Doing the Cha-Cha

Is having your own personal reference librarian for the Internet an idea whose time has come? chacha.com certainly hopes so. The premise behind this unusual search portal is that you search on a term, then are put in contact with a guide who will run the search for you, pull up the most likely results, and help you refine the search to find more of what you need. These people are paid as contractors, earning $5 an hour (or $10 an hour if they build up a really good record as excellent searchers) plus recruitment incentives for the searches they run—though a big difference between this and other pay-for-contributions sites such as the late lamented Themestream or ePinions is that guides will have the option of being paid instantly via a transfer to a debit card (with a $2 fee per transfer).

The site was only started earlier this month, and there are a few questions as to whether it will last very long. The premise reminds me a good deal of Themestream, a site from just prior to the big dot-com bust that paid writers for blogging before anyone even knew what blogging was. I actually managed to make a couple of thousand dollars from that site, due to writing two articles and getting them slashdotted. But Themestream burned through its venture capital and fizzled like a meteor hitting the ocean. Is Cha-Cha going to do the same?

Also, the search interface is slightly clunky. In order to get a guide, you should probably search on a very broad and general term, then ask the guide to refine it for you. (i.e. if you want a plot synopsis of Naruto, search on "anime" and then ask the guide for the synopsis.) The software interface for guides is a little clunky, too, consisting of a currently-Windows-only Java application that serves as a chat tool and wrapper for Internet Explorer. It's a little tricky to work with.

On the other hand, the idea of having, or serving as, an Internet reference librarian on topics of interest to oneself is a remarkably cool idea. And if $5-$10 an hour is chickenfeed, it's not bad for sitting-at-your-computer-anyway money. I'm definitely going to ride this rocket until it flames out, while hoping the idea catches on.

Incidentally, if any of my readers (yes, both of you) would like a guide invitation, please drop me a line and I'll be happy to shoot one off to you.

Edit: Also, ChaCha just appeared on Good Morning America—though it did so in the time slot that my local station pre-empts for its local news segment. Oh well, at least I can read their article about it.

MP3 Commentary Track for Robotech: "Enter Marlene"

Here is a new audio commentary track I have recorded for viewing with episode #70 of Robotech, "Enter Marlene." It is an 11-megabyte 64 kilobit mono MP3, timed for playing with the NTSC version of the Robotech Remastered release of this episode. (I suppose if you have the original DVD release, you could watch it with that also, though the timing might be a bit off for some things; if you've got a PAL DVD, you might want to use an audio editor such as Audacity to speed the track up by 4% to sync it to your disc. Or Sharecrow may actually be able to adjust the speed itself if you edit the .crow file; I'm not sure.)

To watch it, simply start your DVD player (that is, select "Enter Marlene" from the main menu and it will start playing automatically) and your MP3 player or iPod at the same time. Or you can use the Sharecrow mp3/DVD player if you watch DVDs on a Windows computer. Simply right-click the links and select "Save" to download the audio file and the .crow configuration file, save them in the same directory, then load the .crow file once you start playing the disc. When you select "Enter Marlene" from the menu, the commentary track will start playing automatically.

Audio file: here or here
.crow file: here or here

Update: I have just finished an update to this commentary track, so it is now current as of 11/14/06. The main changes were to clarify some things about the relationship between Ariel and Marlene Rush, based on what I learned by talking to Tommy Yune at the Shadow Chronicles screening on November 11th. You can actually hear the sections I changed in their original form in the commentary track excerpt segment that I did for RDF Underground episode #51.

Here are some links to things I mention in the commentary.

Stan Bundy's "Early Return" essay, "Palimpsests"

Peter Walker's "Late Return" essay (updated slightly by me, with his permission)

Rook Bartley's red Alpha, with Jupiter Base logo visible on wings