Shows & Stars — GigaOM

Shows & Stars

Elevator creator Woody Tondorf’s Foursquare Cops elevates minor online infractions to crimes worthy of Judge Dredd-style justice. I invoke Judge Dredd because like Sylvester Stallone’s vigilante future cop, these cops don’t hesitate to shoot transgressors who might violate the Foursquare spirit. Read More »

Comparing a web series to a TV show isn’t something I love to do, because the playing field is pretty uneven. But in the case of the indie series Reservation, when compared to the NBC drama Heroes, I don’t mind doing so because Reservation … Read More »

 
 

I knew I was going to enjoy the entertainment quiz show Red Carpet Run the moment I saw the words “on a moving treadmill.” Sure, it’s a gimmick to have contestants answer questions while running on a treadmill, but it’s a great gimmick. … Read More »

When Sony announced the premise of its first reality series for the PlayStation Network in February, I wasn’t the only one who thought that a competition to win an unglamorous entry-level position was kinda dumb. Internet mockery didn’t, however, keep The … Read More »

If I were given the power to make rules about online video advertising, here’d be one of them: No pre-roll ad can be longer than, say, 20 percent of a video’s run-time. I do not have this power, though, and thus I am sad to … Read More »

Four days following the 2010 Streamy Awards, Tubefilter Associate Editor Jenni Powell and Guild producer Kim Evey put together a “do-over” for those who thought that Sunday night’s ceremony didn’t properly represent the spirit of web video. Read More »

Watching Ghostfacers, a new WB TV series spun off from the long-running supernatural series Supernatural, I am struck, once again, by a yearning for a time machine. This parody of docu-soap reality shows like Ghost Hunters is well-made and well-written. It also feels painfully behind the … Read More »

There is something fascinating about the fact that it is still possible to make a piece of content about three or four white guys in their 20s goofing around (a genre of comedy so old that I’m sure it’s in Aristotle’s Poetics somewhere) that manages to … Read More »

Tech Fail, Taste Fail and Attitude Fail led to this year’s Streamy Awards being poorly executed and poorly received. In the aftermath, executive producer Brady Brim-Deforest said that “Last night’s show really wasn’t in the spirit of how we wanted to recognize the nominees and winners.” Read More »

The winners list for the 2010 Streamy Awards, including The Guild, The Bannen Way, Zach Galifianakis, David Wain, Zadi Diaz, Shane Dawson and “Weird Al” Yankovic. Read More »

You could call them the Oscars of the web, the Emmys of online video, or the Webbys of… webby things with moving images, I guess. Either way, the Streamy Awards, which are happening this Sunday in Los Angeles,  are indisputably … Read More »

The quality of public education in California right now is a pretty depressing topic, and as discussion of yet more cuts builds, it’s no wonder that local parents are turning to humor. It is however impressive that they’re enlisting movie stars as well — not … Read More »

More Must Reads

When I start watching a new web series, I do my best to be in an open-minded, accepting place, one that leaves me free to evaluate a show’s pros and cons without bias. There is the occasional instance, though, where I’ll click play only after … Read More »

It’s not hard to imagine the pitch on Date A Human.com (the dot com in the title is really unnecessary, if you ask me, and thus in protest I shall not be using it any further in this review): “Bridget Jones dates aliens!” And that’s … Read More »

The Streamy Awards announced today that comedian Paul Scheer will be hosting this year’s main awards ceremony — the first time that the show has had a host. Scheer might look familiar to you thanks to his work as a cast member of MTV’s … Read More »

Ah, April Fool’s Day. Other sites are covering the pranks pulled by the tech community extensively today — I like the fact that Techcrunch is grading them — but I’m going to take this opportunity to do what I do best: Read way too … Read More »

Spike Jonze’s I’m Here, a short film debuting online after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, is surprisingly unbeholden to its sponsor Absolut, as none of the glamourous trappings you’d expect from a vodka partnership permeate this 30 minute robot romance. Read More »

If there’s a meme that’s been repeated even twice online, there’s a solid chance that Ben Huh, CEO of the I Can Haz Cheezburger media empire, has tried to build a brand around it. And a few weeks ago, Huh and his team began … Read More »

Everything was picture-perfect when I visited the If I Can Dream house at the beginning of the month, just before five young people moved in to follow their dreams on a 24/7 live feed. Which is why I decided to wait to see what … Read More »

Because I was lame as a teenager, I didn’t watch a lot of MTV. (Or is it the other way around: Was I lame as a teenager because I didn’t watch a lot of MTV? A deeper question for a deeper time.) Anyways, the … Read More »

Current’s Infomania hit upon a winning combination last night: What if Oprah Winfrey (who’s the narrator of the Discovery Channel’s maybe-sorta-ripoff-of-the-BBC’s-Earth series Life) took that same nature documentary approach to another nonfiction series that delved into a strange and previously unexplored culture: MTV’s  Jersey Shore. … Read More »

Shows about people trying to break into Hollywood, as I’ve said many times before, is one of the web video industry’s most tired genres. Fortunately, the BET-distributed web series Buppies isn’t about trying to break into Hollywood — it’s about living in it, … Read More »

One of this week’s unexpected viral stars wasn’t a cat or a girl in a bikini, but rather environmentalist Annie Leonard, whose rant about bottled water, released in conjunction with World Water Day, has racked up over 150,000 views on YouTube in one week. Read More »

