Oh Noes! The Web May Not Be Free For Me To Harrass People!

Yeah, well it never was...

People are in a bunch over a bill that attempts to address "cyber bullying". Yes, as does most attempts to police the web, it has flaws... and probably should never have been drafted. Here is a thought. Use the existing laws and social norms to stop people who hide behind false identity and anonymity on the web to harass people.

All it would take is for us to admit that IT'S NOT REALLY NEW OR DIFFERENT! The web is not magic... good lord, people read to much William Gibson or something! "Ha Ha! I have done something vile but you will never find me because I have escaped into the INTERNET!" : )

It is just a way of communicating... in a few years it will be as thrilling as a CD ROM.

Here is my post to people up in arms over it on a popular news aggregation site...

Regardless of foolish attempts at legislation, I believe that the distinction should be that you never say anything that you would not say directly to a persons face or in a public place... hiding behind a false persona on the internet just proves cowardice. Only the people that post know for sure if what they type is really in their "own voice". If people took the time to be honest with themselves then we would not have gotten to this point.

For 15 years I have argued for more civilized behavior on the web as I have watched people become more brazen and spiteful. Saying crap and even pulling stunts that simply intend to injure others. The web could have REMAINED open and free longer before this sort of thing started... but what so many people don't get is that the stupid ass "wild west" behavior is one thing that will be used as an excuse to eventually bring down the hammer. Look at history and you will see examples.

Do you think THIS technology is beyond control? (from the comments here I can see many do) Sadly, no... powerful people are just waiting for the right time to take control of it. Most likely when it will make a small hand full of those people the most money to lock it down. At that time the law will be brought into play to suit their needs... and not just in the U.S. The crazy thing is... many people who use the web are giving them all the ammunition they need.

Mark my words, as we speak, interesting information about you and everything you have ever uttered on the internet is being collected by several entities. Hell, most people are GIVING it to commercial databases. How many "top 5 surveys" have you taken this month? Even if you are sorta careful and they have not de-anonymized your 16 different online "personalities" now... they will in the future. The data is too intriguing and valuable. Never before in history have so many people revealed so much about themselves. When people act badly... that is useful not from a marketing standpoint... but from a control standpoint. "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" But then, its hard to see them as evil since you can hardly blame them for using the club that the users of the web put in their hands. Ugh.

Do a search for "de-anonymize" and consider that if the University Of Texas is doing this publicly, think about what the capabilities of more nefarious organizations might be.

Good luck everyone... and remember to play nice.

Pulling back the curtain on "anonymous" Twitterers

Oh, and by cross posting that, I just TOTALY de-anonymized myself! lol Thats all it takes. Posting any portion of my own text in 2 places would be a HUGE ping in an engine designed to figure out who people on "popular news aggregation sites" are. : )

I don't care HOW careful you are... some unfeeling piece of software will figure out all your secrets someday... best to plan ahead and act accordingly.

My Pad Computer Gets VOIP

OK so this is weird... I can download an application to my "phone" that lets me make calls over the internet bypassing the people I buy phone service from!

Meet the Skype iPhone client! (iTunes store link... while there be sure to buy a copy of this jewel.)

A year ago, I would not have thought that skype would have been allowed into the app store in ANY form, ever... but it happened. The fact that AT&T managed to keep the calls off G3 is only the spasm of a dying business model in my opinion. (You need to make Skype calls from a wifi connection) They see the writing on the wall, Apple has changed the game and that thing in your hand is not just a phone... With growing dexterity, its whatever you need it to be at the moment. In the near future AT&T will mostly get their money, from selling you the connection you need to make that "anything device" work. Phone service? Text Messaging? Say those phrases over and over and they start to sound really old and silly, like something a guy in a fedora would be trying to sell you door to door.

140? Why so many... Pft.

This animation comes close to my feelings on twitter... Its really damn funny, Check it out!

"Twouble with Twitter" sous-titré
by LePostfr

I mostly tweet about the futility of tweeting.

The video takes some funny jabs at tweeting, but it misses a big one in my book. I am most annoyed by the fact that twitter sets the new standard of "important thoughts" at 140 characters. I find it nearly impossible to convey all the information necessary to complete a statement in a 140 character "tweet". Take the post I made this morning.

"The moby wrap still works really well to put Jamieson to sleep but unfortunatly its just too hot for he and I to use for very long now."

