Reverberations

Microsoft, the object of hatred for a large geek pop (and wannabes), is actually far from over. They are as fierce competitor as one can be. Latest evidence - Microsoft creating a YouTube channel for promotion of Vista and Live brands. Significance of YouTube here is that YouTube belongs to its “enemy” Google. That’s atypical for an “an underdog beats the incumbent” story, so it very well might not be one.

“In Rainbows,” a new record album from an English band Radiohead, has challenged the traditional music sales model by allowing listeners to determine the price they are willing to pay for the album which is available for download on its website.

Figures coming out from comScore - an internet marketing research company - 38% paying an average of about $6 seem much more realistic than the numbers floated earlier - average price between $5 and $8 for 1.2 million downloads.

I’m one of those 62%. Radiohead’s music is decent but not my taste. But, had the album not been available for download, I wouldn’t even have heard of them or their music. Moreover, they probably made much more money from these downloads than they could ever make from regular album release.

Latest version of BitTorrent client (v 6.0), which is based on closed-source uTorrent (acquired a while back), has not been released, neither has been the protocol specs. The “official” BitTorrent client has never been very popular compared to other protocol implementations like Azureus and uTorrent.

Protocol specs, although technically closed, are available with very tightly maintained SDK license.  And, all previous version of protocol as well as the client are available openly.

In lifecycle of any technology “The step after ubiquity is invisibility“. I always hoped BitTorrent to follow that curve. Not anymore probably.

This is freaking awesome. Don’t know why this is supposed to be banned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNuRQmvykwk

Many times (or always?) the videos (especially wmv) streaming over internet are not downloadable as Windows Media Player disables the save menu. Windows Media files are usually served through an .asx metafile. ASX is a simple XML format which stores the path to media file(s) to play. e.g.

<ASX version="3.0">
     <Entry>
        <ref href="mms://rx-lvl3-wa37.rbn.com/farm/*/ibmpdc/pdc/open
                   /wmdemand/mar06/rtoranzo/anthem-v125.wmv"/>
     </Entry>
</ASX>

Now, the media files are served over mms protocol, which cannot be saved directly. Here comes the saviour FlashGet. Just put this mms url in FlashGet’s ‘URL’ field and save the file. Done!

I loved this “Anthem” TV advertisement from IBM.

Direct link to “Anthem” (Windows Media Player required) :
http://play.rbn.com/play.asx?url=ibmpdc/pdc/open/wmdemand/mar06/
rtoranzo/anthem-v125.wmv&proto=mms?mswmext=.asx

(Remove line break from url to play)

Amazing coincidence. Within one week after I blogged how we need direct permalink to the particular part of the video content, Google Video has come up with the exact same feature.

Google Video now allows you to link straight to a specific part of a video by appending e.g. #1m35s to the video URL.

This is what I wrote last week-

I have to download/stream the entire piece just to get to the interesting part somebody mentioned/linked. How about the ability to generate a permalink to particular portion of the podcast/vlog content- just like quoting text from a blog?

Damn! I should have asked for something else that day

I just wanted to list some general observations from the perspective of a consumer (and not a creator).

• Size: Sample this - a 5 min rocketboom show (a new found thing for me, after all that brouhaha) the file size amounts to ~28mb. That’s just insane. Too much of a hassle. My bandwidth is precious. Why doesn’t everyone use divX/xVid compression along with all other formats just for sake of choice? Or flash maybe. Audio formats are little better placed, but still!
• Linking: I have to download/stream the entire piece just to get to the interesting part somebody mentioned/linked. How about the ability to generate a permalink to particular portion of the podcast/vlog content- just like quoting text from a blog?
• Transcripts/Summaries: Availability in alternate formats is usually non-existent. Though I understand that each format is unique and all the subtleties and nuances are impossible to incorporate. *rolls eyes* (Watch Jumanji with subtitles :-))
• Tagging/Commenting: I have been somewhat irregular/occasional subscriber to Geek News Central, TalkCrunch, Morning Coffee Notes and FuzzyBlog over the last year or so, and I use iTunes to manage my podcasts. I can’t tag or comment an episode for later reference and have to depend upon the provided description, which is again - not searchable.

From an article in NYTimes on a patent application filed by Philips in USPTO-

James Boyle, a law professor at Duke University, said that broadcasters offer a program knowing that only a fraction of the audience watches the commercials. Advertisers, he added, buy nothing more than "an option on a probability," and the viewer is no more obligated to watch every commercial than a driver is obligated to read every billboard.

I’m a bit under-informed* to put up an opinion of my own about this entire discussion over the term ‘user-generated-content’ being inappropriate etc. So, how about ‘People-powered’, ‘Authentic media‘, even ‘Unpaid Freelancers‘. Oh, The Name popping all over.

The other day, there was an article about headlines being written for search-engine bots and the decline of creativity. Not really!

*Busy?