So I’ve basically ignored this blog for about a month or 2 now. It’s been a little crazy, but I’m going to try and make a new effort on this baby. Two things have cleared up in my personal and professional life that sucked up quite a bit of my time and energy.
Number one is the Fancast re-design and Premiere Week Blitz. We’ve completely redesigned Fancast in the last 2 months, and most of that design has finally launched. I’ll get in to more detail on that in a post or two.
Number two is that my wife and I went on vacation. We went diving in Key Largo with Rainbow Reef. Tina got her PADI Open Water Certification after taking the PADI e-Learning course, confined pool dives with The Dive Shop NJ, and her open water dives with Rainbow Reef. We then spent a few days at the Disney Animal Kingdom Lodge. We had a great time, and I’ll post some pics and vids from our trip in the next week or 2.
With these now in the rearview mirror, hopefully I’ll be better with my posts. Maybe I’ll even get around to reviewing Second Saturday in Collingswood, with a bonus review of the Collingswood Music Festival.
You know how as a kid, or just last week, you would argue with friends about who would kick who’s ass in a fight, etc. They would always stretch into something ridiculous like Hulk vs Darth Vader. Which is absurd for many reasons. As if the Hulk was any match for the Dark Side.
This new game demo for XBox 360 looks to settle some of the debate by pitting the stars of the Mortal Combat franchise with the DC Comic Universe. It looks pretty badass, even if my video game skills have not progressed far beyond the 3 button SEGA Genesis.
So I downloaded the new iPhone Wordpress app today from the app store. I’m hoping that it will help me post more regularly by letting me post in time that would have otherwise been spent watching Flight Of The Conchords videos. Take this post for example. Like a totall assbag, I left my sprinkler on after watering the garden this morning. I’m now racing home on PATCO to turn it off before my cats need a canoe to get around the house. The typing is a bit tough as I’m still getting used to the keys. If anyone knows any tips, like the double space period trick, I’d apperciate it. Until then, I’ll keep hunting and pecking.
Our fortunes weren’t so bad. We were in line Sat morning at an AT&T store at 9:15, and back in the car with activate iPhones 2 hours later. This included a slight activation glitch caused by me trying to push my luck with the Comcast AT&T discount.
Overall, I’m mostly pleased with the iPhone 3G. However, I would only give our experience with the iPhone 3 out of 5 stars. I doc it a star for the lousy AT&T service. We had to switch from Verizon in order to get the subsidized price from AT&T. I thought we might have some service problems in some rural areas, but I did not expect the network to perform so poorly in Philadelphia. I get horrible service from my office in the new Comcast Center, which is right in the heart of Center City.
I also doc another star from the iPhone itself. I think the phone is great in many ways, but the decision to force people to use the app store is a very greedy move by Apple. It’s ridiculous that I need Apple to approve the apps I want to add to my phone. It’s purely a profit and control move, and the loyal Apple user like me suffers. I have to use Apple programs like Safari, iCal, and Mail even though I use other programs like Entourage and Flock. There is no reason I shouldn’t be able to add the Flash player. Flash is the most popular player for streaming video online But why would I need to purchase or rent movies from iTunes if I can watch them for free from Fancast? I wouldn’t. But no Flash on the iPhone means I am screwed for now.
I also think it sucks I can’t access my work email without forking over another $15 a month for a business data plan. This is my personal phone, not a work phone. However, personally, I’d like the opportunity to check my work mail on the go. I’m just not willing to pay for that privilege. So it’s webmail for me. Fail.
All in all, I am pleased with the iPhone 3G. It is a significant upgrade over my last turd of a phone. It surprises and delights me daily with it’s UX. However, it’s still got a ways to go to be perfect in my book.
PROS:
The design and UX
The ability to add apps
The GPS and map
The Screen Res
CONS:
AT&T’s network
The business data plan for Exchange users
The Apple controlled App Store
The lack of a doc
So I haven’t posted anything in too long. I know, I know. It’s bad. But trust me, a lot has been going on, and I promise to post on it. I’m also going to try and keep the posts shorter and more simple. The top 5 things that have been distracting me from sharing what is rattling around my cueball are:
2. I got a few new Apple toys, including iPhone 3G and Time Capsule. Both are fabulous, and I intend on writing about my experiences soon.
