Live Internet Television

Silicon Alley Insider reports today that Google is redesigning You Tube to look a lot more like Hulu. My first response? It’s about time!

I have always found the YouTube interface to be repellent. It has never seemed so much stripped-down and simple (a la craigslist, Google, etc.) as amateurish. And perhaps, as it popularized user-generated content, that feel was a plus.

As it moves into legal professional content, however, and throws in-stream ads at its viewers for the first time, the hacked-together interface fast becomes a liability even for a pioneering giant like YouTube. The professional content paradigm demands a slick, sleek, sexy, and easy-to-use interface.

Like the makeover subjects on TLC’s What Not To Wear, YouTube will lose a lot of its funky and organic personality, but it will align better with its commercial ambitions and potential.

Update: As always, NewTeeVee has great commentary, raises great questions about the deeper implications of this makeover.

Who knew that TV would contribute to making this month the zeitgeist moment for cassoulet?

“I want to know who ‘cassoulet’ is,” George Stephanoulos said on-air to Charles Gibson just before a commercial break.

Many viewers were just as curious. Thousands logged onto the internet for answers, making “cassoulet” — a French bean casserole — one of the top 100 search terms on Google for Election Day.

And my sister-in-law just met an Italian online who claims that there is no better version of cassoulet, a French white-bean-and duck casserole. Italians are known for their self-confidence and colorful use of language — for instance, most pasta is named for what the shapes remind people of (pens, ears, purses, etc.).

Whether it was Google Translate that made the following miraculous translation happen, or just some nascent English skills, it’s a recipe worth keeping.

CAZUOLA OR CAZOULET

December 3, 2008

Ingredient:

500 grs white beans dry (12 hours in water)
700 grs ghoulder of pig
200 grs of teense bacon
200 grs of hide of pig
500 grs of smile sausage of pig
1 onion big
4 nails of carnation
1small bundle(thyme,them,pasley)
4 cloves of garlic
butter
broth of meat
climbs
pepper q.b. Only necessary

And now execution.

Schoolgirls beams, to clean the hide and to putt the all in an able casserole. To add 3 lts of water, the small bundle fixed, and the onion peeled fanced withe the inchiods of carnation. From whwn it boils to mate to now cook 1 hour, salting and peppering small. 30 grs of butter in a fryingpan with the sausage cutasunder (araund 10 cms). To brown for 10 min. To almost cell remove the fat and add 30 grs of butter. To make to brown the dice bacon for 10 min. To cover to thread with warm broth of meat. To bring to ebullition and to reduce to destination.To put all in the conteiner of the beams and to cook to low fire for 30 min.To butter a heat-resistant pan. Above the sausage and now bake to 220° for 1 hour, with 3 or4 ledles of broth of cooking filtered, to cover the last 20 min.

Good appetitation
Buon appetito

Dario

I hope in a good translate

Aside: How did cassoulet make it so squarely onto my radar? My husband makes us one every year at Thanksgiving, instead of a turkey.