in honor of halloween

eHow’s guide to brushing your teeth.

why the “motherload” is only one step in the right direction

Comedy Central has announced what they are calling a broadband channel, and it launches November 1st 2005. I love reading press releases, and this is no different. Here are a few excerpts and a few comments…

On Tuesday, November 1, COMEDY CENTRAL is launching its first broadband-optimized video channel “COMEDY CENTRAL MotherLoad,” …

Makes it sound like Comedy Central is launching a new type of cable channel, right? Something revolutionary you watch on the television that somehow integrates the internet/your high speed internet connection and your cable connection.

“MotherLoad” will launch with five distinct channels and will offer more than 450 video clips from COMEDY CENTRAL shows including never-before-seen videos and online-only extras.

This is interesting. Five channels? that’s pretty friggin’ sweet! But… wait a second, video clips? Video (here comes the operative word) CLIPS. Not complete shows. “Comedy today does not just live as a 22-minute television show,” says Lou Wallach, a senior vice-president. I beg to differ in cases like South Park, The Daily Show, Futurama (Comedy Central recently announced they will be airing the show when it goes off of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim), Drawn Together, Strangers with Candy etc. Those DO live in 22 minute shows. And South Park and the Daily Show are also among Comedy Centrals highest rated and most talked about (and downloaded) shows.

“MotherLoad” gives users the ultimate viewing experience, it will have video quality like a television set and users will have the power to pick and click the shows and videos they want to watch, when and as often as they’d like to see them.

Here they further distance themselves from the idea of having five individual channels. So now we’re looking at comedy Central’s PR machine dresssing up the idea of using their tape library online, creating exclusive online content, and catagorizing each into five catagories. This is nothing new for mainstream providers as CNN lets you watch their content , the WWE produces multiple online exclusive shows on a weekly basis, and Google offers their Google Video service.

So is Comedy Central launching an online content website? Yes. Absolutely and I’m looking forward to it to be honest. But is it a “channel,” so to speak? Maybe they believe in that marketing speak because in order for you to stream and watch any of their content, you’ve got to download their client to do so. As a side note I have a forboding feeling that the client will not be available for the OS X platform upon launch.

This is probably to combat the downloading and BitTorrenting of their premium shows like “The Daily Show,” but I seriously doubt this model will do anything to deter that. While this is “on demand,” it’s just not the same as having a downloaded file. I, for one, don’t believe that I’m going to get the full 640×480 resolution that I can get with a Torrented download. And what if my internet connection goes down or slows down? Then I’m stuck with the same…

buffering… 0%

buffering… 28%

buffering… 79%

issues as I’ve had in the past with streaming media.

Online content providers need to give the viewer some kind of ownership of the videos they watch. With a TV, we can Tivo and not need the cable company to re-broadcast the show to watch it again. Not so much the case with “MotherLoad.” You’ve got to re-stream the clips.

Criticisms aside, this is a step forward for cable content providers, who historically don’t embrace new technology unless they’re forced to or can charge for it. The content uses the television method by forcing viewers to watch commercials during their their programming, but perhaps in the future we’ll see a premium service where for a small subscription monthly or annually you can watch commercial free? Time will tell.

the end of analog televsion

“When 70 million television sets go black on December 31, 2008, three years from now, I can tell you people are going to have very strong opinions about it.” -Rep. Edward Markey (D), MA

So you might have heard about this. The U.S. government is requiring all television stations that broadcast over the air (think a television with rabbit ears), to stop broadcasting their analog signals starting December 31st, 2008. Some of these frequencies will be used for emergency transmissions and the rest will be sold off to the highest bidder. Previously, the law said that as soon as 85% of the population had televisions that could handle digital signals or December 31st, 2006 the stations would have to change, whichever came later between the two scenarios. It would be possible that this would never come into being under those rules. The government has changed their minds about this. Don’t get too upset at this, not before you understand what it is anyway.

The Senate Commerce Committee approved the measure, with a $3 billion subsidy to pay for those stragglers who remain in the analog domain to convert the digital signals for the analog televisions. The boxes are going to be priced somewhere between $50 and $60 a box. The date set by the Senate was April 7th, 2009.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee also approved the same bill, giving a similar subsidy, but only for $990 million, and also moved the date up to December 31st, 2008. That $2.1 billion and 4 month difference is quite large. To give some background information, the House committee is Republican controlled and the Senate committee is Democrat controlled.

