Liberty Smarter Than Nicrosoft

Liberty media is about to buy Barnes & Noble for 1B$ while Microsoft buy skyoe forn 8.5B$. B & N is a good bridge to an online market place and skype does'nt seem like a good fit.

When new media meets old media

I'm in my late 40's so for the television industry I don't exist. But I'm amazed how hard change is for large companies/established industry. Hulu recently made its way to my XBOX and it was kind of sad. First off I'm not what Hulu is aimed at since is advertiser based and seems to have a lot of reality based programming.

Traditional television reminds me of factory farms. You sit at home at a set time and are feed commercials for watching a program. You are the product for the television industry. Recently the farm animals have become annoying. The have decided that will skip the commercial or watch a program when they want. The chickens are in revolt.

Hulu is the industries factory farm for the internet age. Hulu plus is even more of an insult than normal, they place conditions on what you can watch (delays & web only), make you watch commercials and expect you to pay for all the rules. Thanks but no thanks. Netflix has plenty of better programming (my taste) than Hulu, no commercials, no restrictions and the same cost.

What is sad is that television really want young people and they are the people who are not playing by the media company rules. Watching programming on the internet and not in the traditional 30/60 minute format. The twenty something & teens are loosing interest in the traditional model but that who the advertisers want.

The result is that Google will own the advertising market and broadcast TV will become the realm of adult diapers commercials (both actual and figuratively).

Tutorial: Android Application Development - A 9,000 foot overview

Note just to myself

Nook Color

Who thought the first real challenger to the Ipad would come out of the dark. The nook color as quietly been taking the USA by storm. Nearly 3 million units sold by some news stories. I've got a Kindle and my son has the Nook color and they are very different experiences. I've tried to like e-ink and it great in direct sunlight but I want to read a book before I fall asleep in bed and e-ink on my poor old far sighted. E-ink has those led lights but they don't seem to help my eyes. The LCD display is great on the nook and the resolution reminds me of the iphone 4 retina display. Whats even nicer is that the NOOK is very hackable. Honeycomb hacks are available on the net turning the nook into a slow but very usable tablet. Nook default latest release has flash and a few apps. A simple rooted nook can access the android market and alot of applications work. A list of working apps can be found online a nook dev. Amazon is rumored to working with samsung on a stripped/locked down galaxy tab to be branded as a Kindle Tablet. Apple sued Samsung recently I wonder why, a Kindle tablet could seriously attack their Ipad sales, the nook may be hurting their sales already. One problem for the nook color is battery life but I can live with that.

MOG

Finally a music service that is worth the money $5. My CD's are slowly collecting dust and should be stored away in a box. I ripped them to AAC a long time ago but I've finally given up on owning music after experiencing MOG. MOG is simply put amazing. You want to listen to something an 5 seconds later it's playing. I've found a few songs it does not have but 99% of time it's there. I listen to the new Foo Fighters album, then pulled up deadmau5 tracks followed by Dire Straits, Philip Glass, then Carmen. When I think I used to pay $15 for a CD with a couple of tracks which I listened to for a few months and then forgot.

I've heard a lot about cord cutting. I believe it is possible if you are the right person but if you are a sports fan or love a particular live show it not going to happen. I've noticed that the following service are 100% internet based and provide my 360 of services.
1) First netflix is now great. I've got 250 things in my queue and it beats cable.
2) Second Audible: Not only can I get great books but the new york times everyday.
3) NPR has a create web site and the chrome plugin works great.
4) MOG is amazing and provides music well
5) XBOX live works well and provides great gaming
6) ROKU works well with the above services.
7) Itunes for podcasts.
Now most of these services are not free but combined they are lot less than I'm paying for dish.

What a wonderful surprise

My wife andI have been sharing the new volume 1 of Mark Twains Autobiography. Such a joy to read such thoughts as these.

Mr Steve Jobs. When can a HTML 5 browser without Flash render Google Earth in 3d. Flash may no longer be needed for video but HTML 5/JavaScript has its limitations and until something like action-script is added into the browser certain content will be missing from the IPad. http://code.google.com/apis/earth/. Stop bashing Flash and admit there are somethings HTML 5 cannot do.

Funny thing happen yesterday. My facebook account magically reenabled itself after I deactivated it and said since I was a facebook developer I could not deactivate my account unless I delete my facebook developer account ugh. Don’t join its like Hotel California by the Eagles. “You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave”.

Facebook has become a joke.