3. I went to another Second Saturday in Collingswood on Sat, and saw some pretty great work.
4. I saw a special premier of The Dark Knight for Comcast employees on Wednesday. It was really good, and maybe the best comic book movie I’ve seen, but I don’t know about movie of the year. It had some flaws, mostly that it was about 45 min too long.
5. Last but not least, I’m trying to wrap up the design of Fancast.com for the Fall blitz. We finally handed everything off to our fantastic dev team, and are now working to fill last minute needs. It’s been a busy few months for my team, but they’ve done an amazing job and I can’t wait until the new design goes live!
So that’s all. Again, I’ll be posting about many of these items in more detail over the next few days. Until then, Mahalo.
I pretty much despise text messaging. I only do it with my wife, family, close friends, and co-workers. Actually, that sounds like a pretty big list. That would explain how I manage to rack up about 10-15$ per month in data charges for sending this kind of junk around.
To my delight, CNET’s Digital Home blog suggests the writing is on the wall for this kind of writing on your phone. They suggest the new iPhone will continue to push the wireless companies out of their comfortable revenue streams.
Just look at Google’s latest announcement for all the proof you need. According to the company, it has officially released a new version of Google Talk for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which will allow you to send Gmail messages to friends without the need for any additional software or require to spend any cash to do it.
And it’s that last component that could make all the difference in the world: it’s free to use.
Let’s face it — text messaging prices are ridiculous. Can someone explain to me why I’m forced to pay around 20 cents per message for something so trivial? Of course, many people (especially those with kids) would rather spend money on the unlimited texting plan and be done with it, but it still isn’t the ideal solution.
A quick scan of my text message seem to revolve around a meeting at Table 31 for drinks (yes, Kevin, I’ll be there), an invitation to dinner from my brother (no, I’m fat enough), and my wife sending me a picture of my cats doing something ridiculous in my home (I have too many).
You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And uh, lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder’s head. I’ve got a lot of juice squeezing out of the old mind grapes, but they are all in different cups. Knowing that I have more than a touch of ADD (my wife, Tina, might tell you I was slapped by it), I’ve found it hard to focus these thoughts in to one coherent post. I wake up wanting to write on one thing, and by the time I get home from work, I want to write something else. Plus, I’m thinking of new design ideas for the blog, which spins me in different directions.
I blame most of this block on the Fancast Fall Blitz, heretofore referred to as Wargames sprint, which is the sprint where we turn it up to eleven. It’s also been blowing my mind. Please forgive the sorry state of my posts and bear with me for a few weeks while Wargames are played. As a token of my thanks, please enjoy this video of Flight of the Conchords featuring 1979 David Bowie from the Ziggy Stardust Tour.
A few weeks back, TechCrunch announced the end of the online video distribution games. The fact that Hulu scored Comedy Central favs The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report had convinced Michael Arrington that Hulu scored the knockout blow, not just over it’s online counterparts, but also in other spaces like Tivo and BitTorrent. Now, I respect Arrington’s opinion and enjoy his site. I even follow (stalk) him on Twitter because I view him as someone with great insight. However, this “game over” proclamation is nearly as myopic and premature as Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” banner back in 2003.
While Hulu should get props for being the first video aggregator to deliver full episodes of the Comedy Central powerhouses on their site (which is no small feat), it seems a tad early to crown them king of online content distribution. Hulu is not the only player out there with rights to distribute this content; Fancast has had a deal with Viacom to distribute it for some time. For reasons far beyond my primitive synapses, they have not made it to the site yet…but they will shortly, I can assure you. Once any one of the major online players strike a deal for content, it’s inevitable the others will soon follow suite. Exclusivity is too pricey to sustain beyond a short promotional period.
As it stands, none of the online video distribution networks, Fancast included, offer enough content to be seen as anything more than the online expansion of the TV On Demand concept. The concept of watching a show or movie On Demand has been around on the set top box for over ten years. Perhaps the reason this concept is now taking off online is that the internet crowd has grown up on the concept of controlling their content, where TV is a more passive experience, especially before the rise of cable.
Whatever the reason, the experience of watching free video on your computer is exciting because it’s a relatively new concept to many users. People are not flocking to watch video online because it provides a better viewing experience. Nor is it a particularly social event to gather the family and friends around the laptop. And yes, while you can hook your computer up to your big screen plasma, the quality of the online streams is pretty far from HD. Hell, it’s pretty far from regular ol’ D.
