Glenn’s creativity is a force to be reckoned with. Here are just two examples that have come out of his work on Diggnation: a day editing Diggnation told in 2 minutes and Diggnation at SXSW 2010.

But that’s not the sole reason the camera so often gets turned on him. The camera always turns on Glenn because he has always got a Toasted Donut. When Kevin and Alex (the hosts of Diggnation) ever have a peculiar quandary or topic, Glenn is the first to interject with a unique and entertaining take. Got a stale donut? Just slice it in half, toast it, and it’s fresh as new.

As the regularly scheduled Diggnation series comes to a close, that contribution of Glenn’s to an old episode of Diggnation was the inspiration for the name the new weekly series featuring Glenn McElhose that we’re proud to launch today. The show will feature creative skits, weird stories, food, nutrition, health, travel, and interviews. All of them told through the unique lens of Hippie Glenn.

We’re thrilled about Glenn’s enthusiasm in allowing us to provide an outlet to express his stories, insights, philosophies, and overall creativity and hope you’ll come along for the ride.

You can expect product and app reviews, gossip from the tech world and analysis of news from this group of experts. The show will release three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I think you’re going to like the hosts of the show and really trust what they have to say each week. Jon has diligently built up a reputation as a thought leader in the space and we’re thrilled to have his team joining us.

Please help me in welcoming Technobuffalo to the Revision3 family by checking out the show and subscribing for future episodes!

Ryan Vance | Vice President, Programming & Production | Revision3

The Revision3 Storage Archive

Revision3 has shown incredible growth over the last year, thanks to all of you. With that growth , however, come some growing pains. Our servers were sweating, hard drives were bulging, intertubes were full, and platforms were…uh…platforming. So, over the winter we rolled up our sleeves in the engine room and got to work. Most of the upgrades have been completed – or are close to completion – so we can continue to expand our great programming to you, as well as our reach.

Here’s a sampling of what we’ve been up to. Hopefully, you’ve noticed and have been enjoying the new changes.

Our new episode discussion system: DISQUS
Our previous forum system was good, but not great, so in March we rolled out a new forum system based off the popular DISQUS service. If you are a DISQUS user on other sites, it will feel like old home week to you. (You can also merge your existing DISQUS login with your Revision3 login. Yay.)  If you’ve never used DISQUS before, you’re in for a treat: realtime commenting, mobile integration (forthcoming on the Revision3.com site), media embedding in your comments, and much more. Check it out under each of the show and episode pages.

Our improved CDN service
You don’t have to know what a CDN service is to know when it isn’t performing well. CDN stands for “Content Delivery Network,” and it pretty much does what it says. It is the “tube” part of the intertubes, using advanced technology to download or stream large-scale content to all four corners of the earth. For a year now, we’ve been getting complaints about delivery to places like Australia, Western Europe, the UAE and even parts of North America. Back in February, we asked for your help evaluating new solutions to that problem, and you responded in droves. (Nearly 1000 of you gave us your feedback, thank you!) Last week we began rolling out a solution based on your feedback. We’ve seen results of the changes via measurement, but the proof is in the pudding. Folks who had been having problems with downloads and streams in the areas I’ve mentioned have begun to report to us that they’ve seen a noticeable, and welcome, improvement. We’ll keep at it, but its good to see we’re moving the needle.

The T-Rex of Hard Drives
Take a look at those glowing eyes at the top of this post. Go ahead. Take a close look. That’s not your daddy’s thumb drive you’re staring at, you are looking at part of a system that provides 240TB of serious RAID storage for Revision3 content. It’s large enough to cover our production and partner needs for quite some time to come, as well as provide instant access to our archive of content for our editors. It provides redundancy and backup, and – the best part – it’s a green system. Drives which are not currently in use are powered completely off until they are called up to serve up their delicious goodness.

Tablets are a’Comin’
We heard you and brought out real Revision3 mobile applications for iOS and Android late last year, and we heard you again about Revision3 applications designed for the iPad and Android Honeycomb tablets. I’m happy to tell you they are in the works as we speak, so… stay tuned.

