Here’s a new video that has been making the rounds recently featuring “Roller Babies,” which is essentially a computer-generated bunch of babies on skates doing a rap number.

It’s a commercial for Evian Water, but BoomTown laughs every time I look at it anyway–probably because it reminds me of the most famous of all viral videos on the Internet.

I speak, of course, of the dancing baby from the television show, “Ally McBeal.”

Debuting in 1997, doing a bizarre boogie to “Hooked on a Feeling,” better known as the “Ooga-Chaka” song, the innovative video was an instant hit and is one of the first and best examples of the Web’s powerful virality.

I still heart that creepy little virtual nipper.

Compare and contrast:

Roller Babies

The Dancing Baby

Earlier today, BoomTown posted on the difficulty of making scratch off of popular online videos, including the recent hit of the Jill and Kevin wedding dance video.

Here’s an inevitable spoof–by New York-based Indigo Productions–the divorce dance.

At least someone’s going to pay up!

Here’s the spoof video, (which I learned about from a fellow Twitter-er after my first post):

Oh, who doesn’t just love, love, love the two latest viral videos to hit the Web?

One, called “United Breaks Guitars,” is a very funny music video about an experience singer Dave Carroll had when the airline murdered his guitar and then refused to say sorry.

It has had close to 4.7 million views on YouTube.

The other, even better, is a joyful wedding dance of Minnesotans Jill and Kevin, along with their many grooms and bridesmaids, all of whom hilariously boogeyed down the aisle.

Current count: 17.1 million views.

While that’s all well and good, like a lot of these kinds of viral phenoms, neither is likely to go the distance in economic rewards.

While Google (GOOG), owner of YouTube, has been making noise about the wedding video causing a spike in sales of Chris Brown’s “Forever,” which is the music the wedding party shimmies to, this kind of one-off is not really a sustainable way to make video a true financial windfall.

And herein lies the problem–the Internet is most excellent at surfacing and distributing these delightful videos, but it still is not so good at revealing an organized, massive way they will all pay off.

That’s because much of it relies on buzz, which is simply unguessable.

And, even though more advertising efforts are being aimed at premium content on sites like Hulu, the revenue still remains much smaller than costs.

Consider the Susan Boyle sensation, which can doubtlessly be called 2009’s Web powerhouse. The video of her astonishing rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical “Les Miserables” on the television show, “Britain’s Got Talent,” was a huge hit.

So far, the show’s YouTube post alone has 75.2 million views, but–due to a number of reasons–it did not make such sensational amounts of money.

Obviously, as consumers shift more and more time to watching Internet video, advertising allocations will be shifted too.

And, with media moguls like News Corp. (NWS) CEO Rupert Murdoch making copious noise about charging for content, it’s likely the most popular videos might begin to get some lucrative gating at some point.

But for delightful hits like the wedding dance or “United Breaks Guitars,” it will be interesting to see if they ever become more than watercooler wonders.

In any case, please enjoy the videos gratis!

Jill & Kevin:

United Breaks Guitars:

Susan Boyle:

Oh horror of horrors–Steve Wozniak got sent home last night on the ABC celebrity hoofer-fest, “Dancing with the Stars.”

Whatever will BoomTown do without the peculiar gyrations of the Apple (AAPL) co-founder to praise effusively and mock relentlessly at the very same time?

But with a truly terrible Tango and the lowest judges’ score (12 out of 30) of the remaining 11 contestants from his Monday night outing, Woz’s only chance was the voters at home.

That had worked the week before.

But, sadly, the tally this week was not enough to save him and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, or “The Girls Next Door” star Holly Madison and her partner Dmitry Chaplin. Both couples were dinged at the same time.

Said Woz about his experience, which included a hamstring injury and a foot fracture, as well as allegations of voting hijinks:

“I will dance wherever I am. I will take ballroom lessons. I’ll make it a part of my life. I hope there are a lot of other people like me that never danced their entire lives. [People] sitting at a computer terminal all day long, who are afraid to [dance]. You can actually go out there and dance and have fun.”

