I know that should be "where are my videos?" in the title, but I wanted to contract it. Unfortunately, there's no contracted form of "are" with "where" ("they're" = "they are" - but "wher're" or "where're" doesn't seem to exist in English - at least not in written English, although Dictionary.com seems to approve of the usage). I've now spent significantly more time describing the incorrect grammar in the title of this blog post and as well as researching the viability of a contracted form of "where are." That seems counterproductive to my original point of saving time by using a contraction in place of spelling out "where are" (which I've done at least twice now in this first paragraph of explanation).
At any rate, onto the subject at hand: where're my videos? Sprinkled throughout the various blog posts on here, you might have noticed the occasional Bambuser or Qik video (links to recordings of originally live-broadcast videos). Notice that I used the past tense "might have noticed" (or maybe that's present perfect tense? I should brush up on my English conjugations! especially in light of the fact that I'll soon begin helping for the second year in our church's free English as a Second Language classes). (I was going to continue the previous sentence, but my parenthetical thought really disrupted the flow, so I am starting a new sentence as soon as I finish this parenthetical interjection.) The videos to which they used to point are no longer available, as both Bambuser and Qik have ceased operation, at least in as far as I was using them. Bambuser has become a pay-only service (and it's not cheap - it starts at base $299/month, plus variable costs, with an example of 50 six-minute broadcasts per month, with an average of 200 viewers, costing nearly $800/month after variable costs are factored in); Qik was (apparently) bought by Skype and no longer exists as its own platform (some of the Qik capabilities were merged into Skype). Neither platform informed me of this (although at least Bambuser claims to have done so), and my videos are no longer either accessible or (most likely) even exist. I have no emails from Bambuser in my email, and the last communication I had from Qik was in 2011 where they indicated they were bought by Skype, but nothing after that indicating Qik was going away and I needed to get my videos if I wanted to keep them.
So, sorry family, but if I had a video of you in Bambuser or Qik, it's gone. Sniff, sniff. Although, I guess, I obviously haven't looked at them in at least a year, so perhaps I should apologize, family, for not watching you more frequently. Perhaps I should download everything I have on Facebook and look through it all before Facebook does the same thing to my memories.
Ah, well, at least Blogger still has my memories... a topato!