The 10′ Experience
…or leanback… or Revision3 on your TV… or license for being a couch potato. Whatever you want to call it, we’ve got it. Roku, GoogleTV, Connected Televisions, iTV, Windows Media Center…whatever your flavor of poison, we’ve got you covered. Take a good, long look at Revision3.com’s leanback experience.

That’s just a few of the revisions to Revision3 that we’ve been up to over the winter. We’ve also been drinking beer, but not (necessarily) at thesame time. Watch this space for more announcements of new tech as we keep up with the demand you guys are putting on us. Thanks for that, we need a reason to get off the couch.

Over the last year, we noticed a pattern in our support emails: people who have been getting choppy, incomplete videos – or, worse, no video at all – seem to be coming from areas that are slightly out of reach of our video delivery network. Whether the user is in Revision3′s home country, or in Europe, Australia, or the UAE, it’s possible to be just a wee bit too far out of Revision3′s reach.  We have great programming, and great viewers who want to see what’s happening next on Dan3.0, pick up a few pointers from Tekzilla, or weird out a friend with Scam School antics… so, its up to those of us in the engine room to fix the problem.

We can tinker and tweak all we want – but we can’t very easily get on planes with laptops and fly to all points of the globe to test out our video delivery system. (Although, I think it might be worth it for the free peanuts, actually.) So, that’s where you come in…

We’ve set up two new video delivery technologies that we think will significantly improve the delivery of programming to you, no matter where you are. Taking a page from old commercials and mixing it with a sprinkling of modern crowd sourcing, we’ve created a blind “taste” test on revision3.com. Just point your browser to our Revision3 Video Vote page and help us out.

The test will only take 7-8 minutes of your time, tops. Just play the three videos (it’s Tom’s Top 5, which everyone wants to see at least three times), and answer the response questions below each. Please note, the only reason we ask you for your location is so that we can chart how we’re doing in different regions. We do not maintain or use this information for soliciting, sharing, telling your mother where you are, or any other nefarious purpose. We promise.

Thanks for the help – and please spread the word. Blog, Facebook, or Tweet out the link to our video vote page: http://www.revision3.com/videovote We’re going to leave the page up for the next few weeks and see which technology serves you better.

Thanks again!

As always, we’ve got a jam packed night planned for you. In addition to our headliners, Kevin and Alex, we’ll also have Revision3′s Brian Brushwood hosting a live episode of Scam School, a performance by Indie rock duo Bad Veins and the amazing Audio and Video DJ stylings of Mike Relm.

If you’re in Austin, TX, come on by! All ages are welcome and you don’t need a SXSW badge to attend! And best of all, it’s FREE!

We advise you to get there early if you want to make sure you get in and get a good spot for the show.

Here are the details:

WHEN: Saturday, March 12th, 7pm to Midnight

WHERE: Stubb’s – 801 Red River, Austin, TX

RSVP – Let us know you’re coming. Hope to see you there!

Google Maps:

View Larger Map

Hey guys! Kevin and Alex want to hear about YOUR craziest story suggestion and share it on the next episode of Diggnation. They’re hosting a couple of exclusive meetings using the very slick GoToMeeting and here’s your chance to try it, too! Here’s how to get in on the action:

1) Sign up for a free trial at GoTomeeting.com with the promo code ‘DIG‘
2) Forward your GoToMeeting “welcome” email to Kevin and Alex at this email address: gotomeeting@revision3.com
3) Watch your email to receive a personal invite to the Diggnation Round Table Session with Kevin and Alex on GoToMeeting that we’ll host on March 1st and feature on Diggnation episode 297!

Good luck and look forward to chatting with you guys at the round table session!

David Prager

This is a huge week for us here at Revision3! To kick things off, I hope you all saw Kevin and Alex on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon on Friday. The guys did an amazing job on the show and Jimmy kept them out there for an extra segment. Backstage, it was awesome to see that Tracy Morgan is essentially just like Tracy Jordan: prowling the halls of 30 Rock entertaining everyone non-stop with impromptu comedy routines. Today, we released the Diggnation episode we shot with Jimmy, so make sure and check it out. Jimmy truly is the nicest guy in show business, a real class act. His show staff, led by Mike Shoemaker and Gavin Purcell are fantastic to work with as well, and we can’t thank them enough for hosting us at 30 Rock.

