It took me a little while to figure out what was up with Jay ThePal, a puppet character that seemed to start popping up all over every social media website that you can think of lately. I think I first saw him (along with Kay ThePal) when they gave me a shout-out on 12seconds.tv, which is sort of Twitter for video.

Jay ThePal is one of those FAO Schwartz “Whatnot” Muppet puppets and seems to be a sort of puppetry experiment that’s happening all over the web (Twitter, YouTube, 12seconds, etc.). It’s a little difficult to get a handle on the whole project or where it’s going, but it’s very interesting to watch how people are using puppetry to explore social media. Definitely something to keep an eye on.

I’ve been meaning to post Gary The Puppet’s Magical Internet Adventure for awhile now. It’s a silly little DIY video about Gary The Puppet (of IndyMogul fame) traveling to a bunch of New York-based tech companies. Gary is performed in the video by IndyMogul’s Erik Beck and the wonderfully wacky Ben Ross.

Are you on Twitter?

Like any good early adopter/online-fad-chasing-blogger I’ve had a Twitter account set-up for quite awhile now. Lately I’ve really been getting in to it too, so follow me on Twitter. You can read my random musings, eaves drop on conversations I’m having with fellow Twitters and find links to neat/cool/funny puppet videos that for whatever reason don’t make it here to the blog.

If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about and you don’t know a tweet from a chirp, don’t worry! There’s a handy video on YouTube that explains Twitter in plain English. It’ll tell you everything you need to know to get started.

If you put videos on the web, give Blip a try. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

Update: I just noticed that Blip is having a problem with visitors to their homepage being prompted to download an executable file called XPantiVirus (don’t do it). Give them sometime to fix the problem and try out Blip tomorrow. They really are great, they’re just having a bad day today.

The DNS system is responsible for (among other things) translating human-readable URLs (e.g. www.example.com) into IP addresses (e.g. 208.66.188.165). Without a secure DNS system the internet becomes nearly impossible to navigate. The idea that hackers could do this is to a Google owned site is pretty scary considering how many people and businesses rely on Google services like YouTube, Blogger, etc.

Update: Apparently, this is much ado about nothing. According to Android Apps, YouTube was briefly down because Google was updating it to support Adsense for video, not because of some kind of hacker attack. Other people say the outage was related a technical foul-up after Pakistan blocked access to the site. Either way, YouTube is back up and running.

It’s Valentines Day! Why not mark the occasion with a little puppet fun by sending your sweetie an Valentines ecard from Puppet Greetings or JibJab’s Sendables?

You can check out my new Twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/puppetvision/. If you use an RSS reader you can also subscribe to my Twitter RSS feed.

Don’t forget, there’s also a handy PuppetVision Blog widget available too.

Just in time for 2008, have a look at the new, improved PuppetBuilding.com. Not only does it look an awful lot nicer, but I’ve made a lot of changes behind-the-scenes that will make it a much, much more fun and useful place to visit in 2008. Subscribe to the PuppetBuilding.com RSS feed and/or keep your eyes out for what’s coming next.