Author: Nan

Unlimited(??!!) Streaming downloads from Netflix

The AP reports that Netflix is poised to release news that they will lift the monthly “view instantly” streaming video limits currently on their plans. A quick check over on my Netflix account does not yet show any changes or updates. Perhaps I need to wait until after midnight to see if this helps. This is seen as a presumptive strike against Apple’s anticipated Movie Rental/Download service, expected to be announced at MacWorld this week.

When this service first came out from Netflix, I was very excited. And truth be told, I was really hopped up about it. But the reality quickly set in, and I have never once come close to hitting my maximum hours. This is really no big thrill. I am the perfect candidate for this service. I have a PC with a high speed connection and a Huge wide screen monitor in my bedroom, so I can tune in movies and watch them in bed. Heaven, right? Would be except the movie selection pretty much sucks. OK- corrected statement , you can not say it is full of bad movies when it contains movies like Tootsie and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, these are great movies. There are some great classics on there, but I am not a “watch this movie a million times, because I love it so” kind of gal. I watch a movie once, maybe twice and then not again for years and years. The balance of the selection is filled with Shows from the History Channel and Rock and Roll Documentaries. Again, not all bad– but not the variety that suits the whims of my fickle movie viewing mind.

Then there are the other strange hoops and jumps to watch the movies– first off, it only works on the Windows OS, so if you run Macs or Limux or any other OS.. You are SOL. Then, even if you have a windows box, their player requires that you be using the MS Explorer Browser. I wonder how much MS paid them for that one, or what sort of lazy hack of a programmer sold that as a good idea. Last I checked, 75% of the browser hitting up this Blog were running Firefox.

The article expresses financial concerns for this move by Netflix, as the extra load will cost them more money- but unless they fix a bunch of other things about the service, I see this as no increased burden at all. I would love some data from Netflix, showing how many users currently already max out their allotment and will be excited to hear about this option. Looks more like empty PR smoke to me. Once Apple ( or Amazon, or anyone else) starts allowing download rentals of current movies, with hotter content with an easy, cross platform portable playback option? Netflix downloads are sunk. I will still not stop getting Netflix DVDs in the mail ( at least for now…) but I will be checking out those other rental options.

Rambing, Stumbling Saturday night

I a fairly certain that my Synthroid dosage is too high, leaving me fractured, irritable and easily distracted.. blood work on Monday will show if that is true- in the meantime I am on mad house cleaning/organizing sessions and wild late night tromps around the wilds of the internet. Something good and/or interesting should come out of this, right?

Here are some of the things that might make you stop and ponder the energies that are expended in the great wild web:

I enjoy BSG. I was a big big fan early in the show, then got grumpy about the soap opera-esque turns some of the shows were taking. I admit I missed a few episodes. But this very very cool art and the hints for next season mean that I am going to have to get caught up before the new season in April. It may be marketing, but it just worked…( spoilers if you did not watch all of last season.. big huge jaw dropping ones…)

Since I have teenagers sleeping over at my house tonight, it is likely I will be making waffles from scratch tomorrow morning. ( apparently few moms do this any more, it is highly requested). It would be even more fun if I had this keyboard waffle iron. This is just way way too cool. (I do accept gifts)

If you really like to play with your food, you should consider this “how to” article on making edible Flying Spaghetti Monsters…

I had to add a link to a picture of this very cool art... insanity is about how I feel these last few nights. Imagine 99 wolves, streaming full force in a pack chase… straight into an invisible glass wall. Wow.

Then the art takes a truly twisted turn. ’nuff said.

I am not sure if this qualifies as art or not, but a life sized Christopher Walken Mask, every true fan should have one. If you do not know yet why you should be a Walken fan, comment and I will follow up.

The art having taken me down twisted and dark alleys into fear and despair, I returned to the geek… a T-Shirt from ThinkGeek that has a wi-fi detector built in. Now if we could only get shirts like this with “jerk” detectors in them….

Finally, as the late night munchies and cravings gnaw at my stomach and my mind, I leave you with an excerpt from Michael Pollen’s newest book: In defense of food; whose opening lines I hold dear to my heart: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Who’s a llama?

I am supposed to be writing serious things.
Solution Architecture Documents ( yes, that is SAD, I did NOT name it) are waiting for my formalization.
An Essay on the advantages of simulation for small and mid sized manufacturers, with serious quotes from the Under Secretary of State.
Instead? Here is what is stuck in my brain:

Serious now.

llama, llama, llama, llama, duck. ( truck? jack?)
agghhh.
Maybe sleep instead?

What is your favorite Dr. Who Mashup?

video viewing up… are we really surprised?

