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  • ISS Astronauts Get Ultimate Wireless Network, Send First Tweet From Space [Space]

    ISS Flight Engineer T.J. Creamer has sent the first tweet from space. Did he use his pointy nipple antennas to transmit data back to Earth? No. According to NASA, he used the "ultimate wireless connection", which actually is quite clever.

    The new network is called Crew Support LAN, a software update that allows astronauts to personally use the internet as they will use it from their own home. This can only happen during times in which the ISS is transmitting data to the ground stations at high speed, using Ku-Band communications. However, it's not as simple as firing up Firefox from space.

    The astronauts get into a remote desktop program on their laptops to control a desktop computer on the ground. So, while the computer on the ground access the internet openly, but the ISS's astronauts don't really "touch" the internet with their laptops. A simple, but very smart way to avoid security problems on board the space station.

    This connection is purely for personal use, as the crew already has e-mail, IP telephone, and videoconferencing. According to NASA, the personal use "will be subject to the same computer use guidelines as government employees on Earth." So no porn or torrent for the space dudes. [NASA]


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  • Build a Wall-Mounted Kitchen Computer [DIY]

    If you've been dreaming of having a computer in your kitchen but don't like the idea of hanging it from a cabinet or having it clutter up the counter, this guide can help you build a sleek in-wall computer.

    Putting a computer in your kitchen and having it look natural and part of the design is a big challenge. Ryan's wife had been bugging him to put a computer in the kitchen so she could use it to access the internet, manage recipes, generate shopping lists and so on. She also had a pretty tall order when it came to the machine, she wanted it to be discrete, have a touch screen, be internet-enabled, with wires hidden and equipped with a barcode scanner for her to scan products and manage a kitchen database. Not dissuaded by such an ambitious list, Ryan set to work and built an in-wall computer that looks like it was designed and installed by a professional.

    The build sports a touch screen, runs Windows XP with an interface cloned from the iPhone for easy finger-based navigation and use, and can do everything from displaying the weather to organizing the pantry. You can check out his build guide for detailed information including how he created the iPhone interface from scratch using the active desktop feature in Windows and coding a custom web page using icons he made and linking them to online services and software on the computer.


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  • Insane MS Paint Picture Took Man Four Years to Complete [Ms Paint]

    MS Paint aficionado scorpiongold (his YouTube account name) spent four years creating this "masterpiece." At 2.5mx2.3m, it's more than a mere painting—it's an entire world, filled with fanciful whimsy and magical characters. Did I mention it took four years?

    As for the hairband soundtrack? Well, like all hairband music, it's a bit older than four years. And yet, it's oddly fitting given the circumstances. Interpret the "insane" however you want in this case.

    Four years. [YouTube via Geekologie]


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  • System of a Down Drummer Boy Will Melt Your Face Off [VIDEO]

    It’s that time again, folks — time for another viral vid of a kid who is so incredibly gifted that you’ll a). Come to loathe your own child for his/her inadequate talent show skills, b). Fall into a deep sea of depression when faced with the listless path your life has taken. I give you: 5-year-old Jonah Rocks.

    This little video hit YouTube just a few days ago, and it’s already going viral, giving other pint-sized performers like Ukulele boy and Rush Girl a run for their proverbial money.

    But this little dude is no flash-in-the-pan prodigy — he even has his own website (which — be warned — has autoplay music) replete with more videos and photos of Jonah and the band K.I.S.S. His bio, from the “About Me Section”:

    “Way back in 2008, at the age of 3, Jonah Rocks was lining up his Play-Doh cans to make a drum kit. He would sneak all the baby spoons from the cupboard, and use them as drumsticks. His daddy asked him if he wanted a real drum kit, and of course, Jonah said ‘YES!’ Once he sat down behind that kit, and held that first pair of 7A’s in his hands, he has never put them down, playing as much as he can, whenever he can. Jonah is completely self taught, never had a lesson, and if you’ve watched him play, you know he absolutely loves it.”

    Check out his cover of System of a Down’s “Toxicity” below:

    Talent Show

    And, if you’re not completely demoralized by Jonah’s superior talent, here’s some more bite-sized band members for you.

    Reviews: YouTube

    Tags: humor, music, viral video

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  • The Importance of Daily Blathering

    SUMMARY: I'm at the end of my first five years of blogging, and with the dawn of a new decade I'm wondering what the next year is going to be about. More daily conversations, I think, are in order. If you're here for just productivity talk or design, update your RSS subscriptions to the topic-only feeds listed in the sidebar.

