Whenever you start watching videos online, what are the main criteria for those you choose? Being free or of a good quality? Ask yourself, are you a kind of person that wants to pay for videos/movies/shows? I bet you’re not. We are all trying to save a few bucks on whatever, but is it fair? The huge companies like Paramount, Universal, Walt Disney Pictures or Warner Bros. spend millions dollars on movie making and expect people to pay for being entertained, but do all of us pay?

It would be silly to believe that huge movie making companies will let you go with free internet downloads… They surely won’t. The MPAA - Motion Picture Association of America works as the guard of the legal distributioning, was found in 1922, and was originally called “the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America” (MPPDA). They claim it was a non-profit business and trade association based in the United States, which was formed to advance the business interests of movie studios. Nowadays it’s members are:

1. Walt Disney Pictures (The Walt Disney Company);
2. Columbia Pictures (Sony Corporation);
3. Paramount Pictures (Viacom);
4. 20th Century Fox (News Corporation);
5. Universal Studios (NBC Universal);
6. Warner Bros. (Time Warner).

These guys seem to do the right job. They fight against piracy and make “bad guys” pay for violating rights. But is everything that simple? During the past 6 years MPAA has sued and closed such services as:

Movierumor.com,

SSUpload.com,

Cinematube.net,

PeekVid.com,

Pullmylink.com

and many others. As a matter of fact,  services like PeekVid did not host any copyright-infinging videos, just linked to those available in the web. Looks like anyone can link to pirated videos until they gain enough traffic to face a lawsuit. Will a telling a neighbour that your sister’s husband can make a copy of any DVD also be an infringement? Or shall you put a sign to be sued?

Just to make things clear I’d like to make a statement: I’d never download a movie and would not sell the copies of the DVD’s I own, but the news like: MPAA Sues Grandfather for $600,000 or MPAA Sues Grandmother for $150k make me desperately want to start doing these things…

The fact that Motion Picture Association of America cares about the money only does not make it that popular. Those guys still can not get that they will never be able to sue every single copyright infringer and they can not appeal to his conscience, because of the actions they take and their policy.

Here is some anti-MPAA art related to the topic:

Fred Figglehorn, Lucas Cruickshank, the hyperactive guy with a funny pithed voice, you may call him whatever you want, but once you see Fred, you just can not give it up! It makes you laugh and laugh and laugh again! And step by step, video by video you become FRED yourself! Aaaaaa!

Fred is 6 years old and he lives with his recovering alcoholic mother. Fred’s father is supposedly a rock star, is on death row in the state penitentiary. Fred has a crush on a girl in his Kindergarten class, named Judy. Judy has a very mean attitude, and is always “being a brat” but “it doesn’t matter, ‘cuz she’s really pretty!” Fred has an enemy Kevin, who seems to date Judy and bully Fred fom time to time. Fred’s favorite meal is a TV dinner.

Lucas Cruickshank, the author, director editor of “Fred” (and actually Fred himself), is a 14-year old guy from a small town in Idaho. He says he wanted to create a parody of all these people talking about their lives and making video diaries. Now Lucas is a star of YouTube every episide of Fred has more than 1 mln. views and Fred’s page has almost 830.000 subscribers!

Although Fred is not supposed to be using his mother’s video camera, or posting videos, or even having a YouTube account, he posts his videos to his YouTube channel. Fred has a high-pitched “chipmunk” voice — making him sound more like a 6 year old and less like a 15 year old. According to Cruikshank, this effect and the hyperactive appearance of the character are achieved by speeding up the video.

Please, welcome Fred and believe me, he’ll blow your mind away!!

Fred Goes Swimming

Fred Loses His Meds

Fred Runs for President!

I cant’t even decide which one of these is my favourite! And if you are interested, what kind of voice does Lucas has in life, here is an opportunity to have a look at the teem behind Fred:

Fred on CNN

Today I’m going to proudly introduce you a life-saving video service: Videojug.com. I have mentioned it before and now you have a great possibility to have a look from inside at it. Please, welcome Nancy Cruickshank, Chief Executive Officer of VideoJug Corporation.

