I’m not feeling too great today—I’ve been fighting off a cold. I feel run down, tired, congested, and just not too great. Let’s just say I’ve felt better. Again, it’s a bit of a slow news day. Not much going on in my sphere of influence that I feel like writing about.
My experiments with converting an episode of The Magic Sock into .wmv format went well. I’m hoping to do another test tonight and then see if I could obtain some comments from the person who had sent me the feedback. I haven’t had much time to work on the next show. I have some ideas, but I’ve been focusing my energy on solving the accessibility problem. What would be nice is for me to have a show ready by sometime late next week, but that’s probably not going to happen. Too much is going on for me to get that amount of work done. However, miracles have been known to happen. It’s possible that I might have some time on Sunday to work on an episode. We shall see.
Speaking of podcasts and such, I’ve been interested to learn that the iPod 60GB has been put on an "at risk" list. Typically, this is one of the first signs that Apple is going to phase out the product and then replace it with a new and improved one (maybe the 4” video iPod that everyone has been waiting for?). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this rumor.
I do find it interesting that we’re on the cusp of a digital revolution, but I think that the mainstream aren’t quite aware of the power that’s right at their fingertips. Of course, people have been using RSS for years now and I’ve only really signed onto this about year ago. It took about 6 months or so for me to really understand why RSS is so good. But it took even longer than that for me to realize that you can using RSS not only for text but also for podcasts and videopodcasts. That’s the beauty of RSS. Simply find shows that you like, subscribe, and then click a button to get all the content you want to your PC and then transfer that to your iPod. This morning I had some time after buying some juice to sit down and watch an episode of Mobuzztv.com. Very cool to be able to switch from listening to a podcast to watching a short episode of TV quality like news.
What I find so cool about the video content is that I’m getting access to news from around the world that’s extremely interesting. I don’t have to waste time watching my local news, seeing such exciting things as what houses caught on fire last night. In fact, I can’t sit down and watching the local news any longer. I just can’t do it. It’s so filled with uninteresting content that I realize that I could be getting much more elsewhere (for free).
The jump between your PC and your TV is hopefully coming soon. The difficult thing is that the whole RSS craze is very complicated for your average user. Trying to convince someone (or teach a friend) how to get a RSS feed and then subscribe to a show is not easy at all. Of course Internet Explorer 7.0 is rumored to have seamless RSS built in, but since Windows Vista is being pushed back, it’ll be 2007 before people can use that. Right now, I think iTunes has the simplest way of using a RSS-like feed. Unfortunately, with iTunes, you need to submit your show to their store and then use the feed they give you. Basically, I have my RSS feed for The Magic Sock and then I have this really long and crazy url for the apple iTunes store for people to subscribe in iTunes. It’s a bit nuts. Yet on www.themagicsock.com, there’s a simple button to click on to subscribe to the show in iTunes or through any aggregator. But if your audience doesn’t know (or care) to use the subscribe button, you’re out of luck. Most people tend to visit a website and download the file that way—or worse yet—they click on the link and wait for the episode to load on their screen. It’s much more effective to subscribe and obtain the feed that way, but when users want the 640 x 480 version over the 320 x 240, what can you do? Not much.
Again, we’re in the early stages of all of this video revolution launching out across the web. I’m hoping that within 3-5 years that we’ll be singing a different tune. Maybe by then we’ll have a PC or a device that easily connects to your TV and allows you to download content. I’d also like to see more IPTV here in the United States. But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that this post isn’t very exciting, but I do believe that this use of technology will change the way we watch our entertainment and news. It’s coming.
My experiments with converting an episode of The Magic Sock into .wmv format went well. I’m hoping to do another test tonight and then see if I could obtain some comments from the person who had sent me the feedback. I haven’t had much time to work on the next show. I have some ideas, but I’ve been focusing my energy on solving the accessibility problem. What would be nice is for me to have a show ready by sometime late next week, but that’s probably not going to happen. Too much is going on for me to get that amount of work done. However, miracles have been known to happen. It’s possible that I might have some time on Sunday to work on an episode. We shall see.
Speaking of podcasts and such, I’ve been interested to learn that the iPod 60GB has been put on an "at risk" list. Typically, this is one of the first signs that Apple is going to phase out the product and then replace it with a new and improved one (maybe the 4” video iPod that everyone has been waiting for?). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this rumor.
I do find it interesting that we’re on the cusp of a digital revolution, but I think that the mainstream aren’t quite aware of the power that’s right at their fingertips. Of course, people have been using RSS for years now and I’ve only really signed onto this about year ago. It took about 6 months or so for me to really understand why RSS is so good. But it took even longer than that for me to realize that you can using RSS not only for text but also for podcasts and videopodcasts. That’s the beauty of RSS. Simply find shows that you like, subscribe, and then click a button to get all the content you want to your PC and then transfer that to your iPod. This morning I had some time after buying some juice to sit down and watch an episode of Mobuzztv.com. Very cool to be able to switch from listening to a podcast to watching a short episode of TV quality like news.
What I find so cool about the video content is that I’m getting access to news from around the world that’s extremely interesting. I don’t have to waste time watching my local news, seeing such exciting things as what houses caught on fire last night. In fact, I can’t sit down and watching the local news any longer. I just can’t do it. It’s so filled with uninteresting content that I realize that I could be getting much more elsewhere (for free).
The jump between your PC and your TV is hopefully coming soon. The difficult thing is that the whole RSS craze is very complicated for your average user. Trying to convince someone (or teach a friend) how to get a RSS feed and then subscribe to a show is not easy at all. Of course Internet Explorer 7.0 is rumored to have seamless RSS built in, but since Windows Vista is being pushed back, it’ll be 2007 before people can use that. Right now, I think iTunes has the simplest way of using a RSS-like feed. Unfortunately, with iTunes, you need to submit your show to their store and then use the feed they give you. Basically, I have my RSS feed for The Magic Sock and then I have this really long and crazy url for the apple iTunes store for people to subscribe in iTunes. It’s a bit nuts. Yet on www.themagicsock.com, there’s a simple button to click on to subscribe to the show in iTunes or through any aggregator. But if your audience doesn’t know (or care) to use the subscribe button, you’re out of luck. Most people tend to visit a website and download the file that way—or worse yet—they click on the link and wait for the episode to load on their screen. It’s much more effective to subscribe and obtain the feed that way, but when users want the 640 x 480 version over the 320 x 240, what can you do? Not much.
Again, we’re in the early stages of all of this video revolution launching out across the web. I’m hoping that within 3-5 years that we’ll be singing a different tune. Maybe by then we’ll have a PC or a device that easily connects to your TV and allows you to download content. I’d also like to see more IPTV here in the United States. But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that this post isn’t very exciting, but I do believe that this use of technology will change the way we watch our entertainment and news. It’s coming.
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