Photoblogging Disneyland, 99 Interpretations of the Happiest Place on Earth

Photoblogging Disneyland

You may have noticed that blogging has been a little light these past few days. For good reason. Needing a little R and R, I threw the family in the old Buick this past weekend and headed down to Disneyland, the self proclaimed happiest place on Earth. What follows are 99 photographs representing my interpretations of said place.

One note I will make is that I seriously expected to be hassled when I showed up at Disneyland with multiple cameras, a video camera, tripods, a laptop and a separate hard drive. Much to my delight I was never hassled even once. Although I got a lot of strange looks as the guy setting up the tripod never once did anyone suggest that I wasn't within my rights to photograph. A couple of Disney Cast Members even approached me to ask if it was ok if they swept in my camera's line of site. Although it would be pretty difficult to prohibit photography at Disneyland, I was nonetheless surprised that nobody seemed to mind my professional camera set up tripod and all. Refreshing.

Oh, and sorry for the delay on the loading of the site. It takes a while to load even smaller versions of 99 photos. If you click on any photo in the series it will blow up to a full high res version for your viewing or saving pleasure. Enjoy your Visit to Photoblogging Disneyland, 99 Interpretations of the Happiest Place on Earth. We hope you come back again soon.

If you'd rather see the show at Flickr, feel free to check out my Flickr page as well. I've posted them there too.

And one more thing, the irony of the fact that two of the three of my most recent posts were spent bashing Hollywood and the studios is not lost on me. Compartmentalization, my friend, a big but helpful word.

With Popcorn, DVD's and TiVo, Moviegoers Are Staying Home

With Popcorn, DVD's and TiVo, Moviegoers Are Staying Home - New York Times: The New York Times asks the question whether or not the box office slump for new movies is due to poorer quality movies being made or if perhaps there is a cultural shift with people choosing to get more of their entertainment on demand, through time shifting technology, or though DVD.

The "cinema experience" continues to improve at home with HDTV and high resolution plasmas. Could there be a cultural shift going on?

"It is much more chilling if there is a cultural shift in people staying away from movies," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the Exhibitor Relations Company, a box-office tracking firm. "Quality is a fixable problem."

But even if the quality of movies can be improved, Mr. Dergarabedian said, the fundamental problem is that "today's audience is a much tougher crowd to excite. They have so many entertainment options and they have gotten used to getting everything on demand."

Well one thing I do know. With over 10 million blogs tracked now, at least some people (myself included of course) spend a lot more time blogging than I used to pre-blog and this is but one of many digital technology advancements that threaten to pull our time, money and attention away from a night out at the movies.

Thursday Night's 20 Random Songs From Thomas Hawk's Windows Media Player 5 Star Playlist

1. Hotel Arizona, Wilco, Being There, Disc 1
2. Everytime You Turn Around, Ben Atkins, Mabelle
3. Basing Street, Nick Lowe, 16 All Time Lowes
4. Greetings to the New Brunette (live), Billy Bragg, Big Mouth Strikes Again (bootleg)
5. For You (live), Duncan Sheik, Alice @ 97.3 This Is Alice Music, Volume 7
6. You Belong to Me, Catherine Ann Irwin, Cut Yourself a Switch
7. Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence, Bob Dylan, Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) Disc 2
8. La Chanson Des Rues, Stephane Grapelli, Olympia 1988 En Concert Avec
9. Shake That Thing, Bill Morrissey, Songs of Mississippi John Hurt
10. She's My Best Friend, The Velvet Underground, VU
11. Watch Your Step, Elvis Costello and the Attractions, The Best of Elvis Costello and the Attractions
12. Used Cars, Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska
13. Duty Free, Cracker, Countrysides
14. Men & Women, The Bottlerockets, Blue Sky
15. Shut Up, blink - 182, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
16. Boyz-N-The Hood, Dynamite Hack, Superfast
17. I Walk Along With You, Jimmy Lafave, Buffalo Returns to the Plain
18. What'd I Say, Lyle Lovett, Smile
19. Anchorage, Michelle Shocked, Short Sharp Shocked
20. Stoned, Funland, Stoned / Garage Sale

Say It Ain't So Joe... Why HDTV Support in MCE Won't Change Until Longhorn Arrives

Why HDTV Support in MCE Won’t Change Until Longhorn Arrives Life is a series of disappointments, followed by death. Chris Lanier is out with the first post to begin letting us all down gently on the cable HDTV support that we most likely will not see with the Microsoft Media Center 2005 Update due out later this year.