    The Way We Were

    One thing I've noticed about the past few years has been a topical shift in my writing. When I first started blogging, I didn't have a particular agenda in mind so I just wrote about what caught my eye and elaborated on the why of my interest. I tried to close each post with a useful observation or distillation, more for myself than any reason, because I expect the stuff I read to have some kind of "takeaway". Writing, you see, is how I untangle the writhing mass of thoughts in my head into something that is clear and actionable. I always feel a little bit better when I wrestle some truth, personal or otherwise, from an experience.

    This started to change after this blog became known for some of the tools I've released over the years, notably The Printable CEO series of productivity forms. These forms were born from a need to organize myself, and I shared them because I had just given someone advice with regards to how to drive traffic: people love free stuff. As the forms started to become known through word of mouth, I experienced for the first time being recognized for providing value to people I had never met, but nevertheless started to care about: people like me who want to make stuff and become more than we are now, well-intentioned and creative, but kind of scatter-brained due to an overabundance of curiosity. That description may not apply directly to whomever happens to be reading these words, but it's who I think I am writing to in my mind.

    With the definition of an audience, I found myself starting to second-guess what I was writing. I know it's hard to believe, but I used to write shorter blog posts that just captured a thought or three. My posts of the past few years have been longer and more self-contained, but I feel that I have missed the sense of daily community that I think I had in 2006 and part of 2007. I knew there was a hardcore audience of people who were just interested in the forms and productivity tips, and while I didn't want to go down the "tip a day" path of other successful bloggers, I nevertheless felt I shouldn't stray too far from the "productivity blogger" mold that I'd fallen into. This self-editing has taken some of the exuberance out of the writing impulse. I'd been feeling it for quite some time, as evidenced by the drop in the number of posts in the past few years, but I hadn't quite realized that it was a major problem until a few weeks ago.

    Recently, I started an experiment with Colleen Wainwright, who is one of my favorite voices on the web, using that new-fangled Google Wave technology to followup on a tweet I'd made regarding the statement Do Not Hurry. Do Not Wait. Colleen, who at the time I didn't actually know that well, responded with an enthusiastic offer to try to implement DNHDNW somehow; it had struck a chord with her. And so a few days later, I figured out actually how to sign onto Google Wave and watched enough tutorials to figure out how to make it do something, and off we were. It's been a rather remarkable experience, sharing the daily stuff that was on my mind with someone new, and it helped keep me on track and accountable to myself. I also know that when I write something here on the blog about some planned action, I have more of a tendency to follow through with it because I want to share what happened to other interested parties. I know that the experience will be stumbled-upon by a random search engine user, and it may provide a useful boost. That's reason enough for me to do it. However, there's pressure for me to package the experience in a form that doesn't waste time or wander too much; the result is that I again lose the fluidity of the writing experience, and I think that's going to be increasingly important in 2010.

    The Way Forward

    Although I don't have a clear sense of exactly who this blog's 12,500 average RSS readers are, I do have some general ideas. I always feel immodest when I list the reasons why people would want to pay attention to what I'm doing, but I'll put on my consultant cap and spell things out bluntly:

    • People who want to know what new productivity tools and updates I have available. They aren't reading, but they are monitoring for what's new an interesting, as I have gained a reputation for making good-looking stuff that's a little different and free to download.

    • People who are interested in how I think about and approach productivity in general and in action. They like the way I write about the topic, and consider me an expert in the field at some level. While not on the level of the big guns or reliable as a regular news source, I'm at times relevant to people.

    • People who identify with the complexity I present in my philosophy of life and desire to be more productive. I write using myself as example, and I never prescribe a list of sure-fire steps to be more productive. I talk a lot about the motivation and emotional aspects of getting things done, and try to dig out the nuggets of insight that help reframe my perspective on what's possible and what's ultimately doable. The effort I put into clarifying my state of mind helps other people in the same boat.

    • People who like the way I think. They find some cleverness in what I do and in how I approach things. They don't mind reading about my latest cooking experiments or tangents into children's books. They just like it. Although my subject matter tends to be randomly spread across design, development, productivity, world domination, community, gear, and eating delicious things, the approach is consistent in some way that is appealing. I also try to be clear, to be methodical without being close-minded, and to be logical as much as possible. Some people like that.

