Last night I watched my first Blu-Ray movie in 1080i via the Sony Playstation 3. It was of a movie I’d already seen but didn’t own on DVD. I could have bought the package in DVD format of all three movies for about half (or less) what we paid for the Blu-Ray format, but I wanted to watch something in Blu-Ray format.
Even though we received Talledega Nights in Blu-Ray format with the PS3, I wanted my first experience with Blu-Ray to be with something I actually bought separately. Might seem hokey, but hey, that’s the way I roll sometimes.
I’ve had my eye on the Mission Impossible set for a little while having just finished watching the first season of the TV series.
For those with PS3, I’m curious how often you’ll buy the Blu-ray version vs. the DVD. As mentioned in the video at the top of this post (if you don’t see it for some reason, clickthru to this post), Snakes on a Plane and Beer League came out this Tuesday and I did look for both on Blu-ray but neither we’re available.
While on the subject of strange iPod accessories, cue the i-Dog.
My wife bought an i-Dog recently and left it on my desk. The i-Dog reacts to sounds, moving its head and twitching its ears. It barks and flashes different colors on its face to indicate what mood it is in.
A couple weeks back, I made the video at the top of the post (and repeated in the Google Video above for those who can’t see the embedded video player) of the i-Dog reacting to Amanda Congdon’s second ABC video blog and submitted to ABC, which is today’s Hmmcast (#32). I’m not going to put numbers in the title with every update any more. Ch-ch-ch-changes, but you can follow the Hmmcast TV and Hmmcast (podcast) in your favorite RSS feed.
Following a trackback on a post here earlier today I happened upon Routine Order pondering if Robert Scoble is the right choice for covering John Edward’s 2008 Presidential campaign (emphasis mine):
So why not hire someone who can do both things, or can at least advise on the technology behind it all? Scoble is old, let’s face it - he’s got family. Passion is what pulls readers. Give me a twenty-something with fire in his guts for what he’s bloggin about, anytime.
Since when is having “fire in his guts” limited to twenty-somethings? And if merely having family makes one “too old” than I was too old 17 years ago. Scoble is only a few years older than me, so if he’s too old for following Edward’s campaign I’m probably too old to start a daily vlog. There’s this WWII vet that was in his 90s who became sort of a cult celeb on YouTube, so I seriously doubt either Scoble or I need to turn in our vlogging license.
In fairness, the mysterious Routine Order blogger wasn’t asking the same question I’m asking in this post. The idea that a geek like Scoble might not be the best choice for Edwards bid to be the next President in 2008 was his take and Scoble’s age is one strike against him. Scoble has earned his video street cred with the Channel 9 stuff and if not him then who else?
If Edwards had invited me I would have been more interested in stuff they likely aren’t letting anybody cover. I want to know what Edwards is like out of all the lights, away from the cameras and his handlers. Somebody let Edwards loose and see if he’s got the Dean scream. I’ve seen his polished act already in the video from Gnomedex and he knows how to schmooze the crowd, but most politicians have that game down. Let’s see some behind the scenes Edwards action. Somebody. Anybody.
I doubt Scoble or any of the other video bloggers, podcasters, etc are going to get much of that kind of content. That’s what the American people need to know. We need to know if this guy has a penchant for interns in blue dresses, likes to bet a little too much on the ponies, does drugs recreationally, like pron, and so on. If we get all this stuff on the table long before any elections, out in the open, we can then move to the important issues and not waste time tripping over personal choices and morality debates.
Hmmcast #32
I’m thinking about publishing the new Hmmcast episode every weekday here at 4:20pm PST / 7:20pm EST, just so folks know when to expect a new installment each day. Yes, I realize 420 has drug references, but it’s an easy time for people to remember. I would choose something like 6:66 AM or PM but neither of those are valid. If you have a better time suggestion for the daily show, please let me know below. For those who missed yesterday’s post, I wrote that my goal is to create at least one new video blog or podcast every weekday in 2007, save for holidays and vacation. Will I make it? How many of these will you catch? Two are now in the bag.
Personally I think I’ll be too old for video when my heart stops ticking, but as always am interested in your feedback as to whether age really matters in a video blog? Age matters for Dick Clark. Anybody see that New Year’s Meltdown? I heard audio this morning. Painful. Dick had his run, but that’s one case — where he can’t even do the countdown right — to call it a day.
2006 was a good year and it’s time for me to lay down some goals, resolutions and changes this new year.
1. Goodbye existing RSS feeds, hello new RSS feeds
I’ve completely reset my warm, comfortable RSS reading list. All day long, in fact, I kept checking to see new posts … that were no longer there.
