you’ve caught a video on Current, but can’t quite remember what it was called, shoot us an email at feedback(at)current(dot)com or leave us a comment and we’ll do our very best to track it down for you!