    • People who view my daily activities as a compass bearing for their own lives. I'm a struggling freelancer, trying to make things work, and I share what I do. I procrastinate. I have problems work-life balance. I'm single. And I write about it all in the context of trying to figure it out, pretty openly without being too emotional about it. When I got started blogging, I followed the adventures of Jory Des Jardins, who later co-founded BlogHer. She was writing about going freelance and the daily trials and tribulations she was experiencing in a way that I could identify with. She transparently wrote about her fears and doubts in a way that did not diminish her optimism and strength. When I finally met her at one of the SXSW events, I was so in awe that I couldn't even look directly at her...it's so silly. The writings of Kathy Sierra fell into the same category, and when I steeled myself to meet HER at SXSW I felt the same disabling awe come over me. I'm not one to usually be impressed by celebrity for its own sake, but these two people were instrumental in providing the anchors for my own development at critical points in my life...and they don't even know it. They are ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things that touch people at just the right time. From emails I've received over the years, I think I serve the same function for a few people, just by having shared what I've experienced. We all have that ability to affect each other, but writing daily makes it a little easier.

    This list is roughly in the order from "most common" to "least common", and what I want to reconnect with is the last three. That means more writing, which I will do under a new category: dailies. It'll be filled with writing like this post, largely unedited and posted like this. There's a possibility that this will turn off productivity tool enthusiasts who are following the main feed; for you, I have a separate productivity-only feed that only carries the productivity-related posts. Subscribe to http://davidseah.com/syndicated/productivity and you'll be all set. Likewise, I have a separate design-only feed that carries design-related posts only; http://davidseah.com/syndicated/design will get you there. The blog sidebar lists all the separate feeds at the top, so update your RSS subscriptions accordingly.

    Let me know what you think

    So that's my best guess at the moment...but if there's a different reason why you are reading this blog and don't mind sharing, I'd love to know. I'd never thought of just ASKING outright; thanks Colleen for the kick in the pants!

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  • Twitter and Me! Why It’s The Only Social Media Tool I Use.

    wadhwa twitter

    With all the excitement about the Crunchies awards, I thought I should cast my ballot: Twitter. No, not because it’s the best product (I think Android is), but because it has impacted me the most. To young TechCrunch readers, this post will seem pretty lame. An old professor trying to seem hip by writing about social networking. Yawn. But I’ve never been a fan of social media. I have more than 500 connections on LinkedIn, but have never invited anyone to network with me. I’ve never used LinkedIn to ask anyone for an introduction. I never had a blog (I find it much more effective to write for BusinessWeek and TechCrunch). I never had a Myspace account (does anyone still use Myspace?). Even when I signed up for Facebook, I did it reluctantly because I kept getting friend requests and wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

    But Twitter is a different. I get a stream of concise notes from people who want to bring things to my attention and from news outlets. I can follow anyone who seems extraordinarily interesting (and doesn’t tweet about brushing their teeth every morning). I can read up about people I’m not following any time I want. And I get immediate feedback to my ideas.

    I didn’t feel this way a few months ago. To me, Twitter seemed like another silly tool for kids to tell each other how much alcohol they had just consumed. But a respected professor of journalism at Columbia University, Sree Sreenivasan (@sreenet) kept sending me emails suggesting I sign up for his webcasts on Twitter for journalists. And he kept telling me I would “be a natural” on Twitter.  Why would I send streams of short messages to people I don’t know, I wondered? Sree insisted I try it. So I did. And he became my first follower.

    2008-07-25_pcwIt was pretty lonely at first, tweeting to myself, and I was rapidly losing interest. Having six followers (two of which wanted me to check out their sexy pictures) seemed pretty embarrassing. Then BusinessWeek’s former community editor, Shirley Brady (@shirleybrady) came to my rescue and tweeted to ask her followers to follow me. Soon I had over a hundred people to talk to and it didn’t seem so bad. But my tweeting quickly went beyond conversations and into new and better ways of accomplishing tasks.

    Last July, my research team published a paper about the backgrounds and motivations of entrepreneurs. I created a slide show on this for BusinessWeek. One reader asked me a question which haunted me: what is the difference between a small business owner and an entrepreneur? I had assumed that everyone who starts a business was an entrepreneur. But the more I researched this topic, the more obvious it became that there was no clear answer.