Democrats argue that the $990 million, which $160 million was for administrative costs, is not enough. House committee chairman and Texas representative Joe Barton (R) said “We can be responsible … or we can throw caution to the wind and basically have the U.S. Treasury spend over $10 (billion) to $12 billion if everybody took advantage of the program” in response. The House bill included $500 million for emergency first responders to communicate over these frequencies, the Senate bill included $1 billion. The House bill propposed by Democrats was nearly for $5.8 billion, but was narrowly changed to $990 million by House Republicans.

The $3 billion wouldn’t be enough according to the National Association of broadcasters (NAB), whose numbers estimate 73 million televisions in the United States which rely on broadcast television, and an estimated 21 million homes solely rely on broadcast television. If all the televisions were to be given converter boxes, the amount would be approximately $4.4 billion, in addition to the $500 million to $1 billion to emergency services. Before you get into a tizzy over this, let’s also bring up one more fact.

According to a Reuters report, the sale of the remaining airwaves (currently controlled by the FCC) could equal up to $10 billion. This brings up an interesting point. The government is helping push technology along and ridding itself of certain responsibilities (policing those frequencies) and plans to profit from it. This is an actual tangable service they are doing for the american taxpayer and they want to profit from it. This is already on top of the $160 million for administrative costs. Instead they are willing to potentially let televisions go dark in 2009 rather then allocate money they will make back via the sale of these frequencies. just because the money is allocated, doesn’t mean it will be used. This is why this upsets me.

So the two houses of Congress do not agree, which means very little. they have to come to a conclusion at some point when this thing goes for a vote. This is the time where you can actually make a difference by letting someone know what you think, but not some random people on the internet. People who actually matter.

It should also be noted that digital television isn’t HDTV, it’s just a different way of broadcasting the same quality, if not better, television than we currently are broadcasting. For those of us that have cable, most likely we’re already getting a digital signal. If you’re not, the cost will fall onto your cable company, not you or the government.

All I know is, that when analog television DOES get turned off, I want to be watching an analog TV signal when it does. That is a historical moment.

Review – Fyuze (Beta)

While still in beta testing, Fyuze is a must-try for anyone who keeps track of multiple RSS feeds throughout the day. Here’s their own description of the website.

fyuze is a personal information aggregator that automatically collects information from the internet so you don’t have to. Sign up for an account, tell fyuze what you’re interested in, and you’ll be able to — at a glance — see what’s new on the web every time you log on.

Fyuze collects RSS data from feeds you provide into it’s easy input system. It’s setup easily to get specific tags from Flickr, jobs from Indeed.com, search strings on Technorati, events on Upcoming.com, Yahoo News searches, Amazon.com searches as well as any RSS feed.

A new account (information needed includes login, password, and e-mail address) will get you a default page set up with three tabs. “News,” Technology” and “Fun”. Each tab has a few feeds in it for generic sites like Engadget, Slashdot, Flickr’s “abstract” tag, Yahoo news, etc.

Layout comes in two options, three columns across with each feed under it’s own header, or reverse chronological order (newest stories first for those who don’t understand menu-speak), which looks like more of a traditional news page. The settings apply to each specific tab, not to all tabs. Each story’s headline is shown with a triangular button to the left that pulls down the text from the story. This would be a nice feature to be able to turn off and on, but there are no current options for it.

Adding content is simple enough, click the “[add content]” link at the top of the page and type your feed in or choose one of the pre-selected site’s feeds available. Editing and managing that content is also easy with links above each feed. Moving and deleting the tabs are also easy with buttons close to the top of the page.

Let’s walk through adding a feed. Let’s rob.blatt to your newly created fyuze account.

• click “add content”
• enter http://robblatt.wordpress.com/feed/
• move the feed to where you want it on the page (if you’re using three column view)
• done!

The only setting available is integration to your del.icio.us account. Outside of posting a link there, the settings page is blank. I assume they will add more options as time goes on, as they’ve changed the overall look of the site since it’s launch.

Overall, the feeds are displayed quickly, the interface is simple and easy to use, and it’s helpful for someone who wants to check all their feeds while not at home. I find it helpful in consolidation my not-working-and-on-the-internet time while at work.

