Compilation of Ruminations: Part I

A smattering of a few topics that don't warrant a complete post:
I told you that Chronic (What?) 'cles of Narnia was exploding on the web. [NY Times - TimesSelect]

In ''Lazy Sunday,'' a music video that had its debut on the Dec. 17 broadcast of ''SNL,'' two cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, adopt the brash personas of head-bopping, hand-waving rappers. But as they make their way around Manhattan's West Village, they rhyme with conviction about subjects that are anything but hard-core: they boast about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and achieving their ultimate goal of attending a matinee of the fantasy movie ''The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.''

It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace -- or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills -- that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, ''Lazy Sunday'' has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com.

A tad belated, but interesting none the less, the New Oxford American Dictionary named 'podcasting' as its 2005 Word of the Year. While I was able to run with this and use it in a meeting at the office (yes, my job really does involve researching podcasts and their underlying technologies), I think it has a bit more significance. With the general public's understanding, or more specifically, its lack thereof of the way the technology works, it is important for more people to be exposed to the concepts. If the technology will be accepted en masse many people should be aware of it and understand how it works. [CIO Today]

More tomorrow......