unmediated

Vlog | SoHo | Round 2
Apple Store, SoHo, NYC
Sat. July 30, 7-8:30pm

Videoblogging is a new form of expression centering around posting videos to a website and encouraging an audience response. It is the next step from text blogging and podcasting. A community of artists, video editors, podcasters, bloggers, and software developers has formed around this new mode of communication. Join videobloggers as they show their favorite videos and viewing tools, discuss video blog creation, and share tips and techniques. Learn how you can create your own video blog for free!

This one-day conference brings together archivists, educators, technologists, entrepreneurs, producers, legal experts, and investors to explore the enormous promise offered by the availability of online video and television content. Demonstrations and interactive panel discussions will highlight new video technologies, services, legal issues, and economic models. Participants from diverse – and until now, largely disconnected – specialties will be especially encouraged to interact.

Excellent rant on how newspaper blogs give voice to the already-voiced

"Publishers, editors and broadcasters feel precisely naked if they are not participating in the trend of the moment. They yap about innovation and then simply shamble along, following the lead of others. That's why editors love editorial fads. If one person makes a mistake he or she gets blamed for it. If everyone makes the same mistake, it's an industrywide experiment. No blame. Safety in the mind-numbed crowd..."

FeedShake is a new service for combining , filtering and ordering multiple XML feeds in realtime. It is useful for everyone having RSS managing problems. You can mix multiple RSS feeds , sort them by the date they are published, limit the number of items to list , filter the feeds by keywords and/or only have listed the items with particular keywords. Feedshake gives you a new feed , which can be used in any other RSS reader, browser with RSS support and other RSS services like FeedBurner , Syndic8 etc...

At the annual meeting of the Cable & Telecommunications Association for Marketing, or CTAM, in Philadelphia this week, the big buzz was about mobility, says Wired Magazine.

The so-called triple play, where cable companies offer TV, Internet and telephone service is so last year. Now it's the quadruple play -- including a wireless platform.

After all, customers now want to take their entertainment and communications with them everywhere they go. The last thing cable operators want is to be left out of that party.

"The winners and losers are going to be determined by issues like portability and mobility," said Lindsay Gardner, executive VP of affiliate sales and marketing at Fox Cable Networks.

"We think the quadruple play is right there," said Peter Weedfald, senior VP of sales and marketing at Samsung's consumer electronics division. He urges more cooperation between gadget makers and the cable industry. "We can't do it alone. Selling cold steel does nothing for us."

Cable operators are also discussing partnerships with traditional wireless firms to integrate mobile voice and data services into the bundle of cable services offered to consumers.

"The wireless phone is becoming the third screen of their life," said John Garcia, Sprint's senior VP of sales and distribution. "They want this phone to do everything that their TV does and everything that their PC does."

Ideas floating around CTAM included allowing customers to program their digital video recorders from a mobile phone and letting them access video content on their mobile device as seamlessly as they access "video on demand" programming at home.

After all, cable execs are well aware that telcos, many of which already have wireless subsidiaries, are uniquely positioned to offer a wireless component as they roll out their own video, voice and data packages.

"It's really going to be on any device anywhere," said Robert Ingalls, president of Verizon's retail markets group. "We talk about time shifting. It's going to be place shifting."

A href="http://www.cabledatacomnews.com/" target=new>CableDatacom News, Communications Engineering, Converge Digest, Cable Today, CATV.org, Cable Labs and Ethernet 1st mile.

Billed as the "first national network created by, for and with an 18-to-34-year-old audience," Al Gore's Current TV will launch August 1st in 20 million homes. Programming is designed to show younger audiences what's going on in their lives. It will do so in short bursts called "pods," which will vary in length from 15 seconds to five minutes.

The goal, says Gore in USA Today, is to serve as a bridge between the Internet and TV by allowing people to customize what they watch. They can even produce what they watch through "Viewer Controlled Content" pieces submitted via the Internet.

Gore says his political views won't be a part of the network programming. "The reality of the network will speak for itself. It's not intended to be partisan. It's not intended to be ideological."

And though he may be a relative newcomer to the TV business, Gore has already learned how to stick to the corporate message, refusing to answer a question about Karl Rove because he was there to speak about Current.

He was, however, willing to compare working on Current to running for president.

"It has been a blast. It has been so much fun. It is hard ... but I feel like I've gotten my graduate degree in business." First and foremost, this is the first major new non-fiction network launched in a decade (Oxygen was the last). Lot's has changed in the world in terms of technology, tools, connectivity, and the engagement of the audience.

Current TV will make user-content mainstream, an important step for the evolution of media.

A new survey finds just 9 percent of Americans know about RSS and only 13 percent are familiar with podcasting. I can't say I'm surprised. (Free reg. req.)

Via Lost Remote

Here's a look at the technology behind the BBC News Web site.

A fantastic guide that explores everything from how captions and audio work together, to how to record audio, to what technology and tools you should use.

MAKE pal C.K. Sample has a good overview of all the new things with the PSP Firmware v2.0. It looks interesting, and I'll update once I have another PSP, otherwise (for me) the web browser isn't really enough to give up all the homebrew games and applications. The coolest thing is the video/audio download and pictures via Wi-Fi, there's a ton of projects and physical space stuff you can do with that. Link.

I thought we were making some progress here, but Diane Mermigas reports that traditional media execs attending Herbert Allen's exclusive Sun Valley summit all but ignored the new media execs in attendance. "The traditional media companies sat there and listened to them with their heads in the sand, like it's business as usual," an attendee told Mermigas. "It was really bizarre."

Via Lost Remote

Nothing makes me feel better than sitting with the family watching hours upon hours of home VHS footage of me making my first poopy. Oh those were the days, pooping when I wanted—heck, where I wanted. The VHS tape labeled "poop" will forever have its place in my heart, representing my childhood fecal freedom. JVC, however, is looking to rid the world of poop VHS tapes by going straight up digital with their new hard drive based camcorders. This new model will record up to 37.5 hours onto the 30GB hard drive.

Related
New JVC HD Camcorders Announced

JVC announces 30Gb GZ-MH70 Camcorder [Pocket-lint]

Moving pictures: Looking Out/Looking In is a robust, tangible, multi-user system that invites young users to create, explore, manipulate and share video content with others. The Moving Pictures concept consists of a video station containing a set of two cameras, a number of tokens, a screen and an interactive table. Moving Pictures enables a meaningful, spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. The station supports multiple input devices and group interaction, encouraging collaborative creation.

No sane person at the time ever thought these things would become the most significant electronic consumer device in history. But that's exactly what is happening. Bigger than television. Bigger than the PC. Bigger than the telephone.

