Of all the Hollywood celebs who lurk around the Web trying to figure it all out, comedian Will Ferrell has maintained a pretty consistent level of funny.

And so it is with this video for Funny or Die — the comedy site Ferrell co-founded — that he is not even in (although it is chock-full of famous comics). It’s about Ferrell winning the 2011 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Watch:

But before you hit play, do be warned that there’s bit of cursing at the end. And perhaps more problematic for some of you, what appears to be some (brief) interspecies sex, right around the 55-second mark. So bear that in mind:

This is strangely funny–Will Ferrell, who did that genius impersonation of former President George W. Bush on “Saturday Night Live,” returns to Funny or Die to report from a Sizzler buffet bar about a gopher raid.

And, oh yes, that Osama bin Laden thing too.

So here’s one to counterbalance some of the relentless gloom. You can’t call this a turnaround, yet. But if you squint at this in the right light, click your heels three times and think positive thoughts, it’s possible to imagine that it shows you that we’re reaching the end of big music’s big slide.

Here’s what record music sales looked like in the U.S. for the first three months of this year, compared to the same period in 2010 (courtesy of the RIAA, using Nielsen SoundScan data):

You’ll note that overall sales are still down. But this is the music industry! So a decline of 1.3 percent almost seems like growth spurt. Last year, for instance, sales were down 6.1 percent during the same period.

Again, this is way too early to call the bottom on a decade-long decline. It’s entirely possible that the sales almost-non-decrease is just a temporary burp.

But if sales have stabilized, then things get very interesting. Assets like Warner Music Group, for instance, might actually be undervalued. And digital outlets like Apple’s iTunes and Spotify might finally deliver on the promise that they’ll deliver more money for the industry than its legacy CD business.

In related news, here’s one way to sell music, which seems likely to work for many people in my Twitter/Facebooksphere: Get Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and all your other celebrity/comedy buddies to create a 30-minute video you’ll release in conjunction with your new album.

Which is what the Beastie Boys have done.

Here’s a two-minute teaser trailer, which involves some f and m-f bombs.

Still here? It’s Christmas Eve! But since you’ve got time, check out this interesting Washington Post story on the history of the Bowie-Bing original.

Amazon (AMZN) gets a two-for-one out of this as well: The promotion will (the company hopes) goose disc sales, which are sputtering, while introducing shoppers to the company’s Web streaming offering, which most people don’t yet know about or use.

As NewTeeVee points out, the chief appeal to consumers here is likely for cheapskates who want to buy a disc for a friend but watch the movie themselves. Nothing wrong with that, methinks. But the problem is that Amazon doesn’t offer the option for that many movies–313, to be exact.

Still, if you’re planning on buying “Land of the Lost” for your pal, maybe as a prank, but are jonesing to see it yourself, maybe because you’re drunk, this is the option for you.

Turns out Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt isn’t quite sure himself.

But posed with that question during a Boston news conference yesterday, Schmidt did use the opportunity to expound on the difference between pro bloggers and amateur ones. Or at least, his vision of the difference.

From Nieman Journalism Lab blogger Zachary Seward’s transcript of his exchange with Schmidt:

Me: A very small question. Google News very recently added a label for blogs, to differentiate from non-blogs. It seemed weird in 2009 to make that distinction. I wondered, did you have any input on that or –?

Eric Schmidt: I was not directly involved in that. There seems to be a difference between blogs and traditional news. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish because many people in the traditional news are also bloggers.

Me: Or they use a blog platform.

Schmidt: Or they use a blog platform. So we’re trying to find that line. And it’s hard to articulate what that difference is.

Me: How would describe that line if it’s not based on the tech behind the publishing platform?

Schmidt: No, it’s not the technology. My guess is–again, I’m speculating, which is always a mistake–it has a lot to do with the infrastructure around the writer. So a blog that’s associated with a major, legitimate organization–of which, I think, the majority, if not everyone, in the room is associated with–would be, I think, treated differently than an individual blogger who’s using his or her right of free expression to say whatever he thinks. So the presence of an editor, as an example. You know, an editor that’s not your mom.

