why rb is so great

The subject of today's post is Rocketboom, the daily video blog (vlog). Rocketboom is the collaboration of Andrew Baron behind the scenes, and Amanda Congdon performing the brilliant, lighthearted (but not always), pastiche of culture, politics, news and technology that is Rocketboom. My daily Rocketboom fix is three minutes of guaranteed joy every Monday through Friday. My life has definitely been improved by watching Rocketboom, and maybe yours would, too. Here's some reasons why.

1. Amanda is enormously telegenic. Speaking for myself, I don't have the hots for her, but she's just fun to watch. She's got the bubbly, kind of flirtatious thing going on, but always in a very demure way. She just seems to be enjoying herself so much, you can't help being uplifted watching her, even if she's just reading the news. And of course there are the Amanda "things" - the hair flip, the paper toss, the goofy dancing.

2. Drew is obviously a genius. Rocketboom is the brainchild of Andrew Baron, who is some kind of art student, programmer, renaissance man. In a recent article Andrew talks about how he was inspired around the time of the 2004 presidential elections. He posted an ad in Craig's List for an actress, and the rest is history. You can see footage from Amanda's original screen test here. The whole thing is done with consumer grade video equipment and a Mac G4.

3. Rocketboom has turned me on to zillions of things on the Internet that I wouldn't have otherwise known, like Flickr, Del.icio.us, Halloween gadget list, second life, not to mention dozens of interesting multimedia mavens, Internet artists and just plain kooks. I don't have time to read lots of blogs and scour the Internet for fascinating stuff. I feel if I watch Rocketboom I get a good sample, filtered through some very intelligent folks.

4. Represents the promise of what the Internet should be. It shows that anyone with access to fairly common equipment - a consumer grade video camera and a Macintosh computer, can create multimedia content and publish their ideas for the world. I truly think that Rocketboom is cutting edge, audacious, and obviously a work of considerable sophistication. But it shows that in a time when media is controlled by an ever smaller cartel of companies, we can truly create and share our own culture.

I'll close by saying that without the inspiration of Rocketboom, I would probably not have created the blog you are reading now. I wouldn't put my own personal meanderings in same the class with Rocketboom, but it's the idea that the Internet is a partcipatory, not a spectator experience. Here's a list of some of my favorite episodes:

switch drinking game where is amanda? blue light special John Lennon 25 yrs