Primo Water sells water in large 5 gallon containers at retailers and you return the container for it to be re-used. Its individual water bottles are made with a plastic that is derived from plants, not oil. This way of selling bottled water is what I term practical green. If you need to have bottled water, this is a practical green way to do it.

A big thank you to Matt.

Nicole makes some very good points about stickiness and building viewers into foamers.

Failure is good. You learn from it. I’ve failed many times. You think I’d be quite smart by now, but no.

I have been reading The Dangerous Book for Boys, and the book reminds me of a lot of the things I did as a kid, and I did not belong to the Boy Scouts or the 4-H club. And it had me thinking how odd that one has to write a book like this. I’m happy the authors did, maybe we can tear off some of that bubble wrap kids are encased in.

Today I ran across this TED conference talk by Gever Tulley of the Tinkering School, 5 Dangerous Things You Should Let Your Kids Do, and the lightbulb went off in my head. I just kept on nodding my head yes during the video.

Watch the video here

Here’s my thoughts about these 5 dangerous things:

“Learning to control [fire] is a pivotal moment in a child’s history ” yeah. we played with fire in the backyard, we would make a firepit out of rocks and cook hot dogs, and my dad would not be hovering nearby. We thought it was great, and we didn’t burn ourselves nor any structures. Me, being the safety nut even back then, had a bucket of water at the ready. Gever talks about how fire is elemental and mysterious and “these mysteries are only revealed to those that get to play with it”.

video still from presentation

Own a Pocket Knife “Its a powerful and empowering tool” I had several of the Swiss style and wanted to use if for everything. I would cut my food at the dinner table with it. Yes, I cut myself a few times, but from that I learned not to. I carry one almost all the time.

Along a similar line, my brother and I both had guns when we were young. My gun rack was over my bed. Gun safety was drilled into our heads, and we knew if we didn’t follow the rules, the guns would be taken away. It taught us a healthy respect for a useful yet dangerous tool. Knives can do the same thing.

Throw a Spear . We are wired to throw things. Throwing uses and develops several skill sets, you have to visualize, think in 3D, control muscles, and focus your mind. An extension to this, and perhaps a more suburban friendly version, would be archery. If you get really good with a bow, you can help reduce the deer herd in your subdivision. (check you local regs first!)

Deconstruct Appliances. wow. How much have I learned from taking things apart? A lot. Getting a new dishwasher? Let your kids take the told one apart. Dishwasher have a number of amazing systems within them, electronic and mechanical. Toasters and DVD players are good too, full of wires and springs.

Break the Digital Media Copyright Act. When I was young, ( pre-phone deregulation ) we learned how to hook up more phones to our phone line and not be billed for the extra phones. But Gever’s point is for kids to learn about laws.

Drive a Car. I used to drive our truck around the backyard. It was great. Go find an empty parking lot.

What this boils down to for me is allowing kids to learn real world stuff. Society has built in so many protections that kids carry around anti-bacterial hand lotion.

Our local school is peanut free, and I asked my neighbor, an emergency room doctor, why so many kids have all these allergies. He said, “I think kids don’t get dirty enough today.”

In Gever’s talk is the kernel of a new Gardenfork show for kids. Have to work on this. What are your thoughts?

Now Business Week write that user-generated content is not the buzz it was.

One after another, online video sites that have long showcased such fare as skateboarding dogs and beer-drenched parties are scaling back their focus on user-generated clips, often in favor of professionally produced programming. “People would rather watch content that has production value than watch their neighbors in the garage,” says Matt Sanchez, co-founder and chief executive of VideoEgg, a company that provides Web video tools, ads, and advertising features for online video providers and Web application developers.

…

Another site, ManiaTV, recently canceled its user-generated channels altogether (BusinessWeek.com, 10/22/07). The 3,000 user-generated channels simply didn’t pull in enough viewers, ManiaTV CEO Peter Hoskins says. Roughly 80% of people were watching the professional content produced by celebrities such as musician Dave Navarro and comedian Tom Green. “What we found out is, we don’t need the classical user-generated talent when we have the Hollywood talent that wants to work with us,” Hoskins says. Sony’s (SNE) Grouper in July relaunched as Crackle, sans user-generated content. Its only fare: professional-grade programming.

On the Blip.tv Yahoo group there has been some discussion about integrating more social tools into Blip.tv. Most web video shows on Blip have some sort of website separate from Blip, it may be a WordPress blog, just a HTML page, or a Ning site. Real World Green and Gardenfork now share a Ning site, The Greenhouse.

The problem is that all of these different social sites, right now, don’t talk to each other. They are all walled gardens. Google’s OpenSocial will help. With my shows, I’ve been debating how and where to create a social site or area for viewers to interact. I’ve gone with Ning, and I’m glad they will adopt OpenSocial.

Here’s an excerpt from Mike Hudack on the Yahoo Group:

Each of these social networks is an island. And increasingly sophisticated shows have more than one of
them. There’s the Ning or blog community, there’s Facebook, there’s MySpace, there’s blip. None of these systems really connect to each other. … there’s no good way to keep these things in sync.

MOVE NETWORKS has released viewer data that shows evidence of long-form online viewing on the players it has created for ABC, Fox, ESPN360 and others. 6 million people watched long-form online content on Move technology during October. The company is also seeing an impressive 100,000 new viewers of long-form content every single day. Move believes consumers react to a higher-quality experience with longer viewing times

Yes, 3 million people will watch the :15 squirrel video clip, but more people will watch quality, engaging content longer on the web now if we make it. Gardenfork does have its jerky moments, but soon it will be shot in HD-DV.