As Seward points out, Schmidt is wrong about the way Google News categorizes. As best I can tell, Google basically lumps all blogs, including this one, which I like to think of as reasonably professional, in its “blog” category. And no, despite her occasional appearances on this site, Kara Swisher’s mother is not an editor here.

Anyway, the real question for me isn’t “how does Google refer to my work in its search results?” but “how does Google determine where to put my my work in its search results?” Schmidt and company can call it whatever they want–just send those eyeballs my way.

[image credit: kevindooley]

You’ve been able to get Funny or Die clips on YouTube before, of course, but only with some effort–until now, the site has tried to keep views on its site or with its proprietary player.

That only worked in limited doses, though, so it makes plenty of sense for the site to expose its videos to a much larger audience. But note that even Funny or Die is trying to preserve a “windowed” approach to video distribution: Its clips will still premiere on the Funny or Die site before moving over to its YouTube channel.

This isn’t nearly as important as deals Google’s (GOOG) site has already struck with providers like CBS (CBS), Disney (DIS), Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner, and Sony (SNE).

But it does provide me with a chance to run a YouTube clip featuring Will Ferrell. Warning–Mark Wahlberg drops a couple F-bombs in the last 30 seconds of this one:

That was fast.

The recent resurgence of "Saturday Night Live," spurred by Republican VP candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her comic doppelgänger, Tina Fey, may already be over.

How do I know? Well, there's the gut check--I watched most of Saturday's show, which didn't feature Palin or Fey, and it was a snoozer (the absence of new mom Amy Poehler probably didn't help either).

But we can also gauge the reaction of Internet users, thanks to the good folks at TubeMogul, a small start-up that specializes in tracking Web video views.

While SNL's sketches this season have become watercooler hits in both legal form (NBC.com, Hulu) and not-so legal form (YouTube), this weekend's show isn't making an impact, at least so far: TubeMogul says YouTube users are only trying to post SNL clips at the rate of about one per hour, since the show aired Saturday night.

That's down from an average of about six per hour for the other shows SNL has aired this season.

Could it be that NBC--owned by GE (GE)--is just doing an extra-zealous job of keeping illegal copies of its clips off of a video site owned by Google (GOOG)? Mmmmmmaybe.

But probably not: Last Thursday's SNL special, which featured not only Tina Fey, but also show veteran Will Ferrell as President George W. Bush, was a huge YouTube hit, generating 9.5 videos per hour and 1.85 million views in 24 hours.

Meanwhile NBC.com's own data confirm that this weekend's show fell flat: The site says the two political clips posted below have generated a mere 460,000 views since Saturday.

Compare that to Thursday's showstopper, currently at 1.5 million and counting.

I'd bet the remainder of our 401(k) that SNL's staff and cast are going to vote for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama next month.

But the bean counters behind the show are obviously rooting for the ticket of Sen. John McCain and Palin.

Once again, it is likely to be more popular online than on television, as it has been for all of the sketches, a striking trend for the long-running comedy show.

At its EconCeleb conference in Hollywood today, ContentNext released its list of the most influential and innovative online celebrities today.

It is an interesting and varied list that includes everyone from powerhouse Oprah (pictured here, of course!) to the bisexual sprite, Tila Tequila.

The list, in ascending order:

10. Martha Stewart (she is actually a closet geek)

9. Tila Tequila (vile, but in a good way)

8. Peter Gabriel (a longtime Web pioneer in the digital music space)

7. Radiohead (innovative band pushing Web distribution boundaries)

6. Stephen Colbert (funny online and off)

5. 50 Cent (the urban rap artist as nerd)

4. Oprah Winfrey (um, she’s runs the real world and could run the Internet if she felt like it)

3. Ashton Kutcher (not just a pretty face, but one who gets the power of viral marketing)

2. Will.i.am (for that Barack Obama mashup video alone)

1. Will Ferrell, Chris Henchy & Adam McKay (FunnyOrDie.com might not make money, but it is very funny)

Scrabble is just one of the many ‘apps’ available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In just the first 10 days since the new iPhone and the App Store launched on July 11, more than 900 programs — applications, or “apps,” in tech jargon — have been introduced by numerous developers. Over 90% cost less than $10 or are free.

