Will offline video celebrities jump into online video before the studios do? Kevin Maney thinks so.

Pundits and bratty little Web billionaires have long been predicting the demise of the entertainment-industrial complex. Finally, at the dawn of 2008, their predictions have proved correct. Basically, we’re talking about a gargantuan realignment, like the fall of Communism, though possibly not as important.

It’s one thing when unknown Wisconsin dudes lampoon Darth Vader with Chad Vader spoofs on YouTube. It’s more profoundly symbolic when stars such as Radiohead, Madonna, Spike Lee, Trent Reznor, Morgan Freeman, Danny DeVito, and even Larry the Cable Guy join the uprising. Losing faith in the old guard, these celebs are using the internet to distribute their work directly to consumers and experimenting with business models that don’t have anything to do with Universal Studios, Viacom, NBC, Warner Bros. Records, or any other media powerhouse.

Perhaps in 2008, even celebrity-worshiping douchebags will follow their idols onto the Web. Since online video has a fat long tail, there’ll still be lots of room for born-and-bred online video celebs when these offline celebs make the transition.

(Via Mark Robertson.)

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I’m married to an amazing chef, currently cooking his way in the hearts of Manhattan foodies at Gramercy Tavern where he’s daytime sous chef. But, then there’s me. I use the kitchen table as the place to throw my jackets, dump out the contents of my purse, set up makeshift wrapping paper center, and of course just dump everything else that’s in my way there. For my husband the kitchen table is a sacred space that needs to be treated with love. And, well, I love to throw my stuff on it - it’s extra storage in our tiny apartment.

In an effort to help get me more interested in cooking for Christmas he presented me with an awesome Wii game, Cooking Mama: Cook Off.

The 2 player game pits chef against chef. Step-by-step, recipe-by-recipe, both players assist Mama cook international dishes from 10 different nations and the coolest part is that the players can watch as the realistic foods actually change in appearance based on their actions and misadventures.

Features Boiled Down:

The Wii Remote is the user’s ultimate cooking utensil: chop, grate, slice, stir, roll and use all your culinary trickery! Hold and point it in many different ways (i.e. upright to mash potatoes, lengthwise to fry in a pan, etc.). As the user adapts she/he will actually feel the sensation of cooking in a kitchen! (minus the delicious aroma and results).

Cooking Challenge Mode lets players go head-to-head in the ultimate “cook off” to determine who can cook the fastest with the fewest mistakes, creating 55 real world dishes from 10 different nations: Japan, America, France, India, Mexico, England, China, Spain, Germany and Italy. Making desserts like cream puffs and pudding too! From hot dogs to pan fried crab to bouillabaisse, the challenges invite a wonderful array of food.

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According to my husband, there is no such thing as “too big” when it comes to TVs. Last year, I regaled him with stories of the Sharp 108-inch LCD TV, showcased at CES. Panasonic, one of the largest plasma manufacturers, is out to win the title this year with “the world largest consumer plasma flat TV,” once again at CES, with their 150-inch model. The prototype was developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. It has a size dimension of 138 x 79 inches which is big enough to stand in.

Fortunately (for me), it’s not on the market yet and there’s no word on pricing.

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As 2007 comes to a close we look back at all the good things that have happened this year. iPhone, iPods and Leopard.  It certainly has been a good year for Apple lovers.

It is my wish that the coming year be even better for all of us. Not just in terms of Apple products but in our lives as a whole. Let’s not forget that while Macs and iPods are cool, health, happiness and contentment are even better things to have. We don’t need to have the latest MacBook Pros or iMacs but we should always appreciate the here and now. The future is promising but the here and now is the most important at this given time.

Here’s to a healthy, prosperous, joyous and Mac-filled 2008 for all!

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Office 2008 has been released to manufacturing and should available in time for it’s launch on January 15, 2008 at MacWorld. That being said, are you looking forward to Office 2008?

