My adventure began October 2005 when I purchased the domain name that is essentially my philosophy. ThrowawayyourTV.com. I personally distrust and am done with linear television, after growing up with it in the 80's and 90's the internet seems to be a better more progressive choice. Full of your favourite entertainment and more importantly access to all information about the world I don't understand why more people don't take advantage of this virtual democracy. If the average citizen spent their TV time in front of a computer instead, I think that the world would be better for it. By visiting this website, I promise to offer videos, information and commentary about current events and the world wide media.
Currently I work with Mahalo.com, an Internet Archive startup much to the likes of Wikipedia. The goal is to build an online archive containing the best possible links for every every term concievable on the Internet. I've been with Mahalo full time since February 2008, but I have been using the Internet since the mid-90's.When I was younger, I started my own online community called “Metro News,” which was a division of metroboards.com hockey community. I created Metro News so that the sports fans at Metroboards had a place where they could discuss more important issues. It turned me into a news junkie.
Unhappy with my day job in Customer service I decided to try and build my dream website, I called it Throwawayyourtv.com (link to the Archive site) in late 2005. The idea was to categorize links under the specific topic that they belonged under, at the time I would say "it's like fark, but with categories for everything". The site never really made it out of pre-bata-alpha.
Late in 2005 I discovered the online bookmark website del.icio.us, but more important was the discovery of Tags and the archiving capabilities that surround them. Around the same time, I discovered Youtube.com and vSocial.com. However, I quickly discovered that the masses who visited these video sites were drawn to the same videos that made me want to throw away my TV in the first place. So, as a service to anybody who hates mass media videos, I turned ThrowawayyourTV.com into a video presentation blog. I simply embed the most interesting videos and rant about how crazy they were, media during the Bush Years was fucked up, and I posted the crazy shit that was going on.
In the year that followed, thanks in part to my addiction to bookmarking and the ability to embed video, TayTV became home to over 2,000 videos and was viewed by over millions of people. The labour that fueled my hobby soon turned into a profitable affair and Netscape.com later Propeller.com, who hired me to to steer that labour into their website.
Around this time, TayTV could no longer technically handle the amount of traffic it was getting, it got broken and I could not fix it, and in early 2007, I had no choice but to shut down it down.
The Video Archivist is my 4th blog, I feel my job is to give you an enjoyable online experience. I invite you to follow me around the web, so please consider me your “Internet Chauffeur.” Join me, in the wonderful world of finding the gems of the internet and archiving them for future consumption.
“Masterly“ Jemes Burke