It really kind of bums me out. Not so good of a day.

Chris diagnoses the problem like this:

"Part of the reason Media Center doesn’t support anything more than OTA is mainly because of the rights management issues. Sure, the hardware support isn't currently shipped, but I don't see that as the big holdup. Media Center is not the “closed box” that Hollywood wants it to be. The only reason we can purchase a TiVo or other CE device that will record premium content is because it appears to the industry as a “closed box”. It’s too easy for them to say that Media Center is highly contributing to piracy of TV and films on the Internet because of the PC’s open architecture. Microsoft must make changes to Media Center, and the underlying Operating System that is Windows XP, to be a “closed box” when it comes to recording and viewing digital content."

Chris is right about the open box approach to Media Center. One of the great things with MCE is that, for instance, I can easily copy recorded television to my laptop over my network for remote viewing. No hassle, no problem, simple as pie.

I was pretty specific when I had dinner with Jim Allchin earlier this year and asked him when we'd see premium HDTV content available in Media Center and his response was probably later this year. If Chris is right, and I suspect that he is (he usually is), cable or satellite supported HDTV most likely will not become a reality for MCE until Longhorn arrives in late 2006. Perhaps Allchin misunderstood my question over dinner or perhaps since the dinner Microsoft has changed course.

The issues surrounding cable supported HDTV in MCE are real and are significant. There is no way in hell that Time Warner wants high def copies of the Sopranos floating around the BitTorrent network. It would seriously cut into their DVD sales. Until Microsoft can with absolute certainty assure Hollywood that their DRM is foolproof enough to lock down these recordings on a Media Center machine we just won't see it. I'm afraid that with regards to cable HDTV support for late 2005 Microsoft most likely caved on this one.

It's a shame really because with the XBox 360s coming out this Fall and hot damn the way Microsoft has been pushing the whole HDTV thing, the timing would have been perfect. Now, if Chris is correct, it really dampens the whole XBox 360 launch for me personally. OTA HDTV is quite simply not the answer. And while I'd hoped for the perfect storm of cable or satellite HDTV combined with the XBox 360 release it is quite possible that we won't see the real magic until late 2006. I just hope that by then it is not too late -- with a standalone HDTV TiVo due out in late 2005 / early 2006 and all.

Microsoft really may be missing the boat on this one. Perhaps they really don’t want to own the living room after all.

And then again, maybe Chris is wrong -- but we all know he rarely is.

Top 50 Internet Advertisers In April

Top 50 Internet Advertisers In April $258 million advertising dollars were spent by the top 50 internet advertisers in April alone according to TNS Media Intelligence. Check out who the top companies dolling out money on the internet are.

Anyone know how to get a long tail graph that shows all advertising spent on the internet in April?

Thanks, Lost Remote!

My Thoughts on TiVo's First FY Quarter Analyst Conference Call Today

Uneventful. And disappointing -- not from a financial standpoint, they did great last quarter, but from a technology standpoint.

The highlight of the call, with TiVo's Chairman and CEO Mike Ramsay and TiVo's EVP David Courtney, was that in financial terms as a company TiVo kicked ass last quarter.

Last quarter TiVo lost a mere 1 cent per share or about $857,000. In the comparable quarter last year they lost 11 cents a share or $9.07 million. Analysts had expected them to lose 10.5 cents per share and instead TiVo just about broke even. This is good news for a company that just recently was put on a "death watch" in part due to the massive financial losses the company was suffering. At this point, TiVo is almost profitable. Last quarter, this was in large part to strong sales of TiVos combined with TiVo ending their rebate program.

On the subscriber front, TiVo ended the quarter with 3.3 million TiVo subscribers. Of these subscribers, 2.1 million are DirecTV customers and 1.2 million are standalone customers. This represented about 247,000 new DirecTV customers and 72,000 new TiVo standalone customers.

