mashups
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YouTube embraces Creative Commons licensing, turns your cutesy kitty into mashup fodder
Sourcing material from the mecca of viral video has always been a bit iffy -- who knows which rabid Beyonce fan will bite back when you slice and dice their Single Ladies tribute video. However, YouTube's recent addition of the Creative Commons licensing option just made it a whole lot easier to make mashups without stepping on anyone's stiletto-sporting toes. Users are now given the option to choose between YouTube's standard license or the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which, when selected, automatically adds the video to a library of similarly appointed videos, now available for your cutting and captioning pleasure. An attribution is placed beneath any video sourcing material from the Creative Commons library. Among the more professional outfits adding their videos to the CC pool are Al Jazeera and C-SPAN -- who's ready to see Mittens the Kitten and Sarah Palin battle it out over tax cuts? You can now access the Creative Commons library through the YouTube video editor.
WoW Moviewatch: Warcraft Meets Star Trek
At first, I wasn't entirely positive how I felt about Warcraft Meets Star Trek. The author, who goes by muffstermunch, doesn't have a lot of credits to his name yet, and does say this is his first full-length music video. So, while I was definitely interested in the idea, I wasn't sure what to think.As I fired up the YouTube stream, though, my beloved Draenei fiancee saw it over my shoulder. Recognizing the song from old Dr. Demento shows, she started laughing at the dancing gnomes and immediately yelled, "Oh my god, that's awesome!" So, if nothing else, that experience instantly won me over.Warcraft Meets Star Trek is one of those machinima pieces that is just plain fun. The sheer ridiculousness of the WoW models chosen to represent the original cast is brilliant. The idea to use of a brooding Night Elf as Spock was particularly inspired, in my opinion. While the ending credits could probably be shorter for most people's tastes, I think the author has created an overall laugh-worthy, fun music video. The author definitely won me over with his freshman effort, and I truly hope to see more comedic bits from him. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.
Mashing up WoW data (when we can get it) in outside applications
The New York Times has an article up about Microsoft's latest attempt at figuring out mashups-- squeezing the data from one piece of software into another, and World of Warcraft gets an interesting mention. Apparently students at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts are working on how to put WoW player data into Facebook accounts.We've covered this type of thing before, but Blizzard has a long way to go in making their data open to any players who want to use it. Just recently another MMO named Dungeon Runners decided to break open their player data, into a form that almost anyone could use, and we know that Blizzard has the ability to share lots of data online, but they still haven't opened it up yet. 2.4 is giving us a lot of different ways to view our combat data, and almost every day the Armory adds new features, but none of them have yet been aimed at getting the data out of there and doing cool stuff with it elsewhere.Maybe the reason for this is that they're planning to do it themselves. At any rate, there is a ton of information on Blizzard's servers that players would love get their hands on, and there are plenty of things on the other end to do with it. All that's required is for Blizzard to give us some hooks in, and then real WoW mashups can begin.
Pokemon at the Gates of Fire
We don't know when it became in vogue to dub over Pokemon cartoon clips with audio from 300's trailers, but that appears to be what's hot on the streets nowadays. And when we say "the streets," keep in mind that we mean Youtube.Some mashups are better than others, so we've pasted three of these animated adaptations for you to cast your hot-or-not votes on past the jump. If you've ever wanted to see the likenesses of King Leonidas and Mewtwo played out, today is your lucky day.[Thanks, Ali!]
BlueBox intros miJam iPod toys
If it wasn't yet clear to you that the age of the DIY mashup is upon us, a new set of toys from a company called BlueBox -- which let even iPod-toting tweens "enhance" their tunes by dropping beats and sound effects -- should remove any lingering doubts. The three members of the new miJam series, which all attach to standard headpone jacks - a guitar, mixing board, and electronic drumsticks -- bear little resemblance to their non-toy counterparts, as all of the effects are triggered by buttons instead of real drumming or thrashing. Even the mixer sounds like it would be a letdown for budding DJ's, delivering canned scratches that will in no way prepare them for the beat-matching they'll being doing in a few years on their Numarks. Still, kids are pretty easily entertained, so the flashing lights and loud noises should probably hold their interest for a few minutes longer than your average gimmicky accessory. Like so many other pre-release products we bring you, we have no idea when these are coming out nor how much they'll sell for.