WiebeTECH has announced the G505 Video Contest to recognize video editing work done on Macintosh G5 systems. Enter a video clip (up to 5 minutes long) of your video project edited on a G5. The winner will receive a G5JamPak, worth over US$2,000. [DIGERATI UNIVERSITY]

Via Cinema Minima

"We're not a telephone company anymore; I sort of resent that,” says Lea Ann Champion, an executive at SBC in charge of Project Lightspeed. “We're a communications and entertainment company.” The Economist takes a look at the rise of IPTV and VoIP and the death of the landline. Also see this Telegeography report on VoIP, from which a lot of the data is pulled.

Cory Doctorow: The 2005 Machinima Film Festival has been announced for November 12, 2005, in NYC:

The Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences (AMAS), an organization that provides advocacy, education and community for Machinima (filmmaking using real-time 3D game technology/virtual reality), today announced the 2005 Machinima Film Festival and the call for entries for the 2005 Machinima Awards (the Mackies). Sponsored by NVIDIA and the Independent Film Channel (IFC), the third annual festival will be held Saturday, November 12th 2005, at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

The one-day event will include screenings of Machinima films, workshops hosted by Machinima filmmakers, special presentations, talks with award-winning independent filmmakers and seminars about Machinima production techniques. The event will culminate in an awards ceremony where some of the best Machinima filmmakers will be recognized for their creative artistry in this new and powerful entertainment medium that's set to revolutionize the worlds of filmmaking and animation.

Wonderland)

I recently got a great tip about the hardware that may power the video iPod. Here's a hint: it looks Sharp.

After the bajillionth Google Maps site it hit me: Google Maps is at its core a nifty UI widget for a common type of data. The OS doesn't provide a widget for dealing with location data, and the web browser as a subset of OS widgets certainly doesn't (hello combo box!). That's like 10% of what makes Google Maps so cool, which is a lot considering how cool it is. People with location data are scrambling to put their data in a format that's usable. Google Maps is literally changing the way people think about place.

Your homework assignment tonight is to think about what common types of data people have, and what kind of UI widget could be created specifically for browsing that data. Then create a multi-billion dollar business around your new web service. Bonus points for sucking up to my sympathetic nature towards the Semantic Web.

Business 2.0: "An unknown number of those Apple-made microstars will convince themselves that they hold a first-mover advantage in an untapped medium and that there is at least a modest living to be made from a popular weekly podcast that maybe, just maybe, could become a bona fide media brand. Eventually they'll fail, and they'll fail faster than ever before. Because the sense of novelty attached to streaming audio and video -- the sense that one could build a brand and a studio before big media showed up to play -- has already passed when it comes to podcasting. For the first time in the history of the Net, big media showed up early to play."

"The Internet is filled with innovations, artistic expressions and independently created entertainment. Our goal is to make that digital content easy to find, view, share and manage. ONTV builds conduits between you and others, to enable the exchange of thoughts, ideas, and emotions, embodied within digital content.

With the Beta Release of I/ON, we hope to begin to make our vision a reality. I/ON is an Internet Video Console that allows you to watch the web - accessing rich media content directly, on-demand. "

This may look like a typical external hard drive, but it would be foolish trusting appearances when dealing with a name like "Movie Cowboy." What lies underneath the unassuming facade, is a self-contained media player that not only reads from a hard-drive of your choice (not-included), but will also let you browse and play media from a networked PC. Out of the box it's capable of playing mpeg-1/2, mp3, wma, ogg, and wav files as well as ripped DVD image formats (VOB/IFO/ISO) from DVDs that you presumably downloaded own, of course. Outputs include s-video, component video, and digital optical audio outputs, and to complete the package it comes with a slick little remote. It's too bad they didn't include wifi network support for those of us that don't want to snake ethernet cables across the living room. -JM

Movie Cowboy

"Podcasts are so last month. If you want to get in on the hip trip, you'll turn your attention (and camcorder) to vodcasts—Video-On-Demand-casts, that is. No, this isn't stuff of the future. By following the steps I'm about to outline you can create and distribute a downloadable vodcast today."

"Anina, who refuses to reveal her age, is a fashion model based in Paris and known by her first name only. She likes to call herself a supermodel, but she doesn't mind the nicknames she has been given either; supergeek and 'mobile artist'. But how exactly does a girl from a family of five in Michigan, USA, go from playing with codes and JavaScripts on her computer rather than with dolls, to being a supermodel, working with the best names in fashion, pouting on the catwalk for Givenchy AND to delivering speeches at mobile conferences for Nokia? And not only that, now she is in the midst of project 360fashion where she is in the process of choosing different people from different aspects of the fashion industry; models, agencies, photographers, magazines, designers stylists, journalists and even TV channels; encouraging them to set up individual blogs on their websites. With this Anina is hoping to introduce a new way of communicating fashion."

Link: [eriksmartt.com/blog] - Blog Archive - semacode 1.5 released.

There’s a new version of semacode available, which includes the full source code for the Symbian SDK. Now I guess we need Python bindings ;-)

I wonder if semacode could be used to facilitate Bluetooth pairing. One solution would be to have a semacode sticker on the phone and the app would do the pairing without searching. Alternately, is the camera and semacode good enough to read a semacode on the phone's screen?

If the semacode app and camera could read a semacode off the screen, then I could think of a few cool apps that could use such kind of help. Sure we have Bluetooth, but sometimes, you just want to touch and get it over with. This way we wouldn't have to wait for RFID, which needs hardware. Semacode could do this all in SW.

Just a thought.

I'll pontificate on this later, here's the short version. Some people include information about events in web pages so that if you have the right tools you can import them straight off the web to whatever calendar program you use. This format is called hCalendar.

I created a Greasemonkey user script that will find those hCalendar events and provide a link to import them into any calendar program that supports the iCalendar format (most notably Apple's iCal and Mozilla's Sunbird). What does this mean? Well any time you see an event on the web that has hCalendar information, you can click a link and it'll be added to your calendar so you don't have to copy the information by hand.

How do you get started?

1. Install Firefox and the Greasemonkey extension
2. Right-click on http://george.hotelling.net/projects/converthcal/converthcal.user.js and choose "Install user script..."
3. Go to a page with hCalendar information (such as this one on Upcoming.org) and you'll see a link to add the event to your calendar

This is possible thanks to Brian Suda's X2V converter service. Suggestions welcome.

First of all, let's just say that a Japanese or Korean telephone is meant for calling, despite the multi-functional, supersonic, high-specced devices we present you once in a while. The new DoCoMo phone, a FOMA SH700iS, can make phone calls, but it doubles as a video camera too. It can even change its viewing angle by 10 degrees to allow you to easily shoot the video... crazy!