The editor of the site Dealnews wrote a great article this week called Unplugged: Trading Cable TV for Internet TV. The writer unplugged his cable box for 30 days and tried to exist on what he could get online from free, legal services. Here is how he wraps up his last week:
” My last week had finally arrived and I was itching to go back to live TV. It’s not that I missed my favorite shows — it was actually easier than I thought to detach myself from them — but I missed cable TV’s wider selection of shows. With Internet TV I felt like I gave up control of my TV-viewing habits. There’s a lot of legal content online, but I could only watch “xyz” shows on the days they became available online. With cable TV, I could watch anything I wanted at any time. If I missed a show, I could always record it on my DVR. Internet TV doesn’t work that way. If I wanted to watch “How I Met Your Mother” I had to wait for the show to air on TV and then wait for it to become available online. Although that waiting period was usually consistent, there were times when it varied and a show that was supposed to debut online 24 hours after its initial air date would instead make its online debut 48 hours later. This inconsistency was my biggest pet peeve throughout the month of May, and it was that lack of control that broke the deal for me and made me crave cable TV.
If sites like Hulu gave more of that control back to viewers and offered more content, I would seriously consider ditching my cable provider. Accompanied by a few Amazon.com or iTunes purchases, it would be possible (not convenient) to ditch my cable box and pocket $74 a month. And that’s what it really came down to in the end. Giving up cable TV for Internet content is possible. You’ll miss out on a few shows, but only if you’re a heavy TV watcher. The hard part, for me, was the inconvenience. TV was such a part of my daily routine that I couldn’t let someone else control what I wanted to watch. So until Internet TV catches up to speed with cable TV, my money (as much as I hate saying this) will go toward cable. Despite it’s great strides, in my opinion, Internet TV just isn’t ready for prime time.”
Adding a few episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report hardly satisfies most users demands for content, nor does it offer the options people want in their viewing. There is very little serendipitous discovery online. You generally have to know what you want to watch and then hunt it down.
The real end game is when a site like Hulu or Fancast can offer a similar experience to cable. Live content like news and sports, DVR scheduling, premier channels like HBO or Showtime, a full array of movies that aren’t over 4 years old, and shows On Demand from many networks and partners. What we really need is a service that breaks free of both the set top box and the keyboard and allows a viewer to watch what they want, where they want, when they want. Start watching the latest On Demand movie or afternoon baseball game during your lunch break on a laptop in the park. Pause it and pick up where you left off on your iPhone during your train ride home from work. At home have dinner with the kids, then push that movie to your TV to watch the exciting conclusion.
What would you need to have a service like this? 1) A robust offering of both live and On Demand content; 2) A powerful, fast, ubiquitous, wireless service; 3) Relationships and business models in place with all the major networks, studios, and content providers and 4) Penetration to say, 25 million or so set top boxes across the country.
Here is a video from the official grand opening of the Comcast Center featuring “The Comcast Experience,” an 83.3 ft by 25.4 ft HD video wall.
My favorite parts of the installation are the vignettes that play with the physical space (elevator bay cutouts, etc), the way the wood of the lobby is worked in to the frame in different ways, and the fact that people are completely ignoring the odd lifesize people that were installed last November as part of Jonathan Borofsky’s Humanity in Motion.
Last night Tina and I took a stroll down the main drag in Collingswood for their monthly “Second Saturday” event. Second Saturday is like Philly’s “First Friday”. With the main exception that theirs is on the first Friday of the month, and ours is on the second Saturday. If you aren’t familiar with the concept, once a month the studios, galleries, coffee houses, retail shops, and antique dealers in Collingswood extend their hours and partner with painters, crafters, sculptors, photographers, musicians and food masters in an effort to promote the arts.
Most of the shops displaying artwork do the usual wine and cheese thing, and there are street musicians out and about making the stroll a bit more pleasant. The highlight of the performances we heard last night was a bizarrely fantastic version of a-ha’s “Take on Me” by local folk duo The Hollanders.
If you haven’t heard me ramble about it before, there some pretty fantastic eateries on Haddon Ave, including favorites like Sapori, Casona, and Il Fiore, so if you remember to BYO, you can make a delightful little evening out of it. (Collingswood is a dry town, so every restaurant is BYO. Many of the restaurants make the best of this, such as Casona, where they will bring you a mojito pitcher for you to add the rum to).
If you’re in the neighborhood and looking for a suggestion, hit me up and I’ll be happy to recommend something.
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