Even more noteworthy: iPhone and Touch users have downloaded 25 million copies of these programs, ranging from silly sound effects to challenging games; from news readers to restaurant locators; from social-networking programs to business applications.

We have been furiously downloading and trying out scores of these programs, using a new iPhone 3G, an original iPhone and an iPod Touch, and in general, we are very impressed. We found the process of choosing and downloading apps to be easy and quick, and most of the programs to be useful or entertaining. The vast majority are nicely designed, with great graphics and effective, simple user interfaces.

The easy availability of so many programs written by developers beyond Apple (AAPL) itself makes the iPhone a true computing platform, like a pocket-sized Windows or Macintosh PC. With so many programs already available, and many more in the pipeline, iPhone and Touch owners can have a device with fresh, different capabilities every day.

But the process isn’t perfect. For one thing, it is controlled by Apple, which can theoretically bar a program from distribution or take its time making one available.

There are also some glitches. If you download a lot of apps in a short period, it can slow the phone’s next synchronization with iTunes to a crawl, while iTunes tries to back up all the new programs, each of which can contain numerous hidden files. And there’s a bug in the new iPhone operating system that causes apps to crash, and can even force the iPhone or Touch to reboot, if you use a large number of the new apps in quick succession. Apple says it is working on fixing the latter problem.

Also, Apple’s claim of over 900 programs is somewhat misleading, because more than 100 of those are individual books you can read on the phone.

Apple’s baby isn’t the first smart phone that has attracted developers. Thousands of third-party programs already exist for Nokia (NOK) phones, BlackBerrys, and phones running the Palm (PALM) and Windows Mobile operating systems. But, compared with the graphically rich, snappy iPhone apps — many of which fetch data from the Internet at high speed — the typical program on these older platforms looks positively primitive.

AOL’s AIM program

The App Store can be accessed either from the device itself or from Apple’s iTunes software on a Windows or Mac computer, which then transfers the app to the iPhone or Touch. The programs cover a wide range.

Some fill in obvious holes in Apple’s original complement of iPhone software, things the iPhone has lacked that other phones have. These include AOL (TWX) Instant Messenger, a variety of task and to-do lists, sophisticated note takers and a voice dialer. There are numerous versions of popular board, card and word games, like solitaire, mahjong, Scrabble and Sudoku. There are also eye-popping iPhone versions of popular video games, some controlled by the phone’s motion detectors, which allow you to move cars and characters by just tilting the phone.

Numerous programs let you perform Internet functions without using the Web browser on the iPhone or iPod Touch. These include news readers, Internet radio players, sports-information apps, and programs that let you blog or use Google (GOOG) or Facebook or MySpace.

There are business programs from Oracle (ORCL), Salesforce.com and Bloomberg. And there’s a clutch of Bible programs.

Some are simply goofy, like a virtual Star Wars-like lightsaber, a rotary-phone dialer and a virtual “stapler.” And several programs turn the phone into a flashlight for emergencies.

There are way too many interesting apps to review here, but these are some we liked, in no particular order.

AOL Radio

AIM: free

This version of AOL’s popular instant-messaging program does a competent job with text chat, though it can’t yet do video or audio chats, or transfer files. Because Apple isn’t allowing third-party programs to run constantly in the background, you can’t receive new messages in AIM while doing other things. This will supposedly be fixed by new Apple technology due later this year.

AOL Radio: free

While the iPhone and Touch contain full, terrific iPod capabilities, they don’t come with Internet radio players like this one. It can stream music and talk from a wide variety of online sources, including the Internet versions of broadcast radio stations.

Evernote: free

This is an elegant note-taker that has been on computers for a while. You can jot down text notes, store photos or dictate audio memos. And it synchronizes with your Evernote account on Windows or Mac PCs or the Web.

Instapaper: free

A handy way to store Web pages on your iPhone or Touch for reading when you’re offline. While on your computer, an Instapaper button added to the Web browser can snag Web pages for your personal Instapaper database. Then, when your iPhone or iPod Touch is online, it synchronizes with the Web-based Instapaper database. Later, when you’re offline, the pages are still there on the device, ready to read.

