Link Roundup

You may have already seen The Landlord-- in less than a week it has become a prime example of how quickly viral videos can work-- but here's an article with the story behind it. In short, the video was created to promote FunnyorDie.com. Whether the site will become a popular YouTube alternative remains to be seen.

Here's a quick article about a 13-year-old girl who recently won $25k in a texting competition. Aye yi yi. (Thanks for passing that on, Vicki.)

Here's a blog entirely about breakfast cereal. ...I'm not going to try to justify that.

FINALLY... and I'm really excited about this... My Name is Earl is having a scratch-and-sniff episode soon. While everyone's trying to figure out how to make TVs bigger and clearer and it's-like-you're-there-er, Earl is producing scratch-and-sniff cards that you can use on cue for a new television experience. ...Fantastic!

Kids Pick Flicks

Not all kid bloggers are talking high-tech. Cody, a 12-year-old cinema buff, reviews movies at KidsPickFlicks.com. He rates them (and invites other kids to do the same) so that there's a place on the web where kids can hear what other kids thought of a movie ("Why are 50-year old men telling parents what movies to take us kids to see?").

As you can see on posts such as Bridge to Terabithia (grr!), kids and parents are getting involved in the project. Cody's mom reviews the movies that she sees with her son, giving parents a resource for realistic reviews.

Parent Reviews exist as a "go-to" site for parents to share “red flag” content in G, PG, and PG-13 movies.

The purpose isn’t to review if the movie is good or not, just to help out other parents who aren’t sure if a movie is appropriate for their children.

Thanks for using kidspickflicks.com as a reference site and let us know your thoughts or suggestions!

-- Tara, Cole the Kid Critic’s Mom

Oleg

Warning: I'm going to throw down some personal opinions in a second.

Did you watch Fox last night? American Idol, House, pick your poison. If you did, you may have had a brush with Oleg the Taxi Man.

Now, I will admit Oleg roused my curiosity... but it wasn't in the "ooh, what is THIS bit of intrigue?" so much as "what... is Fox... doing."

I've been enlightened (thanks, Jeff)-- a large part of this effort is geared toward the populace that TiVos their shows, and skips through the commercials. These uber-quick snippets of content are meant to be a reason to watch the ads... after all, they're too brief to accurately skip to with your remote. (More information at Ad Age.)

The idea is great, and I commend Fox for taking such innovative steps where they need to be taken. However-- and here's where my opinion comes in-- Oleg is not interesting! In a matter of seconds, I can't guess that he is Greek-- I initially thought he was a new take on the ever-so-popular cavemen. I don't find myself wanting to hear his next tidbit of broken English, I don't particularly care about his family and background (all laid out in Fox's microsite), he isn't funny... the bottom line for me is that Oleg just isn't compelling.

Was he a misfire for you too, or was I alone in finding him irrelevant?

The Baby Bug

Digg is a popular social site where users can rate news articles... the most popular float to the top, so that you're constantly seeing a barrage of highly-regarded, interesting (by your peers' opinions) content.

So what happens when parents get a hold of the same technology? Sites like The Baby Bug emerge... the same framework as Digg, but stocked entirely with sites that moms and dads find interesting, enlightening, etc.

Are you sick of me mentioning Web 2.0? This is another great example-- actual users are rating the content, so what you get is a fairly fresh look at the content that (tech-savvy) parents find important (or funny, or viral, etc). A great stop for info-hungry moms, who trust other parents (most of whom they've never met) to tell them what's fresh in the world of motherhood.