(They're calling their unique video feature the "10-degree slant camera." I'm translating pages like a madman but I still have no idea what this really means. If anyone gets it, please post in the comments. -kc.)

Al Gore profiled in the NYT. Interesting excerpt: “Virtually the only structure is to be provided by three-minute “Google Current” segments at the top and bottom of each hour, in which the most popular Google searches of the day are to be mined for evidence of what is on people’s minds.”

The Peugot TV campaign for the new 1007 car offers SMS as the only contact channel, according to Mike Grenville for 160characters.org.

"Under the umbrella creative by Euro RSCG, Peugeot's TV campaign for the launch of the 1007 has the only call to action at the end of the advert is to text the word 'easy' to 81007.

By texting the branded shortcode, 81007, respondents can access a mobile portal for the car, where more information and entertainment can be accessed. Customers can book a test drive, order a brochure, see animated mobisodes of key 1007 features, download screensavers and ringtones, and preview the 1007 ad two weeks before it was launched on TV.

Peugeot 1007 News

Link: Blog Power - Forbes.com.

"In reviewing the entries for this guide, I was especially struck by the growing movement of video bloggers, or "vloggers", online. More and more people with digital video cameras are easily creating mini-documentaries, newscasts, parodies and "television-like" reality series on their own. One New York City vlog, Rocketboom, reports the "news" every morning at 9 a.m. for three minutes in an irreverent, but endearing style. It has formed alliances with other vloggers so that it effectively has correspondents in Minneapolis, Boston, LA and Switzerland."

"Elsewhere online, there are video directories forming so that one day soon you will be able to click onto a "guide" and watch whatever you want, whenever you want. Sound like Tivo? So just as 500-channel cable television disrupted the big powerful networks, thousands of vlogs could one day challenge now-thriving cable channels like MTV or CNBC."

"So grab a bucket of popcorn, dim the lights and pull up to your browser. Thanks to the explosion of blogs and vlogs, the action online is about to begin."

Via The Last Minute

More upstream Bandwidth; aside from price-cuts, it's one of the top demands of our readers. PC World waxes poetic about the aspect of your connection most ISP marketing departments just don't talk much about (256kbps just isn't sexy). Digital photography, on-line backup services, video, and place-shifting devices like the Slingbox are making customers more aware of their sluggish upstream speeds.

(Years ago someone suggested to me that upstream bandwidth could one day move from being just a consumer demand to becoming a true human rights issue. As monmentum continues pushing us towards a more participatory media, I expect to hear more stories in support of such an idea wonder if we'll start changing the ways we think about bandwidth. -kc.)

I've been remiss in announcing this fantastic collaborative site:
We Are the Media: News from the Vlogosphere

If you're interested in videoblogs (and I hope to God you are, otherwise you must surely hate me) you should be gobbling their goodies every day. That sounded kinda dirty.

Via Blogumentary

Boing Boing takes a look at the looming PromiseTV box, a prototype DVR being shown off at London's OpenTech conference. The unit, through a ridiculous number of hard-drives, claims to be able to record every show available on television over a one month span. Sounds nice, but will that much storage come cheap? Will it compete with other DVRs or cable on-demand plans?

An experiment that could rearrange the tectonic plates of the movie business is being conducted by the owners of an American movie theater chain, a movie production company, and a High Definition cable TV network, writes Scott Kirsner in his superb blog, CinemaTech. He spoke with Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner about the movies they're producing, and their innovative plans for distribution:

Scott Kirsner: … [Hollywood has painted itself] into the "Innovator's Dilemma" corner. They can't make a movie for less than US$50 million, and they can't market anything for less than -
Mark Cuban: They can't take chances. They can't say, let's change the way we do business. Which is truly the innovator's dilemma. Somebody else comes in and pre-empts them.

Scott Kirsner: With the films that 2929 Entertainment is making, is the production going to be all digital?
Mark Cuban: 2929 not so much, because that's more Todd Wagner's baby. But HDNet Films, that's 100 percent HD.

Scott Kirsner: So with 2929, if a director wants to shoot on film, you say, go ahead.
Mark Cuban: Yeah, because that's Todd's baby, and that's the way he runs that side of it. He just wants to make great movies, and he'll follow the director. Whereas with HDNet Films, it's the exact opposite. Here's the rules of the game: it's going to have a day-and-date release, [on] any platform and every platform that makes sense for us, and it's going to be shot in high-definition 1080.

[Mark Cuban, Mike Homer at the AlwaysOn 2005 conference]

Download Movie Magic Screenwriter from the Writers Store Now - for only US$199.95

ChapterToolMe is a nice GUI for the Apple ChapterTool utility to make simply chaptered AAC file for your podcast.

posted by exiledsurfer to unmediated podcasting software mac osx tools podcast apple ... and others... bookmark this

Frances Pabon over at Good Bloggin' alerts me that Yahoo 360 has added (finally) the capability to pipe in feeds to your personal page there. ... This is a much better alternative to expecting overblogged folks like myself to both posting in yet another location. ... Also, I noticed that Frances' most recent feed entry was what showed up on my Yahoo 360 start page, in the "Latest from my friends" area. Not sure if she had to configure something or if it was just a matter of that being the most recent item available. ... I can't see how I look to other people in that view, so I can't verify if my feed entry will show this item first after I post it and Yaho picks up the update to my monolog feed. [by Christian Crumlish]...

Let's play a game. Here's how it goes: I read a headline, you feign surprise. "Sony-BMG engaged in widespread payola." "Sony-BMG settles in case regarding payments to radio stations." "Radio groups refuse to comment." (see Digital Music weblog or your local paper) Okay, well here's one that brings a little surprise. According to Billboard Radio Monitor, the one radio group that is being outspoken about cleaning out the corruption is uber-evil media giant Clear Channel. On the other hand, payola isn't exactly part of Clear Channel's business model -- they're too busy going after the big bucks by being the Wal-Mart of radio. Meanwhile, Sony is mum about whether it will take any disciplinary action or make any real changes to how it does business, other than to say: "Sony-BMG looks forward to defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion." Hate to break it to you guys, but higher standard ain't sayin' much when the status quo is a decades-old system of bribes. And the damage inflicted by New York state's Spitzer? A "punishing" 10 million dollars. Pardon me, Bill Gates, but can you spare a tuppence? You know what, though? Payola sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Maybe it's not too late to save it. Here's CDM's evil plan:... 1. Promote independent music, distributed on the Web... 2. Turn online music, indie labels, music podcasts, and indie record stores into an industry-crushing sensation... 3. Let the payola from the industry (now geared at the Web, instead of radio) pour in... 4. Use the cash to start a new record industry, printed entirely on (wait for it!) -- vinyl records. That'll work, right? (Why are you snickering?).

