So 2.5 million Muglets (here's me) have been viewed since we launched it a couple of weeks ago. Our servers are bleeding through the nose, our bandwidth bill could fund a small space program and it's not slowing down. Little bursts of (very silly) entertainment are happening globally, constantly, 100 times a minute. Not really what our founding father was expecting surely...

Entertainment on the web has exploded, we're now faced with more stuff to watch than even the most overzealous cable provider could offer. 300 channels? Pah, I've got sites which offer me anything and everything in byte-sized chunks I can digest over a coffee break. My entertainment is not contained in 3 hours in front of the TV before I go to bed, it's everywhere, in my e-mail, on the web, even on my bloody phone. Whether it's this guy partying the night before the big interview, some flying squirrel, great cartoons or a very rude joke in my inbox I get entertained con-stan-tly.

The thing is that we're not relying only on the traditional content creators to give us our fix. I mean, if we did they wouldn't be able to keep up and quite probably try to stop it so we have to pay for an expensive cable package. No, now everyone's a producer from Burger King to a couple of Chinese students. We've got our new studios: webshops, dorm rooms and everywhere else. We've got a new megachannel, it shows millions of hours of programming a day, it's called the web. Remember your first experience with being able to watch TV non-stop just by flicking channels? Well this it's big ugly, uncontrollable, somewhat erratic brother.

There's an interesting post on Organic's blog (thanks, Howard) that talks about viral marketing which, as you may or may not know, we are quite partial to. On getting people to watch your "ad"...

The interesting shift here is that we don't really "drive" people to our experience when it is presented in this manner...we offer consumers the right distraction at a time/place that is relevant to them.

Yes, and yes. In a way it's far more democratic marketing. You like it you watch it. So we, the content creators and the brand owners have to have the insight and courage to try stuff out that is relevant and entertaining to the right people to get the message out. People don't watch it, it goes offline, people watch it, it gets spinned off. It's an old model that seems to work well. Soap operas started as glorified soap ads which became so popular that they turned them into actual shows.

TV shows are no more than vehicles for advertising, so you could have the next Friends or you could have the next Joey, "viral and web marketing are no more hit or miss that traditional media." Indeed. The numbers can't be quantified, it's a completely creative (some would call it gut-instinct) process. You know or you don't. The Sims flopped with test audiences, so did shows like The Office. It's not a case of you never know exactly but it's not predictable in any traditional sense. Brands need to take some risks.

The extreme right unleashes its latest weapon: the KKK-version of the Olsen Twins. (Thanks, Dimitri - Still waiting for proof on the existence of the 5 foot turkey). There's apparently a market for two young girls singing Holocaust denial songs.

While many people have tried to rationally explain this behaviour (radioactive leakage, heavy metals in the water, rampant in-breeding) it still baffles me that people like David Duke are still going strong.

Oh, and it gets better:

Prussian Blue, under contract to the white supremacist label Resistance Records, is one of a number of extremist pop bands, such as Blue-Eyed Devils and Angry Aryans.

Angry Aryans? Sigh. If you want to be truly entertained, Resistance Records has an essay contest on their site with the topic: What Will it Take to Create a White Homeland? There will be two winners and the criteria for judging will be based upon content, grammar, and originality. Hmm.

While the issues discussed are obviously grave and important, this picture of Dubya & Bono hanging out  is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. The whole setup in itself is odd, the angle (could be a giant photographer), the setting, but the expressions are what really get to me. There's a definitive lack of chemistry there and it seems as if they're each cancelling out any hint of photogenic qualities they might have. Bono looks as if he's suffering from the hangover of the century and simply generally pissed off while GW looks characteristically confused. A poor photo generally, and a poor choice for the White House website's front page.

I'm just trying out Flock's latest developer beta build and I must say I'm pretty impressed with it. Flying in the face of the "let's strip everything out of the browser" ethos and adds stuff like blog posting and Del.icio.us integration. It's a nice little app, it looks pretty and works well (especially considering its beta status). I won't go into a fullblown review however because it would be unfair at this stage. If you're looking for a tricked-out browser that's build for bloggers, this could well be it. This post was written through its very impressive, seamless blogging tool.

In what we can only hope will become a precendent to unite all IM systems, Microsoft & Yahoo have agreed to link their instant messaging networks. This still falls short of adopting a standard protocol for complete compatibility but is, at least, a step in the right direction.

