The Peabody Awards are out and my first thought is, "Why in the bloody hell are they giving an award to NBC for their Olympics coverage?" But then there's well deserved awards like the one to YouTube and two which I didn't comment (because I don't watch the shows): Lost and Entourage.

Other winners include :

NBC Coverage of 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony and Zhang Yimou (NBC)
I thought it was actually quite crappy the coverage with restricted web access and fucked up advertisement breaks.

This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money (Public Radio International/NPR)
Absolutely deserved. It is such an amazing documentary about the factors involved in the current economic crisis that I find myself referring to it constantly as background historical and theoretical information.

Coverage of 2008 Presidential Primary Campaigns and Debates (CNN)
CNN had indeed the best team covering the elections.

The New York Times Web site (www.nytimes.com)
Their's may be an example of the future of online newspapers but they still suck at attribution and linking back to bloggers (in the main newspaper articles, not the blogs. Their bloggers are actually quite cool.)

Saturday Night Live Political Satire, 2008 (NBC)
Sadly, the only funny stuff to happen on SNL in like 20 years ... maybe with the exception of "Dick-In-A-Box".

Avatar: The Last Airbender (NICK)
Best. Animation. Show. EVER! Ok, not the best ever because their ending actually sucked a little (am totally opposed to Aang and Katara getting it on. Still, it's really like nothing we've had in kids TV in this country. It is truly exceptional and brilliant.

Onion News Network (www.theonion.com)
This truly blew me away, but ONN is like extremely Daily Show. They really are pushing parody and satire to the limit.

YouTube (www.youtube.com)
Broadcasting and cablecasting will never be the same no thanks to YouTube. For that, they should get a Noble Prize in Computer Science as well.

From The Peabody Awards :: An International Competition for Electronic Media, honoring achievement in Television, Radio, Cable and the Web :: Administered by University of Georgia's Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication:
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[This post is for Greg Scott, who caught me in the middle of a rant about RCN over at Twitter.]

For about 4 months now I have noticed the change in service : I will get to YouTube but the pages load as slow as molasses. Other times, if I'm doing a search in Google, the page will take forever to load.

Today though, it's pretty obvious what's happening : I can't get into Google from my home connection. No Google. No Gmail. No YouTube. So I pinged people on Twitter and asked if anybody was having problems getting into Google.

Erica G replied from Boston :

I'm on RCN in Boston and having trouble connecting to Yahoo and tinyurl this evening. # [...] And actually, thinking of it, for the past several weeks I haven't been able to load YouTube videos properly, either. #

Melanie Notkin, who is also in NYC, reported the same issue. Maria Niles is on Comcast California, but she has had similar choppy access to YouTube in the past several weeks, making her wonder if she's living in China.

Why is this so important to blog and not dismiss as a possible "blip" or outage? Well, if we take into consideration all the services Google provides, the search company may indeed be the largest and most trafficked network of websites in the world. YouTube alone would make Google the largest video broadcaster at least in the United States.

Are you going to tell me RCN just happened to degrade service to the biggest web network and web services provider in the United States? As Seinfeld would say ... I. Don't. Think. So.
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UPDATE 23 MAY 2007:
Click here to listen to the podcast

Last saturday I facilitated a session at the Personal Democracy Unconference, which took place at Pace University's downtown NYC campus.

To those who don't know what means unconference, the concept is an interesting take on the old formula. People come in with a topic or set of topics they'd like to talk about. All the topics are placed written on a piece of paper and placed on the wall, next to an empty schedule grid. Once the organizers give it a go, facilitators place on their preferred time slot and/or negotiate with other facilitators the timing of their session.

The session I facilitated was titled, Reframing Net Neutrality as a Civil Rights Issues. I honestly wasn't expecting more than a few people but was amazed when about a dozen strong came to the corner where I was set up. Nancy Scola, Aldon Hines, Cheryl Contee, Ruby Sinreich, Ed Cone, Heather Holdridge and so many other amazing people came to discuss this important issue that has been amazingly bogged down by too much geek speak.

What's at the core of Net Neutrality? There's people who can put this better than me, but at the heart of the debate is the issue that internet providers should have the right to distinguish all sorts of bandwidth usage in order to better manage their resources and provide better service. The concern is that companies like YouTube may literally clog the internets and it's tubes.
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