Travelocity TravelTools: free

You can use this to check flight schedules, gate assignments and security waiting times. While you can’t book flights through this app, there’s a button that automatically calls Travelocity’s toll-free booking line.

More Cowbell!: free

This is inspired by the Christopher Walken/Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live skit, which made the lowly cowbell a cult musical instrument. Whenever you tap the on-screen cowbell, it makes the recognizable, hollow sound heard in songs like “Down on the Corner,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. You can play along with any song you choose on the iPod Touch or iPhone.

Touch Tarot: $0.99

Touch Tarot

Touch Tarot is a digital tarot-card reading that takes place on your iPod Touch or iPhone, instead of at a table inside an incense-scented tent at the county fair. Phrasing above each card tells its general category, and below each card is a brief explanation of its meaning. For example, we turned over the Wheel of Fortune card in one card reading, and it said, “Advancement for good or ill. The unexpected may occur. Good fortune.”

iWant: free

The iWant app displays 12 black-and-white icons on your device’s screen, each representing a different category of something you might be looking for — including restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, drugstores, banks, car rentals and movies, among others. The device identifies your location, and each category can be tweaked to search by distance or highest rankings from Yelp, a user-written rating service.

Urbanspoon: free

Urbanspoon resembles a slot machine: From left to right, columns show the location, cuisine and cost of nearby restaurants. Instead of pulling a lever to start the slot machine, you simply shake your iPhone or iPod Touch whenever you want to find a restaurant. When it stops, you see the name of a restaurant near you and its classification in each category. (You can also specify what location, cuisine or cost you’re looking for.)

Air Hockey: $0.99

Air hockey works like the game you used to play in your best friend’s basement. You play against the computer, using a fingertip to push red or blue mallets that move a puck around the screen-turned-table and trying to sneak the puck past your computer opponent to score a goal.

MotionX Poker: $4.99

MotionX Poker

This is an addictive poker game, played with realistic, beautifully rendered dice instead of cards. The cool thing is that you roll the dice by simply shaking the iPhone or iPod Touch; convincing sound effects accompany each roll of the dice.

MLB.com At Bat: $4.99

There are lots of cellphone apps and services that can give you live updates on baseball games. What’s special about this one is that it adds video clips of key plays that you can view while the games are still in progress, using the full power of the gorgeous screen and video player on the iPhone and the Touch.

Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D: $9.99

This is a rollicking, fun iPhone and iPod Touch rendition of the classic video racing game, where you control your car by tilting the phone. The graphics are good, and the game-play is responsive.

Truphone: free

This is the first app for the iPhone that allows you to make cheap phone calls over the Internet instead of using the built-in cellphone capability, which can be much costlier, especially for international calls. In our tests, we had some trouble at first, but after we removed and re-installed the program, it worked fine. Calls to 40 countries are six cents a minute to landlines and 30 cents a minute to cellphones. The iPod Touch lacks a microphone, so this app works only on the iPhone.

Write to Walt and Katie at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

The intersection–or perhaps collision is a better word–of the entertainment and technology industries continues at an ever more frantic pace.

And it’s clear the strike is putting into fast-forward efforts by writers and other “talent” to do an end run around the traditional studio system of funding and distribution.

There has been, no surprise, a lot of noise recently about writers looking for funding coming up to meet with venture firms in Silicon Valley, the results of which I remain wary still.

Nonetheless, such marriages are inevitable, as the entire content distribution system shifts to new paradigms in a likely-to-be painful transformation whose end result is decidedly unclear.

To get some clarity, I decided to pay a visit to Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital to talk about his nascent efforts in the arena with his investment in the online comedy video site, Funny or Die, which was launched last April.

Starting with a small $17,000 seed round, Sequoia and others have recently sunk a more serious $15 million in the effort. The site has yielded a few Web hits, mostly done by Kvamme’s partners and the site’s co-owners–actor Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (Chris Henchy is the third leg of the entertainment stool, although the trio has wrangled in a plethora of Hollywood’s hipper comedy elite to contribute to Funny or Die).

Mixing professional content with user-generated material makes for a pretty lively site, where videos are voted up (funny) or down (die).