Now that Esthr has announced it, I can finally blog Simon Grice's 'Personal Identity Summit' in London for Nov. 17-18.

Simon originally planned this event for last February, and then in Sept. - but he's finally settled on Nov. 2005 - as the beginning of a while new thing in London-town.

Simon's company - Midentity (where Esthr is an Angel investor) has a deal with British Telecom - and they're about to launch their services under the BT brand. I leave it to Simon to announce the servcies, but let me tell you - the world won't be the same.

I can't wait to see all sorts of gateways onto and off of mobile devices and see them tie into a DLA driven world.

See Russ! I DO think about mobile - in fact everytime I pick up my 6630. But we need entreprenuers like Simon - 'cause I can't do everything myself!

Midentity and Broadband Mechanics will be doing something together - which we'll let yah know about - once we've figured it out ourselves.

UPDATE: Simon has corrected me. Esthr got it wrong - and I jumped to conclusions. I'll repost this a bit later to remind folks - as more details are unveiled.

Via Marc's Voice

: () Broadband Directions has come out with a report on cable TV's efforts into broadband-delivered video, a hot topic for sure these days. It is available as a complimentary download here (69 page PDF).
The report contends that cable TV networks get it, and are responding to the changes. It also does a review of the video initiatives offered from the ites of the 75 most highly-penetrated basic cable TV networks. Some interesting figures: 91% (68) of the top 75 basic cable TV networks now offer video online...100% of the top 40 basic cable TV networks do so.
Another good data point: Of the 32 basic cable TV networksÂ’ web sites that provided broadband-delivered video primarily to generate incremental revenue, 26, or 81%, used an advertising model, 4, or 13%, used a subscription model and 2, or 6%, were pursuing an e-commerce model.

: C-SPAN, which has a history of tapping in to new technology, adds podcasts to the variety of ways viewers and listeners can tap into the cluster of public affairs nets. It's not the House or Senate -- although some podcasters and bloggers I know are longing for a day when all of the congressional audio and video is available online for public use. Instead, C-SPAN is launching its podcasts with three popular shows: After Words, Q & A and segments from American Perspectives. I heard about the pod trio from network execs Peter Kiley and Rob Kennedy as I was heading out of CTAM tonight. I wanted to ask about the congressional material -- we'll talk about that another time -- but the podcasts are a good sign given C-SPAN's cable roots.
Our CTAM Summit coverage is sponsored by Maven Networks' IP VOD Broadband Delivered Video Solution.

Corante has launched a blog on Rebuilding Media -- and God knows, we need to rebuild the media.

The authors are two of the superstars of the new media constellation: consultant Vin Crosbie and former SF Chronicle new media chief Bob Cauthorn, along with others they'll be adding to the mix. Says Corante's editor-publisher, Hylton Jolliffe: "The blog takes a hard look at the media biz and in particular the factors and forces that are leading to the disruptive change we all know well and are working hard to accelerate."

I've already added it to my RSS reader. Check it out.

Via New Media Musings

Series of articles interviwing game industry figures. Filled with the usual hype and hollywood lines, but worth reading to compare the different perspectives:
BBC articles

Yves Guillemot, Ubisoft: Our goal is to do what they do in movies, but where you are the actor.

Michel Cassius, Xbox: When I look at this and the number of games in development right now, I definitely think the next generation, and even current generation, can tap into broader audiences...Broadening will come as well through different experiences on the Xbox 360. We want one billion people to experience gaming in the next generation.

Kathy Vrabeck, Activision: But it is not a big focus for us. There is so much untapped opportunity for us among the core male gamer, that going after the female gamer is not high on the priority list for us.

Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory: There is an understanding among a few companies but you don't see a lot of it. I can't remember the last time I felt emotionally attached to a game.

David Gosen, I-Play: Look at DS. Through the touch screen approach it created something that is innovative and new...That is a small example of how technological advancement can create new gaming experiences and that is the challenge for the three console manufacturers.

Via USC Interactive Media Division Weblog

The Zig Zag Musig Block is a three-block-structured visual music toy.

Blocks are working as the sound controller as well as the visual container. ZZMB allows players to compose a new character's moving image by mixing and matching four singing characters by twisting around the blocks. ZZMB takes this physical building of visual character blocks into a musical composition. Each top, middle and bottom block plays character's voice, harmony (chord) and rhythm (beat) of music, which are written as parts for complete scores.

When blocks are matched to compose one identical character, users can hear the specific score. But they can also can make variation to the music and apply different voice, chord or rhythm by rotating or sliding the blocks. The linear position of the blocks controls the pitch of the sound, resulting in a new harmony or cacophony.

Check the movies 1, 2, 3.
Author: Inhye Lee
Picture from Create Digital Music.

Windows Media Player  |  Quicktime

This screencast teaches you how to use the "Sync to PSP" feature in FireANT for Windows.

Select videos to transcode to PSP format and they will automatically transfer to your PSP the next time you plug it in.

Simple. Easy. Done.

via: http://GetFireANT.com/psp_sync/

In their most recent survey, The Diffusion Group reports that although not widely discussed, both XM and Sirius have their eyes set on much larger prizes - in particular, providing a range of media services including music, video, and even data services to both mobile and fixed subscribers. They even mention rumors that XM and Sirius are considering merging into a single entity, something that seemed unlikely a few months ago but that makes more sense when considering their multimedia aspirations ....

That reminds me of a technology development I've done back from 1999/2000 - certainly too early for the time. Sketch of a the project is on Wireless Networks Handheld Devices and FM/Satellite Radio. In brief, the solution combines three global networks: Internet, SMS and FM or satellite radio stations. The flow of information is asymmetric: SMS is used to send the Internet request, while response is delivered through much broader channel of data embedded in the FM or satellite radio signal.

I even had a discussion with Palm about the technology, but they said that they "are developing integrated GSM devices that have GSM and GPRS capability (future)" ...

Publishing of video torrents to DV Guide is now substantially simplified, especially for the clips that are already on the Internet - but need always functioning BitTorrent seed.

Reloaded "DV Guide in 5 Easy Steps" document is available here. Please drop me an >email if you want to join DV Guide ...

Rebecca Lieb has some good comments that are pertinent to television content making its way onto web sites.

As recently as five years ago, media companies safely considered their Web sites mere brand extensions; summoned into existence to promote a core print or broadcast product. A site wasn't a product unto itself.

… In this new landscape, every medium must master all the media, and the real media masters want to master the Web … It must have been part of the reasoning behind AOL TimeWarner and Barry Diller's IAC. It's why top Yahoo! executives, such as Terry Semel and Lloyd Braun, were plucked from Hollywood studios.