Since March 20 2006, I averaged following 185 RSS feeds and personally skimmed through over 150,000 posts marking 14,717 as ‘publish’ed. In a new directory and database I installed a fresh reBlog install for 2007 and am now looking at this:
I’ll be resubscribing to some of the 180+ feeds I was subscribed to in 2006, but I’m going to try my best to add primarily new voices, new feeds and new sources to my daily reading list. I also reset the Hmm front page blogroll.
Nothing against the many sources I enjoyed in 2006, but I’m not the kind of guy who likes staying in comfort zones and coasting along for an extended period of time. I like to keep doing new and different things, experimenting and exploring. You’re welcome to make your case for why I should resubscribe in 2007 below either by comment or trackback. Tell me what you will be doing differently in 2007? What will be new about you/your site? If the answer is nothing, then this is your opportunity to make a post like the one I’m making here and share.
Along the left hand side of the homepage (location subject to change) you’ll see my OPML file for 2006 and 2007. As of this writing 2007 I have only two subscriptions, one for here so I can monitor how the feed looks and the other is the next item I’ll be discussing.
I’m also working on a public shared reading list experiment that you can get involved with (keep reading for clues) and help influence what I post about here at Hmm in 2007. This means even if I’m not subscribed to your blog, there will be a familiar and easy way for you to submit posts you’d like me to skim/read.
2. Virtual world (MMO / MMORPG) focus changes
In January of 2006 myself and several others started a group blog called VTOR (Virtual TO Reality) to cover the virtual world landscape. We chose to use the new freehosting service from the people behind Blogexplosion called Blogcharm. Within days of launching the service, unfortunately, the BE owners announced they were selling the entire service and from there Blogcharm never really got much attention and the service went from new to bad to miserable.
It turned out to be a horrible move starting our blog at Blogcharm, especially over the last 60 days when the hosting has had numerous site outages, so we jumped to our own server. The VTOReality site migration is now complete and the new group blog is available at vtoreality.com on a server that is dramatically faster. We’re hosting on one of our dedicated servers. The RSS feed was being served by Feedburner so existing subscribers don’t need to update their links.
I’m looking forward to some exciting developments in virtual lands in 2007 and hope to be contributing even more than in 2006. I started out 2006 very involved and after summer things kind of tapered off. I downsized my virtual land holdings in Second Life so I’ll be starting lean and mean in 2007.
3. Removed sharing links
I’ve removed the digg, del.icio.us and sphere links at the bottom of each post. While I considered these convenient and useful for readers in 2006, those who use these services can use bookmarklets from these services if they want. These links just seem redundant to me any more. Maybe I’ll change back to thinking it was a good idea, but they’re gone for now.
4. Hmmcast — video or audio — five days a week
Vlogging here I come!
One of my 2007 goals is to publish at least one originally created video or podcast every weekday, save for holidays. They won’t necessarily all be related just like text posts here. Some might be short clips, others longer with higher production value. Expect screencasts, one on one commentary and more. This starts today and now below (on a holiday too, oops):
That video may be more of a strange vignette, but my experimenting and exploration will come into some sort of regular production (or quit after a serious concerted effort). Yeah, guess I’m saying the Hmmcast will be a regular production, which is what I alluded to in my last post and have wanted to do for quite some time now.
This will be replacing the bi-monthly most hmm-worthy posts. I liked the concept but it’s kind of out of gas in the current format and want to try something different.
5. Back in Black Labs
Many of the new experiments we’re working on related in some way to Hmm will be listed in a new labs.makeyougohmm.com. You can poke around there now and see some of what’s happening behind the scenes, away from the RSS feed and website. This isn’t some promotional thing, it’s a place for us to play mad scientist together and check out stuff. You will be a part of this, if you want to be.
I probably won’t write posts about all these lab experiments, but you’ll note a new category called “labs” which is bound to follow some of these experiments. One of the things I want to do a better job at in 2007 is making things being worked on and experimented with behind the scenes a little more publically accessible. Also will allow me to get feedback from you about ideas you might think would be cool more fully developed for here or related sites.
6. ???
This list could go on but I’m going to leave it there for now. Tease, tease. Hopefully you’ve noticed most of these personal and site goals lean towards creating more original content. I’m not planning on getting too far removed from commenting on news and what other people are saying/doing, what’s happening in tech, and ultimately things that make me and hopefully you go hmm, but I do want to focus more on producing and publishing a greater amount of original content in 2007 than in prior years, if that’s even possible with my frenetic schedule. We’ll find out in 12 months, won’t we?
