The Fearless Blogger

For those times when you catch yourself thinking how much YouTube has enriched our lives . . . Just perhaps, maybe we don’t need to be this enriched!

Probably, possibly NSFW* (depending on where you work, at least!)

(Filed under: random, WTF)

*NSFW is internet lingo for “Not Safe for Work” (i.e., maybe wait ’till you’re home to watch it!)

A Very Alive Zach Braff (from his Facebook page)

In the past few months, rumors of various celebrity deaths have been popping up on the internet.  With sites like Facebook and Twitter, these rumors travel far and fast.

The most recent, occurring yesterday, involved two stories about ‘Scrubs’ star Zach Braff.

The first, seemingly posted by a New Zealand news site,  stated that

reports from New Zealand Police officials indicate that the actor fell more than 60 feet to his death on the Kauri Cliffs while on-set

In reality, the page was generated by some anti-Zach using FakeAWish.com. (Based on the site’s “In the News’ section, this site has likely been the culprit of several other celebrity death rumors)

The second was a fake CNN page (since removed)  which reported the actor’s suicide.  Chris Laganella, the site‘s owner posted the following explanation

Wayyy back in 2007, I copied CNN’s webpage and changed some text and some pictures to reflect an apparent Zach Braff suicide. This wasn’t a publicity stunt, it wasn’t a plea for hits, or to promote anything else. It was just to fool some of my friends. We’re really big Scrubs fans and really big Zach Braff fans. I made this page to fool them, called them to my computer, and showed them to get their reaction. I obviously told them it was a joke afterwards, but I neglected to take the page down.

Apparently, something clicked with someone on the internet today. I saw my bandwidth for chrisbox.com ran out earlier, so I increased it and looked at my traffic. I saw all the hits to braff.html, and started researching. This was the second largest trending topic on Twitter along with tons of links on Facebook. I had people like Perez Hilton and even an ABC spokesperson commenting on this.

Laganella continues, apologizing

So let’s just clear some stuff up. I did not make this page to intentionally fool everyone on the internet. I didn’t expect it to even be made public. Ever. I’m sorry if I scared everyone out there.

Zach, sorry if you got offended by me posting a fake suicide about you on the internet. Your 32,000 square foot house would be pretty empty without you. Thanks for (apparently) taking it lightly, since I haven’t gotten a letter about a lawsuit yet. Just so you know, I’m a huge fan; that’s the only reason I made this page, believe it or not. Also, sorry for upsetting your mother :(

Unfortunately for Chris, his apology did not get to Zach Braff before the actor posted a YouTube video.

In the video, Zach assures the world he is, indeed, alive and seems pretty good-natured about the event. However he does make a point to call out Chris for the prank, telling him he’s won Braff’s first “Douche of the Day” award for making Braff’s mom upset.

Single ladies, do you sit home wondering where all the great guys are?  Well, pay attention, because here’s a limited time opportunity too good to ignore!

Single men, take note!  Unless you have an infomercial touting your assets, you’ve got competition.

Tim Goggin, 32, is looking for a special someone:

A super-smart, funny, beautiful, passionate, intelligent, curious, amazing, generous, kind, wise, insightful, brilliant, successful, ambitious, self-aware woman who knows who she is and doesn’t hide any part of herself.

TimWow!

Goggin knows this is a tall order – and he’s not shy about sharing what he has to offer in return.  As a refreshing change from the typical online dating ad, Tim set up TimWow.com – a site dedicated to letting the ladies of the world know why they need to Act Now to claim their FREE date with TimWow before he’s off the market.

But wait!  There’s more!
Not only do you get a site, complete with information about Tim and the super-special-patented form that’s as simple as 1-2-3 to claim your free date,  the next 100 visitors get an exclusive viewing of the ShamWow infomercial!  (OK – so there’s no limit to the number of viewers and it’s exclusive to people with online access, but you get the idea! The form doesn’t have a patent either.) read more

The Today Show invited YouTube’s most recent sensation, Jill and Kevin, on the show today to share the story behind their (now very public) dance down the aisle to the altar.

Matt Lauer (don’t you just love him?!) shared his sentiments with the newlyweds

If you can have that much fun at the wedding, that much fun will carry over also into your marriage. What a great sign and what a great gift.

What the Today Show failed to touch on, however, was the significance of the event. Never again can someone watch a “High School Musical”, “Fame” or even “Grease” and be able to correctly say: “This stuff never happens in real life.  When do you ever see a group of people just dance like that?”

Folks, we have now entered a new era.

(Those of us who weren’t invited to the wedding can watch the wedding party in a reprise performance on tomorrow’s Today Show.)

Update: To get a sense of how much attention this video has received, CNN posted a link to the video on Facebook.  Their description:

Whether you’re single, married or engaged you’ve probably never seen a wedding processional quite like this. See the wedding video that made Anderson Cooper laugh

Matt Rosoff at CNET.com just posted a review of Muziic, a free music streaming service with an extensive catalog of songs.

Two things about Muziic struck me as especially cool:

First: The music catalog?  YouTube. That’s right – the video site. Muziic

makes extensive usage of the YouTube API to deliver rich audio-visual content, forming the web’s first ever “YouTube for Music”.

I think this is brilliant.

YouTube holds contracts with Universal Music Group, Sony BMG and EMI.  (A noted exception is Warner Music, who recently removed YouTube videos containing their music after negotiations around licensing fees failed.)  Through the usage of Google’s YouTube Content ID Recognition System, artists are paid royalties based on the number of plays their song receives. “Because of YouTube’s contracts with the record labels, satisfaction can be reached for our listeners and the artists themselves,” stated David Nelson, Muziic’s CTO and Co-Founder.

David, by the way, is the second cool thing about Muziic. read more