… Will old dogs learn new tricks? … Somewhere between citizen journalism and global media conglomerates … a lot of media companies out there are cramming on new skill sets.

Is it really so much to ask to have people who are making and enforcing laws concerning technology actually understand the technology they're dealing with? Following the series of recent arrests of people for using open WiFi networks, the definition of illegal equipment is being stretched. In the UK arrest, the guy was arrested for "possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service," which all of us who have WiFi in our laptops probably are guilty of. At least that's just in the UK. Over here in the US it's apparently still legal to have WiFi equipment -- but if you dare try to boost your signal with an antenna, watch out. According to the head of the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force, the popular "cantenna" device is completely illegal. For those who don't know, someone a while back worked out that you could boost the range of your WiFi router with a Pringle's can. It requires a bit of work, so a small operation sprung up to sell Cantennas. They're quite popular with people who want to spread WiFi around a house where the basic router won't reach certain parts of it. Hell, even CompUSA sells them! But, according to this "high tech" police officer: "They're unsophisticated but reliable, and it's illegal to possess them." The article includes a story about how the police arrested a high school student for breaking into his school's network to change his grades and they (gasp!) found a cantenna in his room! Again, the crime he committed has nothing to do with having an antenna booster, but that doesn't stop the reporter and the cop from talking about the evils of connecting to WiFi networks.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the three main Long Tail business opportunities are:

1. Long Tail aggregators (that include both the head and tail of content and products)
2. Niche suppliers/producers (who get aggregated by someone else)
3. Filters (which help people find what they want)

    Most of the examples I've been using to date, such as Netflix, Amazon and iTunes, fall into the first of these categories, aggregation. But as the smart kids in the front row always point out, there's a seeming paradox at work in that category.

    The Long Tail is all about the shift from hits to niches. But aren't all those aggregators "hits"? They're not only the largest players in their category, but they seem to be getting even larger, gaining market share at the expense of their competitors. Is there something about aggregators that tends to favor a few big winners, even as the other two categories fragment into a million niches of varying size?

    That's certainly the way it looks now, but I suspect it won't last, or at least won't last as it is. I'll give an example by starting with the biggest of them all, Google.

    In a sense, Google is a classic Long Tail aggregator, one that uses great filtering (its PageRank algorithms) to improve the s/n ratio of the tail. And not just one tail. They aggregate the tail of information, the tail of advertisers and the tail of publishers (see this post for more). But is plain old Google enough for all of this? Or is there something more appropriate for many needs than one-size-fits-all search?

    The question can be generalized to this: how finely can you slice aggregation? The answer, in the case of search, turns out to be quite finely indeed. The rise of the "vertical search" market is simply a case of slicing aggregation into niches, optimized for different needs. (Actual examples here; imaginary ones here)

    In fact, Google itself is already doing this, with Google Local, Google Scholar, Google Maps, Froogle, Google News, Google Print, and so on. Each has a specialized presentation and pulls from a subset of the information universe that gives more appropriate and useful results in that domain. Right now that's Google fine-slicing its own aggregation--the emergence of a long tail of search, but within a short head of search companies--but there are plenty of other firms that are rushing into this market to do the same.

    Now let's apply the same approach to media and entertainment aggregation. I've already argued that any Long Tail aggregator has to include both the head and tail of content, to allow the recommendations and filters to carry users from the known to the unknown. But does that only work in broad categories, such as music and film, or could it work just as well, if not better, at the sub-genre level, aggregating the head and tail of just jazz, for instance, or documentaries?

The advantages would be that, instead of a one-size-fits-all presentational model, such as is currently the case in iTunes, you could have a model customized for a genre. I don't know much about jazz, but I'll bet that it might be useful for a jazz music service to have links for each one of the musicians on an album (because they often shift from group to group), much as IMDB tracks the careers of each movie actor and director independently. But that wouldn't be appropriate for pop music, because the individual musicians aren't as important.

    Likewise for documentaries. Wouldn't it be useful to have documentaries accompanied by related information and news articles, so the films could be a launching-off point for further exploration of that subject? Or a site just for TV-show DVDs, complete with all the entertainment news and gossip around their stars?

    No doubt there are already companies working on all of these and many more. What's important, however, is that these fine-slice aggregators allow themselves, in turn, to be aggregated by the larger, more general aggregators. Those niche music services should, for starters, be fully searchable by Google and anyone else. Could they also do deals with iTunes to be niche specialists, the way individual merchants are integrated into Amazon's Marketplace and eBay's Stores? I'll bet they could. It's the Long Tail of aggregation, coming soon.

If you've been looking for some ways o convert DVDs so you can play them on your PSP, here's a big ole' Flash movie that will walk you through this step by step. You'll DVD Decrypter, PSP Video 9 and a PC. Once you get the files out using DVD Decrypter, then you convert them with PSP Video. Link.

TENORI-ON (sound on your palm) is a novel personal digital instrument for playing sound and ambient light patterns. This instrument was developed by Toshio Iwai and Yamaha Corporation and will be showcased at SIGGRAPH 2005 which will soon take place at Los Angeles Convention Center (July 31 - August 4).

[TENORI-ON: What is the right instrument for the "real" digital age?]

TENORI-ON is operated by touching 16x16 LED switches. You could think of them as musical keyboards that respond to the subtlety of your finger touch by emitting light waves, creating afterglow, and making soothing sound sequences. The instrument knows how long and from which direction the player touches each LED switch as well as the tilt angle. ITRON is used as the computational engine that handles complex processing in real time. It has a jog dial, LCD display, hi-quality stereo speakers, and four function switches in the frame. On the back side of the device are additional 16x16 LEDs that allow audience to see the light patterns as well. Multiple TENORI-ON devices can be connected for collaborative sessions and exchanging songs.

"Controlling light and sound as comfortably as playing musical instruments or painting pictures" -- Toshio Iwai has long been interested in adressing this challenge. TENORI-ON, which is designed for esthetics and comfort, can be used as an ambient interior decoration object as well as an instrument. "A violin doesn't work if any of its beautiful shape, sound quality, and usability is missing. However, electronic musical instruments often fail to create this inevitable relation of shape, sound, and usability. My goal with TENORI-ON is to make it the right instrument for the real digital age by rethinking what musical instruments should be." (Toshio Iwai)

Related:
"Touchable Media Art" game

So legal downloads are up, tripled in fact, over the past year.

Lobbyists for the record industry have had a field day, touting their battle against file-sharers as the reason paid downloads have finally started to make a return.

Here are several reasons why it is not so cut and dried.

