The 2009 Tony Awards were held last night, and it seems that Broadway loves the story of a kid.

Billy Elliot, the musical based on the movie of the same name, was the big winner last night, taking home a whopping 10 statues.  This includes the odd fact that three boys (David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish) will share the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical due to the rotation of the three through the performance.

Major kudos to Angela Lansbury for winning her fifth Tony for her performance in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.

With all of that out of the way, here is the complete list of Tony Awards 2009 Winners.

Best Play: God of Carnage

Best Musical: Billy Elliot

Best Book of a Musical: Billy Elliot

Best Original Score: Next to Normal

Best Revival of a Play: The Norman Conquests

Best Revival of a Musical: Hair

Best Special Theatrical Event: Liza’s at the Palace

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play: Geoffrey Rush – Exit the King

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play: Marcia Gay Harden – God of Carnage

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical: David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish – Billy Elliot

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical: Alice Ripley – Next to Normal

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play: Roger Robinson – Joe Turner’s Come and Gone

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play: Angela Lansbury – Blithe Spirit

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical: Gregory Jbara – Billy Elliot

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical: Karen Olivo – West Side Story

Best Direction of a Play: Matthew Marchus – God of Carnage

Best Direction of a Musical: Stephen Daldry – Billy Elliot

Best Choreographer: Peter Darling – Billy Elliot

Best Orchestrations: Martin Koch – Billy Elliot

Michael Starobin and Tom Kitt – Next to Normal

Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre: Jerry Herman

I’m not 100% sure who first thought to do this, but I would send them a huge thank you if I could.

Someone got the bright idea to pose a very simple question: Ever wish songs just sang what was happening in the music video?  The concept is simple enough in that you take any music video that has odd, non-sensical moments (i.e. pretty much every music video from the 1980′s and 1990′s), write new lyrics for the song that deals with what you are seeing in the video, and, there you go, you have a literal video.

I believe the first one was by Dusto McNeato for A-Ha’s “Take On Me“, which has since been pulled and replaced by a version showm on a Digg show.  Since then the concept has really taken off, but I think the person producing the highest quality ones is dascottjr.  Check out his latest for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”.

You can check out all six literal videos that dascottjr has done so far on this playlist, or be more adventurous and check out every literal video done thus far (be warned, some of them really suck).

It’s a nifty concept that I am sure will be taken too far as happens to everything else on the Web, but it’s a fun diversion for now.

I’m one step closer to launching a video show.

I’ve been promising for some time that I would launch a video counterpart to my audio podcast, Scattercast.  Well, after many so-so test results with webcams, I decided to just chuck that whole angle and I bought an actual digital video camera as an early birthday present to myself.  I got a Sanyo VPC-FH1 HD, and, as the name implies, it does indeed shoot in high definiton.  It actually goes all the way up to 1080p, so the video quality is insanely clear.

It’s been a long time since I played around with a video camera, and I have to say I am blown away with what all this thing can do.  The fact I can stitch together multiple clips inside the camera itself just blows me away.  You can also edit out frames, color correct, rotate, just all sorts of things that impress the heck out of me for a device this small.  I mean, honestly, I can almost completely conceal this camera with my hand.  True, I have huge hands seeing as I’m 6’4″, but that is still a seriously small video camera!

So the show should be coming soonish, but there are three things left to do before I start shooting the show:

• I’m waiting on my Gorillapod SLR tripod to arrive (pictured to the right).  This will allow me to set up the camera pretty much anywhere I want as the legs are bendable.
• Need to set up a space in which to record.
• Need to set up proper lighting so I don’t have so many shadows aross my face.

As for what exactly the video show is going to be about… who knows.  This is part of the reason I am just continuing the name “Scattercast” from the audio show because I am sure the video will be just as random.  The most exciting things will probably be you can SEE me drink coffee as opposed to me randomly saying “Coffee sip…” during the audio show.  You’ll also get to see just how much I use my hands while I talk.  That should be… fun.

All in all I’m excited to get this up and running, and, hey, it isn’t like I had 500 other projects to keep me going at all times, so why shouldn’t I add yet another?

Keep an eye on the site for when I finally launch the show in the coming weeks.

CobWEBs episode 6 is in the can! (and yes, we know episode 5 is missing in action… blame tech problems)

This week Steven Hodson, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins and myself took on, as usual, a lot of subjects.