1. Could you please tell us about some specific features of your video service? What makes Videojug so special?

VideoJug has created the largest global library of short-form factual content. With circa 50,000 professionally produced films, we advise, inspire & entertain our audiences across a wide range of subject areas – from Food & Drink to Beauty & Style and on into Technology, Health & much more. VideoJug has also developed one of the most effective video players available on the web achieving over 90% customer satisfaction ratings. As the site grows, so does the community. We have busy discussion boards on almost every topic and people get actively involved in rating and commenting on all of our films, fuelling debate and discussion around our topics. We actively encourage people to share their own knowledge and wisdom on anything in life, and are constantly working on new tools to encourage this.

2. The users are able to upload videos of their own. How do you manage to sort them all? Because, the videos available are of a great quality.

Quality is vital to us, our audience & our advertisers. We review every film uploaded to the site and each one has to go through a quality check process with our producers. We also have some really prolific users who are producing their own quality films on a vast range of subjects, so we have a team of editors who curate our user generated content. We want to be credible when the customer comes to the site and we want the experience to be a consistently positive one. Our content must be useful. We refer to our users as ‘proactive knowledge seekers and sharers’.

3. How big is your community and how many videos are viewed/uploaded per day?

VideoJug has over 350,000 registered users who have the ability to comment, rate and discuss the huge range of video content available. Users are able to upload not only videos but also webcam videos, articles and slideshows. We receive approximately 1,000 pieces of content a month which then go through our editorial approval process. VideoJug attracts over 160,000 global visits per day, 4+ million unique users per month and 300,000 video views per day.

4. Do you use Videojug to make your own life easier? Was it ever so that you could not find the right solution within the service?

I LOVE our recipes and have converted many of my friends to the service.

5. What was the best video/advice you happened to come across on the website?

I think that our ‘how to beat box’ and ‘how to moonwalk’ films are fantastic and they always make me smile! I also rate our building self-confidence films. How to walk into a room and exude self-confidence is genuinely compelling and helpful in my view.

6. Please, tell us more about the competition and its winners.

VideoJug runs a monthly competition giving video uploaders the chance to win up to £1,000 / $2,000. Users just need to submit their videos to VideoJug and the prizes will go to the 3 videos that have the highest number of views during each month. The winning videos each month also have to be liked by the VideoJug community – so, even if a video draws a huge audience, it must also achieve a 3 star rating or above to be eligible for one of the three top prizes: 1st Prize £1,000 / $2,000 2nd Prize £500/ $1,000 3rd Prize £250/$500.

So far, VideoJug’s users have already contributed some great videos to the Made by You channel showing other users how to make 3D glasses, curl hair with straighteners, or get a flat stomach in under 9 minutes ! Whether practical advice, hilarious skits or educational insights – VideoJug welcomes it all!

7. Your website has a very nice and handy interface. How many upgrades did it take for VideoJug to have its today’s look?

We are continuously upgrading and improving the site for our users. Since VideoJug launched in September 2006, we have made a range of changes that have contributed to increased dwell time, return visitors and registered users including:

1. Introduction of a fresher and crisper design sitewide to improve usability and navigation.
2. Development of successful new content types – interactive quizzes and informative text articles and a pop-up information box to describe its format (video, text, quiz etc), what it’s about and any other useful info such as film duration, and ratings.
3. Enhanced navigation and organization throughout the site and new video player controls.
4. Greater editorial presence and improved systems of content recommendations.
5. New tools and features to encourage user engagement and participation including user profiles and forums.
6. Ability for users to subscribe to different content areas, receive updates and alerts that are specifically relevant to them, as well as our increasingly popular monthly newsletter.

8. All of the videos have laconic and informative names. Do you have a special person for this or do the users themselves give names to their videos?