Well said.

And to show you what he means, here are the four videos of his clumsy but adorkable dancing efforts on “DWTS,” as well as some post-loss interviews in reverse order:

Good Morning America (with funny Footloose segment):

Jimmy Kimmel Live (with shoe-burning):

Elimination:

Week 4–Argentine Tango:

Week 3–Samba:

Week 2–Quickstep (dance-off):

Week 1–Cha-cha-cha:

Apple (AAPL) Co-founder Steve Wozniak revved his damn-the-judges juggernaut into high gear this week with yet another low-scoring performance on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” and a full-bore mangle of the Argentine tango last night.

Interestingly, as the trio of judges dinged him for the fourth week in a row, they also tried to compliment Wozniak at the same time, telling him they loved his spirit.

Oh, these judges know that a Silicon Valley mob riding Segways could run them down at any minute if they got too mean (and there was actually a video of just that possibility on the television show).

“The judges have forsaken me,” said Woz, sounding more and more like a very appealing nerd cult leader. “But the geeks shall inherit the earth.”

One judge, Bruno Tonioli, still had the temerity to speak the truth about Woz’s tango: “This really stunk.”

Retorted the cute-as-a-button-who-can’t-dance Woz: “I have three words for you: I’m still standing.”

That he is. So you better get out there and vote early and often (you can vote up to 10 times).

Results come tonight, but here is the video from last night:

Getting a foot fracture, pulling a hamstring, claiming there was a voting conspiracy, getting an abysmal score of 10 out of 30 from the judges (the lowest score ever) and, of course, dancing with as much grace as a block of cement were not enough to sink the Good Ship Wozniak last night on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Instead, the people spoke loud and proud for continued goofiness by voting for the clod-hopping Apple (AAPL) co-founder in droves and tossing off actress and Charlie Sheen nemesis, Denise Richards.

“I was more shocked than any time in my life,” said Woz. “Maybe except when I got served with divorce papers.”

It helped his cause, I think, that the judges tried to hand him walking papers on Monday, with one calling his dance “the worst samba I’ve ever seen.”

Well, that was technically true. But the people have chosen to ignore that little detail and are focusing instead on the sheer entertainment value of Woz.

Next up: Tango Argentina!

Or, most likely in Woz’s version: Mangled Argentina.

Here’s the video from the ABC show of the announcement last night, when the shocked Woz and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, found out they were were safe, including a very cute Pillsbury Doughboy moment right after.

That the rotund Woz allowed a Pillsbury Doughboy moment on national television tells you all you need to know about why he is still in the competition:

At least Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak can pun through the pain of his foot fracture and pulled hamstring.

“Hey, well, one thing I learned is that if you mix a little dancing with a little Smirnoff, you might end up in an ambulance,” he joked, riffing on the name of his partner, Karina Smirnoff.

What he can’t do, of course, is dance very well, which was why he got the low, low score of 10 out of 30 last night from the judges on his third week of “Dancing with the Stars.”

“Steve, on your knees and beg forgiveness–this was the worst Samba I’ve ever seen, I think–just bad,” said Bruno Tonioli.

“I just hope the viewers enjoyed it as an entertainment, because for me, it was consistent–it was terrible from start to finish,” said Len Goodman.

And, while she called Woz “adorable,” Carrie Ann Inaba delivered the bomb: “At some point, the novelty wears off…you’re like the uncle at the party that we just root for.”

Well, maybe for her it gets old, but not the rest of us completely riveted to exactly what wacky stunt and what level of atrocious dancing Woz will deliver next on the ABC television show.

Oh, it was a bad Samba. A very bad Samba. Sam-bad.

But from his decidedly odd “worm” to his accusing the producers of vote-rigging to his pink boa, Woz should still get the ballot box stuffed Silicon Valley-style.