So what was missing from the call? Serious innovation to delight their customers. There was no talk about a new HDTV standalone TiVo. There was no talk of the Netflix deal that seems to have gone into a big black hole. There was no new interesting technology to discuss. In fact, if anything from a technology side at all came out of the call it was this, get ready for the ads.

Regarding advertising, CEO Mike Ramsay said he was "clearly excited about the opportunity." "We haven't' pushed it super hard because we haven't had the scale," said Ramsay. Ramsay said that it was too early to say how significant an impact advertising will have to their short term bottom line. However, he did say that TiVo has created a "large available market that we will take advantage of."

Great, another exciting thing to look forward to. Take advantage of indeed.

Some other tidbits to come out of the call included that TiVo sees the Comcast deal less of a niche offering and more of a "broad deployment" product for Comcast subscribers. This would be consistent with TiVo's expectation to increase advertising revenues going forward as they would potentially have a much larger install base.

On TiVo's CEO search Ramsay said that a search for his replacement was still underway -- although he subsequently added that he was feeling "really in charge," for the time being. Certainly Ramsay's personal stock in the eyes of his Board and shareholders may be improving with the Comcast deal behind them and the stock price up significantly in the last quarter.

Ramsay was asked about losing DirecTV's business as DirecTV begins to offer competing DVR products to their customers. While acknowledging the upcoming competition, Ramsay said that he still expected to see "good growth there." TiVo seems to feel that they still can compete in the satellite world.

One little gem that did find it's way into the call was when Ramsay was asked about the status of TiVo's Tahiti initiative. When talking about Tahiti Ramsay said that TiVo was positioning itself to offer on their standalone boxes broadband content distribution in addition to traditional broadcast television. This is exciting as it leads the way and could open the door for micro content long tail internetworks to begin broadcasting to the TiVo platform.

Press Release: TiVo's Strong Revenue Growth Results in Significant Progress on Path to Profitability

TiVo's Strong Revenue Growth Results in Significant Progress on Path to Profitability: "TiVo's Strong Revenue Growth Results in Significant Progress on Path to Profitability" Earnings press release.

Yahoo! Movie Recommendation Technology, A Mixed Bag

Yahoo! Movie Recommendations - The Unofficial Google Weblog - google.weblogsinc.com _ One of the things that I've complained about in the past is that recommendation technology does not really seem to work for me. I stopped going to TiVo's suggestions a long time ago because I just couldn't find anything super relevant there. I loved the idea and diligently used the thumbs up thumbs down thing for months but it seemed my TiVo just couldn't figure me out. Such is life.

Recently I was excited to try out Yahoo!'s new movie recommendations. It had been suggested to me that this might represent new and improved technology so I gave it a test run. I rated 75 movies that I'd seen in the Yahoo! catalog and then checked to see what it came back with for me.

So here are the movies that I rated high at the top of my list. Some of these are some of my all time favorites: Barfly, Heathers, Sideways, Pulp Fiction, Broadcast News, The Player, Husbands and Wives, Glengarry Glen Ross, Wall Street, Boiler Room, Singles, High Fidelity, American Beauty, Goodfellas, When Harry Met Sally (I know, don't laugh), As Good as It Gets, Short Cuts, Deconstructing Harry, Malice, Grace of My Heart, Copland, Blue Velvet, American Wedding, The Big Chill, Say Anything, Reservoir Dogs, Back to the Future, Jerry Maguire, Fargo, Ransom, and Casino.

There are obviously more movies that I like and some that I'd like much more than these but of the 75 that I browsed all of these got either an A+ or an A from me.

I only rated 7 movies C- or worse: The Joy Luck Club, The Piano (yawn), Mrs. Doubtfire, The English Patient (and the very very very patient English Patient), The Name of the Rose, Monsters Inc., and Airplane.

So most of what was recommended that came back to me I'd never seen. But based on the above, the recommendations that came back that I'd already seen included Apollo 13, The Wedding Singer, The Graduate, Heat, Fandango and Get Shorty. I didn't really enjoy Apollo 13 or The Wedding Singer. I would have been disappointed based on these recommendations. On the other hand they weren't terrible either. I kind of liked Heat, Get Shorty and The Graduate. And I'm bonkers about Fandango, it's one of my favorite movies of all time.

