Random Culture

New Microsite: Guns for Sale

Amnesty International has launched a new microsite "Teleshop: Guns for Sale." On the site, you can watch a video parody of a "home shopping network" channel selling AK-47s. The video is also available as a podcast in the iTunes music store. According to Iain at CrackUnit.com, the site was created by Poke, and the video was created by Mother.

Thanks to Frances for the link.

The Huffington Post

Well, the much hyped "Huffington Post" has launched. Posting to this group blog, you can see such notable folks as: Bill Mahr, Walter Cronkite, Larry David, Rob Reiner and many many more. Seriously, there were like twenty or more people posting yesterday when this blog launched...

The interesting thing about this particular blog is that big name people are embracing the blogging medium. The media and the rest of us had better pay attention.

But there's something disappointing about the Huffington Post... it feels to me like the same old "broken" media slapped into a new distribution model. It's basically a chronological collection of editorials where each author writes a couple paragraphs. I do find it refreshing that the blog format seems to invite a little more "off the cuff" conversation. But it's the same people we see every day in the media...

I'm waiting to see true "citizen journalism," like OhMyNews.com. Didn't Dan Gillmor have something in the works? I'd rather see the average person empowered, than the empowerment of talking heads. Who knows, once media personalities start blogging, they might shed their old media ties and start something new.

The United Nations Blog

The UN Foundation has set up a blog called "UN Dispatch."  Its purpose is to "promote thoughtful discussion about the UN, and to provide an outlet for important news and views on the UN."

Looks like they are having important guest bloggers as well. Two notable NFL players, Amani Toomer and Kurt Warner, are currently talking about their trips to Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Link via Micro Persuasion.

NewsNow: News Feeds

NewsNow is a great newsfeed site covering more than 19,000 global news sources. Definitely worth a look, but a shame that they don't have RSS feeds for many of these topics.