Woz was cheerfully defiant about his performance, joking that he probably deserved a lesser score even: “I enjoy it and I am going to try to bring my form of entertainment to the world.”

World geek dancing domination!

So vote early and often tomorrow so that he can overcome his lack of dancing ability and win first place on this ridiculous show!

Here’s the video:

Also here are Woz’s missives to the fans on his Facebook page from yesterday, after the jump:

On Mar 23, 2009, at 1:53 AM, Steve Wozniak wrote:

Yesterday evening I was sure that I couldn’t dance on Monday, due to so much pain that I would wince when I walked. It wasn’t pretty.

My partner, Karina, is very familiar with such injuries and worse. She was of the opinion that if I withdrew from Dancing With The Stars, rumors would fly that I was using this injury as an excuse. She has danced with pulled hamstrings many times. I can tell you from how this one felt, that it’s not the same for a 20 year old as it is for a 58 year old.

Karina modified our routine to keep it as good, but avoid a few maneuvers that caused me extreme pain. We practiced a few times last night on the real DWTS stage and I decided that I could do the dance, a Samba, on Monday (tomorrow).

We practiced today. I had very little problem with my pain in the dance but now had to learn different sequences of the whole routine, and connect them. You have heard of muscle memory. One step reminds your foot of the next step, and so on. But now we took chunks in the middle and rewrote them. Plus we lost nearly 2 days of rehearsal due to my inability to do anything, not to mention hospitals and MRI’s and more over 2 days. So rehearsal-wise, we are behind everyone else, but we are feeling confident that we can do something of value tomorrow. You’ll have to see.

I have much more to say to you all, but it’s an incredibly tired time for me.

Please, keep email and phone calls to an absolute minimum. I will not necessarily be by either with any time at all tomorrow. I have to ask your help in minimizing this.

thanks,

Woz

On Mar 23, 2009, at 2:41 PM, Steve Wozniak wrote:

http://abc.go.com/primetime/dancingwiththestars/index?pn=aboutthevote

If that URL doesn’t work, go to –Dancing With The Stars–click the “Vote Now” tab.

I can’t stress how important in my case the audience voting is. It can fairly easily make the difference between last place and first place. When you are in the dance-off, you have to take extra time preparing for it instead of your next dance, which gets you further behind for the next week’s dance. It’s unfortunately a case of positive feedback and votes can pull me out of that situation. If you pull me out, I will owe you and love you all forever, as I do people who attended my US Festivals.

best regards,

Woz

On Mar 23, 2009, at 6:46 PM, Steve Wozniak wrote:

Dress rehearsal had a wardrobe malfunction

My pants were falling down and I had to keep pulling them up!

Ha ha, everyone loved it.

Also, before heading to the stage, Karina was looking for me and the camera went down to me crawling on the floor with a hurt leg. They loved it so much they asked us to do it live tonight.

The pants are being repaired now. I can’t tell you how it feels to have your pants falling off in a dance. I lost too much weight again.

The worm went great in dress rehearsal. Enjoy the show tonight.

best wishes to all,

Woz

Apple (AAPL) co-founder Steve Wozniak sure knows how to make things dramatic.

For the second time, after a foot fracture, his continued appearance on the ABC celebrity show “Dancing With the Stars” (pictured here with partner Karina Smirnoff) appears in jeopardy, due to an apparent hamstring injury he suffered at practice on Friday.

Curiously, a photo of Woz on a stretcher and an update of his injured status were taken off his Woz.org blog sometime over the weekend (I saw the picture on Saturday night, but it is impossible to find now).

Also previously 86ed was a letter he had posted and then unposted about his contention that some vote-rigging was taking place on the show, which he leveled earlier in the week.

Woz had picked and then unpicked this fight with the “DWTS” producers about their use of drama to goose ratings, related to his dance-off last week as a last-place contender.

