Month: April 2006

Well if you read this blog regularly then you know I love Flickr (almost certainly the best online photo management and sharing application in the world). But while frequent Flickr users may love the capabilities of the site, it can still be a formidable thing to navigate for the more casual photographer or beginner new to the whole online photo sharing thing.

It’s great then to see Richard Giles out with his fine new book, How to Use Flickr, The Digital Photography Revolution. I would heartily recommend this 276 page primer for anyone who is interested in learning the ropes of how Flickr works a bit more. The book also would also make a great gift for a friend of family member if you are already a Flickr old hand but would like to help someone new get into the service. At a little over $15 for the book from Amazon it’s a bargain.

Even though the book is a great book for Flickr newcomers, I also still found myself, even as a more advanced Flickr user, learning quite a bit (especially about the history of Flickr and the staff).

The book is organized and laid out nicely and is structured in an easy way to figure Flickr out on a step by step basis. It starts out with basic chapters about things like “Introducing Flickr” and “Getting Started” and progresses through all of the various aspects of the service ending with more advance uses and the last chapter, “Third-Party Flickr Tools.”

Throughout the book there are great little anecdote sections that bring up all kinds of interesting Flickr trivia and information. Things like Flickr Coincidences, how the “May Offend” button works, special html tags for posting to Flickr or blogs, etc. Hey, even Thomas Hawk gets a mention in one, but I won’t say where. There are also many interviews with tech heavyweights about Flickr like Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow, CNET’s Esther Dyson (an early investor), and various high profile Flickr members themselves.

Included in the book also are great rundowns on some of the more popular groups and Flickr forums, a pretty handy writeup on how the various licensing for your photos work on Flickr (creative commons and all it’s variations vs. all rights reserved, etc.), uploading via email or with your mobile phone, etc.

Overall I was impressed with the completeness of the book while at the same time I was impressed with how easy it was to read and follow. Author Richard Giles, who also produces The Gadget Show podcast, did a thorough job, and as Technical Editor Flickr member Striatic keeps lots of the more advanced Flickr info in line. It’s great to see a book like this out there and I wish them lots of success!

I’ve written a couple of other posts on Flickr basics myself including “Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr” and “Top 10 Ways to Find Great Photos on Flickr.”

Techdirt: Philips Patents Pissing Off TV Viewers: Techdirt is out with a story about Philips latest patent a “system for inserting flags into television broadcasts that would prevent you from changing the channels during commercials or prevent you from fast forwarding if watched on a DVR.”

Wait a minute. Wasn’t the television industry just using their fuzzy math to tell us that they liked DVRs? Oh, wait, that was just for their *advertisers* to hear, ok. I get it now.

Well it would be an interesting feature, just imagine how the sales will skyrocket when Philips markets this exciting new feature on their new TVs. Plus it’s a pretty cool feature for a company whose tag line is “At Philips, everything we make is designed to improve your life.” This would be one hell of an improvement. Thanks guys for thinking of it.

Hey and while we’re at it, I’ve got another idea. Philips could patent one of those chairs that has the clamps that forces your eyelids open. You know the one, like from the movie A Clockwork Orange. They could then put a little LazyBoy swivel on the chair and when the commercials come on the thing could grab your eyelids and force them open.

It could be a huge hit!

By Davis Freeberg

Editor’s Note Davis Freeberg is a shareholder of both Netflix and TiVo

I’ve got to admit that when I first woke up this morning I was a little shocked to see Dave Zatz report that you can find Blockbuster Online subscriptions through the TiVo website. TiVo has had a vaporware partnership with Netflix for sometime and while I didn’t expect that we would see TiVo would start showing downloadable Netflix movies anytime soon, I had always held out hope that we might see Netflix start bundling TiVo with their online service. The two services are a perfect marriage for each other, but it looks like TiVo has opted to go with Blockbuster Online instead.

I’ve got to assume that Dave Zatz’s screenshot was accidentally published by TiVo early because TiVo seems to have three different prices for the online service. All three packages include an 80 hour TiVo box for one year, but have price points of $29.99, $32.99 & 35.99. It could be that TiVo is still experimenting with the pricing on this or it might be that these three plans represent the one, two and three DVD at a time programs.

I know that in the past Blockbuster has sold TiVos at their retail stores, but it’s been a few years since I’ve seen Blockbuster carry TiVo. If TiVo is in fact turning their back on Netflix and going with Blockbuster Online then this represents a big coup for Blockbuster. The more DVDs that customers rent each month adds to the cost of maintaining an online program and if Blockbuster can give you 80 hours of customizable television, then it will inevitably reduce the number of DVDs that customers will rent each month.