    So I went to my new friend: Twitter.  I asked my followers if they could help me solve this puzzle. Before I knew it, I had received several insightful responses. I ended up writing this BusinessWeek piece which featured Sue Drakeford, Miss Nebraska 2001 (yes, she does tweet). Since then, I’ve had my Twitter followers help me with most of the articles I’ve written. They provide a sounding board, valuable feedback and examples. I’ve quoted several followers who offered themselves up as sources (see my last post on stealth companies – Preetam Mukherjee(@_marcellus) was one of my followers as was Alex Kosorukoff(@alexko3), who I highlighted in a post about the Founders Visa).

    More recently, I’ve been getting demands from my Twitter followers for articles. My post on selling and why everyone in a tech company should have sales training came about after a series of Twitter requests. I’m writing a piece on women in engineering which is inspired by Women 2.0 founder Shaherose Charania (@shaherose) and Cisco CTO, Padmasree Warrior (@padmasree). And I’m writing a follow-up to the post on stealth because twitter followers have been bombarding me with questions about protecting intellectual property. I’ve joked that my Twitter followers seem to be setting my research and writing agenda these days and it’s not that far from the truth.

    So, Twitter has become a very useful tool. I hope I never become like Sarah Lacy (@saracuda), though. On our recent trip to Jaipur, India, she tweeted while sitting on an elephant. I kid you not. She wanted to let Twitter founder Evan Williams (@ev) know she was the first to do this.

    At present I have 3600 followers and they keep coming out of the woodwork. Many are amazing people. I follow only a few because I can’t keep up with all the conversations. If a follower looks very interesting I do try to at least read some of their tweetstream. I click on their names on Tweetdeck and read their last 20 posts. I have a few people I like to read closely for different purposes and topics. In that way, too, Twitter is amazing as its the most efficient mechanism I have ever seen to allow me to peruse the thoughtstreams of others who live all over the world.

    I firmly believe that of all forms of social media, Twitter (or more accurately, microblogging) is the only one that could have achieved this sort of effect. Writing a full blog post is time consuming and comments can be lengthy. Who wants to read or police all of them? IM is essentially a one-to-one communications tool. Facebook has elements of microblogging but it’s not really the kind of place where I want to share thoughts about immigration reform, if you know what I mean. With Twitter, I learned it in an hour, became proficient in a few more, and spend no more than 20 minutes per day on this. Because the message size is so concise, I find people say important things (or silly things, but at least they are short silly things). So Evan and Biz, you have my vote for the Crunchies, guaranteed.

    Editor’s note:  It should go without saying that Vivek doesn’t get any special votes for the Crunchies other than what any TechCrunch reader gets.  You can vote for your favorite startups for the Crunchies here. And you can follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa.

    Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

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  • The Socially Acceptable Geek Subgenre Scale [Geeks]

    Being a geek no longer holds the stigma it once did. In fact, it can be downright cool to be a geek these days. But not all geeks are created equal.

    The Socially Acceptable Geek Subgenre Scale is a handy showcase of just where various types of geeks fall in the social hierarchy. And if you're offended because you find yourself near the bottom of the scale, just remember: there's no shame in being passionate about something unpopular as long as no one knows about it. And if you really hate clicking through the gallery, click here to see all of them on one long page. Although while doing so realize that people who whine about galleries are their own subgenre of geek, and it's not very high up on the scale.

    Illustrations by Dan Meth.


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  • 7 Ways News Media are Becoming More Collaborative

    news collaboration imageWith the turn of the decade, the news media are seeing shifts from hyper competition to collaboration. News organizations are partnering to produce the news, while journalists are working with the audience to bring them content that they demand.

    Media mavens too are hoping for more collaboration in the coming year, perhaps with more action from media executives as well. And though old media may be slow to change, there are a few glimpses of tools, partnerships and models that show how news media are becoming more collaborative.

    1. Curating and Filtering the Stream

    Hourly Press Image

    We’ve already talked about the importance of journalists being curators and contextualizers using collaborative tools like Publish2. News consumers have created a social link economy from sources that they trust: their friends. The editor has been replaced by a friend on Facebook or someone you trust and follow on Twitter.