“The producers play games to get viewers and don’t disclose the numbers. If they disclosed the numbers, it would be less of a game, but still suspect,” he said at first last week.

In a follow-up email soon after, Woz did the verbal equivalent of a clumsy 180-spin: “Yesterday, I wrote my suspicions of the secret ‘Dancing With The Stars’ audience vote tabulations. I wrote that the producers were liars, simply because I truly believed in that possibility, not because I had a shred of evidence. I hurt a lot of honest people.”

Also, even better, Woz favorably compared himself to a Teletubby on his Web site (see picture here by Janet Wozniak).

Whew! And all this before he has even stepped onto the floor for the third week of “DWTS,” which airs live tonight.

All the hubbub seems to have worked, since the blogs are full of Woz’s antics and not those of other contestants. It is, in fact, a modern miracle that Woz has garnered more attention than the publicity heat-seeking missile that is Denise Richards.

Will the hobbled Woz be dancing the samba or foxtrot in that clodhopper nerd style that has endeared him to those in Silicon Valley who have voted early and often to keep him alive?

As they say: Tune in tonight!

Doing the quickstep and wearing taped nerd glasses to the tune of Buddy Holly’s “Oh, Boy!,” Steve Wozniak’s dance stylings on “Dancing With the Stars” this week was more like “Oh, Brother!”

Nonetheless, support of geeks world-wide and an infectious spirit kept the Apple (AAPL) co-founder in the running on the ABC television competition by besting former Go-Go’s singer Belinda Carlisle in dance-off elimination.

With his very patient partner, Karina Smirnoff, and with an injured foot, Woz keep up the pace and did his Monday night dance over on Tuesday, as one of the two lowest-scoring couples.

And while the judges dissed his skills again, even though they did compliment Woz’s enthusiasm, the viewer votes sent him over the top–proof that it is marketing and not product quality that can sometimes win the day.

Woz is dancing as badly as he can with a pink boa, Silicon Valley, so get out there and make your 13 votes each count!

In any case, here’s his latest outing:

Despite the little-movie-that-could, “Slumdog Millionaire,” sweeping the Oscars on Sunday night, it was well-nigh impossible to find a really good online video of the amazing Bollywood-style dance routine done during the closing credits to the also award-winning song, “Jai Ho!”

(Even the Pussycat Dolls have covered the song, which loosely translates to “Victory.”)

Unfortunately, the A.R. Rahman tune (two well-deserved Oscars for him!) in the catchy song-and-dance number seemed to be subject to takedowns all over the Web just when it probably was a good time to put it out and generate even more box office buzz for “Slumdog.”

Why? Well, as you can see below from the video mashup on Dailymotion that I finally found, it perfectly communicates the infectious mood of the movie:

So–at this point–BoomTown feels it is not untoward in asking: What the heck is taking so long for Yahoo and AOL to decide whether or not to merge their struggling operations?

And, after talking to a dozen sources, inside and outside both companies, this week, I can tell you there is definitely one nagging problem: They’re just not that into each other.

“It’s like two people who are not really attracted to each other trying to get married,” said one source close to both companies. “But they also both desperately need a new story and have no other place to go, so they keep at it.”

Make no mistake, though, these arranged marriage negotiations are grudgingly advanced. Oh, they are talking, and how, now engaged in what another source describes as “very serious due diligence.”

Last week, for example, Yahoo (YHOO) and AOL execs had a series of long meetings in New York to discuss what the integration of the various overlapping units–content, advertising, email–might look like and to assess each other’s assets some more.

It was all organized by AOL President Ron Grant–although it is Time Warner M&A SVP guy Jim Burtson (pictured here) who is repping the media giant in the talks–who is more likely to be a player in a merged company than AOL CEO Randy Falco.

Cost savings are a prime motivator in the merger, including whether to have a single back-end system for a variety of products and services and what to eliminate or not.