- Tweetdeck wants $50K to feature your app… inside their app… it’s like some sort of chicken/egg thing.

- The Twiiter-based game Spymaster annoyed Steven… Mark and I played it with glee.

- Jeremiah Owyang really made an annoyance of himself.  You’ll have to listen to the podcast to learn why.

- People are investing in lawsuits, and that just feels weird.

- Digg got a stupid idea that people want to vote on their ads.  Say what?

- Project Natal and Bing made for a full week at Microsoft.

- We actually talk nicely about Drew Olanoff being diagnosed with cancer, and we wish him all the best in his battle with it.

As always, I make a joke about Canada… and Steven has no clue how to gracefully change subjects.

Scattercast is 46… and it misses “the good old days”.

- There are a lot of really painful movie ideas coming down the road at us. Whatever happened to a movie being made just for the sake of a movie, and not the potential for sequels?

- Why I think of podcasting like everyone having a license to be their own radio DJ in some really odd way.

- Project Natal excites and scares me all at once.

Not a ton of subjects this week, but I still get past the 1/2 hour mark with this episode. Hope you all have a good week… hoping to announce some stuff in the next week or two!

Here’s

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

for those who wish to download it, subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.

Well here’s a follow-up post I never thought I would have to write.

Back in January 2008 I wrote a short post about Salad Bar Etiquette and the things people do while going through a salad bar that annoyed me to no end.  You know, making artistic arrangements, chatting with their friends and so on.  Well, every week I go to lunch with a friend, and ever since that post he has given me endless guff about it and how I was making too much out of it and so on.  I just grunt him and I still stand by it.

Of course, any one can be changed to “the darkside” (aka as my way of thinking) by a small event.

A few weeks ago we’re at Ruby Tuesday in the salad line as a woman is going through the line with her daughter.  My friend and I are the only other ones in line, and as he hits the midway point, and I’m behind him at this point.  All of a sudden the woman says “excuse me,” smiles, and backs up to get something she forgot.  Okay, no biggie, it’s one thing.

Then she backs up further and gets something else.  -grumble-

Okay, seriously?  Three things?  ”I’m so sorry, just one more thing!”  You go reverse in the line for three things?!?  Here’s an idea… GET BACK IN LINE AT THE END!

So, as all this is going on, my friend finally turns to look back at me, and he mutters “I think it’s time you updated your post.”

… I WIN!

And the moral to the story kids?  Don’t go backwards in the line… unless you want me to stab you in the back of the hand with a salad fork.

Who needs some silly remote controls you wave around to control a game when you can turn your entire body into that silly remote?

Microsoft has announced at the annual E3 gaming conference that they are working on a new addition to the Xbox 360 gaming system called "Project Natal".  While small details like pricing or a arelease date are missing at this time, what is known is that this could completely change how we play video games and interact with technology.

Imagine a camera system bar under your TV, and when you walk in to the room, it recognizes your face and automatically logs you into Xbox Live.  From there you can control your Xbox dashboard with flicks of your hand like the computers in the movie Minority Report.  Don’t feel like waving your hands around?  Talk to it.

Check out the video below for more of what this this will supposedly do.

I have a real hard time believing it will be able to do true full body motion capture, but if it does, then things will change in electronics forever.  Why would anyone ever need ot buy something like a Wii Fit again?  Why buy any seperate controller again when you can simply do the motions?

One of the demoed pieces of software at the show is Peter Molyneux’s ”Milo”.  From the description, it is a virtual friend that will interact with you and other members of yoru family.  He, or his female counterpart named Millie, will know each member of your family by facial recognition and will react to each person differently.  He will also hold conversations with you by relating things he or she discussed with you earlier.  (… anyone else think that could be hugely embarrassing?)  The other thing intriguing about this is the mini-review mentions Milo throws you a pair of goggles, which you catch with a motion, and then the system instructed the reviewer as to what motions to make to put the goggles on.

In short, this is about as close as we are going to get to virtual reality for a while, but there is doubt that lingers in the back of my head.  I have seen numerous game peripherals over the years that fall short of their promises, and this one is promising a heck of a lot.  I am hopeful that it will deliver on everything they are listing, heck, I really want it if it does deliver, but until I see it in person, I am going to have to remain somewhat doubtful that they can really pull off such huge leaps in technology.  If they do… Sony who?  Nintendo who?

Are you a squealing teenage girl? Have access to your parents credit cards? Then have I got the deal for you!

