Month: November 2005

The Long Tail: First take: XBox 360 Media Center extender The Media Center Extender functionality of the new XBox 360 is to me the most exciting feature of all. As a non gamer (perhaps not for long) I plan on picking several of these up for my home shortly. Chris Anderson just got his and has a write up about the new box and also reflects on what this might mean for Microsoft’s chances to become the leader in in-home media distribution:

“I never thought I’d say this, but by the standards in this industry Microsoft is actually looking relatively innovative (Apple is playing catch-up with Front Row, but until it comes up with its own version of the extender concept to distribute content easily to TVs around the house, it won’t have broad appeal).

What’s important about the Media Center is that it takes the DVR concept and extends it to all forms of content, whether broadcast or downloaded from the Web. By having a broadband-connected PC at its core, it’s by nature a full-featured connected device that can keep up with the pace of innovation in digital media online. If the Xbox 360 and the new content marketplaces of its associated Xbox Live service continue to take off, we really could have the beginnings of a Long Tail platform that could challenge broadcast TV.”

Combined with CableCARD HDTV support in 2006, enhanced digital photography capabilities and indexing in Vista (tagging, photo sharing, faster music libraries, etc.), larger cheaper hard drives and 64 bit computing, the extender functionality (along with the ability to stream high def), and an open development platform for new and exciting internet based content, Microsoft finally has the killer home entertainment PC. There will probably still be bugs to work out and ways to fine tune this platform, but by next year we should be 98% of the way there and ready for mainstream Media Center adoption — exciting indeed.

Ed Bott’s Windows Expertise ? Finally, a big enough backup disk Ed Bott’s blogging about a new holographic backup disc that apparently will hold 1.6 terabyte. Wow. What a great way to drop a disc with 100,000 mp3s on it in the mail to your very close and not so very close personal friends.

FlickrNation, Episode 2,

Download the show here.

Show Notes:

1:00: New website home flickrnation.com. You can vote for the podcast on Podcast Alley here. The RSS feed for the show is here. Contact info: tom@thomashawk.com, Yahoo Messenger: thomashawk22, Skype: thomashawkskype, Phone: 415-992-5350.

2:30: Two new Flickr features: Auto-Magically Rotate and Allow Blogging.

3:45: Yahoo!’s logon process to get “flickerized” according to Stewart Butterfield.

5:45: Flickr mentioned on CNET’s news.com, Tagging Gives Web a Human Meaning.

8:40: Flickr Staff blogs: Sylloge (Stewart Butterfield), hchamp.com (Heather Champ), caterina.net (Caterina Fake), iamcal.com (Cal Henderson), george08.blogspot.com (George Oates). The link I mentioned from Cal’s blog on corporate logos and their colors.

14:37: Hypergene MediaBlog, Using Flickr for Product Marketing. iView Multimedia. Thanks for the link Steve!

16:26: Wrong number call in on Skype during the podcast by a 90 year old woman without a computer or digital camera. (Sorry about the bad sound quality from her, I wasn’t expecting a call in from a wrong number so the mic didn’t pick up so well).

21:00: Shayne Bowman and using Flickr for Product Marketing continued.

23:00: One Google AdSense ad is ok for your blog when linking to and using Flickr as a non commercial personal site.

26:55: Is Less More? Heather Champ asks, should the number of tags on Flickr photos be limited to less than 100?

31:08: Fav/View >= 5% Group. Top poster, Aqui Ali.

34:00: New FlickrNation Group on Flickr.

Spent last night hanging out with Elinesca (who is in town from Boston for an educators convention training type of thing), Caitlin Burke, and SFBuckaroo. Lots and lots of Flickr talk and other fun. It’s great that you can show up in another City and instantly have a friendship with the people that you meet on Flickr. Elinesca took this photo of Caitlin and I. The only bad thing was that I forgot to swap my battery out of my camera so it was dead and I went through massive withdrawls not being able to shoot. It was pretty cool though playing with everyone else’s cameras — a fun and different kind of experience for me. Caitlin, Elinesca and SFBuckaroo all have shots up from our little mini kind of Flickr meet up last night.

Zatz Not Funny… Cisco Buys Scientific-Atlanta Dave Zatz has the scoop, from CNN. More from the NY Times here.

Tales of Windows Media Center Project Management : Is On-Demand Coming? Soon? More then I thought? David Fleischman asks the question “is On-Demand Coming? Soon?” This of course is the utopian dream — from a television perspective:

“Imagine that you no longer get TV shows from the networks. Imagine you no longer get football games from ESPN. What if you got sports, in high quality, directly from the leagues? For a subscription fee? And what if those fees would vary. You could get a choice of a specific team, the whole league, a certain game. Maybe the fees go down if your team isn’t doing so well. Heck you could get Australian Rules football in America and get American Football in Germany. Your choice.

But take it farther out. What if you could subscribe to Lost for the year? Or all of the shows from ABC? Or beyond that what if you could subscribe to Lost and all other shows by the Lost creators?

I mean can you have simple interface where you can get any show ever made? Ever game every played? Can you watch the 1968 Olympics whenever you want? Could you skip to certain scenes? How cool would that be? “

The problem is though that as much as I share David’s passion for this dream, it runs contrary to the way “God” intended for us to watch TV, which is live, according to Alan Wurtzel, head of reserach over at NBC. More accurately, it runs smack in the face of the advertising and DVD sales based revenue models that Hollywood is addicted to like… well I guess I just said that, smack.

I do think we will see David’s vision eventually, just not in the next 10 years unfortunately. I wrote an article comparing the television industry to the music industry recenlty that sheds more light on why it will be so difficult for us to realize David’s vision.

It really is great though to see people from Microsoft staying up late at night and thinking about things like this. This is EXACTLY where I want to go today.

This week’s winner of the Site of the week contest was Where’s George. Where’s George is a fascinating experiment in tracking currency. I originally heard about the site 3 months ago, when I received a one dollar bill with a www.wheresgeorge.com stamp across the front of it. When I put my bill into the website, my where’s george “parent” Pam told me that she had originally received the bill from a bank in Ashland, MO.

Since then I’ve been hooked and have now entered 47 bills for a total of $484. While I’ve only had one of my bills discovered, I’m confident that over time my hit ratio should rise closer to the average of 10%. Looking over some of the user statistics it appears that it usually takes around 45 days for a bill to get discovered. Congratulations to Where’s George on winning the first site of the week contest.

If anyone has a site or a blog that they would like to suggest, please send it to Davis *at* thomashawk.com This week’s site nominations are as follows:

– Death By Caffeine

– Bob From Accounting

– Bug Me Not