Rule No. 1: Convince the video's participants that the end product will be less embarrassing if they don't worry about being embarrassed while they make it. Get your people to either commit themselves fully to the project, or stay out of the way. Vimeo's companywide lip synch of Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta" wouldn't work nearly so well if the girl listening to her iPod at the beginning didn't keep such a straight face. Know what else doesn't hurt? Actually memorizing the lyrics.

Rule No. 2: Get the heavies involved. Digg's "Groove Is In The Heart" from Mark Trammell wouldn't be nearly so worth watching if CEO Jay Adelson didn't start rapping two minutes in. Tocquigny's video featured only interns, making it seem like the real executives didn't take the PR project seriously. What kind of example does that set for the monkey-see-monkey-do younguns?

Rule No. 3: Plan meticulously and practice. Here's "L'amour a la française" from AOL France. Note how precisely the performers hit their marks. Note how cleverly new singers appear on the screen. That's dedication, people! (It probably didn't hurt that the most of these people knew they were about to be laid off and probably spent most of their remaining time working on this video.)

Rule No. 4: Learn to edit. Facebook code monkeys — here dressed as White Ninjas for the company's annual games day festivities — aren't actually supersneaky ninjas; that they appear as such comes from careful editing. A hint: Editing usually takes longer than filming.

Rule No. 5: Feature the most attractive coworkers prominently. Sure, a companywide video will probably include everyone from the company. But give the longest shots to the most attractive office-workers, like the girl listening to the iPod at the beginning of the Vimeo video or the swirling blonde in the middle of the video below made by Leonardo Dalessandri's production company, "Tambureddu." Also, be a little cynical and use a frame from one of those shots for the clips' still frame, which will appear in searches and embedded placements in blogs.

The phrase Vesting in Peace, which means you work for stable company increasing in value, and you’re doing as little as possible until your stock options are worth something — just enough to be perceived as functional, but never to the point of exertion.

Klein gets this mostly right, though he fails to note where it most frequently happens: At startups after they're acquired. Most of the original YouTubers, for example, are only at Google because they're still vesting in peace.

(Photo by sfllaw)

This afternoon, someone gained access to our server and caused some problems. We are investigating and will have more information soon.

Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.

Former Vimeo Web designer Justin Ouellette quit Connected Ventures on April 4 to work full-time on Muxtape. Ouellette says he's Muxtape's CEO and founder. In his blog post announcing the project, Lodwick claimed he was "hired" by Ouellette.

But we hear that Muxtape is just as much Jakob Lodwick's company as it Ouellette's. Lodwick may well be footing the bills. After Muxtape's first day, Ouellete wrote that server costs had already reached $118.17. Ouellette can't afford that kind of charge for very long, from what we hear about his finances. Lodwick, who with three other cofounders sold Connected Ventures to IAC, can.

And likely does. We're not surprised. Since shortly he left Connected Ventures, Lodwick has publicly sought to own and operate a music service on the Web. Lodwick is also an active investor in Web services he appreciates — such as David Karp's Tumblr. Lodwick has also served as Muxtape's chief marketer since its launch. (Our coverage of the company began when Lodwick posted about Muxtape nine days before Ouellette quit Connected Ventures.)

Asked if it's good for Connected Ventures and IAC to have departed execs poaching current employees for new startups, Connected Ventures president Josh Abramson told us, "No, it definitely isn't. But to the best of my knowledge that isn't what happened."

If Abramson's knowledge suddenly expands in the coming days, Lodwick wouldn't be the first engineer to get in hot water for poaching talent from an old company while starting a new one. Netscape founder Jim Clark hired away top Silicon Graphics engineers when he started Healtheon. But perhaps Jakob Lodwick isn't Jim Clark and Muxtape merely rhymes with Netscape.

I try not to blog about Julia. I can't help it. I want nothing to do with her, but she:

• calls or emails me
• ignores that I told her she is a "psychopathic narcissist" who is "evil"
• recently hired my brother to do video work for her
• writes about me on her site
• misrepresents her closeness to my friends
• visits my old office and my old coworkers
• emailed one of my ex-girlfriends
• started attacking Tumblr

I have insulted and degraded her to no avail. She has no value. But every day Julia-related shit pops into my life.

We know you people prefer schadenfreude to jealousy. So while gazing at this photo of three out of four Connected Ventures founders (Ricky Van Veen, Josh Abramson and Jakob Lodwick plus entourage are present; Zach Klein spent the month in India), recall that despite his success Van Veen rents owns a tiny Manhattan apartment and that this trip cost the recently fired Lodwick his relationship with Julia Allison. He went with another woman. Follow the thumbnail to see the full image on Flickr. (Photo by mareen)

CenterNetworks observed that norbum.org, a domain recently purchased by Lodwick, briefly went live with the message:

Norbum.org is an open, crowd-sourced, web 2.0 application powered by Tumblr. Why the name "Norbum"? Simply put, Norbum is like Nordstrom for the homeless. We bring to you the latest in urban street fashion from the people who live it. Rather than relying on an elitist group of professional editors, we invite our readers to submit photos of the most stylish street people from around the world. If you spot one of these edgy trendsetters, just snap a photo and email it to 2tvazf87@tumblr.com. We'll post the best ones to Norbum.org.

Remember kids, some day you too could make it in New York and buy yourself a whole entire 1BR/1BA to yourself. Ricky has a counter in his kitchen; I know, I know.

"I think TV/features and Web shorts are two different animals," Van Veen told me. "Creating a 44-minute episode of Lost and a 2-minute short like Hand Vagina definitely require different skill sets."

In fact, Van Veen says the writers strike is hurting College Humor. Or at least its brand. Viacom's Paramount studio bought the rights to a CollegeHumor film a couple years back and signed on Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, writers from The Office. But, Van Veen said, "The project is on pause because of the strike."

Seventeen years old and trying to figure out how to pay for college, Klein started an online pet store in the late '90s. He designed an online store front, took orders, and mailed a daily manifest to a breeder located near the Miami airport. He made enough cash to pay for a Wake Forest degree, too. The success gave him a taste for using the Internet to sell things. You know, actual things, not just advertising.

Which is good, because without BustedTees — Connected Ventures's online T-shirt shop — CollegeHumor.com might never have become what it is today, a sparkly gem in Barry Diller's IAC tiara. Early on, the CV founders noticed that many of CollegeHumor's advertisers were T-shirt retailers. They decided to cut out the middleman and sell their own shirts. Klein lead the charge, and BustedTees became CV's most significant source of profit.

That might not be the case anymore, but the memory of success stayed with Klein. In fact, he told me the act of creating something offline and selling it online was his most fulfilling responsibility at Connected Ventures. So expect more of that. What's Klein going to sell? He wouldn't say; he only hinted it might have to do with real estate in an online world. Or selling geckos.

If you want to have a young office full of vibrant new ideas, just buy a bunch of slinkies. That will make all the old people turn into — no, not turn into young people directly — but, it will make them leave. And then they'll be replaced by young people.

Above is a photo of what Lodwick calls "my new Manhattan office" on his blog. It's also the home of Tumblr, the increasingly popular blog engine oft-touted by VC blogger Fred Wilson and founded by Lodwick associate David Karp. How do we know? That's Karp on the right.