Now that note is missing some key information! I think Jamieson has inherited my "warm blooded" nature and he seems to get warm fast, and I would also have liked to include the time of year that we are having to stop using it and that we could have used the wrap year round in some place other than the dreaded Texas. Someone reading this out of context might simply think I don't like the something about the Moby wrap... but the opposite is true, I love the thing and I am sad that I have to put it away due to the place I live.

So the choice is to leave out detail or use a Tarzan like shorthand.

"Moby wrap good for putting Jamieson to sleep, but its too hot for us to use for long. March + Texas + Warm baby wraped on warm daddy = bad" (138 ugh)

Honestly, I think that the idea that most thoughts can be fully formed in 140 characters brings us one step closer to ushering in an era of sub verbal grunt based communication.

Get ready.

I remember these!

They came on right after the smurfs, but it only lasted for like one season.


Just kidding... Its a parody, add it to the collection with Watchnuts and Watchmen babies. : )

Unimplemented t-shirt idea #482

I have wanted to design a t-shirt for many years that reads... "I used to be angst ridden, now I'm just curmudgeonly."


Maybe if I wore t-shirts I would be more inspired to actually get them made when I have ideas for them...

Hulu Asks Boxee To Not Be A Browser...

Thats about the size of it. it would be the same as if Internet Explorer became really good at displaying and organizing media and Hulu said to them "Oh, wow that makes our content providers uncomfortable... can you stop?"

Here is the story from their respective blog posts:
http://blog.boxee.tv/
blog.hulu/doing-hard-things

And here is the post I made at the hulu.com user message boards:

I just wanted to say that even if Hulu never returns to boxee, I will STILL be dropping my cable service. I will make due with content from other sources that remain available via Boxee. (long live Netflix!) I think many other users like me are tired of being treated so poorly and having ridiculous bundling packages forced down our throats. I honestly believe that cable and satellite companies could have used their influence, wealth and power to make something like Hulu/Boxee happen MANY years ago and they and the content providers could have had absolute control over it... But they were all too driven by greed and ended up treating their customers like they were morons.

Well I am afraid that after a long wait, the genie is out of the bottle and under the command of the customers. No matter how you try to shove him back in, he will slip through your fingers like so much pink smoke. If these moves manage to damage Boxee, what is to stop someone from creating a free "Hulu viewer" based on open source browser code with many of the same advantages? And maybe these people won't have the same respect for the imbedded advertising and will find some way to allow users to mask it? Perhaps THAT will become the standard for how people view Hulu on a "living room monitor"

And not to beat a dead horse, but as many others have mentioned there is the piracy issue, hopefully I can ad a slightly different perspective. As a musician, photographer and short film maker, I don't want to see file sharing become the standard of our society because ultimately it leaves little room for small independents and creators of genuinely unique content to monetize due to the fact that it creates a culture that lacks respect for creative people. (It helps to dislike the people you steal from and think of them all as rich and arrogant even if that clearly is not true.) But if people behind this move continue with the old way of thinking... more and more people will be lead down the wrong path and everyone who creates and consumes media will suffer in the long run.

So on the constructive side, can I ask why not create a separate stream for TV bound browsers like boxee (there will eventually be many...) and pop in a few more ads? I doubt many of us would mind, as long as it stayed well below the ridiculous amount of broadcast TV. Most of us understand the unspoken contract of "TV" is that the ads pay for the content and that it has never been "Free" no matter what an Alec Bladwin shaped alien says. (BTW, thanks for propagating the myth amongst young people that they somehow "deserve" free TV. It makes it much harder to argue the point that TV has a price and that downloading is wrong to a young teenager when a TV star/alien told him that TV was free. : P) --I sincerely hope this can be resolved, and thank you for reading.

Without Hulu Boxee is quite hobbled, but I expect it to be worked out. I am serious though. I will just do without Hulu if they don't kiss and make up. The cable companies had decades to find a solution that made sense and they squandered my trust... now let them be regulated to what they really are... a utility. And just like my water, trash, electric and gas... I expect that internet connection to be fast and on all the time.

I have seen the future of "TV" and it shall be be know as BOXEE!

Or at least if its not THE future, it at least has a real good shot at getting installed in a LOT of entertainment centers in the coming years.

The ultra short version of this post...
Go to this link and get Boxee. It is really cool, play around with it and give it enough time so that you really get a feel for the potential of it. You will thank me.