Facebook is horrible. When I first started on facebook it was very private. Now they post everything. I strongly suggest you lock down your account so only friends etc can see you. Deactivate your account for a few days hopefully. Facebook will wake up and take your privacy seriously.

Nashville is a mess. Drove in on Monday morning after the storms and it was amazing. Mud everywhere in Parking lots, co workers with wrecked homes. Downtown underwater. Just like a major earthquake effects a city. Power has been horrible it keeps going on and off.

Internet is everything

I recently moved into an apartment and no internet, no cable, no phone (except cell). Could not careless about cable, but the lack of the internet was a problem. Finally got the internet up last night and I don't care about the rest. AT&T beware the internet is here and the phone/cable is dead.

With HULU, NETFLIX online, TNT.TV, PBS.ORG & iTunes who needs cable. Skype work fine too.

I love my TomTom 125

My mother in law bought me one of these for Christmas and if you are new to a city. I just moved to Nashville. They are increadibly useful. Need a Radioshack just type in radio shack. Need to find a place across town. Just type in the address. For less than $100 you just can't do better. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001H9NR2Q

Really good UML primer

http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/31863

WPF etc

Well for the last few months I've been focusing on WPF (windows presentation foundation). Basically Vista promise for improved user experience that was not realized in Vista. Whats funny is its there but just the foundation (no pun implied). After reading and putting a few joke applications together in my spare time I've become a firm believer in this technology. Microsoft has taken the really good things about HTML/CSS/DOM/AJAX reworked them into an incpmatible format called XAML that has the features of all 3 but a much better integration and operations expecially when creating RIA (Rich Internet Applications).

I'm not going into all the wonderful things on thh internet but try this link for pointers to all the articles I think are worthwhile .

I got interested in the 3D part of WPF just because it is sexy. I don't believe that it will have the same level of application as the 2D stuff but it is fun. 3D modeling is a lot of fun but difficult to learn, any 3D application such as 3DMAX, Maya or Lightwave can be a very challenging thing to learn, but I've found a wonderful set of learning tools from Tuffs University. I happly working through the lessons I'm on lesson 4 succesful created the lab lessons. The wonderful thing about all of this is it's free. Blender is free. The University course is free and you don't need a very powerful computer to get Blender working.

So if you want to learn 3D modeling give it a try.

Suppose They Gave a War & Nobody Came

This about the new media format Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD not the Iraq situation where everybody is about to join in. They are about to finally release products in the next few months. But there is a dirty little secret that few realise and that is that some of those movies being release are just on plan old DVD's but formated to use MPEG4 with the new disc layout to provide the higher quality picture. Given the complexity of getting the new technologies to even deliver a HD picture given all the layers of copy protection and the expense of the new hardware. I thin many people will be using DVD players with the new HD simulated output for a long time and only the few will bother with the expense of the new technolgies.

I do think a few blu-ray disc will be sold but because the PlayStation 3 will be in so many homes that people will by the discs just to see but they will buy the game hardware first and the blu-ray second.

I saw a really wonderful play last weekend. It was amazing that such a deep and complex work was written in the 1920's. THe work marries the characters complex attributes to what is the final translation that you see from the actors on the stage. If you live in Evansville and have next weekend free I highly recommend you by a ticket. The student actors really give it their all in such a way that makes many professional production seem weak.
Six Characters in Search of an Author
by Luigi Pirandello
Translated by Carl R. Mueller
The most remarkable attribute of Pirandello's art as a playwright is his magical power to turn psychological analysis into amazing theatre. The sweeping gesture of six characters storming into a rehearsal and interrupting an already chaotic creative atmosphere serves as a bold opening to this striking allegorical work. This Puliter Prize-Winning author playfully investigates the paradoxical nature of human beings struggling to balance their desire for immortality against a yearning to truly live in the present. Heralded around the world as a masterfully written piece of theatrical genius, Six Characters in Search of an Author provides an entertaining reflection of our absurdly complex lives.
February 17-18, 23-25 @ 8PM
February 19, 26 @ 2PM

Squeak

No its not a mouse squeaking its a new computer language for Kids nad a very powerful one. Last weekend my son went to the University of Evansville for the Cub Scouts Engineering pin. Part of that Pin relates to computer engineering and they built a squeak porgram. It was amazing, it reminded me of Logo but after digging a little deeper I realized that this was a user friendly smalltalk engine. If you have a kid and wnat to start them on programming computers i highly recommend squeak at squeak.org or squeakland.org