Nothing says “Lets celebrate our love of vampires” more than taking a cruise ship from Seattle, WA to ports in Alaska for a week.  For a the low, low price of $1200, you too can hang out a cruise ship filled with squealing girls while you discuss the books and movies, browse the dealer’s room, visit with Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen) and Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen) from the movie, watch the movies with a large group…

Okay, yeah, I can’t even fake sounding positive about Twilight Cruise 2010 any more.  I understand that people have all sorts of different fandoms and so on, but the idea of a cruise ship filled with primarily squealing teenage girls for a week would make my head explode.  (Which, by the way, has anyone checked to see if there is a giant bulls eye on top of the ship yet?  Sounds like a perverts dream come true)

Now, if a week on the cruise ship isn’t enough, you can also book an extra pre-cruise event where you go to Forks, WA and explore locations described in the books.  That’s a seperate fee… and then there is $150 on top of the cruise price for admittance into the events on the cruise ship (which implies non-Twilight people will be on the ship… oh how I pity those people)… okay, anyone remember we’re in a recession?  Anyone think Twilight is going to be anywhere nearly as popular in a year as it is now?

-waits for people to stop throwing things at him-

Look, I’ve been around enough fandoms over the years now to know how fast they fizzle out.  And don’t think it’s just me thinking this… haven’t you wondered why the movies are coming out so fast?  Lets take a look at the release schedule of the first three movies, shall we?

Twilight – 11/20/08

The Twilight Saga: New Moon – 11/21/09

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – 6/30/10

Three movies in a span of 19-months?  Anyone else ever seen movie adaptations come out that fast?  Yeah, didn’t think so.  See, this is called “cashing in before fickle teenagers move on to the next ‘hot’ thing.”  It would be nice if people thought about this before they book this cruise, but whatever, it should be a fun filled week filled with a lot of swooning, fake vampire teeth and smudges of eye-liner all over the ship from all the fans wearing too much of it.

In the mean time, check out this video of an actor from the movies taking on the fans you may find on this cruise.

Were you aware that if you go to a search engine and search on the term “porn”, you will see… wait for it… porn? I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.

Apparently some people in the social media scene are unaware of how search engines work.  You enter a term for something that interests you, you click a button, said search engine returns those results to you.  Seems like a fairly simple concept doesn’t it?  Well, apparently this was news to MG Siegler of TechCrunch and Loic Le Meur.

These two brain trusts decided to see what would happen when they went on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing, and searched for “porn”.  Both Siegler and Le Meur were shocked at how easy it was to view porn, but at least Siegler threw in a disclaimer:

Now, to be fair, to see these results, you do have to manually override the adult filter on the video search, but that’s a whole 2 clicks and doesn’t require that you actually verify your age or anything.

Well, I hate to school a fellow blogger, but, has he actually gone to any other search engine and tried this?  Don’t worry, I saved everyone the work.

Well, would you look at that.  Not only does Bing have a filter you can easily disable without age verification, but so does Ask.com, Google.com and Yahoo.com.  Imagine that.

Now, on Yahoo I realized I was signed into my account, so I signed out just in case age was associated with my account, and I was still able to turn it off with no fuss.  I did the same test on Google and got the same results.  I don’t think I’ve ever had an account with Ask, so I didn’t even bother to look.

Look, I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, and I think the name Bing is so atrociously obvious as an attempt to make a verb out of themselves as to be insulting (i.e. instead of saying “I’ll Google that”, they want you to say “I’ll Bing that”… not happening).  However, to try to insinuate that they are somehow falling down in protecting people from porn when they implemented the exact same method as every other search engine is just low.  The only thing Microsoft did differently is that the videos auto-play when you hover your mouse over them instead of you having to actually click on them.  Wow… that’s… really a non-starter.

Since this “news” came out over the weekend, Bing has added an “Agree” button stating that you are over 18-years-old, and apparently some people are calling victory because you now have to click another button.  Wow, that’ll stop those pesky kids!  They’ll never think to lie and click the “Agree” button.  I mean, heck, that’s a whole extra click to get to the porn!  No one will do that!

Personally I think this is just another example of, ‘well, Microsoft made it, so it must be evil’ thinking that is so prevalent in the tech blogosphere, and quite frankly I find that sad.  As I said, I’m no huge fan of Microsoft, but to attack them for something that is really no different than any other search engine?  Well, I think that says more about the authors of the commentaries than it says about Bing.