Results for Funny or Die are still mixed, with big success for one with Ferrell and McKay’s daughter, called “The Landlord,” which has garnered more than 50 million views. Its follow-up, “Good Cop, Baby Cop” (see here), is also popular.

But those are the exception, of course, with several million monthly unique visitors engaged for about five minutes a visit.

But Funny or Die is definitely doing a lot better than some other failed efforts in the genre, such as NBC’s DotComedy.com, Time Warner’s This Just In and Time Inc.’s Office Pirates. Current competitors include sites like CollegeHumor and the Onion, although each one has a taken approach.

Funny or Die’s will be to expand to new areas, such as a recent site on skateboarding and other extreme sports fronted by Tony Hawk called Shred or Die and another one called MyBlueCollar, focused on redneck comedy. Eat or Die–using famous chefs–is next.

But who knows what tomorrow will bring–as the song kind of goes–in a world where few online video sites survive?

Here’s Kvamme to talk about it:

And here is the post and video of FOD investor Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital talking about the online video space.

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags on.

Wrote Menn: “At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.”

That includes meetings with Silicon Valley VCs like Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, whose investment in Facebook gives it insight into the creation of new audiences.

The hope for the–let’s just say it, shall we–unnatural pairing of tech VCs and Hollywood folks?

That the sour lemons being thrown between studios and writers–ironically over future Internet revenues–will actually yield delicious lemonade, spurring the creation of quality online programming using the Internet’s massive distribution system that could also make lots and lots of money.

“Could” is obviously the operative word here, because–as we have noted many times in this column–very little original content created on the Web has had any true payoff yet.

Um, well, none, actually. (Save porn, which is an almost perfect content format for the Web.)

To be fair, there have been promising signs.

Ex-Yahoo exec and Hollywood player Lloyd Braun struck a deal with PepsiCo to pay for and create online content.

MySpace has been backing a range of online-only shows made by Hollywood types (although none has shown strongly increasing popularity and even seem to display worrisome declines in viewership, despite the justified potential touted by creators).

Of course, there’s the high-profile Sequoia Capital-backed and Will Ferrell-fronted FunnyorDie.com, as well as MyDamnChannel.com, from former MTV executive Rob Barnett.

And Viacom agreed this summer to create a new online entertainment studio in a 50-50 split with the creators of the popular “South Park” TV program.

Finally, Creative Artists Agency, which is the biggest talent agency in Hollywood, is apparently working with Silicon Valley VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson to raise up to $200 million to invest in the digital entertainment sector, even as other such firms as UTA and William Morris are making similar moves.

While that is a very little amount of money considering the billions of dollars that slosh around Silicon Valley to fund things like dopey widgets and yet another movie-comparison site, it is still a start.

The presumable goal is that by creating and distributing content for the Web in a lower-cost way, many kinds of revenues could be garnered via everything from advertising to getting back investments by selling the online material to television and the movies.

That sounds like a plan, except for the fact that the current state of advertising innovation related to Web videos is quite nascent, even pre-fetal.

While a lot of companies are focusing on this and advertisers seem willing to move in the direction of more online ad spending, it will simply be a long time before these investments pay off.

Which is just not part of the no-risk-and-all-reward mentality of most players in Hollywood, who wouldn’t know a start-up unless it took their prime table at the Ivy.

In all seriousness, it seems unlikely that the high cost of production now in place in the entertainment industry would in any way lend itself to the critical need for that kind of massive shift in economics required to make online content pay off now.

Currently, studios still only grudgingly want to consider sharing ownership of content, and the talent seems even less willing to take the burden of risk required onto its shoulders.

Still, I admire all the efforts on the part of writers to not just strike, but strike out from their current comfort zone and move into the future, where online entertainment production and distribution seems obviously inevitable.

The problem is that it might take a longer while than those creators have patience for and they will prematurely abandon their efforts and return to propping up a system that is destined for, while not oblivion, then certain diminution.

So what’s needed–as in all marriages–is a crazy leap of faith, like this one from “Heroes” Peter Petrelli on NBC.

I am definitely no expert on this topic, except to say that the problem is that the delta between falling flat and succeeding is frighteningly close.

In other words, I Has No Idea what to do.