YouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story - Zennie62

YouTube turns 5 years old and this is my third installment to celebrate YouTube's fifth birthday.

 This blog post presents the video called YouTube Turns 5: My YouTube Story.

For me, all of this started when I was using a camcorder at the 2006 NFL Draft and interviewed my friend Oakland Raiders Legend and Stanford Hall of Famer Michael Dotterer as we were walking to 21 Club restaurant in New York City.

On the way, Michael said "you're a vlogger, You should start video-blogging" or words to that effect. He also mentioned an online show called Rocketboom.   That was here:



Later that year I was lucky enough to attend Vloggercon in San Francisco, and met a lot of interesting people including Irina Slutsky and Schlomo Rabinowitz, who produced the event:



The stars of Vloggercon were Amanda Congdon and Andrew Michael Baron the founders of Rocketboom. While not YouTube stars, Amanda and Andrew's daily video news show with videos hosted on their own site, drew as much as 125,000 viewers a day, and over 1 million during their celebrated argument over control of the company. That happened just a month after this presentation:



While their argument was nasty and publicly displayed it served to shine light on the value of video-blogging and vloggers.

It was also an example of what was possible for me.

In 2007 I became a YouTube Partner, which means I draw a monthly check based on the views my videos generate. That set in motion a number of events, from being on the CNN / YouTube Democratic Debate and the "coin question"...



Which now-Vice President Joe Biden answered very well at the debate:



That started a major change in my life and led to to being on my first national TV show, and on CNN, and one of my favorite videos:



And later that year I met YouTube Founder Chad Hurley at the BizWorld Luncheon:



Then there was the 2008 Democratic National Convention, and CNN's Jessica Ellis found me to be their on the scene iReporter. Of course, YouTube was right there with me and Matthew Modine and Willie Brown:



As of this writing I have posted 942 videos on YouTube and heading toward my 1,000th. I officially joined YouTube in April of 2006, so I'm past my 4th year mark with YouTube. But what's changed is that now I feel like I'm part of the YouTube family:



YouTube and vlogging have made me a better, more confident, and more thoughful person. It's actually helped my game business Sports Business Simulations, and for me, now, I have two jobs that I have to figure out how to merge into one. Whatever it comes to be, YouTube will be a part of it.

And yes, YouTube fixed my Channel, Zennie62.

Hong Kong seeks California and U.S. wine imports, signs MOU

This blogger just received a letter from an unnamed source and written by Jeff Leung of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco that announces a formal economic relationship between Hong Kong and The United States beneficial to California wine makers.

The bottom line is that for winemakers in America, and particularly in California, Hong Kong has made doing business there much easier. US wine exports to Hong Kong totaled $49 million in 2009-2010. The U.S. is Hong Kong's fourth largest wine importer; America wants to be number one.

The Secretary of Commerce of the United States, Gary Locke, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Hong Kong Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, Rita Lau, in Hong Kong. The "Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in Wine-related Businesses" (MOU) was signed between Hong Kong and the United States on Monday, May 17, 2010.

Because of the MOU, Hong Kong will facilitate in the pairing of wines with regional cuisine, facilitate wine auctions and assist in the establishment of quality storage facilities in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is becoming a regional wine trading and distribution center for Asia, and it's clear from the MOU that it wants to grow in that area.

For more information, contact the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in San Francisco. It's at 130 Montgomery Street, San Francisco, CA 94104-4386; the phone number is 415-677-9038.

YouTube turns 5: the vlogger exodus from YouTube

YouTube turns five (5) years old and while some celebrate the fact that YouTube has reached 2 billion views per day, this vlogger feels its important to look at the people who helped YouTube get to where it is today: the vloggers.

 While looking at videos to help frame my thought about YouTube turning 5 from a video-blogger perspective, I found a number of videos and blog posts that described a kind of video-blogger exodus from YouTube that started back in 2007.

Now I have uploaded videos on as many as eight different video distribution systems, but YouTube went from being my second favorite to my favorite because in "the old days" of 2006 and 2007, YouTube's website design encouraged vlogger interaction in a way that Blip.tv's website design did not do.

That caused a number of video-bloggers to emerge like Renetto, Kenrg, Gimmeabreakman, Nalts, and others. They were the pioneers. Renetto and Kenrg were on YouTube before me in 2006; YouTube was just launched in 2005. Vloggercon, a convention of vloggers, brought all of us together in 2006.

But something happened to really piss off a number of vloggers starting in 2007, and in retrospect, I think this funny video called God talks to me about YouTube by the one YouTuber Renetto, who YouTube has not celebrated during its birthday celebration, yet owes a lot of its early growth to, sums up what happened.

In this video created and uploaded on December 19th 2007, Renetto replays YouTube Founder Chad Hurley's words that "We're just creating a new market for distribution" and notes that YouTube dropped the "Broadcast Yourself" tagline from its main logo design. Renetto goes on to explain that YouTube's direction is to become a market for TV clips and says that YouTube was becoming essentially becoming less about community and more about control.



It's for that reason Renetto and Kenrg and a few others started a new website called Vloggerheads. They invited me to join in 2008; this was my video response thanking them for inviting me to Vloggerheads and pointing to the enormous level of racism on YouTube:



A number of people expanded their video distribution from, but did not quit YouTube, for that reason: Internet trolls. The people who sit down in cubicles at work or sit at home jobless drawing the government's money and waste that time and money writing nasty comments to creative people like me.

When I joined Vloggerheads there were 50 videos; now there are over 17,000 videos. It's growing and it will keep growing as more people fall in love with the method of using a camcorder to express their ideas in an online community. Some have left YouTube for sites like it and Blip.tv. I haven't quit YouTube. I'm here and plan to stay but some issues really need to be ironed out.

I think YouTube stumbled over a way to maintain community in a sea of shows and television clips, and that's what is being done with My YouTube Story: putting vlogs all in one page area for us to see.

That's a great start toward reestablishing community.

Stay tuned. I'm not done celebrating YouTube's 5th birthday and they still need to fix my channel!

AC Transit Bus Rapid Transit: San Francisco video of Van Ness Av

BRT Along Geary in San Francisco 

AC Transit has embarked on a program to construct Bus Rapid Transit in Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and the East Bay.

Bus Rapid Transit is best described as combining the "dedicated lane" advantages of light rail systems with the cheaper equipment purchase and maintenance costs of buses to have a new kind of urban transit system.

Bus Rapid Transit has become "the thing" Worldwide; there are scores of examples of successful programs and systems.

While AC Transit has worked for four years to advance Bus Rapid Transit, the latest round of voting by elected officials in Berkeley proves that more education is required. In Berkeley, the City Council was under the impression Bus Rapid Transit would harm deliveries to businesses along Shattuck Avenue.

In the last blog post this blogger presented a photo where a Bus Rapid Transit system was in the middle of Shattuck Avenue and asked how such a configuration would harm businesses? But a better example is video, and the video below, while not of BRT along Shattuck Avenue, does have it along several familiar streets in San Francisco: Market, Geary, and Van Ness.

Here's the video by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority:



What BRT would look like and how it would mix with traffic along Van Ness is shown at the 23 second mark. What's important to note is the configuration does not block intersections and does not harm or block vehicle access to businesses, because it's in the middle of the street.

Aside from the access issue, the video provides an excellent animated example of how BRT fits in the fabric of San Francisco's pedestrian and vehicle traffic and its urban design.

Again, I see no example where businesses would be harmed in any way. Indeed, considering Bus traffic congestion along Telegraph Avenue and Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, BRT's the perfect solution to improve public transit performance.

Stay tuned.

Celebrity Apprentice winner 2010: 70 percent pick Bret Michaels

The Celebrity Apprentice 2010, Donald Trumps' celebrity version of his hit show The Apprentice, is down to two celebrity contestants, Holly Robinson Peete and Bret Michaels.

To determine who the public thinks should the the Celebrity Apprentice 2010, this space issued a poll. As of this writing, Bret Michaels is the runaway pick of the public with 70 percent of the vote. Holly Robinson Peete only gets 14.19 percent of the vote.

Keep in mind that's with just 161 voters responding. The number of voters would have been greater if a video was part of the blog package. So we'll keep running the poll.

Bret Michaels is so overwhelmingly favored because of his very public brain hemorrhage and his battle to survive it. Also, Michaels mentioned his diabetic daughter several times on Celebrity Apprentice.

Michaels has recovered from hospital surgery and is scheduled for perform in his first concert with Poison and will appear live on the season finale of The Celebrity Apprentice, May 23rd on NBC.

If you want to cast a vote for Bret Michaels or Holly Robinson Peete, here's the poll:

More opinion surveys on pollsb.com

Celebrity Apprentice winner 2010: Bret Michaels or Holly Robinson Peete

See: celebrity apprentice 2010 winner, celebrity apprentice 2010, who won celebrity apprentice 2010, holly robinson peete, sharon osbourne

The Celebrity Apprentice winner for 2010 has not been named, but there's enough Internet buzz to push the subject to the top of trend boards. Last night's Celebrity Apprentice was a bit of a disappointment to this blogger because Donald Trump and his children revealed their view of how the game of business success should be played: be nasty.

Being nasty was always the message of The Apprentice series, but perhaps due to a number of personal factors those patterns in the way Donald Trump looks at life became more pronounced to this blogger.

