I first heard of David Attenborough after getting addicted to Planet Earth, a revolutionary nature show that aired last spring. The show’s groundbreaking scenes and footage drove me to learn more about the team that captured these great moments.

Attenborough has been writing, producing and acting in nature videos for over thirty years. I’ve had the chance to watch a lot of his work, and I must say I have yet to be dissappointed. His DVDs have become one of my favorite things to watch. Here’s a short list of some of them along with their IMDB score (out of 10):

• Planet Earth, 9.8
• The Blue Planet, 9.4
• The Life of Mammals, 9.7
• Life in the Undergrowth, 9.5
• The Life of Birds, 9.4

Here’s a short clip of one of the best scenes in Planet Earth. It shows great white sharks hunting seals off the coast of South Africa. The action is slowed down to 1/50th speed to give you every detail:

What is going on in Austin? With this system of voting, can Texas be called a democracy?

Found this on Digg today. Pretty good car ad in Germany.

If you’re trying to reach the 18-34 demographic, it’s everything. Below is a quote from a NYTimes article about legendary music producer Rick Rubin:

This summer, Columbia Records began a program called Big Red. The company invited 20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of Miami to work on various music projects. The interns concentrated mostly on the digital marketing and promotions departments in Columbia’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, which are on Madison Avenue in a granite skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson.

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rick Rubin’s co-head at the label, and Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red — Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience. “The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I — and Rick — already knew,” DiDia told me afterward. “The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”

An interesting side note is that MySpace is not so cool anymore. In fact, and I’ve heard this argued before, Facebook is loosing its cachet pretty quickly as well.

With the recent sale of Dow Jones fresh in our minds, it may be time we consider if for-profit news can actually work. Let me give you some food for thought. These are the current top stories on CNN.com’s homepage:

• Old enemies kiss in triangle of death
• U.S. basics bring smiles to family of burned boy
• Soldiers critical of war die in Iraq
• Police fear dad is a serial killer
• SI: Mom sees hope in laugh of injured Everett
• Fossett search finds old wrecks, new hope
• Wife who killed preacher says jail time too short
• WNEM: MySpace teen flies to West Bank man
• Van barrels into 7-Eleven, stuns shoppers
• Ticker: Giuliani blasts Clinton ‘venom’ on Iraq
• WDIV: Man kills self with DIY guillotine
• CNNMoney: See Lamborghini’s new $1.4M car
• Pooped pooch plucked from surf
• ‘Daily Show’s’Jon Stewart gets Oscar gig
• Fantastic fondue holds 1600lbs of cheese

Is it just me, or is there something wrong here?

This is one the best videos I’ve seen on YouTube in a while. The quality is outstanding and it’s very entertaining. This would be a great ad for Nike to show in movie theaters before the movie starts.