Online music sales have come of age in the past year. As paid downloads have tripled, so have the number of online music sellers, up from 100 last year to around 300 now, and especially, Apple’s triumphant run from iTunes shop to iTunes software to everyone’s favourite Christmas present last year, the iPod.

Paid downloads have increased – 180 million single tracks downloaded in the US, Britain, Germany and France between January and June this year, compared to 57 million last year – but file-sharing still dwarfs its respectable sibling, there are at least 900 million files available on sites around the world.

Three years ago, researchers said that "active usage of online music content is one of the best predictors of increased consumer purchasing." Parallel research found that 81 percent of music downloaders reported that their CD purchasing remained the same or increased. Many people reported they would like to pay for downloads but couldn’t do it simply enough. In fact, there’s been a constant stream of evidence that file-sharing is a positive tool for the music industry. See articles in USA Today and Wired.

Although big record industry litigation claims to have successfully sued thousands of infringing music copyrights, it’s fair to say in practice they’ve been primarily about fear. RIAA president Cary Sherman said as much, "The lawsuits are an essential educational tool.'' Most (all?) of the people sued by the music industry have settled before appearing in court, they barely have a choice, either settle for a small slap on the wrist or fight against the big labels in court.

Certainly some people are scared of litigation, but most are paying for their downloads because (a) it’s easier to do and (b) there’s wider range of music and (c) possibly most importantly, broadband take up means a wider demographic is getting their music from the Internet.

Mexican telcos are gearing up for mobile TV services: Iusacell, owned by media and retail billionaire Carlos Salinas, will be the first to roll out mobile TV services later this summer. MobiTV is providing the technological platform and licenses that will allow Iusacell to offer Toon World, Fashion TV, Comedy Time, ABC News and TV Azteca’s national channels.
Telcel, owned by Latin America’s wealthiest businessman, Carlos Slim, tied up last week with Motorola and Fox Latin American Channels to offer “24: Conspiracy,” the first made-for-mobile series. It has already been released in the U.S. and U.K.

Douglas Rushkoff has an interesting yet disturbing take on suicide bombs and their coverage in today's mediasphere.

Via Clippings.reblog

The New York Times shallowly surmises videoblogs in their Critic's Notebook article, Watch Me Do This and That Online. Writer Sarah Boxer concludes: Congratulations. It's television!

Sorry Sarah, videoblogs are not television. Here's why.

First off, here's a news flash: You can link to videoblogs. Unlike the excellent Wired News article on the same topic, the New York Times doesn't link to any videoblogs or any videos. Their thumbnail photos show a Quicktime player, yet they lead nowhere. For some reason they do link to Neopets.com. WTF? Perhaps they have a wrongheaded policy of only linking to "whatever.com" which clearly fails. The New York Times is doing a great disservice by not linking to the subjects of their article, which are frigging web sites.

The first half of Sarah's article is nice enough, giving the reader a few dollops of vlog from across the spectrum. She gets into trouble when her thesis arrives: Already, though, it's beginning to look a lot like television, at least in spots. Some vlogs even share television's worries, chief among them the burden of coming up with fresh programming on a regular basis.

She cites Rocketboom's recent request for the audience to send in story ideas. While it's logistically true that story submissions will make life easier for Rocketboom, the comparison to television programming is way off the mark.

CLUE #1: Videoblogs interact with their audience. This is not a weakness. It's a strength.

Television transmits one-way information to its audience. Weather photos emailed to local news represent a lame exception, but it's a start. Videoblogs exist in the realm of links and conversation. It's sort of like Burning Man - everyone is a participant. Sure, you can passively watch videos, but everyone is encouraged to comment and make their own videos.

We are all potential creators and participants. We all have a voice.

The very concept of audience begins to melt away.

In his book We the Media, Dan Gillmor says "My audience knows more than I do." Rocketboom opening its doors is a celebration of the geekosphere; an invitation to be creative and hijack the "channel." Indeed, Minnesota Stories is built on the concept of people with video cameras hijacking the channel.

Everyone is creative and has a story. Want to borrow my transmitter? Go for it. Better yet, build your own. You won't hear these words from television.

ips into the vlogosphere's real reality show, The Carol and Steve Show: It wants to sell out, but who would buy? Maybe a laugh track would help.

CLUE #2: Do not confuse the packaging with the contents.

Videoblogs are authentic voices. The Carol and Steve Show is a superb expression of "Mundane is the new punk rock." Sure, it hearkens back to TV Land sitcoms, but then you see... Carol and Steve watching TV. Or running out in the rain trying to grill. Or sitting in bed. In other words, they're going about their real lives on camera. And there is no laugh track.

Who would greenlight this show? Carol and Steve, that's who.

Sometimes there's a laugh track on ZipZapZop, but you know what? I hung out with Clark, and he had the little laugh track/applause toy with him. He really does hang out with his guitar and play goofy songs. ZipZapZop is one genuine facet of the scintillating human we call Clark ov Saturn.

We may well be in the television radioplay phase of videoblogs. The "show" is one of many forms a vlog can take. Sometimes the wrapper looks like the old medium. But what's inside is real people, without a producer, without a middleman. What's inside you can't buy at the candy store. It's homemade and one-of-a-kind.

s on one of my favorite videobloggers, Ian from The 05 Project. She says he's beginning to look a lot like "Fear Factor" and gives him some deserving compliments: He has Conan O'Brien's direct delivery and David Letterman's deadpan. In short, he has television charisma. I'm thrilled about all the nice things she says here, but...

CLUE #3: We don't look like television. We look like ourselves.

Ian isn't great because he vaguely resembles an amateur amalgamation of late-night talk show hosts.

Ian is great because Ian is Ian.

Bored kids were daring their friends to do outrageous things long before Fear Factor or the invention of television. The difference is, Ian has never met his new friends. But that doesn't make them any less real.

To say we look more like television personalities than our own personalities is wrong and perverted.

more I think about this the more shallow and ridiculous it seems. Videoblogs are lightyears away from television. I've got this little planet it my hands; I can spin it around and jump into someone's life. I can talk to them. I can show them my life. We could not do this before. Television doesn't have anything to do with it. The comparison is lazy and, frankly, embarassing for the New York Times.

You can lead a horse to vlog anarchy, but you can't make it understand the revolution.

A company called Massive is testing full-motion video ads inside online games.

Via Lost Remote

The TV::Anytime module parses TV-Anytime bundles. TV-Anytime is a format organised by the TV-Anytime Forum (http://www.tv-anytime.org/). These are open standards (see ETSI TS102822) for the rich description of Radio, Television and other types of media. The metadata specification includes a comprehensive genre scheme, methods of linking and grouping programmes, listing credits and lots of other data fields.