    Lyn Headley and Steve Farrell developed The Hourly Press, which uses Twitter’s API to track popular stories of the hour based on link sharing from a “publisher’s” or user’s select group of “editors” that they follow on Twitter. It helps filter the noise and see what the people of your choosing find important.

    “We’re at the intersection of a more traditional, top-down editorial model and a direct democracy or crowd-edited approach,” Headley said.

    The Hourly Press also gives the user a way to catch up on news they might have missed without having to read a lot of tweets, Headley said. Because “editors” are selected by a user, it lets people know who the influential people are in a community. Right now Hourly Press is available per request.

    2. Working With the Audience

    explain this image

    Journalists are relying on the former audience more than ever to create content and curate the news stream. But perhaps a move toward creating a more established collaborative relationship with the audience is in order.

    Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, sketched out an idea for ExplainThis.org, where readers ask questions that can be answered by journalists through reporting. This isn’t just a search or a Yahoo! Answers kind of service, but ones that take “real journalism” to answer the question well, Rosen said in his outline. Users would not only be asking the questions, but part of the process. This is also content that is completely based on what users want and are looking for.

    3. Collaborative Tools like Google Wave

    Google Wave Interview Image

    Google Wave is beginning to change the way newsrooms create news and the way we consume it. But it is also allowing the ability for news organizations to collaborate with the “former audience.” Robert Quigley, the social media editor at the Austin American-Statesman, said he sees comments on stories becoming a “living, breathing thing with people jumping into a breaking story with live updates and thoughts.” He said he’s big on Google Wave, in part, because waves can be embedded and have the potential to serve as live wikis.

    Mathew Ingram, the communities editor at the Globe and Mail, said Google Wave is another tool that makes it easier for people “formerly known as the audience” to take part in the news gathering process.

    To drive collaboration as a point, I used Google Wave to collaborate, interview and discuss some of these ideas (and others) with most of those mentioned in this post. I outlined some starting discussions of trends that are emerging, which served as a launching point for discussion. The Wave generated more than 100 wavelets, or messages. The format worked well (aside from Wave crashing several times).

    4. Social News Partnerships

    Fark Image

    One form of collaboration that is becoming more prevalent is news organizations partnering with other companies or institutions, including social sites. We’ve seen this with the MSNBC deal with the @BreakingNews Twitter account and a partnership between Fark and USA Today.

    These partnerships, in part, stem from news organizations realizing what they do well and collaborating on the rest, said David Cohn, founder of Spot.Us.

    “Could USA Today build its own Fark-esque site? Yes. Would that be ‘doing what it does best?’ No. Hence, they should work together,” Cohn said.

    Andrew Nystrom, social media editor at the Los Angeles Times, said that Fark partnered with their news organization too because they decided they weren’t very good at reporting “straight, hard news,” and so they worked with the LA Times on a custom feed of the funniest LA Times headlines.

    5. Large News Partnering With Blogs

    We’re also seeing more larger news organizations partnering with smaller organizations that cover specific subjects or communities really well. News organizations are hungry for more content and are trying to move further into covering local communities.

    Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism program at Birmingham City University noted the example of the Guardian’s move to build up its local news coverage by hiring local bloggers and sites like MySociety.

    6. Local News Organizations Team Up

    Climate Pool Image

    Local news organizations are also beginning to work together as they cut back on budgets and look for ways to fill in the gap in content. We’ve seen this between local TV stations and newspapers, but now there are examples of longtime newspaper competitors sharing sports coverage and news organizations sharing one another’s space and resources. There’s also the example of the Miami Herald creating a network of community news sources and republishing the stories on one another’s sites.

    In some cases news organizations are even pooling resources to contribute to social media. Eleven international news media, for example, joined to collaborate on updating a Facebook page dedicated to covering United Nation’s climate conference in Copenhagen.

    7. University Partnerships

    Bay Area News Image

    University journalism programs are also playing a bigger role than just educating journalists, but producing content creators while they are still in school. Carrie Brown-Smith, assistant professor of journalism at the University of Memphis, also points to the collaborative efforts between universities and news organizations, such as the Bay Area News Project, a partnership between Berkley’s Graduate School of Journalism and a public radio station.

    “However, I’ve found that, understandably, ceding even a modicum of control to students/professors does not come easily, even when news organizations are facing down a situation in which there are a serious deficit of boots on the ground,” Brown-Smith said.