To cut to the chase, The Apprentice concept is a study in what happens when you chose to give power over you to someone else. In Maria Kanellis's case, the WWE Diva got fired for a "locker room" comment about Curtis Stone that had everyone laughing.

But at the time, Trump was looking for someone to fire. That's the game. But it's not a game to play with celebrities. College graduates are one thing but to set up a show that humiliates powerful people is playing with future PR fire. I think that's what Donald Trump has done in the case of Celebrity Apprentice. But Mr. Trump might say, "That's the way the game is played. You can chose not to play."

The Celebrity Apprentice winner for 2010 comes down to Bret Michaels or Holly Robinson Peete since Sharon Osbourne cried her way out of a potential win. Rocker Bret Michaels has to be the sentimental favorite because of his brain hemmorage and his fight to survive. But that has little to do with winning Celebrity Apprentice. From the cold view of playing the game Holly Robinson Peete was hands down the better player. Peete was aggressive, assertive, combative, smart, ruthless, and smarmy. That was how she came accross and that's what is takes to win The Apprentice, period.

Note that I did not say I liked the way Holly played it.

What do you think? Who should be the Celebrity Apprentice winner 2010? Take my poll:

More opinion surveys on pollsb.com

Stay tuned.

Pretty Wild is Pretty Ridiculous By Nikky Raney

E!'s controversial reality show Pretty Wild has always been one of my guilty pleasures, but after last night's episode I have started to look past the sensational entertainment and realize I am guilty of being sucked into the questionable content of this show.

I was initially drawn to this show due to my interest in the "bling ring" burglary scandal that involved a group of young adults who were accused and then put on trial for participating in the burglaries of various celebrities. Alexis Neiers was one of the girls involved and I had a soft spot for her.

These girls are very articulate and seem to be well poised in the way they present themselves in front of the cameras during interviews. Even when they are doing outrageous things, they still remain articulate and speak in an adult manner. These girls have a mature vocabulary and seem to be reasonably intelligent.

Last night's episode drew the line. I could accept the Adderall dispensed by Andrea Arlington, the mother of Alexis and Gabrielle and "adoptive" mother of Tess Taylor, I could accept the outrageous behavior, and I could even accept Alexis' reaction to the Vanity Fair article published about her.

The Vanity Fair article especially made me feel for her because I watched the interview happen. The journalist comforted and consoled Alexis as she cried and eloquently explained herself. Alexis had been so excited and expecting the article to be all about her and improve her public image. From the looks of the interview I also expected that. When the article ended up showing an entirely different side of the story I actually felt resentment toward Vanity Fair. Under no circumstance should a journalist tell the source that the article is going to be one way and then have it turn out the next. I was also appalled at the lack of fact-checking.

The part that bothered me the most was that most of the people who read the article probably never watched an episode of Pretty Wild, and never watched the interview take place. Although Alexis is shown in the show complaining and crying over the fact that the article listed she was wearing one outfit when she was really wearing another, that was something that when watching the interview take place Alexis really emphasized. It may have seemed like a minor slip up, but with something so minor it was probably overlooked during the fact checking. No matter how insignificant a statement may seem that is no excuse to get it incorrect. Even though most rolled their eyes and thought, "Wow, she's complaining because the article got what kind of shoes she wore wrong," when the article says someone wore 6 inch heels to court when she really wore a smaller heel, that actually alters the perception of the way the person presents herself in a professional setting.

I had defended the show against those who harshly criticized it, but last night I can't think of a way to justify what I saw.

Tess Taylor has previously been a Playboy cyber girl and is reportedly going to be on the cover of an upcoming issue of Playboy.

Last night's episode had close ups of the naked Tess Taylor, blurred of course, posing nude in her shower as her "adoptive" mother took photos. The reason was to prep her for her Playboy shoot, but taking naked photos of your own daughter (even if she isn't your biological daughter) doesn't seem like something that can be justified.

The episode goes on to show Alexis and Tess taking their 15 year old sister lingerie shopping and ooh-ing and ahh-ing about Gabby's development into a woman.

I suppose that I can justify my interest in the show by the scandalous actions, or the fact that I am a 19-year-old girl who, despite my love for serious news and journalism, is still interested in the celebrity gossip.

Am I still going to watch the season finale next week? Yes. Do I still feel bad for the outcome of Alexis' trial? Yes. Will I continue to tune into this show if there are more seasons? Yes.

I guess that the biggest part of having a guilty pleasure is that after the fact you feel guilty that you take pleasure in it.

Written by Nikky Raney

Check out my personal blog The History of Journalism

Have anything you want me to write about? Let me know!

(photo above taken from Worldcorrespondents.com)