So what else is going on, you ask? Well we’ve got a couple of huge releases coming tomorrow. First, a brand new show is launching called Food Mob! This is a truly interactive cooking show hosted by professional chef Niall Harbison. He’s going to be featuring a new recipe every week. These are simple recipes, aimed at the novice chef, giving you the skills you need to impress your date or your friends. The interactivity comes in once you try out the recipes. We want to get your pictures and videos (via flickr, youtube, twitter) of your wins and epic fails and we’ll feature them on the show the following week. We want to make this show a two-way dialog between you and Niall. The first recipe is for white chocolate blueberry pancakes….I tried making them and they’re amazing…just don’t plan to move for an hour or so after you eat them. You’ll be able to watch the show every week and try the recipes yourself starting April 22! And as an added bonus on April 22, Rob, the producer of Food Mob, will be answering your questions live on Twitter- @FoodMobTV at 6 PM Eastern/3 Pacific.

Speaking of two-way dialogs, we are releasing one of the most high profile Digg Dialoggs to date tomorrow: a special Earth Day Digg Dialogg with President Bill Clinton. We shot this Dialogg on Monday in New York and it was a fantastic experience. Clinton could not have been better to work with, and it’s amazing to see him in person talking about the issues he’s so passionate about. He also made a point to meet and chat with everyone in the room. What they say about his unending charisma is true, he’s got tons of it. The host of this episode is Boback Firoozbakht, a student at the Clinton Global Initiative University and grad student at the Rhode Island School of Design, and he did a great job. Check out this episode tomorrow to see President Clinton talking about the electric car and addressing global warming skeptics. You don’t want to miss this.

So yeah, it’s a huge week on Revision3, but as always, we have tons more on deck in the coming months. Stay tuned for more BIG announcements and BIG names!

And that’s a big part of the reason why I’m so concerned about how the courts have removed the FCCs ability to police net neutrality across broadband ISPs. Left to their own devices, it’s only natural to expect large cable operators, including Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and Verizon to start favoring their own cable networks and services, and slowing down competing services.

Heck, it happened back in 2007, when Comcast was ratcheting Bit Torrent traffic down , which negatively impacted us – as we used to distribute all our shows via BT.

But now, three years later, we’re an even bigger thorn in the side of traditional TV. Our shows are getting audiences that rival some of the best on cable TV, more and more people are abandoning traditional cable services for web-delivery of Netflix, independent TV, Hulu and other video sources, and new devices from Roku, Boxee, Syabas and others offer even more freedom of choice.

But today that choice is threatened. I just wrote an opinion piece for GigaOm detailing Why We Cannot Let Neutrality Fail. I encourage you to read it. But get involved too. Write your representatives and tell them you don’t trust the big ISPs to protect your interests.

Tell them you watch Web TV… and you Vote!

– Jim Louderback

This year is even better than last year too! We’ve got Brian Brushwood, the host of Scam School performing his bizarre magic for the crowd, Diggnation, AND we’ve booked an amazing band, The Walkmen to perform live! We’re back at our favorite BBQ spot in Austin, Stubb’s, since they have such a rad stage and outdoor area.

Here’s the details:
When: March 13th, 2010 – Doors open at 7
Where: Stubb’s – 801 Red River Street, Austin, TX (google maps)
Who: Anyone, 18 and over, no badge of any sort required
How Much?: FREE (yes, free!)

But it doesn’t stop there. We’ve teamed up with our friends at Gowalla to make this event one that you can check into, and if you’re one of the lucky people to check in on Gowalla, you may that you’ve won something, so make sure you’ve got it on your phone and you check in when you get there!

You can tell everyone that you’re going by RSVPing over on Facebook and join the thousands of people planning on attending. We look forward to seeing you there and hope everyone has a great time!

Here’s last year’s show at Austin so you can get at taste of what to expect: