September 2005: ThrowawayyourTV.com Domain Purchased
October 2005: ThrowawayyourTV - 1st Attempt as a link Archive
Nov 2005: First Del.icio.us Tag Archive created.
Jan 2006: TayTV Media Blog created
March 2006: 1st Time on the Front Page of Digg
April 2006: TayTV account banned from YouTube for uploading the Stephen Colbert CSPAN WHC Dinner Clip
July 2006: 1 Millionth Visitor
July 2006: (My 25th Birthday)
August 2006: Reached Reddit Top Ten
August 2006: (I moved from Ontario to BC)
Sept 2006: TayTV Forum Created.
October 2006: First paying advertisement on TayTV
November 2006: Signed contract with Netscape.
Jan 2007: ThrowawayyourTV.com becomes a Charity Blog
Feb 2007: New Tag Archive has 300 Del.icio.us fans
Feb 2007: Picture in the Wall Street Journal
Feb 2007: Article in the Globe and Mail
Feb 2007: ThrowawayyourTV.com Crashes. Have to restart
Feb 2007: Blog.throwawayyourtv.com Created
March 2007: Tag Series Begins
March 2007: 2nd Del.Icio.Us Tag Archive Retired
March 2007: TayTV Builds Videosift Collective
May 2007: Socially Given Charity crumbles under the weight of success.
May 2007: Contract with AOL Newsbloggers
May 2007: TayTV Collective put on Hiatus and Closed
May 2007: Videosift Documentary Collective Created
July 2007: Tag Series is Completed
July 2007: Completed First Award winning Mahalo Search Result: E.O Wilson
September 2007: Throwawayyourtv.com forever closed and rerouted to AOL.
February 2008: Reached Diamond Level on VideoSift: 500 Published submissions.
February 2008: Retired from AOL Newsbloggers
February 2008: Hired Full Time with Mahalo.com
March 2008: Purchased Domain InternetResaerchLeague.com
May 2008: Siftography Published
June 2008: James Burke says my Mahalo work is “Masterly”
July 2008: Started jhoard.com
July 2008: Gave up on InternetResearchLeague.com
December 2008: Mahalo Answers Launches
January 2009: Karen and I opened the IdiocracyIndex.com
April 2009: Promoted to Community Manager of Mahalo Answers
June 2009: Sign a blogging contract with TrueSlant.com
2008 was my first full year working online with nothing related to TayTV. In the beginning of '08 I found myself working on three different paid projects simultaneously Propeller, AOL News and Mahalo. I was afraid to admit that I was a little overwhelmed with work.
I made a decision to leave AOL News, first of all the project wasn't going as well as I had hoped and Mahalo gave me a golden opportunity to work within the archiving industry. The original TayTV was about archiving quality, here is a screengrab courtesy of WayBackMachine of TayTV back in 2005.
Working at Mahalo has allowed me to get my hands deep into archiving again, the infrastructure there is perfect for building entertaining and educational archives for users, and going in there I know it's a long term project, the boss has said many times that it's a 5 year plan he's working on, so when I see an imperfect archive, I realize we have time to perfect this stuff, and that's what I'm there for, to improve our pages.
My greatest asset so far (other than working more hours then they'll pay me for) is adding videos to archives, each time I touch a Mahalo page that has either no video embed, or a dead one, I venture out and look for the most responsible replacement, after years of video research (over 1000 clipped uploades, and 3000+ research video posts), I am certainly making sure pages get the best video options for users. I look at this way, if a user finds a video they are interested in on a Mahalo page, then they will sit there and watch it... on Mahalo...where it is surrounded with useful information and links about that topic. It's a thing of beauty, and being able to help build Mahalo has been a pleasure in 2008. 
At the time that I was hired at Mahalo I already held two jobs with AOL, one with Propeller and one with News, I attempted to juggle all three along with my other online communities, but it turned into a big bucket of fail. Blogging on AOL News brought a lot of stress, probably most of it from me putting it on myself but it almost seemed like I was looking for an exit. I loved the idea of blogging about politics and sharing mind blowing stories in the same space as guys like the Young Turks and Daily Show Alumni Mo Rocca, but blogging was a sideshow to my research for video. I would love to pro-blog again in the future, but only if I'm approached by the right person at the right time, and I can continue Archiving.
When I started at Mahalo, my main duty at the beginning was checking the incoming links, deleting the spam, and archiving the quality gems, which was no problem, I could do this all day, however so many new Pages were being started through the Link Submission engine, we couldn't keep up with building them. Some organization was needed for the relatively young archive. Our Department created a "To-Do" section. The terms that we thought could potentially be built out into full blown pages were categorized and saved. There are thousands. That list honestly makes my mouth salivate because it just shows how many archives will be built someday. If Mahalo is developed properly there will be chance to build, maintain and curate all these interesting and potential information hubs, it sounds very fun.
Things were going smooth for the most part, we had a production line operating where some of us would check the links, others would build out the pages and others would complete the Guide notes for the pages....Unfortunately Mahalo ended up cutting a large chunk of their staff due to the whole "economic crisis" and the whole "To-Do" production line was put on hold as I moved to another project on the site. The last part of 2008 was tense, we felt as if we were fighting to keep Mahalo alive, watching co-workers leave left-right and center wasn't much fun to watch.
Mahalo made a brisk move and introduced Answers, which is where I've been stationed as a moderator and researcher, it's put a lot the curating and archiving on hold except for my continued progress on the Today in History archives which I've been working on since August and are looking to make it full circle in '09 and really get down to business by adding extra padding to each page, everyday.
Beyond Mahalo, I started a couple blogs, after leaving Newsbloggers there was a blogging void I needed to fill, first I started Twitter account (which is a "microblog") it has been interesting to watch Twitter really take off, I also false-started the InternetResearchLeague.com blog right after I got hired at Mahalo, thinking I could figure out a way to encourage people to submit links to Mahalo by creating such a "league" - it never really worked out, it just added to my early year chaos, and of course I settled on this blog jhoard.com, simple, easy, not having to care about traffic, just really murmuring to myself is pleasure enough. Blogging was a lot easier when I was a angry muckracker working at a call center living with my parents trying pay off debts. But now that I'm a full time online worker, with my own house...It's hard to venture out and find reasons to get angry? Perhaps that's why my blogging has declined, anyway, we'll have to see what 2009 brings.
The absolute highlight to my online experience 2008 was receiving and email from James Burke where he complimented my work on my DUC (The Day the Universe Changed) Documentary guide that I built on Mahalo. I am slowly making progress on Connections.
Anyway, that is Hoard's year in review
Today I posted my first blog post to InternetArchivist.
This is my fourth blog, or is it my fifth? I can't seem to remember. I remember leaving AOL Newsbloggers almost a year ago, or about 8 months, whenever last February was, either way, I left them to join the archiving team at Mahalo and still believe it's been one of the greatest decisions of my online career. I am still with AOL at a smaller level working with the great people at Propeller.com
When I left Newsbloggers, I started up Internet Research League. I had hopes to get others interested in archiving links, however I was just too busy to ever build an audience on a new blog, so I went on hiatus. Now it sits, as a wordpress graveyard it houses my complete blogging archive dating back to 2005 including my super blogging days of ThrowawayyourTV.com and TayTV.com. (Which is where the logo comes from)
This blog will be different, I will post when I have time, but probably only my Archive editions to Mahalo. I'll see if I can pretty up the place and made it enjoyable for anybody who accidentally stumbles in.
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.
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
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