A new Public Radio International show, "Open Source" draws on listeners' ideas posted on a blog to drum up ideas for the program.

Growing up in the 70s on Long Island, I had a pretty set after-school routine. Throw my coat over the living room railing, throw my books on the kitchen counter, grab a soda and a big bag of chips or cookies and throw myself on the couch in front of the television set. Most afternoons included F-Troop, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeanie, Batman, The Beverly Hillbillies and of course, The Addams Family. Most people who know me, blame my ADHD personality of the amount of TV I watched as a kid. I’m sure they’re right.

Back then, I knew that Channel 11 (WPIX-TV) and Channel 5 (WNEW-TV, now WNYW-TV) were “my” channels – especially from 3pm to 7pm on weekdays. Saturday afternoons belonged to ABC’s Wide World of Sports, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Back then we enjoyed a 25 channel universe, but all the cool stuff (from my point of view) was happening on two or three channels. This is a very old story and everyone in the business knows this, so what’s the point?

Well, as it turns out, the advertisers who supported those shows knew a great deal about me. In fact, they knew that I wanted a Johnny 7 OMA, they knew exactly which Hotwheels cars I was going to need and they knew exactly how important Fritos were to an adolescent living in suburban New York in the 70s. I was part of the Pepsi Generation -- Commin’ at ya ... Goin’ Strong!

I couldn’t talk back to the television set (if I did, I certainly was not expecting a response), but it could and did talk to me. The box held my attention, I watched the commercials that interested me, and ignored the ones for Barbi and Easy Bake Ovens. They weren’t really meant for me anyway. Let’s fast forward 30 years to this week’s announcement about Apple iTunes and the very probable future of Apple introducing a family of Video iPods. Imagine a video experience that works with playlists and podcasting schemas that are in tune with your behaviors, wants, needs and desires. This will be a completely personal video experience unlike anything we have ever experienced before ... or will it?

The deep, dark, dirty little secret is that most of the big brands can’t even begin to plan media campaigns around individuals. The optimization programs just don’t exist. In fact, most media optimization programs are totally quantitative and don’t really look at the creative or qualitative element in the optimization algorithms. What they actually do is look at populations and predict, as best they can, where you will be at a given time and what the likelihood of selling you something will be. That’s how media is planned and purchased and that process is not going to change overnight, it will evolve over time.

So, how personal is personalization? How important is two-way communication? What is the compelling reason to get granular and, if you can, what should you get granular about? These are just a few of the questions that we, as in industry, need to answer and we’d better do it soon. I’m pretty sure that my teenage, weekday afternoon playlist is going to hit my iPod before you can say, “Tish ... I love when you speak French!”

TV Week reports that Stern is in negotiations with Comcast to produce a new TV show to be aired on a subscription on-demand basis. "Having Howard Stern on subscription VOD is a killer application for the platform," said Cathy Rasenberger, a cable distribution consultant. "It would draw a lot of viewership. It would be as big a coup for Comcast as it was for Sirius."

Only 5 per cent of American movies made over the last five years have come from spec scripts … and only an additional 3 per cent have come from pitches, observes Derek Haas. He offers this analysis: These statistics strongly imply that over 95 per cent of the movies made in the last five years are written by someone who is already a professional. A “spec script” is Hollywood argot for a script which is written without an assignment from a producer, on the “speculation” that it would sell. [The Blank Page] [Pie chart by Cinema Minima staff]

• Shop the Writers Store for screenwriters’ supplies, books, courses, and software — even those little brass fasteners for your script (tip: in Hollywood, writers only use two fasteners — never three). Your purchase through this link supports Cinema Minima

• Download Movie Magic Screenwriter from the Writers Store Now — for only US$199.95

Apparently in response to Google Earth, Microsoft has launched MSN Virtual Earth. According to blog chatter (also see Slashdot), the system may not function at full capacity until Monday, when Microsoft is expected to make an official announcement.

Having made the 7-day BBC TV schedule data available TV-Anytime format on backstage.bbc.co.uk, we're now keen to see what you can do with it!

The way people watch television - and choose what they are going to watch - is changing. More channels, new delivery platforms, new ways to consume television programming...

For the first backstage.bbc.co.uk competition, we are offering you the opportunity to innovate and build prototypes that demonstrate new ways of exploring the BBC TV schedule. Plus we have arguably the ultimate "geek bling" prize for the producer of the winning prototype.

Some possible ideas you might like to incorporate include:

• Combining schedules with web services such as del.lici.us, furl, flickr and technorati to open up each programme to external annotation.
• Focusing on specific genres (contained within the TV Anytime metadata). Promotion of signed programmes, etc.
• Introducing a social element to a schedule or channel (such as bookmarking programmes, rating/voting, vertical searches by genre).
• Alerts, SMS, email broadcasts and other client-push delivery mechanisms.
• Combine the schedule data in interesting ways with existing BBC feeds or non BBC information feeds (such as IMDB, Google images, Wikipedia, Google Video, Yahoo Video).
• Explore new ways of users tagging the TV data and aligning that with tags attached to existing tag based web services

winner of the competition will receive a rackmount server, delivered to their door! Whether they chose to co-locate it in a data-centre or run it from their bedroom, we hope it will prove useful for their future backstage.bbc.co.uk prototype hacking.

The winner will also be invited to the BBC to discuss their prototype and take a tour of the department as guests of the backstage.bbc.co.uk team.

We also have two 1Gig USB MP3 players to give away as runners-up prizes.

The competition closes on Monday 5th of September, so get cracking!

The competition is only open to residents of the UK. Overseas users are still welcome to submit their prototypes, however they will not be eligible to win prizes.

Please check out the full competition terms and conditions for details.

The goals of the Forum are to: Create a public voice on the issues raised by the relentless expansion of what are considered to be patentable products, processes, discoveries, inventions and appropriated goods, or what is commonly referred to as intellect

Copyright resource for all active artists in australia.

RSS aggregator and reader. MyNewspaper is written in Python with a bit of javascript and uses sqlite as permanent storage for the articles.

"What happens when you open up media platforms to bloggers, amateur critics, self-educated experts, passionate commenters, and independent reviewers? You get insightful, surprising and highly original content, not to mention entirely new products and services from GARAGE INFLUENTIALS: amateurs-turned-professionals posting their reviews, criticisms, software, solutions and God knows what else on the web, ready for reading or downloading."