The online world is all a-twitter today as people work through this recent Pew Internet& American Life Survey report. The BBC first reported that “Online video sharing sites are reaping the benefits of the ongoing writers’ strike in the US.” in this article. That led TechCrunch to write an article that quoted the BBC article and recently released Nielsen Online numbers that show “According to Nielsen’s figures, YouTube’s audience was up 18% in the two months after the strike started and Crackle doubled its audience from 1.2 million users to 2.4 million users”.

Now, I have no doubt that these numbers are correct. Gods know I watch more and more video online every day ( no it is NOT all NSFW, thank you). But to attribute this so strongly and immediately to the writer’s strike is yet another example of people’s misunderstanding of co-incidental events. Before I even link the two, I want to see the trends from last year. What was the growth pattern over the months of the year in 2006? After all, the Pew report very strongly shows that teens and young adults are some of the biggest consumers of video, and the November/December time frame includes long holidays, end of semester breaks, etc.. They certainly have significantly more time on their hands to cruise the net than other times when classes are in session. (yes, I do know that there are some folks who watch YouTube on laptops in lecture halls..).

Then, I want to see the numbers on a graph with a matched time pattern for other events. Hulu released in early November. YouTube released a new interface somewhere in that time frame and made it easier to subscribe. Joost did a serious push for viewers and was running strong promos in October. Presidential candidates started getting serious on YouTube, electoral coverage is live on YouTube and getting promo’d in the mainstream press more and more.

I believe that there are a myriad of reasons that online video viewing is up… but that the writer’s strike is actually one on the smallest. The BBC article sounded more like it was written to make the writers on strike look strong, than by someone who atually watches video online.

What about you? Have you purposely turned to the web for video to fill a hole in your TV viewing habits??

CoverItArchive

Rather than keeping this test archive floating around on the bottom of every page, I am archiving it here.

ISPs to play big brother ?

Engadget reports that AT&T is talking with the MPAA and the RIAA about implementing network level solutions to filter pirated materials. This is a very parental position, where it has become a matter of “if you can not control your own behavior, we are going to control it for you”. Studies continue to show that the majority of traffic on the internet is P2P( with some numbers as surprisingly high as 80%), and the majority of that is video. As far as I am concerned, video has the majority of the share merely because the files are so much larger. There is no good data ( nor a good way to get it) to tell if the number of music or video files is larger. Number of files would give you a better measure of the incidence of file sharing in each format. But governments, large companies and the RIAA and MPAA look at those numbers and say to themselves “there is no way that is all legal….” and are thus motivated to go after the offenders. Here is where we get into murky ground in my opinion video is split between TV and movies, with often equal splits between the two.

In my mind, Movies are easy. If you buy a movie, you should have the right to copy it to a digital format and watch it in your own home on whatever platform you want. But this in no way gives you the right to share that digital copy for use anywhere other than on your equipment. That is, you are not allowed to then give copies of that movie to your friends, neighbors or strangers on the street- no matter what the format or media you share it in. The only way you are allowed to share is if you lend them your originally purchased disc. It never ceases to amaze me that people who are very loudly supporting the writers strike also think they should have the right to give away copies of movies. Is the irony of this not obvious to everyone else?

TV is trickier. Not trickier according to the written law, of course- trickier in figuring out what the real solution should be. To understand the culture of what is acceptable and how we got here, you have to go back to VHS. The industries had complete meltdowns when home recording equipment was first released on the market, and predicted the end of all time. This end did not, as we see, come. But what happened was the birth of time/place shifting. People started recording the shows they love and watching them later. After some debate, it was determined that recording shows for your own individual usage was completely legal. But then you were at work ( or school) and talking to someone about the big episode that just aired and your cube mate says “dang, I missed that episode”.
“well, didn’t you tape it”
“no, I have not figured out how to work the programming on that yet, and I was not at home”
What is your response?
“well, I taped it- you can watch it and then return the tape to me”.

Returning the tape in those days was important- they were not cheap. Technically, this was illegal. But should it be? Most people would answer no. Their gut tells them this is fair use. What was the difference if they came to your house and watched it with you or if they took it to their house, watched it and then gave it back? There was not much the industry could do to intervene in this sort of activity, so although it was technically illegal it was ignored.

