What do you get when you throw Joss Whedon, Neil Patrick Harris (Doooooogie!), and Nathan Fillion in a room and say “We want funny. Go! GO!”? Some funny television, that’s what. Only, the catch is, this television is only available freely for a limited time on this crazy thing called the Internet.

Go watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog now. Then come back here and comment saying “wow, that was actually pretty darn funny” (*cough*commentwhore!*cough*). Alternatively you can come back and comment about how I have a ridiculously warped sense of humor to think anything so inane and childish could be funny. That would work too.

Go Caps! (Just went up 3-2!).

Edit 04/18/08: The Caps ended up losing 4-3 in double OT. But it doesn’t make this any less cute.

I first started using Flickr in October 2005. Several months later, I wished I could upload and share some of the short videos of cuteness that abounded. Now, this is reality (yes, it’s been around on other sites for a while - but I wanted a central media repository). Yesterday Flickr launched the ability to upload small (< 90 second) video clips. The clips appear in your photostream just as photos do, and you can basically perform all the actions on them that you would on photos: tag, set permissions, add to groups, etc. Oh, and apparently this feature is currently only available to "Pro" users ($25/year).

I know this is probably going to be a controversial move within the Flickr community, as many Flickr users are very serious about their photography. I know there have been some vocal opponents of this as it has been kicked around in the community. But for a Flickr user like me, who posts mostly pictures of my kids, dog, travels, etc., this definitely has potential. Since the videos I take are very rarely over 90 seconds, they will fit well in the "story" that my photostream tells.

I also use flickr as an emergency backup of my "best" photos. If my hard drive were ever to die on me, I can rest easy knowing that I have the majority of the photos that I care about loaded onto flickr. I hope that I can do the same with the little videos that I take. My big question is if the file that I upload (60 fps 640x480 AVI) can be downloaded again at some point in the future, or if only a converted, web friendly version will be stored by Flickr. I suppose there's only one way to find out. Here's more of Simon's American Idol training:

My father in law called the other night with the news that he’s ON the news! Check it out at 7 Online. Dad appears at about the 1:15 mark, if you don’t have the patience for the full 3 minute story. Virginia Tech gets a little free publicity here as well. Go Hokies!

Watching American Idol, Kate and I are struck by the parents that are all “MY child has been singing since he was THREE YEARS OLD!” Well take THIS Crazy Hollywood Parents: my boy is 2!

The toy he has in his hand is “Rocket Ship” from the Little Einsteins, a show on the Disney channel that he loves. The song he is singing is the theme from the show. He doesn’t really watch that much TV, but the TiVO up in New York ensured that he got to watch at least one episode with Grandma every day. So by the time Easter Sunday rolled around, he apparently had it down pretty good.

I wasn’t going to post this, but I it makes me laugh more and more every time I watch it.

Apple has real knack for picking catchy and previously unknown (at least to me) music for their advertisements. New Soul, by Yael Naim is the song they used for the Macbook Air. Out of curiosity (because I wanted to hear it in it’s entirety), I looked it up on YouTube. I was pleasantly surprised by the video. It is whimsical, fun, and it makes me smile. Hopefully it will do the same for you.

Say what you like about Microsoft and their products, but it seems that their founder is a genuinely good-hearted human being. I know it is (seemingly) easier to give money when you’ve got lots of it available, but I feel like Bill and his wife Melinda really go above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to their philanthropy. It appears that they really want to work to get at the root of some of the societal problems that are the cause of much of the poverty in the world.

With his concept of “creative capitalism”, Gates encourages business leaders to creatively use market incentives to bring the benefits of scientific, medical, and technological advances to those who need it most: the poor. I have no idea how the business/economics of that will work, and how it will be profitable for businesses (the driving force behind capitalism, right?), but I certainly admire the sentiment.