On the other hand, there were some suggestions that came back that although I haven't seen (and maybe I'm being closed minded here), I just went no way. Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera (ewwwww). I fell asleep during the theatrical performance when my wife made me go to the theater to see this back when we were dating (and it was a birthday present for me no less). The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn? Um, no thanks.

One thing I did like about Yahoo!'s service is that it allows you to review your previously rated choices. I've always wished that TiVo gave me the ability to go back and review my past choices. I'm convinced that accidental choices are one of the things that plagues my bad recommendations on TiVo. Why not let me fix them?

By the way, want to have real fun with a good friend who swears by TiVo Suggestions? Next time you are over at their house sneak off and give everything on the Home Shopping Network and the Game Show Network three thumbs up. Then the next time they are bragging about how good the technology is have them pull up their suggestions. Hilarity ensues. Cruel, but fun.

IE7 Tabbed Browsing Implementation

IEBlog : IE7 Tabbed Browsing Implementation Tony Schreiner, a developer on the IE Team has a post on the development of tabbed browsing that we will see in the IE7 beta. Tony says, "This core functionality is largely catch-up to other browsers which support tabs, but a necessary foundation for future work." He goes on to discuss the implementation of the tabbed browsing within IE as well as compatibility issues to be explored. "One design decision worth calling out is that our current implementation is fully multithreaded. Each tab is on a separate thread, and the frame is also on its own thread. This has some impact on the overall footprint of IE, but we believe this will allow IE7 to feel faster and provide an overall better user experience.

TGB RSS Feeds

Does anyone have a good current RSS feed for The Green Button? The one on the site is the link above but it doesn't seem right and NewsGator won't recognize it.

Xenon, XeSled and Bobsled, Sean Alexander on the New XBox 360 as an Extender and more

Addicted to Digital Media - Cool Stuff Roundup Sean has got a write up on the new XBox 360 and other stuff.

More Crap from the MPAA

Why the broadcast flag should go forward | Perspectives | CNET News.com: Dan Glickman, CEO of the MPAA is out this morning with a "perspective" on CNET talking about why the Broadcast Flag is a good thing for you and me and why we should support it's implementation even though the MPAA has now lost their legal fight to shove this backwards technology down our throat by their lackeys at the FCC.

Glickman says that it's you and me who will "suffer" by not having the broadcast flag.

His logic runs as follows:

"Our companies want to continue to show their movies and television shows to viewers who don't or can't subscribe to cable or satellite systems. But without the broadcast flag, that option will look less and less appealing. In the end, it will be the consumers who suffer the most if the broadcast flag is not mandated for the digital era."

Oh, yeah, ok Dan, whatever you say guy.

You just don't get it. You lost. Hollywood lost. You guys had and will continue to have your clock cleaned time and time again. Embrace the future. Learn to share the love. Give up control and move on.

Look, many Americans think the speed limit is a good thing. They like it. When cars come barrelling down my street and my kids are outside playing I think the speed limit is a good thing. When I'm on the vast stretch of lonesome highway between San Francisco and L.A. I think it's a bad thing. But either way I don't want some lawmaker trying to mandate that cars made be crippled and have a maximum operating speed of 65 miles per hour. Nor do most Americans. And likewise, I don't want my technology crippled so that I can't do whatever the hell I want with it, when, where, and with whomever I choose.

So you go ahead and flaunt your, "if we don't get our way we'll take our ball and go home" logic all you want. And I'll call BS. Hollywood will still make blockbuster movies, big budget TV shows will still go on and actors, directors and artists looking for the flickering fame of the silver screen will be no less motivated.

You and your cronies may have less money to spread around amongst yourselves, but Dan, this is a good thing as you are part of the problem.

And you know what else, your big budget features will on their own become less and less successful and less and less profitable. This is inevitable as long tail economics take over and the very tools that you want to crush become the tools of liberation for new armies of artists and creators who bypass you entirely to bring their creations (and collectively their entertainment will offer you serious competition) to the rest of us.