I would contend that that TV portion of P2P is mostly this sort of behavior. Those who know how ( or who have the equipment to) recording TV shows and sharing them. Is it illegal, Yes. Should it be- probably not. The only reason that the industry is pushing for this to be controlled is that they are convinced that if people could not download, they would buy more TV shows on DVD. I contend this is not true. It does not lose them cable subscribers, because 99% of the ISPs out there who provide cable internet require you to subscribe to digital cable TV in order to receive cable internet. if you do not have high bandwidth connections, you are not going to be downloading video files- it is just too painful. The other reason for file sharing of TV shows is unavailability through normal broadcast. Our water cooler has gotten very large. It is not just folks who live in the same neighborhood- it is a global water cooler. And when people are discussing tv shows they watched last night, they want they same things everyone else is talking about. If your teammate at work now happens to be in another country ( mine are), and you are discussing tv, the whole “here, borrow my copy” issue comes up again. Only this time the copy is not a video tape, it is bits and bytes on a hard drive. Be certain, it is not just folks in other places wanting current US shows.. the folks in the US are busy downloading shows from BBC and India and China and….
If the TV portion of video sharing ( about half, give or take some depending on the region) were considered legal, how do we tackle the other half?

Why do people illegally distribute copies of movies? I can come up with a list of reasons why people might download them.. but what is the motivation for uploading them? Have you ever uploaded or illegally shared a movie you own? What was your reason/motivation?

There is a lot of discussion on this still to be had… but I need to bolt to work. Comment and let me know what you think.

Hands Off!!???

I am often confused by the world that my teen-aged daughters live in. Not the one in our house.. but the one that consists of their peers and social networks.

My daughters could not be more different on some notes: one is a serious student, the other brilliant, but not interested in spending any more time hitting the books than she has to. One is quiet, has a few close friends and even though I try to talk about a broad variety of topics at the dinner table remains fairly socially sheltered– mostly through focus and oblivion. The other is a social butterfly, with a wide network of many casual friends and an easy way of getting to know people. She talks endlessly on the phone and on Facebook, and has a gossip network that travels faster than light. She responds strongly to peer pressure and is concerned that if she is a teenager without breaking rules she will have missed the crux of what a teenager is supposed to do.

Strangely enough, they are both very conservative when it comes to sex. I do not mean worrying over sexual orientation or gender identity. We are way beyond that in this family. I am talking conservative about the actual mechanics of sexual intimacy. The perceived “grossness” of sticking your tongue, or fingers or other body parts ( or other objects) into your own or someone else’s orifices is still strong with both of them.

Don’t get me wrong. There is some small part of me, as a concerned parent, who is glad that my almost 14 year old is not thrilled about the idea of sexual intercourse… she has plenty of time to get over it and still have a healthy sex life. Just because I lost my virginity at 15, does NOT mean I want my daughters to.

What concerns me is that they both have adopted from all of their peers a sort of “blinders on” attitude about the sexual parts of bodies that means that they are not gaining that crucial life long familiarity with their OWN body. Both of my daughters discovered masturbation as small children… almost every child alive does. We had a talk about how that was a private thing that was fine when you were by yourself, but NOT an OK public action. Laying in the middle of a living room full of folks and jacking off tends to be frowned upon in our current society. Then, they hit about 5th or 6th grade and apparently absorbed from their peers that masturbation was BAD. Wha??? No amount of discussion on my part or casual inclusion of the topic into discussions seems to make any difference at all ( and if you think it is easy to include the topic of masturbation casually into family dinner talk… you are mistaken).

Flash back to being 14. Life is full of crazy insane stress, your body is changing on an almost daily basis, your brain confuses and surprises you and your hormones are raging. I think the one reason I survived my teen years without completely losing my mind was that I became a connoisseur of masturbation. Not only does it feel good, but it produces a sweet endorphin rush that relaxes you way better than any glass of wine, or any smokeable product. Jacking off was sanity in a world gone complete mad, and some nights I went to bed early, just to escape into that warm haze.

Now I have teenagers of my own, one of whom often can not fall asleep. Stress rushes through her body, making muscles twitch and neurons randomly fire, startling her back awake. I remember this state.. heck some nights I still find my self in the neighborhood. And so when she plaintively says to me “Mom, I can not sleep, please can’t you help me sleep?” I find myself talking about relaxation techniques and centering and calming when what I really want to do is say “For heaven’s sake- just jack off – it will make you feel much better!” This is, of course, NOT an acceptable thing for a parent to blurt out to a teen offspring.

What I wonder is if this “hands off” attitude is limited to the mid-west, or if it is a nationwide or global sort of phenomenon. What do you see in your neck of the woods?

It’s a weird, weird world

After getting the kids off to school this morning, I was hit with the “alien beast trying to claw its way free from my stomach” bug. I crawled back into bed for a while and tried to sleep through the cramps and fun pain, then eventually crawled back over to my computer. What I found in my feeds when I got back up was enough to make me want to crawl back into bed again. One or two of these would not be so strange, but back to back to back??? Time for a world-wide reset button.