Each video title has been researched and created by our in-house professional production team for one of three reasons; it has viral potential, is easily found by the search engines, or has been recommended by our users. Each video is accurately named according to the actual content contained within the film. In the case of user generated content (5%), the individual user decides on the name of the film as we perceive the original creator as the most reliable judge of the video’s content.

9. So far, how many videos were shot by VideoJug staff?

There are currently over 50,000 videos on VideoJug. The majority of this video library (95%) has been produced by us at our production studios. All VideoJug content has been carefully researched and professionally produced in high definition with an eye toward quality and value. The video content on the site takes a variety of formats that include informative “How To” and “Ask The Expert” films that guide you, step-by-step, through everything and anything in life. The “How To” format delivers easy-to-follow, bite-size tutorials on a wide variety of topics from cleaning tips and sport, to relationship advice and recipes. We search the globe to find leading experts in their respective fields for the “Ask the Expert” format - be they celebrities, professors, high-flying professionals, coaches, teachers, or consultants - who provide answers to common questions and concerns. There are a growing number of articles on the site as well.

Making pranks is an ultimate art of having fun. But there are two types of pranks: good and bad. To make a good prank make sure that the aim will understand it or it will be a bad prank and your health might be at risk. And of course, be creative!

Compilations of funny situations:

Clever skeleton prank:

Street prank

Snakes prank:

Bench prank:

Head in the toilet prank:

Bag on the car prank:

A simple computer prank:

The best thing about surfing the web is the ability of having lots of fun online. The only trouble is to find a quality source for really funny video clips, animation, pics or whatever is funny. I bet you found my tips to find video clips article useful for this. But some weeks ago I have discovered the ultimate source for having fun: ebaumsworld.com. And became ebaum-addicted for real! Here is a total review of the best source of fun on the web:

Introduction:

eBaum’s World is a Web site featuring media that comprises videos, flash cartoons, and Web games. The unique feature of the website is individual celebrity soundboards where users can click buttons to hear quotes or phrases spoken by that celebrity. In addition, it has a collection of prank and comedic photos, including signs, Photoshop images, and misleading croppings of normal pictures, as well as flash movies and prank phone calls; and a chatroom and a store that sells the company’s merchandise. The company was founded in 1998 and is based in Rochester, New York. As of November 1, 2007, eBaum’s World, Inc. is a subsidiary of HandHeld Entertainment, Inc.

Features Oreview:

At the first glance, eBaum may seem to you like a huge media storage. But in fact it’s much more than that! There is an opinion that eBaum’s World might be considered as a social network like Digg, Reddit, Kirtsy and others. Everyone is allowed to upload any kind of material
(article, photo, video, sound) in case it does not violate anyone’s rights. Basically users prefer to upload funny videos or pictures, occasionaly some of them upload flash games or news articles.

Once you open News & Links page, you get a Digg-like list of articles with votes count on the left of each article and if you are a user of eBaums’s World, you can vote them up, comment and even thumb comments up and down.

When browsing pics, videos or games you are able to rate & comment them. All in all, videos section is much like YouTube to me, which is very helpful, because you are shown related videos and the tab for getting the source code to get the video embedded in your blog is also present.

Audio/Prank Calls section contains famous soundboards and prank calls (including those in which sounboards were used). As everywhere else on the site, you can comment and rate the stuff you like. I spent half an hour playing with Mr.Garrison’s sounboard. I bet anyone can find something extremely interesting for himself.

eBaum also has a very nice Jokes section where different jokes on various topics can be found. And there is also a list of 10 featured and 10 recently submitted jokes, which may be very convinient if you do not have enought time. Featured jokes are very good!

And offcourse, eBaum has its own community and such features as blogs, groups and live chat help people to socialize with each other, tighten their friendship and encourage them to come up with some more awsome funny ideas.

All in all, eBaum’s World is a huge community of people united with an idea of having fun. For the best of funny stories, pics and videos go to the homepage, where one can easily pick the funniest stuff. So if you ever find yourself bored or depressed - give it a try!