It’s a free service and is worth a look if you check RSS feeds. For an idea of what the feed page looks like, check out a provided screenshot. What’s not shown is the Google Ads that are on each tabbed page. The ads are text based and unobtrusive, but still present.

My big worry with this site is that it will stay in BETA… FOREVER. GMail’s main page once you sign in still says it’s in beta, Google Earth is in beta, WordPress is still in beta, beta just seems to be the chic thing to do at the moment. It just screams “Don’t hold me accountable!”

web browsers

So I still use Safari to browse the web, not to read RSS as I think it’s reader is lacking, but it’s still my overall browser. But there are alternatives to Safari.

• Flock – I like Flock’s built-in blogging abilities, flickr and del.icio.us integration, but my criticisms fall with their lack of bookmarks. They integrate your del.icio.us account as your bookmarks, which I’m not a fan of. Granted they’re in a developer preview at the moment (read: expect crashes), but I like where they’re going with this. I like their inclusion of extensions in such an early release. They claim it’s a social browser, but most of the browsing I do is still private. We’ll see with coming releases. It’s also a build that originates from #2 on the list. Some features are highlighted on the Flock site. It also includes a “What do you want to do with this file,” dialogue box, similar to IE on a windows box, it remembers passwords (just like Firefox).
• Firefox – Firefox is the Windows box alternative to IE. It’s got many of the same features that Safari includes, tabed browsing, Google built into the browser bar, pop-up blocking, RSS reader, etc. It also includes extensions, is pretty stable and is updated regularly if a security flaw is found. I’m not sure if the same browser flaws apply in the Mac environment as they do in the Windows world, but it’s always better to be safe then sorry.
• Opera – Recently a pay only browser until recently. I heard that the copany makes their money from Google searches made from inside the browser. I wonder if that’s how all these browser creation companies make their money? If you really feel like paying money to the company, you can buy their support services for $29 a year. An “idiot service” if you ask me. Also includes RSS reading, GMail support, high security, tabbed browsing, pop-up blickong, they are the “fastest browser on earth” (their words, not mine), etc. My complaint lies in the inability to create folders in the boomarks bar. I have the same complaint about Flock, although I hadn’t spent nearly as much time with it.

A complaint I have with all browsers except Firefox is that the “refresh” button is the same as the “stop” button. They change dynamically, but if the browser doesn’t respond in time and I hit stop, it’ll sometime refresh the page.

So what the hell do I do with four browsers on my computer? Well, I just like to be on the ball I suppose. And I have a thing for new applications and I’m always looking for something better than Safari, which is pretty damn good.

iPod + car = mess

As an iPod user and owner, I’m looking for a simple integration with my car. I’m looking for somethhing that will let me control my iPod from the car stereo head. That’s all, very simple.

Now here’s the catch.

I want to be able to use the iPod’s interface when controlling the iPod. You know, Playlist, Artist, Album, Songs, Podcasts & Settings are all I really need. Most people won’t even need the Podcasts menu. But this simple point is where every car intergration head or system has fallen short. Most use playlists (like the Motorola ROKR E1) tfor playback, some up to 10 playlists, but who wants to be limited when for 10% of the price you can buy an iTrip and have unlimited use of the iPod?

Alpine and Clarion appeear to be the closest with this, but niether gets it right. Alpine uses their own menu system, and despite Clarion’s screen resolution of 1440 x 234 on a 7″ screen, it still looks like they have an issue fitting long artist, album or song titles on their display.

Is this a licensing issue between the companies that are already paying to use the word “iPod” in their products? Do they have to fork over a little more money to Apple (or Creative, whoever owns the copyright to the menu system)? Is that such a bad thing? Yes, the people who just want it done and dont care how will pay to install your crap into their cars, but are they truely satisfied with the results?

When BMW announced their iPod integration into their cars it was exciting, but upon further inspection, it’s just playlist playback. Again, useless to me. If I knew what songs I wanted to listen to, I’d simply burn them onto a CD. The Scion’s integration sounds like it uses the iPod menu system, but I can’t tell from any press releases or their website.

Which is a common problem amongst nearly all of the websites that are referred to on Apple’s own site. Almost all are confusing as to what exactly their products offer inn terms of iPod intergration. Yes, they all allow you to connect using an official cable, they all charge your iPod’s battery, but what else? Playlist playback? Artist/Album/Song control? Availablity?

So until something comes along that I’m happy with, I’ll stick with my Belkin cassette adapter.