Jason Calacanis: Bill Gates Gets Blogging

Engadget's Jason Calacanis blogs about meeting face to face with Bill Gates at the WSJ D Conference:

" So, I was chatting with Bill Gates (huge name drop, I know.. but there is a point coming) at the *amazing* WSJ D Conference on Sunday night. Bill was talking to me about the comments on Engadget’s coverage of the XBox 360 (yes, he reads the comments). Since I only get to speak F2F with Bill every two or three weeks I figured I would tell him about Microsoft sending us some legal letters about a screen shot of some mobile software we covered.

He was really concerned, but I cut him off and said “don’t worry, I just talk to Robert Scoble when I have an issue with Microsoft.”

He smiled and nodded his head. Bill gets blogging… it was a stark contrast to Steve Jobs who is busy suing bloggers to get their sources while knowing full well the impact that could have on freedom of the press. On that note, Steve Jobs was clearly conflicted—looking almost embarrassed—when he explained his lame reasons for suing bloggers. Jobs says he thought the case could go to the Supreme Court, but you could see the wheels spinning while the audience shock their heads at him in disapproval."

Bill Gates does get it. You can't buy the kind of publicity to get Jason Calacanis to write things like that.

Thanks, Scoble!

Wednesday Night's 20 Random Songs From Thomas Hawk's Windows Media Player 5 Star Playlist

1. Waterloo Sunset, Fastbacks, Give the People What They Want: Songs of the Kinks
2. I Will Be There, Paul Brady, The Paul Brady Songbook
3. Flesh and Blood, Johnny Cash, The Essential Johnny Cash, 1955-1983, Disc 3
4. Why Me?, Delbert McClinton, Never Been Rocked Enough
5. Something About What Happens When We Talk (live), Lucinda Williams, Live at Penn's Landing, July 11, 1998 (bootleg)
6. Go On Blue, Johnny Cash, American Outtakes (bootleg)
7. Shelter from the Storm, Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
8. None But the Rain, Townes Van Zandt, Anthology, 1968-1979
9. If It Makes You Happy (live), Sheryl Crow, The Trinity Church Sessions (bootleg)
10. Western Kingbird Air and Reel, Joe Weed, Waltz of the Whipporwill
11. Cat Like Thief, Boxcar Racer, Boxcar Racer
12. Sunday, Helium, No Guitars EP
13. Theme from Rhapsody in Blue (Take Two), Charles Mingus, The Complete Debut Recordings, Disc 1
14. One Too Many Mornings, The Band, Tangled Up in Blues: Songs of Bob Dylan
15. Rollin' By, Lyle Lovett, Step Inside This House, Disc 1
16. Together Forever, The Softies, Double Agent 1980: A Tribute to the '80s
17. Come As You Are, Nirvana, Nevermind
18. Comes a Time, Neil Young, Comes a Time
19. May You Never, Eric Clapton, Slowhand
20. Who's Gonna Stop Me, Delilahs, Cities 97 Sampler, Volume 6

Afternoon on the San Francisco Bay

On-Demand Channels: A Niche Frontier

On-Demand Channels: A Niche Frontier - New York Times: The New York Times has an interesting story on On-Demand programming. Among other things they zero in on the potential for advertisers to better target market with niche content and definable audiences.

"When and if the media business catches up, however, advertisers could benefit as much as consumers. 'Television has to date been a relatively blunt instrument for marketers,' Mr. Hanlon said. 'You're going to see a much better alignment of advertising and programming.'"

and

"In another indication of the ad industry's interest, Nielsen Media Research said yesterday that it had developed a plan to measure audiences for on-demand programs. Like so much in the on-demand world, though, "plan" is the key word. Nielsen said it intended to introduce the service during the second quarter of 2006."

The Motley Fool on TiVo's Stock Run Up

Editor's Note: This post should not be construed as financial advice.

Nothing Happened. Buy TiVo! [Fool.com: Motley Fool Take] May 25, 2005: The Motley Fool ponders why TiVo's stock price has had such a strong run up the past two days. At first blush it would appear that the analyst report from First Albany's Richard Baldry is the responsible culprit. Baldry initiated coverage on TiVo with a $16 price target as reported here yesterday.

Could there be more to the story though? TiVo's earnings are out tomorrow. It will be interesting what is said on the analyst conference call following the meeting. The stock has had unusually high trading volume the last few days. Normally TiVo trades about 4 million shares per day and today they traded almost 17 million shares and yesterday almost 26 million shares.

