Spark

LAST WEEK’S WINNER: Calvin!!

It’s Friday so that means another contest and luckily it ties into a show we’re chasing at the moment so ultimately we’ll both win from your answers.

As we posted in the “Chase-List” earlier this week, the Spark team is putting together a piece called “The Web We Were” which profiles websites that have fallen from glory; extinguished from the golden net-scape of the nineties. Our challenge to you this week is to become a retro website bounty hunter. Bring us back a link to the most tacky, throw-back website you can find. Think along the lines of Spark blogger Adam who submitted a site he recently built, or maybe you want to offer up something truly authentic by using the Way-Back Machine.

The blog commenter that comes back with the cheesiest website will win a Spark bag and maybe even a chance to appear on the show.

4151 Commenthttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/same-day-game-day/Same+Day%2C+Game+Day2008-08-29+20%3A40%3A08kellych

If you’re interested in a bit of a look behind the scenes at Spark, you might want to check out this podcast from The Canadian Podcast Buffet. It’s a recording of a presentation that my colleague, Dan Misener, and I made at the Podcasters Across Borders conference in June. It’s a great annual meetup of indie podcasters from Canada and abroad, and we were very pleased to be presenting. Our topic was “Lighten Up, Tighten Up: What Public Broadcasting can learn from Podcasting, and Vice Versa”. We talked about what we learned in the first season of Spark in terms of making something that could live both on the radio and online.

Photo Credit, Joao Pedro, uai!

414No Commentshttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/video-of-the-dayis-audio/Video+of+the+Day....Is+Audio2008-08-28+19%3A48%3A42Nora+Young

If it’s Wednesday, it must be chase list time. Here are some of the stories we’re working on. We’d love it if you’d give us your thoughts, suggestions, and tips. We’re also always looking for interesting guests, so if you know someone who might have an unusual perspective, let us know!

Texting While Walking
Liz is looking for your opinions on ‘texting while walking’. The American College of Emergency Physicians recently issued a warning about the risk of injury if you walk and text message at the same time. How about you, have you mastered texting and walking effectively, or is there a limit to multi-tasking? Is texting and walking the new ‘talking loudly on your cellphone’?

The Web We Were
Chris recently wondered when we would get nostalgic for websites in the same way that we enjoy campy nostalgia about old TV shows, or post-war instructional films. What are some of the website conventions that seem quaint to you now? How much time needs to pass before we can get nostalgic?

Smells Like Teen Zeitgeist
I’m researching a story on fragrance. Perfume says a lot about the era it was created for: the Glamazon ’80s, for instance. Any thoughts on who to interview? Possible treatments? What does 2009 smell like?

The photo this week is of listener kc dyer’s dogs: Silas Ermineskin is being chased by his Golden brother Seamus!

4138 Commentshttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/the-chase-being-nostalgic-for-the-web-we-were/The+Chase%3A+Being+nostalgic+for+%22The+Web+We+Were%222008-08-27+18%3A07%3A40Nora+Young

As producer Liz Bowie posted last Monday, we’re back! But before coming back we had a meeting about what Spark’s second season would be like. One of the ideas we came up with was keeping the blog a place that you can come back to everyday. We’ll be doing this by posting updates on items were working on, tasks we’d like your help with, contests, what will be in the show and…what will not.

That brings me to this post… Gutter Links. When brainstorming for stories we scan through a lot of websites and throw a lot of internet spaghetti against the story wall – some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t. Gutter Links is what falls to the floor – stuff that doesn’t quite feel like a full story but is still interesting and worth checking it out. By posting it, it keeps all our random thoughts somewhere we can check back on and potentially re-work later. Maybe you’ll see where we can go with these tidbits of web and you can re-pitch it to us.

Here’s what was thrown in the gutter this week:

Nora
:: I’ve heard of ways of tracking where your food comes from, but this is tracking the provenance of your clothing.

:: Tool for lazy bloggers (I should use this!)

::This may be too speculative, but I’ve been thinking about cyborg chic, given the new Janelle Monae album.

Chris
:: I saw the latest Radiohead video and then the making of it, then I read about the first feature film to use a “tapeless” system premiering at TIFF ‘08 – What direction is video going?

:: First there were Cargo Cults, now a documentary called Disneylandia. How is the third world synthesizing Western pop culture?

:: Lo-fi regression: cameras, instruments, and how we listen to music. When will vintage internet be in?

Liz

:: Sneaky teens in the UK are using Google Earth to find homes with pools for a summer dip.

::Touch screen computers at food pantries let people choose what they want to eat, instead of accepting pre-prepared charity food boxes.

::Gotta give credit to Dan Misener for finding this one: A washing machine that uses a single cup of water to wash a load.

412No Commentshttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/gutter-links/Gutter+Links2008-08-25+16%3A00%3A00kellych

We love contests here at Spark. We love making them up and giving away prizes.

So, we’ve decided that every Friday we’ll post a contest for you to enter. We’re hoping all of you Master-Procrasters will check it out after you’ve browsed Boing Boing and YouTube and you’re still trying to avoid your TODO list.

We’ll try to keep the contests low maintenance so you can play them while you should be listening to that conference call at work or answering emails.

Winners will get a snazzy Spark reusable grocery bag (which not only looks great, but we’re told is the perfect size to haul vinyl records around town!)

This week’s contest: Write a caption for this photo…

This pic was taken this afternoon in Norway especially for Spark. It has to do with a story you’ll hear on Episode 1 on September 3. I think it looks more like Mars than Norway.

Write a caption and win a bag. You can post your caption below or send us an email.

It’s that easy.

41112 Commentshttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/introducing-same-day-game-day-contests/Introducing+Same+Day%2C+Game+Day+Contests2008-08-22+20%3A10%3A19Elizabeth+Bowie

The above video is an animatronic version of Montreal-band The Arcade Fire’s song “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”. This is one of a series of popular songs being covered by this fully animatronic group The Rock-aFire Explosion. For some reason (maybe it’s because I went to Chuck E Cheese all the time as a kid in Winnipeg) I got obsessed with who would do this and I uncovered some very interesting stories.

Turns out that long before Chuck E Cheese there was a string of restaurants called Showbiz Pizza and Rock-afire was the house band in each one. The creator of the technology and the band lost everything when the mouse with the big teeth came along but recently he’s been making a come back with these videos. There is a documentary being made on this whole story which I think will be just as good as King of Kong – if not better.

410No Commentshttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/video-of-the-day-rockafire-explosion/Video+of+the+Day%3A+Rockafire+Explosion2008-08-21+17%3A05%3A49kellych

Hi Sparkers,

My name is Chris Kelly. I’m new. For the next month I will be producing here at Spark while Dan Misener works on a highly-covert, priority, radio mission. When I am not covering for extremely talented producers on Radio 1 I can be found making content over at CBC Radio 3. I make podcasts, conduct interviews, edit sound and blog…really it’s not that much different than what I’ll be doing here but instead of covering new Canadian music I’ll be wrangling tech and trend stories. Our first show of the season is only a couple weeks away and I’ll be mixing it, so let me know how I do.

Thanks,
ck

PS. Yes, that is Elijah Wood. No, I’m not all that tall – he’s really short. Yes, that is the glisten of sweat on my face – this was taken at the Dirty Dog in Austin, Texas during the South by Southwest Music Festival where Frodo and I were checking out Thunder Bay’s the Golden Dogs. No, he doesn’t wear “one ring to unite them all”.

4091 Commenthttp://www.cbc.ca/spark/2008/08/new-guy-chris/New+Guy+Chris2008-08-20+20%3A21%3A34kellych