Boxee home page

OK, for those of you with a bit more attention/time...

About 6 months ago I got into an alpha test of a media application called Boxee and started playing with it. I quickly realized it was the thing I had been waiting for. For quite some time now I have thought that Cable and broadcast television were dying slow deaths and I had began looking for a way to do away with then once and for all. Also I want to present any video content for our new son Jamieson in a more controlled fashion. I want to own the programs he is allowed to watch and have them stored locally. Mainly so that he is exposed to as little advertising as possible for the first several years of his life. After several less than perfect attempts at a solution fell flat. I finally became aware of boxee and I got to tell you its been great! Just about everyone I have shown Boxee to has thought it was revolutionary and several people have installed it after getting a tour of what it could do over at the house. Its quite amusing to me that it has taken someone so long to something like this so well! Honestly, I started imagining a product with many of these capabilities a very long time ago.

OK, so what IS Boxee? 

The best way to describe it is that it is a "media browser" that is designed for your TV. If you are fimilliar with apples front row then you can put boxee in that class of product. BUT Boxee is very extensible and powerful! it playes TONS of media formats and handles streaming from the enternet like a pro. Do you like Like Hulu? boxee can be your front end for Hulu. Have some DVDs you ripped? Boxee understands those files and lets you play them without conversion. Want yo go to CNN.com and see the top stories? not a problem. Do you like Lost? Navigate over to ABC.com's channel in boxee and watch episodes. Got pictures on flickr that you want to show off in a fancy slide show? Covered! In fact you can view you friends flickr accounts also! And here is the big one... Netflix! Yup, you can pull up your netflix account and start an instant play movie or TV show any time you want. I am currently working my way through the second season of Dead Like Me. and Katy and I burned through all of the first season of 30 Rock recently. The combination of a netflix account, and streamed shows from services like Joost and Hulu and you are pretty covered as far as watching a huge variety of shows. The selection seems to be growing rapidly too!

So, another way to look at it is  that Boxee is like a cable guide... for a bunch of differently formated stuff thats spread out all over the web, on your local drives, or on a household server.

So why is Boxee important?
Because it brings all that crazy stuff together under one simple interface... that you can work with a REMOTE!

Die Cable Die!

Cable has killing itself by treating its customers like idiots and doggedly refusing to introduce services that would meet their changing needs. Why in the hell do I still need to buy a huge package of channels in order to get the half dozen I am actually interested in?! For gods sake! It's the 21st century! The year 2009! Even new services like AT&T universe STILL bundle content in ridiculous ways. What could possibly be motivating them to continue these seriously outdated practices? Well thats a rhetorical question... it makes them money and they can get away with it.

This situation is so bad that I believe (as many people do) that it actually contributes to piracy. People don't want to be limited to what they watch and when. Just give me the things I am in the mood for and make it simple for me to find them!

Arg! hey... where are you all going? don't you guys want to play pirates anymore?
People have taken it into their own hands to use the available technology to do just what I described above. hook an inexpensive computer up to your TV get a decent internet connection and a bittorrent client and you CAN bybass the traditional methods of content delivery altogether. Sites and services like Hulu and ABC.com have come into being partly due to the realization by the content creators that if they did not give fans of their shows options in how to receive them other than cable... they would simply download them from the file sharing communities and at that point they would lose all control of the delivery and also lose any opportunity to be compensated fairly through the the inclusion of advertising.

More and more people have been unwilling to continue playing the sucker to the cable companies when such a simple alternative was available, even if that alternative is questionable in its "morality". The way we pay for TV has always been a simple contract that most people clearly understand. You watch a show and no matter how hard you try you WILL see some ads and the people that made the show get paid. But as it got simpler and simpler to get shows and movies in a modern on demand fashion via file sharing and as cable companies doggedly resisted providing logical ways for people to find and get the content they wanted, more and more people justified downloading movies and TV shows. You might be surprised at the types of people that participate in file sharing, its a huge and rapidly growing trend... what could stop it? Making the content from legitimate sources MORE CONVENIENT than file sharing!

Boxee goes a long way to doing just that.

Your turn!
Try it, the alpha is now open to the public and its pretty easy to get started, especially if you don't mess with hooking it up to a TV and just watch on the computer screen. Just remember its designed to work with a remote so learn the keyboard commands before launching because it hides the cursor by default.