There is a lot of potential news that could come out on TiVo in the next few months both good and bad. You have the CEO search that has been ongoing that could be announced. You have the Comcast partnership and the details that could follow. You could have more visibility on the ongoing DirecTV relationship. Rumors have floated on a TiVo deal with Yahoo! or Google. There is always the Netflix TiVo deal that seems to have gone into a black hole. And you could always have positive or negative actual earnings vs. projections that are reported tomorrow.

The Street also has coverage of the run up here.

Personal Video Recorders are Selling Like Hotcakes

Tom's Hardware Guide: Tom's Hard News "Demand for Personal Video Recorder (PVR) products increased dramatically during the past year, as unit shipments rose from 4.6 million in 2003 to over 11.4 million in 2004, according to In-Stat. The market research firm believes that increased consumer awareness about the concept of time-shifting television programming, and both pay-TV service providers and PVR product manufacturers are reaping the benefits are the main reasons for booming sales."

Looks like folks are finally warming up to the idea of TV time shifting.

CNET covers the same story here.

Secrets of the A-List Bloggers: Lots of short entries

Secrets of the A-List Bloggers: Lots of short entries Tristan Louis did an analysis of A List bloggers and has determined that the secret to A List blogging success just might be lots of short posts every day.

I'd elaborate more and provide my own analysis on the research but I need to move on to the next post to blog.

Thanks, Heather!

Compress your Media Center TV

Power Compress: DVR-MS to WMV or AVI Another interesting plug in to compress your TV shows and fit more television on your hard drive. At present I've got a 500 gig external LaCie drive and storage is not really an issue for me, but if you are running out of space for television shows you may want to check this out.

It May Be Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

Well if you haven't already it looks like Dell is pushing the envelope with cheap big monitors. Today Tim Coyle is raving about his new 20" Dell widescreen and also points us to a post over at Digital Media Thoughts on the new 24" widescreen Dell Ultra Sharp. Two of those 24" widescreens just might make for the perfect home office display. Want to visualize what it could look like (and I know I've posted on this before)? Check out Corey Gouker's set up from the MCE pool that Sean Alexander set up over at Flickr.

And if you haven't added a photo of your MCE set up to Flickr yet go ahead and upload a photo I'd love to see it.

Here are some other great MCE set ups on display over at Flickr. Steve Owens, Rob Morris, Steve Makofsky, Sean Alexander, and then my own (which pales in comparison)

Over at Ed Bott's site, Brian Hoyt comments: The only problem thus far is that the 24" has yet to be on sale or discounted well. The jump from 20" to 24" still almost doubles the cost. Also the 20" has a slightly newer LCD and control electronics than the currently available 24".

Thanks, Tim and Ed.

New Seattle Traffic MCE Plug-in

Addicted to Digital Media - New Seattle Traffic MCE Plug-in Now THIS is creative thinking. I love this idea. Would love to see someone set up something like this for the Bay Area, and Sean, this is definitely a plug in that we should see on an MCECar when you guys finally get around to building it!

Downtown San Francisco From Tiburon

Golden Gate Tower

PLIX EMC 3200HD Media Center Edition PC

Ricavision PLIX EMC 3200HD

eHomeUpgrade | PLIX EMC 3200HD Media Center Edition PC EHomeUpgrade has the details on the new Ricavision PLIX Media Cener PC. Another beautiful form factor for your living room.

Having an acceptable form factor for a Media Center machine has been something that I've stressed and others have suggested will be helpful for adoption of Media Center PCs in people's living rooms. Lately I've been thinking more though that perhaps form factor will not be as important as I and others have suggested in the past.

With the introduction of the new XBox as an extender unit my thoughts are now that rather than spend a lot of money on a high end nice looking MCE machine for one's living room, people will simply buy the most powerful even boxy looking MCE machine for their den or home office and just stream everything from that machine to their XBox 360 extender.

Form factor in the home office or den is much less significant than form factor in the living room as we are already used to having boxy looking PCs in our dens and home offices.

That being said, it's still fun to see these great designs that PC manufacturers are coming out with.

Marina Through Downtown

View From Russian Hill

Street Lines

Bodies and Motion