12 November 2006
Moving to blogger
Its been a rough 2 years: 20 odd posts, no readers, but tonnes of viewing annoying flash ads on friendster while editing my blog. Hence, I am moving from friendster.com blogs to blogger.com.
Ads are a major deterrent; its a push-pull relationship between non-paying viewer/reader and advertising corporate client. Friendster pushed it too far with their flashing, laughing, talking ads written in Adobe FLASH. It was too much and I jumped ship.
However, I think a fair balance can be reached. I do not mind Google's text only AdSense program. It is not very obtrusive. On the other hand, MySpace looks like an incredible waste of time, that is too much time wasted on looking and cognitizing ads.
I would also say that TiVo benefitted from a similar phenemonon. Networks pump out so many ads on TV. Customers simply found the balance of viewable content to noxious advertising was no longer favourable. Customers have more power to bypass ads.
Ads are a major deterrent; its a push-pull relationship between non-paying viewer/reader and advertising corporate client. Friendster pushed it too far with their flashing, laughing, talking ads written in Adobe FLASH. It was too much and I jumped ship.
However, I think a fair balance can be reached. I do not mind Google's text only AdSense program. It is not very obtrusive. On the other hand, MySpace looks like an incredible waste of time, that is too much time wasted on looking and cognitizing ads.
I would also say that TiVo benefitted from a similar phenemonon. Networks pump out so many ads on TV. Customers simply found the balance of viewable content to noxious advertising was no longer favourable. Customers have more power to bypass ads.
11 November 2006
Web without multimedia
The web without images:
Pre-2000: limited multi-media.
Post-2000: free of flickering annoying advertisement (save for cunning google's text-only ads), faster and truly amazing.
Please see annoying ad above or below post
Pre-2000: limited multi-media.
Post-2000: free of flickering annoying advertisement (save for cunning google's text-only ads), faster and truly amazing.
Please see annoying ad above or below post
Friendster and friends
TRUISM: people never becomes friends on so-called friendster. They were friends already in 'real life'!!
26 September 2006
PictureTel versus iChat, Skype, and free video conferencing
PictureTel was a video conferencing platform that used proprietary hardware and software; it was active in the 1990s. It cost at least 50K for a single installation. Hence, it was purchased by only well-financed corporations. It struggled for years and must have went bankrupt. It was the cool in the 1990s but now iChat with Video is the coolest in 2006. $50K is not needed for the picture telephone experience; moreover, picture telephone is available on regular personal computers for regular people. Skype with Video is cool too, and offers cross-platform functionality. It should be popular because of this latter feature.
University of Calgary's Dept of Communication has a classroom dedicated to advanced video conferencing using surround sound, multiple screens, high-quality microphones. It is a great setup, but it reminds me of a PictureTel scenario. Too exclusive, too expensive, and too institutional. Will I need to book in advance to use the room!! Of course. Im sure it will be great for an occassional academic conference. (But then again, what is wrong with travelling to an occassional academic conference.) U of C's Dept of Communication seems excellent.
University of Calgary's Dept of Communication has a classroom dedicated to advanced video conferencing using surround sound, multiple screens, high-quality microphones. It is a great setup, but it reminds me of a PictureTel scenario. Too exclusive, too expensive, and too institutional. Will I need to book in advance to use the room!! Of course. Im sure it will be great for an occassional academic conference. (But then again, what is wrong with travelling to an occassional academic conference.) U of C's Dept of Communication seems excellent.
06 September 2006
Jetsons and iChat
The popular 1970s cartoon Jetsons featured a device called the Picture Phone. It was a phone with video, functionally no different than Apple's iChat with video. In one episode Judy the wife donned a wig in order to receive a picture call--possibly from George's employer. The Picture Phone required a different preperation for interaction than telephones without video; rather than simply clearing our throats we will be grabbing for wigs and makeup with new video phones. The Jetson's Picture Phone captured Judy's groggy wake-up moment of insobriety.
iChat captures moments of insobriety too. I captured my friend Katrina falling asleep in New York at 2:00AM, 6, Sept 2006, while Im in Vancouver, 11:00PM. We were chatting but then she fell asleep.
UPDATE: Applke incorporated video camera and microphones in their new iMacs and laptops. Another great idea from Apple. The little video eye staring at me seemed a little eerie. And sure enough, it is dangerous: i caught a 2 second glimpse of my friend full-on stroking his bone in front of his iMac; he must have hit the accept button on iChat. It was the best laugh I've ever had. At any rate, BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! I'm now waiting for a wily black-hat peeping hackers to control someone's Apple video camera.