After 4 years of waiting, what does Office 2008 bring and is it worth the wait? First, Office 2008 is now universal binary. It means it should perform faster because it’s a native binary. It supports Open XML which brings compatibility to the Windows version of Office 2007. A new user interface ties things all together nicely.

Word 2008

• Publishing Layout View - this is similar to what Pages already has, which is an interface for creating newsletters, flyers, etc.
• New templates, themes, and other elements that will help you create professional looking documents.
• SmartArt and Dynamic Guides.
• MailMerge is also there to help you personalize mass mailers.

PowerPoint 2008

• Integration with Apple remote
• SmartArt and Dynamic Guides
• Themes and other design elements to provide better looking presentations

Excel 2008

• New formulas to make your common tasks easier to do.
• Quick access to formulas and functions
• Pre-built ledger sheets to help make financial documents such as invoices, inventories, etc. easier to make.

Entourage 2008

• My Day keeps everything you need in one view. Managing your schedules, task and priorities is easy.
• Access to Exchange servers via the Office 2008 for Mac and Office 2008 Special Media Edition.
• Improved junk mail filter to keep those unwanted spam out.

With these new features, are you looking to forward to upgrading to Office 2008? Are you looking at other solutions.

Honestly with the$399 price tag for Office 2008 for Mac and $499 for the Office for Mac Special Media Edition, I’m not too sure if I’ll be getting this. Money doesn’t exactly grow on trees and I find that despite what seems to be a good software package it’s too expensive.

I’m currently using iWork and though I still have a copy of Office 2004, I think I’ll stick with 2004 for now. I use it primarily just for compatibility. When clients give me documents that I need to open. Otherwise iWork seems to be doing ok for me. $79 is a far cry from the $399 price tag. I’m not sure if the $300 plus is worth the extra features that I hardly use.

What’s your opinion? Check out the details of Office 2008 for Mac on their official web site.

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Revver hit this landmark in its first year of sharing revenue. Now Metacafe does the same. Congratulations to over 550 Metacafe Producers on earning one million dollars from Metacafe’s one-year-old Producer Rewards Program. The top video earned $27,829 — not bad for a three-minute gymnastics demo. With online video advertising expected to grow 53.2% in 2008, those numbers will only get higher.

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Even big media can get hip sometimes. Congratulations to Reuters on providing embed codes for their videos. The embed itself is pretty sparse by today’s online video standards — no fullscreen, no related videos — but it’s a start. The Associated Press has some catching up to do.

(Via Andy Plesser.)

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My wife and I came home this afternoon and started flipping around the channels on TV. We came across a special about the funniest TV ads of 2007. After watching it for awhile they showed the URL of www.veryfunnyads.com where you could go watch all the ads online.

It’s too bad they didn’t provide the option for embedding the ads themselves. So much discussion about people not watching ads anymore because of TiVo and DVR functionality. Here’s an opportunity for people to watch them over and over and share them with everyone through viral video and they don’t make it easy.

I believe my favorite ads were the ones for FedEx Kinkos. My favorite foreign ads were from Hydro Energy about young engineers.

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Received this today from a friend via e-mail. A few of these are pretty funny and definitely cause you to ponder.

• Life is sexually transmitted.
• Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
• Men have two emotions: Hungry and Horny. If you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.
• Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
• Some people are like a Slinky .. Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help but smile when you shove them down the stairs.
• Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
• All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
• Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you $30.00?
• In the 60’s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
• We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where millions of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located.  Why don’t we put hate Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration?

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In a previous post, I said that you should buy Apple shares if you can. Well most people think that it’s a great stock, hence it’s been crowned as Fast Money’s stock of the year.

Apple grew 135% in 2007. At the start of the year it was trading at $80 dollars. It just breached the $200 mark this past week topping out at $202.96. That’s a great return on investment.

What’s even better is that Apple seems to have some products up its sleeve.

Check out Fast Money’s video here.

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