Katie Couric Is All Smiles; How Bacon Banner Ads Get Made
We realize there's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: What to expect from Katie Couric on Good Morning America, the latest in animal-inspired battlefield technology, and Michael Vick's stars in some highly-stylized anti-dogfighting PSAs.
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Next week -- and only next week -- Katie Couric will be returning to the world of morning talk as co-host of Good Morning Excitement America. Based on the promos ABC has released, we should expect plenty of walking through the studio, as well as shots of Couric and George Stephanopulos smiling and pointing at each other. Adjust your DVR accordingly. [via The Hollywood Reporter]
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Oh, gosh, this alarming: Kraft, the multinational food company, has teamed up with Bleacher Report to create an app that magically adds pictures of bacon to the site's borders and background. Gross, right? It is, but the video showing the process by which the app was developed is fascinating, if you can get past the shot of a giant glass bowl full of bacon that pops up at the six-second mark. We concede, that's a pretty big 'if'. [via Fast Company]
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Ooh, this is nice: a mellow, black-and-white video for Nick Lowe's new song, "House for Sale." We like Nick Lowe and like this song, but it's particularly effective as a counterpoint to Bruce Springsteen's similarly-themed "We Take Care Of Our Own," which as a song is terrific, but suffers from an obvious, stagey video that robs the song of its impact. This is the route The Boss should have taken. [Rolling Stone]
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Today in frightening robots that could, one day, be coming to a battlefield near you: the "sand flea jumping robot." Adorable, when not packing plastic explosives. We appreciate that Boston Dynamics is proud of its line of animal-themed war toys, but should they really be releasing video of every single one? Won't this just prompt enemies foreign and domestic to move to compounds with slightly higher walls? Just a thought. [Boston Dynamics]
Michael Vick is appearing in two new public service announcements for the Humane Society urging the public to report suspected dogfighting rings (like the one Vick plead guilty to running in 2007) to authorities. Good for him, though we wish the ads wren't cut to resemble early teaser trailers for The Michael Vick Story. Oh well. It will certainly help. [via Philadelphia Weekly]