Looks like in the case of The Guild, the gestation of a comic book project is about the same as a human pregnancy. Nine months after announcing that she’d be writing a Guild comic book for Dark Horse Comics, Felicia Day’s first foray … Read More »

The host of Freezerburns, Gregory Ng, has no culinary skills — he’s a creative director for a Raleigh, N.C., marketing agency and a father of three. But that hasn’t stopped the packaged meat enthusiast from creating the web’s most prominent video series focusing on the … Read More »

Paula Deen fans take note — the domestic goddess with an EQAL-run umbrella site wants to give you a taste of the limelight. Partnering with co-sponsor Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Deen’s site is running an online audition in search of on-camera cooks with … Read More »

Any fan of Joss Whedon’s now-departed Dollhouse knows that the freakiest thing about the show wasn’t its dystopian neuropunk brain experiments, but the talent of its at-the-time-unknown supporting cast, who were challenged to create completely different characters on a weekly basis, but made it look … Read More »

UPDATED: Anyone catching up on last week’s viral videos this morning might run into a unfortunate surprise: Chat Roulette Funny Piano Improv, featuring a Ben Folds-esque gent named Merton serenading Chat Roulette users with improvised piano ditties, has been taken down from YouTube for … Read More »

The second annual Streamy Awards approach, and with it comes today’s announcement of this year’s 10 Audience Choice finalists, which are: Agents of Cracked Anyone But Me Dorm Life: Semester 2 Elevator Noob Star-ving The Guild Legend of Neil The Totally Rad Show The Young Turks Votes will be accepted at Streamys.org until … Read More »

When you watch Stupid for Movies, an independently-produced movie chat show live-streaming weekly on Ustream at 8 PM PST, you see Los Angeles-based film critics Mark Keizer and Wade Major sitting side by side on a red-curtained set that invokes the golden days of Siskel … Read More »

The abundance of pop culture out there means that things are going to slip by, especially when they’re targeted to a different demographic. Which is why I feel like I’ve seen a large number of comments recently from people who have no clue who Justin … Read More »

Before we understand where we’re going, we have to know where we’ve been — and why we know what’s going to happen. That seems to be the premise, anyway, behind the so-far intriguing sci-fi thriller Tyranny, which premiered last week on Koldcast. Tyranny is slow … Read More »

To quote The Princess Bride: “Let me ‘splain… No, there is too much. Let me sum up.” I’ve been having a great time and learning a lot at SXSW this year, but while I process some of the bigger ideas, here’s just a taste … Read More »

Hey, so if you’ve been by a little unknown website called YouTube today, you might have noticed that we were invited as guest editors to pick out some of our favorite web series. Our list of picks, with links to our past coverage: Acting … Read More »

Last fall, I interviewed Pixar CTO/indie film producer Oren Jacob for a GigaOm Pro piece about using online data in the offline world. At the time, Jacob was considering the idea of putting his latest project, the Spellbound-esque documentary Ready Set Bag!, … Read More »

Okay, so last week I kvetched about OK Go’s newest video, which is visually awesome but isn’t much of an actual music video, especially since there’s no real effort being made to tell a story. This week, wow: Lady Gaga, with guest collaborator Beyonce, … Read More »

Here are just some of the first comments I saw yesterday on the Youtube user page of nuttymadam3575: “OH GOD IT’S AN ABOMINATION.”/”fat f–k.”/”i hate you. you insulted kristen stewart so i HATE YOU.”/”You made me laugh so much xD”/”Kill yourself you fat mess.”/”you don’t … Read More »

It’s a tricky thing to pull off, producing a show that can’t be pigeonholed into any one genre, but new indie entry Off-Key has somehow managed to carve out a place for itself in the space between drama, comedy and thriller. In fact, upon closer … Read More »

Last night, my flight from SFO to LAX was stuck on the runway, and so I was channel-surfing the DirecTV provided by Virgin Airlines. It was an exercise in minimizing boredom, not to mention enjoying a few minutes off the clock — which is why I … Read More »

It’s hard to top having Barack Obama as a live-chat guest, but that isn’t stopping YouTube, who is following up their user-generated interview with the President with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Next Tuesday, Mar. 16, Genachowski will be answering user-submitted questions to topics like Access … Read More »

For want of an embed code, the band was lost…to their own independent label. Viral music video experts and indie rock band OK Go, after publicly squabbling with EMI over the lack of embedding on their YouTube music videos, have left the label … Read More »

For some people, defining success online can be a subjective thing. For viral mavens the Fine Brothers, it’s all about the numbers. Literally. The pair behind Movie Spoilers in One Take, My Profile Story, and the Lost parody series have recently begun … Read More »

Ah, the Sci-Fi Channel original movie. Even the channel’s recent name change to SyFy can’t keep Saturday nights from being must-see TV for B-movie fans who like their snakes mega-sized and their spiders on ice. A pretty wide range of actors have done their … Read More »

Which movie is gonna take home the prestigious Best Picture price: Avatar or The Hurt Locker? That’s the big question of tonight’s Academy Awards, if we can believe Hollywood pundits. Both movies have been nominated for nine awards, and anything seems possible. Of course, … Read More »

Yesterday NBC released the latest round of webisodes from the world of The Office — the four-part series The Mentor, which, like previous limited series produced by the show’s production team, is a well-made little look into internal Office politics. However, watching the surprisingly … Read More »

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