Awesome. this is what citizen media is about

"Lux Mean works for the IRI.  He is currently training young people in Cambodia's provincial areas how to blog.  His organization is excited about the potential for Cambodian blogs to generate more political dialogue.  Mean was only recently introduced to blogs and the organization got the idea of doing a blog projects from one of Cambodia's better known bloggers, Ex-King Sihanouk."

via adrian miles: Newsmasters are an emerging group of news editors which utilize new tools and techniques to create unique content streams on specialized topics by tapping largely into the RSS content universe as well as in other openly reusable sources

Bitflux Editor (aka BXE) is a browser-based (currently mozilla only) WYSIWYG XML editor which is written in JavaScript and uses XML, XSLT, and CSS for rendering. It is usable with any XML document and features tables, lists, images, special chars, clipboard, undo/redo, and easy customization.

I wrote about how the Simputer arrived this past Wednesday, and I've been playing with it off and on as time permits - between projects and work. I tried taking some photos, but they didn't come out very well - but I'll do more as I go into the features of the Simputer. Of course, I need to update that Wikipedia entry!

reactions were obviously glee. To be honest, my Simputer and I are still in the honeymoon phase - but there's no denying how easy it is to use. The documentation for the Simputer remains untouched; I have explored almost all of the features except the internet connectivity. I've done the diagnostics, set calendar appointments and even linked it to my laptop, though I have to do some work on the laptop to make it Simputer-developer friendly. That's no reflection on the Simputer :-) Basically, it's an excuse to fully install Linux on this thing, and I finally have all the tools I need to do it. That probably will get done this weekend.

Jon Udell has an interesting piece on (among other things) the use of del.icio.us tagging by InfoWorld editors as a way for them to work with each other and also interact with their readers.

We’re finding similar things at Nature. First, our social bookmarking service for scientists, Connotea, is proving useful as a collaborative tool for our journalists and editors. For example, editorial teams can use tagged links to communicate ideas and leads among themselves. Also, journalists researching particular stories can use the system to store and retrieve informative links under suitable tag names — and can choose to keep those links private, at least temporarily, if they’re worried about being scooped.

Second, Connotea enables greater interaction with readers. For example, collections of links gathered by a writer during their research can be released on publication of their article in order to provide readers with further sources of information. A recent example of this was Declan Butler’s Nature article on the new generation of laboratory information systems, which pointed interested readers to his accompanying collection of links.

As Jon Udell points out, such collections are future-proof because they can grow even after the URL has been distributed. This means that sometimes, as with Declan’s own collection of avian flu links, they can become important community resources that continue to be tracked by significant numbers of interested readers, potentially even long after the original article has become obsolete. Of course, readers can themselves contribute simply by using the same tag names. For example, the Connotea collections on bioinformatics and open access have attracted groups of users that turn these pages into something like pared-down group blogs.

With participative (or grassroots or citizen) journalism becoming an increasingly important theme inside media organisations and beyond, it’s intriguing to see that tagging also seems to have a role to play in facilitating exchanges between writers and their readers, and in blurring the boundaries between those traditionally distinct roles.

Birds have started to imitate ring tones, warns Richard Schneider of the NABU bird conservation centre in Germany. He says birds have an uncanny ability to mimic ring tones and are suddenly doing so.

The worst offenders are the jackdaws, starlings and jays. Apparently they see bird watchers, with their maps on strings around their necks and binoculars, and watch them scrabble for their mobiles, with a cunningly mimicked call.

Schneider said the phenomenon was that these birds were increasingly common in German cities and were adapting to their environment -- which includes ring tones.

The scary thing is that some birds were marking out their territory and hoping to attract mates with cries like the crazy frog song. He suggests in the interests of ecology that mobile phone users convert their tones to pop songs which are too complex to be mimicked by the birds.

I couldn't pass this up. I had a bachelor mocking bird in my backyard for a couple of nights and the variety of songs it sang were incredible, some of them MUST have been ring tone inspired.

Fuji Work's PvrAlex is a video recorder unlike any other recorder, with a sole purpose of recording in the H.264/MPEG-4 format in real time, which is the video format for the...

Lawmakers Allow Voters to See It Now - Jul 19, 2005
Finally..

We're glad you are enjoying our detailed list of Internet TV stations and appreciate your feedback. As promised, we're working to improve the experience.

Here's a list of updates:

• We added the Telewest TV stations which includes blueyonder 01, broadsports, broadway, and broadwise. You may have recently read about this via our news report, Narrowstep Creates Multi-Channel Internet TV Solution for Telewest. We recommend checking out blueyonder.
• France has been added along with a number of French-speaking stations
• Major Fix: We became aware that if people using Internet Explorer have the check box "Show Friendly HTTP Errors" checked in their options, Windows Media streams beginning with the mms protocol (mms://) will show a DNS error when redirected. (joy) After several hours of pulling hair, we resolved the error by simply "not forwarding URLs beginning with mms://!" We apologize for all the Windows Media feeds that were not playing because of this weird scenario.
• The Legend will now properly hide and show in Firefox
• Fixed other alignment issues in Firefox such as the search box and navigation bar
• Several other countries will be added this week along with enhancing our current lineup

Now we would like to recommend two Internet TV stations that have impressed us.

• ManiaTV - Move over MTV and make room for ManiaTV. ManiaTV is working to bring back the music MTV started out playing but later gave up on.
• ROO TV - Wow. ROO claims they have over 4000 video clips and we have no reason not to believe them. Their entire web site is blended into the player for a really clean TV guide of sorts. You can watch video clips of music artists, news, sports, entertainment, video games, commercials, and much more.

You can watch video from both stations via our de.

More to come, stay tuned!

---

[This feed contains only short descriptions of the articles. To read the full article, please click through.]

We reMediated this a little while ago, but it is definitely worthy of an update.

The folks at the MIT Advertising Lab point us to where television, cell phones, and french chic may be headed. They write:

"France Telecom’s wireless unit, Orange SA, will soon roll out a new mobile video service that will let cellular phone subscribers view TV, movies, photos and broadband Internet content with a big screen viewing effect using Kopin-enabled [head mounted displays]."

I include it here because every once in a while we should look at cool gadgets worn by french chic models dressed in black.

However, I am trying to wrap my head around (oops, poor choice of phrase I suppose) exactly what the target market is here. Perhaps Parisians who want to be somewhere besides their living room; are still within a cell phone service area; and have nothing else happening around them so they watch TV?

All I know is that if the U.S. had these things, we could go to a baseball game and watch a movie instead.

It is being reported that Time Warner Cable has "quietly embarked on a trial in the San Diego area" that delivers 75 channels - all of Time Warner's expanded basic tier -- via IP to the PC.

This news was first reported in The San Diego Union-Tribune and is said to be a "six-month trial." About 9,000 customers who take the MSO's video and Road Runner data services are participating. According to the paper, the service is powered by a RealNetworks media player. User