Just found this. Nikki is a rising star

This is a video that my little brother-in-law made. I was cracked-up by it, but I hope he stays in school

I add this because I think this is what makes YouTube so popular. Sure, we all like to see the ‘millions of views’ videos, but what really matters to us is what matters to us offline (family, friends, goofy pranks and silly parodies of songs). We watch and forward these via IM (as Justin did to me) and continue to be enamored with this service that allows us to share these semi-private videos with ease and for free.

Sure, YouTube has problems, but I’m never bored when I’m browsing. There’s always something there to find, like when I initially scoured the ‘normal’ internet on Google. There are treasures awaitin’ and all we have to do is lazily click as we veg on our sofa. The joys of the internet…

I love this! I didn’t get to put on the bunny suit, but this is exactly what I wanted to do (videotape the inside of this building, not goof on Intel) when I visited in January.

Jen at ISN sent it to me, so I guess Intel’s taking the silliness in stride.

Several more at YouTube (username bipchizzle)

I’ve not gotten a subscription to GameTap because we already have far too many gaming choices at home that I can play easily with a controller. I’m not a fan of keyboard-controlled games (gasp) and I haven’t taken the time to make my television easily linked with a computer, until now.

When we moved, my husband sneakily purchased an HDTV (one of my first days in the office) and took my gaming laptop and joined it (via MediaCenter) to this shiny new TV. I came home from work and in a day he had transformed our box-filled living room into a full-fledged media room, which is amazing since the codecs for MediaCenter are notoriously still tricky deal with and the fact that he did this feat in a few hours is mindboggling. If you haven’t set up a MediaCenter, or played with Vista either, then you don’t understand, but if you’ve even attempted this, then you know how long this takes, if you are ever even successful. When I installed the Vista beta last fall, I had no sound for months (explains the LONG time between podcasts and vidcasts, doesn’t it… I blame it all on Microsoft LOL).

Anyway, it was this MediaCenter/HDTV that made me want to give GameTap another look. I finally have a reason to hook my controller up to this TV. I mean, I can probably do it easily using the XBox Extender service.

But, I probably would have still taken months to get around to doing this, if I hadn’t read today on ArsTechnica that GameTap is going the ad-supported model and making their service free.

While GameTap will still offer subscriptions, GameTap.com will expand from its current role as a portal to the GameTap client and will offer big-name classic games to play for free, all supported by the ads displayed on the page. The new site will launch on May 31 and will feature 30 games to begin, including titles like Metal Slug, Joust, and Rampage. These are titles that are being sold for premium prices on other consoles, so they may be able to draw the high number of people required to make this strategy profitable.

There literally is no barrier to playing now. As a marketing hack I always get excited when I see advertising used in creative and relatively new ways, but the cheap geek in me has always dreamed of a day when all games will cease to be $60 a pop and will be liberally sprinkled with ads and in-game placement ala most movies. Has that day finally come? Well, not really, but still I can go and play Metal Slug and Joust, and soon Laura Croft: Anniversary.

The service doesn’t open up until the end of the month, and it will be competing with the much anticipated Halo 3 beta (May 11-June 9), but I’m sure I’ll still find some time to Joust my heart away for free. Of course, that doesn’t even begin to imagine the fun we could have on GameTap, one-the-go, with a UMPC. Gosh, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps!