You should already be aware that this year’s “Shark Week” on Discovery channel started yesterday. In honor of this great event (yes, I love Shark Week!) I’ll be posting a few times this week about the shows that air. This multimedia Monday is all about the Shark Week website, it has videos, games, pictures, interactive guides; let’s just say this post is very geeky but very awesome nonetheless.

Anyone living in Florida, or even someone that visits it often has to be somewhat interested in sharks. I mean, how could you not be given the stats?
I’m a little disappointed this chart doesn’t have 2007. While 2007 was supposedly a low year for shark attacks, Florida had 32, highest in the world, followed by Hawai’i, which had seven. That’s a big difference.

While I don’t play many online games, Discovery keeps advertising their “critically acclaimed” Shark Runners game so I had to play it to see what all the hype was about. The goal is to track down sharks and collect data on them, but the cool thing is is that it is using real sharks and their real movements, taking advantage of GPS tracking. But then when I got to the part of the site where I realize that the game is going on all the time and it’s going to email me alerts giving a certain amount of time for me to log back in a do something, I decided this was something I didn’t want to get into. If you want to try it out, let us know what you think in the comments.

I did try some other games, though some of them aren’t really games, like voting for the coolest shark? I guess voting is a game for some people…I actually prefer other games on discovery.com that are not part of Shark Week, like Life or Death: Lost at Sea. Basically you’re given sets of three items to choose from and you have to choose the right items that will keep you alive, it’s tricky.

While Discovery does have great pictures on the site, like this one:

if you want something high enough resolution for a wallpaper or if you want a shark screensaver, NationalGeographic is your best bet.

The best parts of the website are the interactive features, like the dive, and the pictures. But really, I think the site could have been better. I especially don’t like that they don’t have an option to embed their videos (though the videos are great), and the commercials before them are extremely loud compared to the actual video.

As for the shows though, what I’ve seen so far is awesome. I love MythBusters anyway and the Shark Week Special that aired last night was not to be missed (if you didn’t see it, it airs again Wednesday). See a clip of the robotic shark they created here.

I’m also looking forward to Dirty Jobs tomorrow night. Mike thinks they should have monkey week.

For more Shark Week, see the official Discovery.com site.

Too bad they’re out of my size, I hate to pass up a deal this good. Nice try Gap, but I don’t think it’s going to work.

Am I completely behind in knowing that there is a movie in production based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”?

I was browsing a few websites, looking for new books to review and found a new edition of Fitzgerald stories is being released in August and it’s because there is a movie based on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” coming out this Christmas starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett.

For those not familiar with the story, it is one of Fitzgerald’s less common fantasy stories. The idea for the story originated from a comment that Mark Twain once made about it being a shame that the best part of life was at the beginning and the worst part the end. So the story is part joke, yet melodramatic as it tells the story of a man who is born old and grows younger and younger. He falls in love but while she ages normally, he continues to get younger.

Enough chit-chat, here’s the trailer.

I think it’s going to be strange, creepy, and fascinating. More than that, I think it’s a great opportunity for those less familiar with Fitzgerald’s work to give the new edition of short stories a chance. While I was searching for the trailer I even found a website where you can read the story (and other stories from Tales of the Jazz Age) in it’s entirety.

What do you think? Will it be good, bad? Maybe you don’t care; what movie are you looking forward to?

I’ve actually been meaning to write about the water crisis for several months, but have put it off repeatedly. Today I found this video on Virb°, it’s a public service announcement from Charity:Water, that puts everyday Americans in the situation (to an extent, that is) that many in Africa face daily; it pushed me to make this Multimedia Monday’s post on water. (If you’re viewing this post in a feed reader, click over to see the video.)

Other videos, photos, and media on the Charity:Water website are worth your time as well.

One of the things that I wanted to post when I originally decided to post about the water crisis was this photo essay from TIME, which includes photographs from the book Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. Right now you can download the book for free, in pdf form, from that Amazon page. Though, if you can afford to, you can purchase the book from Charity:Water and $70 of the purchase goes to the charity.

While Charity:Water is a great organization, I know more, and feel more strongly about giving to Blood:Water Mission (yes, the charity started by members of Jars of Clay). Blood:Water exists to provide sustainable water sources in Africa by building wells with emphasis on reducing the HIV and AIDS epidemic. Check out the site for information on what they’ve already done, what they’re doing now, and how you can help.