    More journalism resources from Mashable:

    - 10 News Media Content Trends to Watch in 2010
    - 8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist
    - 10 Ways Journalism Schools Are Teaching Social Media
    - The Journalist’s Guide to Twitter
    - Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media
    - Social Journalism: Past, Present, and Future
    - Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I learned in J School
    - 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy

    Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Warchi

    Reviews: Facebook, Google Wave, Twitter, iStockphoto, news

    Tags: business, collaboration, journalism, media, News

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  • Confessions of a Public Speaker Demystifies Your Fear of Public Speaking [Public Speaking]

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    Our Pal Scott Berkun's New Book Reviewed >>>

    Getting up on stage, taking a microphone, and facing an expectant audience scares the crap out of most mere mortals. Scott Berkun's new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, explains why, how, and what goes on before and after a great speech.

    Rock star public speakers from Al Gore to Tony Robbins inspire and inform thousands of people with their talks–-and charge $30,000 an hour to do so. Berkun's book makes a little more sense of their seemingly superhuman skills.

    "Good public speaking is based on good private thinking," Berkun writes in Confessions, where he recalls years of his own successes and failures traveling the country giving presentations. Preparation is the key to reducing your anxiety about public speaking, Berkun says, as is the awareness that humans are literally wired to fear the situation.

    Our brains, for all their wonders, identify the following four things as being very bad for survival:

    • Standing alone
    • In open territory with no place to hide
    • Without a weapon
    • In front of a large crowd of creatures staring at you

    In the long history of all living things, any situation where all the above were true was very bad for you. It means odds are high you will soon be attacked and eaten alive. Many predators hunt in packs and their easiest prey are those who stand alone, without a weapon, out on a flat area of land where there is little cover (e.g. a stage). Our ancestors, the ones who survived, were the ones who developed a fear response to these situations.

    Just knowing that I had sweaty palms, a pounding heart, and a serious adrenaline rush up on stage at Web 2.0 Expo because the primitive cave woman version of myself thought I was about to get eaten alive made the situation more amusing than desperate-–which relieved a lot of the tension. In Confessions, Berkun outlines practical advice for softening your body's natural fear response to speaking situations, as well as how to write and prepare your material so that you can up your chances of nailing it.

    If public speaking is a part of your job–-and it is, in some capacity, whether or not you're Barack Obama–-this book is a worthy read. It's converted at least one person who has turned down speaking engagements because the idea was too scary to someone excited about getting better at a special and important skill.


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  • America can't make things because managers all learn finance instead of production

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    Curious Hypothesis On Management's Role in Decline of American Manufacturing >>>

    In a provocative New Republic article, Noam Scheiber proposes that the collapse of American manufacturing is due to a general shift in management to people who have MBAs, and to a shift in MBA programs to an emphasis on finance instead of production:


    It's not obvious that you would. Since 1965, the percentage of graduates of highly-ranked business schools who go into consulting and financial services has doubled, from about one-third to about two-thirds. And while some of these consultants and financiers end up in the manufacturing sector, in some respects that's the problem. Harvard business professor Rakesh Khurana, with whom I discussed these questions at length, observes that most of GM's top executives in recent decades hailed from a finance rather than an operations background. (Outgoing GM CEO Fritz Henderson and his failed predecessor, Rick Wagoner, both worked their way up from the company's vaunted Treasurer's office.) But these executives were frequently numb to the sorts of innovations that enable high-quality production at low cost. As Khurana quips, "That's how you end up with GM rather than Toyota."

    Upper Mismanagement

    (via Making Light)

    (Image: Venn Diagram - Happiness in Business a Creative Commons Attribution image from budcaddell's photostream)


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  • Who Says You Can’t Make Money on Youtube? [YouTube]

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    VIDEO: When Robotz Atack! Fun short clip lands film deal >>>

    I'm sure plenty of you have seen the amazing "Ataque de Panico!" video from Fede Alvarez by now, but here's how it paid off. His $300 video landed him a $30 million contract with Ghost House Pictures.

    That (understatement)very lucrative(/understatement) contract is with Sam Raimi's studio. That's right, a $300 video on youtube and a boatload of talent can score you a job in Spidey's house. So next time anyone tells you that uploading your filmed-off-the-mirror practice videos for the next American Idol audition isn't worth the time or embarrassment, show them this story.

    And congrats to Fede. Work this great deserves it. [Yahoo! Movies, Thanks jesuswhammy]


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