Here is a synopsis:

Stellar parenting:

Man Throws 4 children off bridge, because of fight with wife

4 decomposing children’s bodies found in home- no one even knows whose kids they are yet.

Local Tragedy:

Rochester Indiana is about 45 minutes north of my house, and although we are a bit soggy, there are places very close by where the flooding is very bad. I can not imagine being able to save 3 kids and then getting stuck…sitting on top of an SUV and knowing 2 other children were drowning inside.

Whackos take it out on themselves:

Man cuts off his hand, fearing eternal damnation.

I am just considering going back to bed at this point and hoping the news looks better when I wake up.

The Future of Music is FUN!

I am pretty sure I just saw the future of music earning potential, and it was a blast. Tonight I attended a live webcast concert of The Maine on DeepRockDrive ( thanks to TechCrunch for the freebie tix). I dialed in for the Product Launch announcement first and then watched the concert. There is actually a second artist performing at 1am, but it is getting too danged late here in the EST timezone to watch that and THEN do a write up.

Just for kicks, I decided to do a dual trial test and did my first initial beta testing with CoverIt to “livecast” the live webcast. I was not doing this to test the interactive features of Coverit( we will play with that another time), but just to test out the mechanics of it. The archive of that transcript is saved here: http://roguepuppet.blogspot.com/2008/01/coveritarchive.html

But now to focus on DeepRockDrive and the concert.

Here is the setup:
Las Vegas sound stage- a fairly big one, from the pan shots after the announcements. Not a movie set, but nice space. From here you can have Musicians, Comedians, even- god forbid- politicians perform. That performance is broadcast live over the web. In the browser window, you have the video feed, as well as a box to type “shoutOuts” to the band. These are broadcast on multiple large monitors that the band can see. There is also a listing of songs, that the audience can interactively use to vote on the next song they want to hear. You have 4 potential camera angles and you can click and switch between them live at any point. There is a slight lag when switching cameras- at times up to 3 seconds- but the audio continues through fine and it all re-synced seamlessly.

The other audience members were not at any time quiet. The shoutOuts flowed in a fast and furious continuous stream across the bottom of my screen. If you really hate that sort of thing and just want a fine concert experience, go full screen mode and the text chat disappears.

The Maine were a great pick as a first highly promoted band to show.. they have great energy and appeal and even more important, they have the interactive rock gig down pat. They paused between songs to talk to the audience, reading aloud and responding to the messages that flashed on the screen. There was even a series of marriage proposals flying back and forth! It did seem that the band had to step off stage to read the monitors well, then step back on stage to perform again. Because they had mobile cameras, you did not lose visual, but this is something some artists may not be comfortable with at first. The Maine did great, calling people by name, having running chat, and even calling for the audience to type certain messages to respond. There were so many messages flying in simultaneously that there were at times delays of a minute or longer before the message you typed made it to the display. The band did note that everyone’s oddball nicknames and online handles made it very odd and difficult to talk to the by name out loud.. they suggest people use their real names.

Here is the compelling business model I see looming from this. During the product launch, they indicated that in the future real even tickets would cost $6.99. At first this seems like a lot for a web event, but this is a fraction of the cost for real concert tickets. It is even less than typical cover in a bar. This was a fun, high energy event that engaged me WAY more than I was expecting it to. And then I started imagining this with a room full of friends.. I was even standing and dancing to the show here in my bedroom at one point.. I can imagine how silly a group of us with some snacks and drinks would get. This is a concert event I would attend over and over and over again. I am ready to go and cruise the concert catalog right now and see who else interesting is going to be performing soon. They split the concert take with the artist, so the musicians get 3.50/ticket. This does not sound like a lot, but if you can get a few thousand ( or more) people attending an event, that is not a bad take for an evening’s work..

I have to unwind and head for bed soon.. but I am absolutely not done with this topic yet.. Part of me is hotly curious what the web hits on the band page looked like right after this event.. and what the download of their songs does in the next 24 hours. I also have some thoughts about improvements for the deeprockdrive guys, but I am getting too tired to type coherently, my typo rate is starting to scare even me.

although part of me is very very curious if this will play over the wii browser on my tv……. 1am is not that far away, is it??

EDIT:: FYI, I really did stay up and test on the wii… no dice. I am not blaming this on the DRD guys, however- it has to do with the Flash install on the wii. Hulu will not work yet either. Hopefully Nintendo will get their acts together soon, so I do not have to break down and buy an XBox360 or something…