“Bringing these two companies together is very operationally complex,” said one source close to AOL, which is a unit of Time Warner (TWX). “There are lots of issues to be resolved and you don’t want to wait to deal with them after a merger, because that is asking for disaster.”

For example, as was discussed, what should happen when a person types aol.com into a browser? Should it go to a Yahoo page, or perhaps the AOL sites should remain intact?

And what about the competing mail and communications systems? Yahoo favors its own products, not surprisingly, although its execs were particularly impressed by a presentation by former Bebo head Joanna Shields, who is now president of AOL People Networks, about how its various social-networking and communications assets like AIM will be knitted together in the future.

Left unsaid, although a major gorilla in room, was who would run the whole shebang. Yahoo, of course, is assuming that its execs will dominate, including CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker.

But Time Warner execs, which will own a major stake in the new entity, are worried about the pair’s management abilities, given their recent record, and would prefer that a new leader is brought in to start with a clean and more invigorated slate.

“This is not just unloading AOL for us,” said one person close to Time Warner. “It is also an important strategic move for our future to get this right.”

For its part, Yahoo is still worried about weakening AOL assets, including its large, but low-margin ad network.

AOL’s performance, which has been lackluster in recent times, will be on display in a week when Time Warner announces its earnings on Nov. 5, and Yahoo is watching carefully.

The low price of Yahoo shares is also a problem, given the company would have to give up a big percentage of itself in a deal.

Today, the stock is dipping below $11.50. And it shows no signs of improving, tamped down by the weak economy’s impact on its display advertising business and a feeling that Yahoo management is unable to improve its fortunes.

That makes what percentage Time Warner would get for trading AOL a moving target.

Also worrisome is the still-pending situation with the Justice Department’s investigation into the much-maligned Yahoo-Google search advertising partnership.

Some kind of resolution is expected to be announced this week, a decision on which the Yahoo and AOL talks also hinge.

Most expect the deal to either be neutered significantly or even blocked by regulators. Either way, that’s not good for Yahoo, which is counting on the increased ad revenues from the arrangement.

If it is blocked, Yahoo will have to seek other alternatives.

Like, um, Microsoft (MSFT). According to sources, some members of Yahoo’s board have reached out to the company about renewing talks about a search deal, in case of a Justice Department lawsuit related to its Google deal.

Microsoft execs have also been to visit Time Warner recently. The reason: If Yahoo and AOL do manage to merge, the company will press regulators to not allow Google–which has a search deal with AOL–to continue to be so.

As to Google (GOOG)? It owns five percent of AOL and also has a major interest in what happens to both Yahoo and AOL.

In other words, it’s very, very complicated dance.

We had this video hidden away in Voices yesterday, but BoomTown had to let it run free some more!

Why?

Can you say Wookie dancing to “Footloose” and Darth Vader to “Thriller”?

Frankly, that’s all I need to achieve nirvana.

And we are not even going to explain why Princess Leia dancing to “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is simply divine.

Plus, there are two of these videos, one from earlier this June and one from last year.

Shot by a site called ParkSleuth, the dance contest is part of the Hyperspace Hoopla show at Star Wars Weekends at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

The force is definitely with these videos (please, I had to!).

2008

2007

At one point, I kid him, noting, “You can’t dance on the Internet.”

So, of course, it took about two seconds to get an email on the subject decrying my ignorance, including a link to Second Life Ballet’s first production from about a year ago.

Called “Olmannen,” it uses original animations, music and choreography, put together by a choreographer and director whose Second Life name is Inarra Saarinen. And, apparently, the virtual-reality dancers are real ones manipulating the avatars.

While I am not a big fan of Second Life, this is oddly riveting and works well in the avatar medium.

The SLB’s newest production is, no surprise in this holiday season, “The Nutcracker,” which just premiered in Second Life and runs through January.

Here’s “Olmannen,” in two parts:

Part 1

Part 2