Look around the site, leave comments and if you like, get involved here in the many other creative ways to be available throughout 2007. Thank you for reading and supporting this site with your time and energy. It’s contagious.
This is the final Hmmcast of 2006 and was meant to be the last post of 2006. My bad for not pulling the trigger last night. This one has an odd twist: there’s no actual audio to go with this at publishing time (then how can it be called a ‘cast’?), hence the name “unplugged” in the title.
Why?
More on that in a future post, but in the meantime Happy New Year 2007 everybody and don’t be surprised if you see a few changes around Hmm today and beyond. Don’t you love the smell of fresh paint?
“Well said. Providing a obfuscated redirect service in a way that isn’t abused is very very difficult. The redirect site’s abuse desk doesn’t see all the email and IM spam containing its link — they only get the clicks. This creates a very murky mess — Is a volume redirect click abusive (the screenshot) or just popular (the mentos diet coke fad)?”
– Comment by Miles — December 4, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
“Kennedy took one of the web’s most infamous pornographic images and put the Creative Commons logo over the explicit part so that you could avoid seeing far more of the mooning man than anyone would ever want to see. The original’s pornographic without a doubt. His objection to the media coverage depends on whether a pornographic image is still pornographic if you obscure the dirty parts.”
– Comment by Rogers Cadenhead — December 5, 2006 @ 12:30 pm
“Oh, and I’ll have to say that I did write twice on the comment section for help on fixing Akismet for MT a while back. No one from Automattic got back to me (before when I reported just an Akismet issue, Matt wrote back like right away).”
– Comment by darkmoon — December 7, 2006 @ 11:27 pm
“It will be clearer in January about Jon’s purpose and you’ll see it as a somewhat different charter than Robert’s.”
– Comment by Jeff Sandquist — December 8, 2006 @ 2:31 pm
“We have plans for subscription to be up and running by next weeks show. Right now the show hovers between Internet TV and a videoblog– not a good place to be. I think a videoblog needs to have links, comments and subscription or it just isn’t a videoblog.”
– Comment by Amanda Congdon — December 13, 2006 @ 10:43 pm
“I have two girls (6 and 7) who turn into Venus and Serena when they play tennis.
They’ve never let go of the controller, much less thrown it across the room.
I thing people are being silly about the whole thing and news outlets are half reporting the story by labeling it a “recall”. I heard this on the radio this morning and it made me angry to hear such sloppy reporting.”
– Comment by Wayne — December 18, 2006 @ 6:48 pm
Historical news events and releases
- Nintendo Wii launches in Japan, also releases forecast channel and browser
- Joseph Barbera, James Kim, former President Gerald Ford, James Brown and others pass on
- Jon Udell leaves Infoworld for Microsoft’s Channel 9
- eBay announces unlimited SkypeOUT plans for 2007
- Time magazine makes ‘You’ the Person of the Year
- Digg adds two new main categories: video and podcasts
- AllofMP3 sued for over a trillion dollars
“I know far too many white people (one is too many) who vehemently insist that they’re not racist, yet they will casually throw down the “N” word to disparage black people.”
– Comment by Vince Williams — November 21, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
“I too must mention that the use of the N word between African Americans to me is as offensive as it is with any other person using it. The only time I find it acceptable is when it is used in a dramatic sense to point out ignorance (such as movies and such).”
– Comment by Ron — November 22, 2006 @ 5:42 pm
“This is pure genius. By creating group excitment around a slot machine, they’ll be able to replicate one of the major draws of the crap table. No longer is it one vs. the house, it’s us vs. them. It would not surprise me to see this as the dominate slot technology in five years.”
– Comment by Davis Freeberg — November 21, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
“If there’s anything in my review that I wish I’d re-worded, it’s the “dead in six months” line. I’m confident that in six months’ time the Zune will have failed to make a serious dent against the iPod or the family of WMP-based players, and will have become irrelevant and mostly forgotten. But not dead and buried, not beyond revival with a terrific 2.0 firmware update … Anyway. Like I said, I thought your post was very illuminating.”
– Comment by Andy Ihnatko — November 27, 2006 @ 5:05 am
Historical news events and releases
- 176 newspapers and Yahoo get together on project
- Microsoft Office 2007 for business launches, also HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360
- Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3 launched, Wii takes early sales lead due to higher number of produced consoles
- US Copyright office shows cell phone users some love, you can break the lock on phones to use with competitors
- Wal-mart starts offering digital download (for Windows only) along with sale of Superman Returns DVD and soon others
- Google Answers gets pink slip
- MPAA gets anti-pretexting bill killed
How to subscribe to Hmmcast RSS Feed - just copy/paste this to your favorite podcast client iTunes - Hmmcast is available and listed in iTunes, just search for “hmm” in the iTunes podcast menu.