I think that this arrangement makes natural sense for TiVo, but I’m pretty disappointed that TiVo didn’t make better use of their vaporware partnership with Netflix and sell their service instead. When their partnership with Netflix was announced there was a lot of hoopla from the stock market over it, but it appears that the only good thing that has come out of it was Michael Ramsey leaving the board of Netflix. Netflix offers a better online experience and their interests seem better aligned with TiVo’s, yet TiVo has still choosen to endorse a dying company with terrible customer service over a Silicon Valley start up that has changed the rental industry forever.

Given the amount of hype that we’ve seen for the Netflix player, it’s bitterly disappointing to see TiVo not make at least some use of their agreement and it makes me wonder if the Netflix player may also be at risk. I’ve always understood why Netflix would want to sell VOD over TiVo’s platform, but I’ve never understood the benefit to TiVo for doing this. Couldn’t TiVo license the content themselves and cut out Netflix as a middleman or is their relationship with Hollywood so bad that they knew that they had to use a Netflix or Blockbuster to get access to VOD content? Either way, this new partnership casts further doubt about the future of the Netflix player.

WSJ.com – Can Bloggers Make Money?: Alan Meckler: “Blogs are really diaries or microcosms of what is happening in millions of ways in daily life — ranging from special interests to business specialties to whatever. Obviously there is money to be made with blogs, but very, very few will bring in more than a few hundred dollars per year.

Jason created a great business model in aggregating blogs. But here again the opportunities to replicate this model will be few and far between — the reason being that such a model requires at least one or two anchor blogs that will be attractive to advertisers. Much like great magazine empires that offer magazine networks only a few of the magazines are big winners — these big winners help support the weaker magazines — same with blogs.”

Now I make more than “a few hundred dollars per year” with my blog but I’d still probably have to agree with Alan on this one. My blog is presently in the Technorati top 500, out of how many blogs there now? 35.7 million!?! And trust me, I still ain’t quiting my day job anytime soon.

I think it is going to be the pretty rare blogger that ever makes a six figure income out of this. Still, I think for the right blogger to franchise in the right way there could be other opportunities — books, conferences, freelance work, consulting, network building, using your blogging notoriety to land a plum job at some place that would value that PR, etc. all come to mind.

Jason got lucky because he built a blog network at the right time. Jason got rich but I seriously doubt his bloggers did. FM Publishing probably has a bit better model where they at least give their bloggers some phantom equity in the deal, but let’s face it, at the end of the day bloggers are pretty much just *gasp* user generated content (yes I know we all hate that word). A single blogger doesn’t stand to make much in terms of financial gain. Sure, it’s a great hobby if you already have a fairly flexible job with a decent income and you can do it on the side or if you’re fresh out of college and content making little money just for the experience of it all. But the real money will probably continue to be made by guys like Jason who better understand how to get others to do the work for them and then package it all just right and nicely.

Hands-On First Impressions: Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player DVD HD-DVD Blu-Ray at TheManRoom The Man Room Welcome to the most confusing mismarketed over-hyped and jumbled new technology in years. High Definition DVD! Ohhhh, ahhhhh, ohhhhh.

Ok, so I was there with the best of them this year at CES and boy were they hyping this HD-DVD stuff. Blu-ray too, but since today’s the big HD-DVD launch we’ll stick with them for the time being.

So *why* does HD-DVD suck so bad? Well thanks to The Man Room’s early coverage, and the first review I’ve seen yet of the first generation Toshiba HD-A1 HD-DVD Player, we get this little nugget directly from the Toshiba’s manual:

“”HD DVD and DVD video disc creators have the option to include copy protection instructions in their discs that prohibit the output of some standard video or high definition video (original 720p or 1080i or up-converted 480i or 480p) from the COMPONENT OUTPUT jacks. If such instructions are present in the disc you are playing, you must use the HDMI OUTPUT jack to view the disc in a high definition format and the COMPONENT OUTPUT jacks, if activated, will output video only in 480i or 480p resolution.””

So let’s see, not only am I a sucker for spending (how much? $500+) on the player, but now when I bring it home it can’t even play my movies on my 43″ plasma Pioneer HDTV, THAT I BOUGHT LAST YEAR! So, I can either watch HDTV from HBO, etc. on my HDTV TiVo. Or I can rent regular DVDs, which look pretty darn good. Or I can go out a buy a brand new $5,000 plasma to go with their crappy HD DVD player.

