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by Teresa Martin

Oh we love our doggies. I mean, the biggest news about our president-elect is conjuncture over -- no, not the cabinet, not the policy plans, not even the sit-down with former rivals - but WHAT KIND OF PUPPY WILL THE GIRLS GET?

Yes, blogs and lists and chats are bulging with ideas and speculation and debate (see "there's no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog"). They are discussing shelter dogs and rescue does and giving most of us our first look at the Peruvian Hairless Dog. The AKC, the Humane Society, the AVMA, the ASPCA, and seemingly everyone with access to mail has chimed in on this issue of critical importance.

Google is showing nearly seven million results for "obama puppy", putting the topic in a dead heat with "bank bailout." See, here's the wonder of our web medium in action - when your friends and family get sick of hearing your thoughts on dogs, you can find seven million other souls out there who share your obsession and can talk about it endlessly. Dogs, the killer app. Who knew? Woof.

Of course, we also like cute. And we like to watch things on TV. So combine puppies - very cute puppies -- with web video and you've got the perfect streaming sideshow for your workday. At least that's what the owners of six absolutely-adorable Shiba Inu puppies found out.

Shiba Inu is a breed of dog hailing from Japan. The puppies look like roly-poly little teddy bears and they just make people say 'oooooooh' and 'ahhhhhh.'

The San Francisco couple used a live video service called Ustream.tv as a way of keeping an eye on Mom and the pups during the work day. Someone at Ustream noticed the stream and it must have made them smile because they emailed two friends the link. Who emailed two friends. Who emailed two friends. And so on and so on, just like that old shampoo commercial but in warp speed. Before you could say sit-stay, the cute puppy video popped onto desktops across the globe. Upward of 3 million people have tuned into watch puppy cam. When I dropped in this afternoon, there were more than 25,000 other tuned it at the same time. In case you missed it - cute puppies:

http://www.ustream.tv/videoplayerpopup/channel/317016

This was great news for Ustream, which couldn't have created a better promotion. It turned out other human puppy parents were using the service for the same thing and suddenly Ustream was featuring its puppies. It was a virtual puppy play date! And UStream says that when the six Shiba Inu pups move to their new homes, they'll be sending along web cams, so that we can continue watching them grow up.

Talk about unexpected outcomes. Ustream was founded in 2006 by John Ham and Brad Hunstable who met as West Point cadets, and Dr. Gyula Feher, as way to help overseas soldiers stay connected to their families. The idea was to make an easy platform for anyone with web cams to share live video.

Think of it is a channel for micro-broadcasting - what local cable access could have been if it were delivered from a random accessible streaming server and created with remote cameras from anyone's living room. While YouTube is the king of recorded video, Ustream wants to be the new live TV. Did I mention those puppies are awfully cute?

Despite a world of narrow casting, we have more that brings us together than splits us apart. Mass media has long played the role of being that shared platform of common experience. How ironic that the medium was going to let us create the individual me-channel also turn out to be a perfect way to create a new sense of us.

Woof! And Double Woof to that.