Producer: JD Lasica

A sample ad -- not for circulation -- of San Francisco attorney Colette Vogele.

I recently interviewed Russ Solomon, founder of Tower Records, about the music retailing giant's rise and fall. The interview took place as employees were clearing out of the company's headquarters in West Sacramento, Calif.

A couple of surprising comments: "I don't think we're seeing the passing of an era (from physical goods to digital downloads). I don't think the CD is gone."

"The impact of Napster and free downloading was not as severe as one might suspect." He says the record companies "turned their backs on the kids" by their practices in the '90s, and he believes the future is big enough for digital downloads and CDs. He also discusses Tower's overexpansion and financial mismanagement.

Russ is a great guy — down-to-earth, unpresupposing and really smart. He talks about the momentous changes occurring in the music industry, digital music, and where he'll be going from here. He hasn't been involved in running the company in recent years. Here is our 9-minute video interview. The full 31-minute version is also available.

A 1 minute 38-second compilation of video testimonials about Ourmedia, from Lawrence Lessig, Howard Rheingold, Amanda Congdon, Colette Vogele, Kent Nichols, Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur and shot and edited by Ourmedia co-founder J.D. Lasica.

A 6-minute video interview with Noah Bonnett, executive producer, and Rachel, the host of 88slide, a new one-minute trivia contest channel.

Here's a 4-minute collage of photographs and video set to music by Alex Woodard (used with permission), with photos taken by me and also drawn from PDPhoto.org, Ourmedia and Flickr.

In this 7-minute video interview, Michael Arrington of the top 10 blog TechCrunch discusses the Web 2.0 landscape.

Here's a 13-minute video interview I conducted with Alexander Castro, co-founder and CEO of the podcasting service Pluggd at pluggd.com.

At We Media in Miami in February 2007, the highlight for me was what happened outside the conference: a half-hour sitdown with the wonderful Nikki Mondschein, creator of the serial fiction blog The Star Islanders, set in South Florida. (It currently ranks at #96 among Literature blogs, says blogtopsites.com.)

In addition to the superlative writing, Nikki adds an innovative twist: a music playlist that the narrator creates, letting readers download and purchase music that the story's characters listen to. Very cool idea.

I didn't know much about the series when I sat down with Nikki, but she bails me out in talking about the story, its characters, and the new genre of serial fiction blogs. Here's an 18-minute video interview I conducted with Nikki against a pastoral background.