RSS feed readers: if you don’t see the download/play mp3 menu below just click on over to the website. Thank you for listening and reading.
Earlier today I spoke to the the co-founder of BitWine, Alon (pronounced “alone”) that was profiled here yesterday. Last night we played a brutal game of appointment tag in the BitWine system and while I can’t speak very positively about the appointment setting part of BitWine (it sucks frankly) Alon did promise that a much better version was forthcoming after the first of the year. Alon shared a few other things about BitWine, some of which I’ve recounted in this very first episode of Hmm & Tell.
Unrelated sidenote: check out the last number in the URL, this is also the 4,000th post. Thank you to everybody who has ever stopped by and especially those who return and subscribe. Here’s to another 4,000!
“I still maintain that the best thing that ever happened to my typing skills were police quest 1 and 2.”
– Comment by iiq374 — November 12, 2006 @ 1:26 pm
“I understand the necessities of the compromises that Microsoft made and I think that a lot of this is being driven more by their IPTV goals, then even their Zune goals, but I still see it as a case of technology gone bad. I do think you’re absolutely right about the Zune marketplace being the real killer app for this device though. Micropayments will be huge and Microsoft is building something much bigger then an mp3 player with their site. It will be neat to see where this ends up going.”
– Comment by Davis Freeberg — November 17, 2006 @ 11:56 am
Historical news events and releases
- Duncan Riley no longer with B5Media
- Jason Calacanis and Jim Moore no longer with AOL
- Bix and Mybloglog no longer on their own, Yahoo acquires both (turns out they are just acquiring Bix and in “acquisition talks with MyBlogLog)
- Google, Yahoo and Microsoft agree on sitemap protocol
- New James Bond, Daniel Craig, makes theatrical debut in Casino Royale
- Web turns 16, Xbox 5, Xbox Live 4
- Reviewme launches offering bloggers to make money writing paid reviews
- Democrats take over Senate and House majority in election
- Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii launch
- Microsoft Virtual Earth gets 3D upgrade
How to subscribe to Hmmcast RSS Feed - just copy/paste this to your favorite podcast client iTunes - Hmmcast is available and listed in iTunes, just search for “hmm” in the iTunes podcast menu.
RSS feed readers: if you don’t see the download/play mp3 menu below just click on over to the website. Thank you for listening and reading.
“I love the idea of adult stem cell research. According to clinicaltrials.gov there are a lot of open trials using adult stem cells. The main argument for using embryonic stem cell is that there is hope a benefit may someday be found. Adult stem cells have benefits now. Seems to me we can avoid the controversy and focus studying what has *demonstrated* to be useful.”
– Comment by Dean in Des Moines — October 24, 2006 @ 11:39 am
“Since he first stated it publicly, I’ve never doubted that Bush’s position on embryonic stem cell research was one of political expediency. I’ve always thought his pose of religiosity was utterly insincere, and if the consequences for this country of his actions weren’t so terrible, it would be laughable. I think the way Bush and team have conducted their war in Iraq and the ‘war on terror’ gives the lie to any pretense he might make of concern and respect for human life.”
– Comment by Vince Williams — October 26, 2006 @ 5:41 am
“To keep track of my keys the #1 thing is a standard location. Otherwise, if I throw them somewhere I always make an effort to leave them on top of something, not to the side, etc. Things will still get lost from time to time but this cuts down on the mornings with the “where are my keys”.
– Comment by Kman — October 26, 2006 @ 11:29 am
“hey there, i’m the CEO of iLike & GarageBand. good post and discussion! I just wanted to note that some of the issues noted have since been fixed… the original blog was posted on Oct 26, a day after we first released our “beta.” In particular, there was a bug resulting in some obviously inflated “playcounts” (e.g. the 688 million example!) and we’ve since resolved that. We’re still barely a week old so there’s a *lot* of problems that need to be fixed. But I hope you’ll try it out.”
– Comment by Ali Partovi — November 1, 2006 @ 6:30 am
Historical news events and releases
- Evan Williams buys back Odeo from investors
- YouTube purging more copyrighted clips
- Windows Media Player 11 released
- Google acquires Jotspot, Wired buys reddit
- Microsoft to work with Zend on Windows PHP runtime
How to subscribe to Hmmcast RSS Feed - just copy/paste this to your favorite podcast client iTunes - Hmmcast is available and listed in iTunes, just search for “hmm” in the iTunes podcast menu.
RSS feed readers: if you don’t see the download/play mp3 menu below just click on over to the website. Thank you for listening and reading.