On a similar note: Skype is largely doing Voice over the Internet (VOIP); they added Video to their software in a recent release. Nevertheless, the make money through voice calls to landlines. This seems a bit dated model. Did eBay overpay $2 billion for Skype. I think so, but we shall see.
iChat captures moments of insobriety too. I captured my friend Katrina falling asleep in New York at 2:00AM, 6, Sept 2006, while Im in Vancouver, 11:00PM. We were chatting but then she fell asleep.
UPDATE: Applke incorporated video camera and microphones in their new iMacs and laptops. Another great idea from Apple. The little video eye staring at me seemed a little eerie. And sure enough, it is dangerous: i caught a 2 second glimpse of my friend full-on stroking his bone in front of his iMac; he must have hit the accept button on iChat. It was the best laugh I've ever had. At any rate, BE CAREFUL OUT THERE! I'm now waiting for a wily black-hat peeping hackers to control someone's Apple video camera.
On a similar note: Skype is largely doing Voice over the Internet (VOIP); they added Video to their software in a recent release. Nevertheless, the make money through voice calls to landlines. This seems a bit dated model. Did eBay overpay $2 billion for Skype. I think so, but we shall see.
Pandora's Music Box
The CD medium is one step closer to obsolesence.
I discovered Pandora's Box and it was full of music; in fact, it was chock full of almost every music selection I wanted. Pandora is a beautiful Flash application that is user-friendly and well coded. It loaded on my friends burnt-out Windows 98 machine, my Apple OSX w Safari and the more prevalent Windows XP, and it was wonderfully simple and logical in design and functionality.
Pandora's power is that it is conceptually quite phenomenal. Pandora, based on the Music Genome Project that had no lovely interface, suggests and plays music based on a single Artist name or Track name. It is unlike a traditional music suggestion engine that simply suggests a like-for-like music track: Pandora plays a full endless stream of music; one track leads into the next suggested track and so on.
Their recommendation system appears to analyse music for beats per minute (bpm), repeating melody, harmony, instrument type, vocals use, and other musical characteristics. I'll assume that music tracks (MP3, AU and other formats) can be analysed for content in such core manner computationally by a machine, although that seems quite remarkable. For example, analysing a JPEG for visual content would seem out of reach of today's technology. A few jobs on their site ask for musicians suggesting that humans categorize the tracks rather than machines. In fact, Pandora can outsource categorization to countries with cheaper but music-savvy labour. Nevertheless, their analytical method is currently a mystery to me.
Music tracks, books and other items are often categorized by large social groups; one track is suggested because another track is also enjoyed by the same group of individuals. Amazon's suggestion engine uses a derivation of this technique. Pandora's categorizing scheme appears to not require the social component for categorization, which requires 'seeding' or priming by people to be instantly quite accurate. Pandora does allow you to rate the track with a thumbs up or thumbs down, but it may only effect the content of your future radio stream rather than categorizing the track. Pandora is 'social' in other ways: one can share a custom radio stream with others.
Why is the CD a threatened medium. Pandora plays an endless stream of music that the listener will invariably love. I found it selected and played music I liked; I rarely gave a 'thumbs down' and skipped over even fewer. Quite frankly, I never need to purchase a CD again. In fact, a customized music streams offers a method of listening to music without any hard medium altogother, whether CD, DVD, miniDisc, and LP. Even the downloaded MP3 is unnecessary. Pandora is 'On Demand.'
The upcoming satellite based radio seems to be threatened too. Pandora does not require an expensive satellite infrastructre in order to deliver a fresh stream into my house. Pandora uses the Internet system that weaves across much of the developed world. Albeit, Sirus and XM Radio is making the greatest headway through the automobile industry where the Internet is currently void. (Hey, I am waiting for radio stations to broadcast TCP/IP and if you have a billion bucks Im sure it is possible)Moreover, Pandora is not paying Howard Stern $100 million a year for his expertise.
Of course, this phenomenon has a further consequence: the music-savvy DJ with his or her latest cool tracks is less necessary for his music expertise. A few can cash in their knowledge right now for the $15/hour job offered by Pandora.