"IM interoperability is the right thing for our customers, our businesses and the industry as a whole, and Microsoft is delighted to help lead these efforts with Yahoo," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a statement.

While Microsoft tried tying to AOL's IM (without their consent) in earlier versions of MSN Messenger this was mostly to gain an advantage over the competition. Allowing true uncompromising interoperability, akin to what we're used to with e-mail, is sill a long way away and I think we won't see Microsoft or Yahoo adopting the Jabber standard (like Google Talk) any time soon.

On that note, Imeem looks pretty cool.

I love this. Xbox 360's new viral campaign sees strange signs cropping up all over real-world locations with the promise of some sort of resolution at the end of it all. "The Beginning is Nigh" -- surely a reference to the 360's imminent release? Or could it be that Halo 3 announcement that everyone's been praying for?

For the rest of the world, unaware of Microsoft's odd marketing tactics (wish they were so inventive for their OS launches) this could all seem mildly disturbing.

The sign is a puzzle, and it is a promise: “I will bring them together to witness the New Beginning before the rest of the world. And I will reward them with a physical manifestation of the power of this sign.”

Spooky.

It's great to see Hugh back in form with his latest rant. It's nothing really new, just a bit of a burst on how he perceives the world which in the process reminds us why we read his blog. On handling building a Global Micro Brand:

Frankly, it beats the hell out of commuting every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city, something I did for many years. Just so I could make enough money to help me forget that I have to commute every morning to the corporate glass box in the big city.

While I often get annoyed with Hugh, I have to admit the guy knows his shit and at least he always keeps me entertained. Welcome back to the top of my list. Yes, I'm fickle and I will probably hate you again tomorrow.

The Tango Desktop Project (thanks, William) is an effort to basically de-uglify the open-source scene with a set of completely free (as in beer) icons. This is great news for everyone involved in UI design and a great resource.

Tango defines a standard icon style guidelines document that applications and desktop enviroments can adhere to. Work has started on creating a new base icon theme based on a standard icon naming specification. In addition, we provide transition utilities to create icon themes for existing GNOME and KDE desktops.

Of course, creating your own icon set will earn you more brownie points but if this means that the open-source community can deliver more cohesive interfaces I'm all for it. I see some benefit in utilising such movements as Tango to homogenise (to a certain degree) internet applications. One could thank Basecamp's look-and-feel for many of today's online app stylings and while I don't particularily condone "everything looking the same" (that would put me out of a job) I do see a benefit in getting some sorts of guidelines in place for icons, buttons, forms from their naming to the way they look. Familiarity is at the center of every great UI design and if you can't build an icon, at least use something people will recognise. Things should always work the way people expect them to.

Mike Downey drops Flash 9's codename. The name Blaze is the only thing being announced at the moment but it will be interesting to see how the featureset will be affected by the Adobe acquisition. Mike gives us some more tangible information on the forthcoming Flash 8.5 release.

We can't comment on the timeframe for the release of BLAZE but it will be a full cycle so don't expect anything to be coming any time soon. That said, you've probably already heard about the upcoming release of Flash Player 8.5 with an alpha available in a few weeks and a ship date next spring. Flash Player 8.5 will add a new virtual machine, AVM2, and a new programming language, ActionScript 3.0. This player release will coincide with the release of FlexBuilder 2, the new Eclipse-based developer tool for creating rich Flash-based applications.

This is getting pretty exciting. On another note, I'm somewhat annoyed the Web 2.0 community usually doesn't include Flash in its discussions. Isn't it in some case far more capable at getting the job done? AJAX is fantastic but I could certainly see a few ways the two could cooperate. With its near ubiquitous reach, new open philosophy and (now) robust drawing engine Flash can now easily deliver the goods.

The new Wonderbra site is quite possibly the best site ever made (thanks, Dimitri). It maintains the eye-catching (read: accident-inducing) effect the famous billboards had and wraps it all up in an absolutely gorgeous Flash site (even without the, erm, photography, this would be one slick site). The concept is basically similar to the Axe campaign with the roles reversed but not quite. Indeed, while Axe sells itself as something to simply help men get laid, Wonderbra is much more tactical: make men adore you, make women jealous. There's a universal marketing rule in there somewhere which says: "market to men: use sexy women, market to women: use sexy women." Peh.