Hemp-mote is a Wiimote with a Hemp exterior. Wait, what?

That is hemp string. Around a Wiimote.
That is hemp string. Around a Wiimote.

People love modifying things. A google will show you the plethora of inventive PC case mods that have been churned out by human hands. But I can bet you’ve seen nothing like this.

This man named DHRECK,whose blog feed I’ve added to my Google Reader just now, is the inventor of the Hemp-mote. Alright, just a catchy name. What it is, is a a standard Wiimote with a hemp exterior.

As the creator describes it, “In stark contrast with the original Wii-mote set, what was once sleek, cold, white and hard plastic has now become a slightly fuzzy, natural, warm and textured concoction. No more bland, branded and boring but mottled, flawfull, rough and a tad sweat absorbing.”

He also describes the creation procedure in detail at his blog here. While the remote itself works perfectly, the exterior isn’t exactly as durable as good ol’ Nintendo plastic. That makes the Hemp-mote a rather unsatisfactory controller for daily use.

Still, I think it’ll more than just impress your friends. DHRECK is going to create some more Wiimote mods soon, so I’m interested in what can come out of that brain.

Facebook Video now HD and Embed

One of the best social networking websites out there Facebook.com now allows for HD 720p video content to be uploaded and streamed to users. Facebook Video also now allows for videos to be embedded on other sites. The embedded videos will not be played back in HD format. In order to see those videos you have to be on the website.

From what it looks like, Facebook Video continues to be for the public and isn’t directly competing against YouTube.com. Facebook Video is for sharing favorite video moments with real friends while YouTube is for releasing videos to the world-wide web.

It is pretty amazing amoungst my friends how many more comment on my videos uploaded onto Facebook as opposed to my videos uploaded onto YouTube. It would be great if Facebook introduced a program like YouTube Partners where it allowed more serious content producers to generate revenue off of their videos, but for now that doesn’t seem like it’s the direction Facebook plans on taking its video service.

Here’s my first ever Facebook HD video!

Check out the picture below and see how the HD video looks on Facebook. There’s an option to view the video in regular quality. The video itself has the ‘HD’ written on the thumbnail and even ‘HD’ by its title.

This is how HD videos on Facebook look along with their listed features.

Overall I’m happy with Facebook going HD. It’s just as simple to upload videos and tag friends. If anything that is still what sets it apart from other online video services.

YouTube High Definition

It’s an even more joyous day with what appears to HD enabled content on YouTube! Late last night YouTube revamped its website and enabled widescreen video embeds. Now it looks like they’ve gone a step further.

Look at the picture below. Click on it. What do you see? Hint: it’s in the bottom right corner of every video. Look at the watch in normal quality, high quality, HD??? Is that HIGH DEFINITION?

YouTube Widescreen Embeds

[Update 12/4/08: YouTube has now enabled HD streaming]

YouTube has revamped their website. One of its major new features is widescreen embedding. When you find a video that you want to embed simply click on the customize button and choose a size that you want the player to be in. It really couldn’t be simpler.

As you may notice YouTube has enabled its search bar to display on top of the video before it has been activated. It’s pretty darn ugly.

Now all we need is allowing these embeds to play in YouTube HD stream quality. Oh the joy.

500k views later…

First off, please let me get this off my chest – WOW! This blog, StuffWeLike.com, has just hit a major milestone. We’ve surpassed 500,000 views. That’s a pretty impressive number after the site transformed into a blog on February 23, 2007.

Half of the reason why we made the grand move was due to this widget:

The minute that it was created, that weekend I literally revamped the entire website to WordPress. I’d say that doing that was probably one of the smartest moves that I’ve made with this website. The site definitely wouldn’t be what it is today without that switch.

Thanks for sticking by and being apart of StuffWeLike’s history. Hopefully within the coming months you’ll see even more and better content than we’ve ever produced before!

Widescreen becomes Default to YouTube – The Change Begins Now

[UPDATE 12/4/08: YouTube has now enabled Widescreen embeds.]

YouTube has officially switched from the default 4:3 ratio to a 16:9 ratio for videos playing on their website. This is definitely great for future web video content. Now there’s a reason to upload videos in 16:9 ratio. Obviously there’s a difference between 16:9 and true high definition, but YouTube is taking it one step at a time.

In the past, YouTube’s user generated videos and professionally produced videos looked practically identical. We’re finally getting to the point where we may see a rift occur between these user generated content and professional content. When YouTube began, it didn’t matter what quality you uploaded the video at because it looked like crap. Earlier in the year, YouTube enabled high quality video streams and now that it has defaulted to a widescreen display, there is a reason for content producers to actually care about the visual quality of their footage!

This will only help the internet web video industry as a whole. If there has been one reason why advertisers have been hesitant to step into the web video market, it has been because a lot of web video shows don’t look and feel like a traditional TV show. By having YouTube, the king website for web videos, shift their focus from low resolution videos to high resolution videos, the web video industry will grow and evolve.

This is a big day for not only web video content producers, but consumers as well. We’re finally getting to the point where quality matters.