A truly great irony is that Pandora currently raises money through advertising Amazon and ITunes links to CDs and MP3 files. There are fewer reasons for buying the track after Pandora. I just listened to a track and the next track is equally great.
The music business must realize that individuals are not necessarily interested in owning music but interesting in listening to music. It is a subtle difference: listening to music is the primary goal; owning music is not the primary goal. Owning has been the dominant way of achieving the goal of listening to music but this is clearly rapidly changing with technology. Hence, the music industry should be re-engineered around use rather than ownership. Those in the thick of the music industry must see the critical distinction. I find a similar mindset with the modern library: librarians are lovers of books; they fail to see that libraries are not for books but for people.
Check Pandora www.pandora.com asap, and tell me what you think about it. I love it.
Even Better is the IP based tuner from Slim Design. WICKED.
I discovered Pandora's Box and it was full of music; in fact, it was chock full of almost every music selection I wanted. Pandora is a beautiful Flash application that is user-friendly and well coded. It loaded on my friends burnt-out Windows 98 machine, my Apple OSX w Safari and the more prevalent Windows XP, and it was wonderfully simple and logical in design and functionality.
Pandora's power is that it is conceptually quite phenomenal. Pandora, based on the Music Genome Project that had no lovely interface, suggests and plays music based on a single Artist name or Track name. It is unlike a traditional music suggestion engine that simply suggests a like-for-like music track: Pandora plays a full endless stream of music; one track leads into the next suggested track and so on.
Their recommendation system appears to analyse music for beats per minute (bpm), repeating melody, harmony, instrument type, vocals use, and other musical characteristics. I'll assume that music tracks (MP3, AU and other formats) can be analysed for content in such core manner computationally by a machine, although that seems quite remarkable. For example, analysing a JPEG for visual content would seem out of reach of today's technology. A few jobs on their site ask for musicians suggesting that humans categorize the tracks rather than machines. In fact, Pandora can outsource categorization to countries with cheaper but music-savvy labour. Nevertheless, their analytical method is currently a mystery to me.
Music tracks, books and other items are often categorized by large social groups; one track is suggested because another track is also enjoyed by the same group of individuals. Amazon's suggestion engine uses a derivation of this technique. Pandora's categorizing scheme appears to not require the social component for categorization, which requires 'seeding' or priming by people to be instantly quite accurate. Pandora does allow you to rate the track with a thumbs up or thumbs down, but it may only effect the content of your future radio stream rather than categorizing the track. Pandora is 'social' in other ways: one can share a custom radio stream with others.
Why is the CD a threatened medium. Pandora plays an endless stream of music that the listener will invariably love. I found it selected and played music I liked; I rarely gave a 'thumbs down' and skipped over even fewer. Quite frankly, I never need to purchase a CD again. In fact, a customized music streams offers a method of listening to music without any hard medium altogother, whether CD, DVD, miniDisc, and LP. Even the downloaded MP3 is unnecessary. Pandora is 'On Demand.'
The upcoming satellite based radio seems to be threatened too. Pandora does not require an expensive satellite infrastructre in order to deliver a fresh stream into my house. Pandora uses the Internet system that weaves across much of the developed world. Albeit, Sirus and XM Radio is making the greatest headway through the automobile industry where the Internet is currently void. (Hey, I am waiting for radio stations to broadcast TCP/IP and if you have a billion bucks Im sure it is possible)Moreover, Pandora is not paying Howard Stern $100 million a year for his expertise.
Of course, this phenomenon has a further consequence: the music-savvy DJ with his or her latest cool tracks is less necessary for his music expertise. A few can cash in their knowledge right now for the $15/hour job offered by Pandora.
A truly great irony is that Pandora currently raises money through advertising Amazon and ITunes links to CDs and MP3 files. There are fewer reasons for buying the track after Pandora. I just listened to a track and the next track is equally great.
The music business must realize that individuals are not necessarily interested in owning music but interesting in listening to music. It is a subtle difference: listening to music is the primary goal; owning music is not the primary goal. Owning has been the dominant way of achieving the goal of listening to music but this is clearly rapidly changing with technology. Hence, the music industry should be re-engineered around use rather than ownership. Those in the thick of the music industry must see the critical distinction. I find a similar mindset with the modern library: librarians are lovers of books; they fail to see that libraries are not for books but for people.
Check Pandora www.pandora.com asap, and tell me what you think about it. I love it.
Even Better is the IP based tuner from Slim Design. WICKED.
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