Now in fairness, Hollywood is more to blame with regards to these poor decisions on HD-DVD but Toshiba and every other manufacturer who has decided to support HD-DVD seems to be going along for the ride.

Forget about the disaster format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray and who will survive, etc. Take this advice directly from The Man Room:

“So should you rush out and buy an HD-A1? With a looming format war on the horizon the best bet is always to wait on the sidelines until a clear-cut winner emerges. I encourage ManRoom owners with deep pockets and urges to own the latest and greatest to at least wait until we spin a real HD-DVD before taking the $500+ plunge into an unproven format.” Well said.

As for me (and remember, I’m an early adopter folks) and the rest of the world with our crappy plasmas from last year, I think we’ll just wait a while on this one. Certainly there is a lucrative market out there with over 100 million U.S. households currently with regular DVD players but sorry Toshiba, I don’t think it’s going to as lucrative this second time around. People *hate* hearing that after buying a new HD-DVD player that they won’t be able to… well… watch HD-DVDs.

Want more evidence that this HD-DVD thing is going to be a fiasco? Just check out Blockbuster’s decision today to *not* carry HD-DVD titles in their stores. You will only be able to get them as a Blockbuster Online customer.

Until the DVD manufacturers can unequivocally state that HD DVDs will play in full high res HD glory on all HDTV’s then good luck to you sparky!

eirikso.com — Yahoodeeo – coming soon? Eirik Solheim reported on it earlier this week, but now it seems official. Yahoo! has bought much of the technology of home digital media concern Meedio.

From Pablo and the Meedio team:

“Today is a big day for the team here at Meedio; we have sold most of our technology to Yahoo!

David Brott, Jeff (beergeek), Kenny (fasttech), Pedro (flea0) and I are joining Yahoo!’s Digital Home team. We’ve had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Yahoo! in the past few months and we love the way they are developing the best, most user-friendly services for the Digital Home.”

I reported previously on Yahoo!’s new GoTV initiative that they were showing off back in January at CES. So it looks like Yahoo! wants to join the ever crowding field of TiVo, Microsoft and Media Center, Apple and FrontRow, and a horde of other smaller players in dominating your living room. This is good. Competition spurs innovation and while Microsoft may be coming out with an imporoved version of WMP11 for Media Center by June, well, Yahoo! has Flickr and that’s super cool. (Of course with the Flickr add on Slickr I’ve already turned my MCE machine into a living room Flickr box).

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Meedio, they are essentially the television link that Yahoo!’s GoTV initiative was lacking. I reported about them in June of last year here. So what is still missing for Yahoo!? HDTV. While Meedio has an OTA solution for HDTV to the best of my knowledge they don’t have any CableLabs approved technology yet or any deals with the satellite players to broadcast premium satellite HDTV.

With TiVo’s standalone HDTV unit due out later this year and Microsoft’s Vista Home Premium which will have CableCARD support due out early 2007 Yahoo! does have a little bit of time to try and work out the premium HDTV content issue.

Congrats to Meedio and congrats to Yahoo! on getting even more serious about the digital home.

XP and Vista to get new media player | CNET News.com: Well I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. Which do you want first?

The bad news of course is that Vista was recently delayed and moved from a Fall 2006 release to an early 2007 release. But the good news? Well CNET is reporting today that a standalone version of Windows Media Player 11 will be available for XP before the end of June. Windows Media Player 11 of course is also the underlying music engine for Microsoft’s Media Center Edition software.

This is really, really, great news. For those of us with large digital libraries WMP 10 (as great as it is) has been a huge hassle for trying to sort through these tracks. Windows Media Player 11 (according to Microsoft insiders) has been tested with over 2 million tracks and runs much more smoothly.

When I had dinner with Microsoft exec Jim Allchin earlier this year I asked him directly about whether or not we’d see a version of WMP11 for XP and he said yes, but I’m surprised that they would be bringing us this as early as this June.

I’m really looking forward to this one. Hopefully it’s everything in speed I hope it will be.

Boing Boing: Billboard Liberation Front hits a Chevron ad in SF It seems like Chevron is the latest target.

Update: Milton Rand Kalman, the BLF’s Chief Scientist just emailed me saying that this billboard rearrangement was not actually their work but tha tof a strategic partner, the California Department of Corrections:

From Kalman: “Gotta read the post more carefully, Tommy tom. It was the work of the California Department of Corrections, a strategic partner/competitor in billboard improvements.

Their site is dead because they use one of those filty GeoCities sites, but they do good work.

Thanks for the post though. if you’re going to the Maker Faire, I’ll see you there, and I hope it drives you crazy that you won’t know which person saying hi is me.”