Category: Uncategorized

Will Zune Actually PodCatch?

Post ImageThat’s the question Paul Colligan asked in his latest post at Zune Luv, and it appears the answer is yes. Well, at least it looks more likely to be a yes than a no. He says:

Fact: Yesterday, September 10, 2006, Microsoft Zune(firmware 0.9 beta) hit 200+ Podcast feeds.

Where do I get this stat? Rick Klau, VP Business Development at Feedburner.

And yes, I have permission to quote him.

This still isn’t proof, but it’s a heck of a lot better than nothing. I mean if the Zune has wifi, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a podcatcher too! I guess we’ll find out soon enough (November 14th).

Read: Zune Luv?

Michael Schumacher Announces Retirement

Post ImageI just watched the Italian Grand Prix, which was won by Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari. It will be his last win at Monza, as he announced in the driver interviews after the race that he will be retiring at the end of this season. The decision has been expected for quite some time, but it’s still kind of shocking to hear him say it. He’s by far the most successful driver in Formula 1 history. Some people love him, some people hate him, but I think everyone respects him. He’s done so much for the sport, and it’s hard to argue with the records and accolades he has achieved. He holds just about every record there is, except for the most starts (he’s about 7 races behind).

With the win today, Schumi is just 2 points behind Fernando Alonso in the drivers championship with three races left. Should Michael finish ahead of Alonso, it would be his eighth championship. He has always been focused and driven by the challenge of winning, and he reiterated as much today. He made it very clear he is focused on winning the championship and leaving his sport on a high.

Who will replace Schumi now? Speculation is that it will be Kimi Raikkonen, but Ferrari has yet to announce anything. To be perfectly clear, no one can replace Michael Schumacher. Someone will drive his car, yes, but no one can replace Formula 1’s greatest driver ever.

I am sure there will be more to come on this story over the next few weeks. I’m glad Schumi is leaving on a high, but I’m still sad to see him go.

Podcasters: act now to stop anti-podcasting treaty!

Post ImageSometimes people or organizations do things that just seem beyond comprehension. You just sit there, dumbfounded, shaking your head and asking “why?”. One example of this is what the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization is proposing:

The Broadcast Treaty is an attempt to force the world’s governments to give a new right to broadcasters, a right to control the use of works they don’t own. The Broadcast Right will allow broadcasters to stop you from copying or re-using the programs they transmit, even if those programs are in the public domain, Creative Commons licensed or composed of uncopyrightable facts.

It gets worse though, as Boing Boing explains. They want to create a “webcasting right” at the same time:

This is deadly to podcasters. The webcasting right will break podcasters’ ability to quote and re-use each others’ work (even CC-licensed works), and other video found on the net. It will allow podcast-hosting companies like Yahoo to tell people how they can use your podcasts, even if you want to permit retransmissions.

I guess a few letters have already been put together by EFF, signed by people like Mark Cuban, and sent to WIPO. Now they have put together another letter, and this one can be signed by podcasters everywhere:

If you are a podcaster — or better yet, a podcasting organization — sign onto this letter now! It will be presented Monday morning to the WIPO committee that’s creating the Broadcast Treaty in Geneva. This is your best-ever chance to be heard.

You can check out the letter and indicate that you want to sign it here.

Read: Boing Boing

Telus finally upgrading broadband network

Post ImageDickson sent me this story today about Telus. I recently got rid of my Telus landline and while I am not a big fan of the company, I have been pretty happy with their mobile phone service, and until a couple years ago when I lost my static IP, I was happy with their ADSL service too. That said, the Internet offerings have always been truly “North American”, and by that I mean slow and expensive relative to the rest of the world. Finally though, Telus is going to make some changes:

Telus Corp. says it is investing nearly $800 million over the next three years to beef up its broadband network so it can offer its customers a wide range of new services, including high-definition television.

The company said its proposed infrastructure will allow it to double internet access, to speeds of 15 or 30 megabits a second.

That’s still a far cry from the 100 megabits/second you can get to your house in Hong Kong, for example, but it is markedly better than what we have now. Apparently the entire project will be completed by 2009 (at which time, the rest of the world will probably be faster still).

Read: CBC News

Pluto: A Planet Again in 2009?

Post ImageAs I have said before, I think the demotion of Pluto is a good thing. I see nothing wrong in recognizing that assumptions of decades past (there are no more objects like Pluto) have been rendered false (there are in fact lots of objects like Pluto). However, as an article in The Economist points out, a lot of people seem to think Pluto should remain a planet:

Members of the public are also wielding the web. Sites such as www.plutoisaplanet.com and www.pleasesavepluto.org have been launched. Sales of “Pluto is a Planet” T-shirts are high. And a band called Jimmy and the Keyz has written a song called “They demoted Pluto”.

Okay, people are entitled their opinions. And I realize that humans can be quite sentimental. I had to laugh at how The Economist ended the article though:

Whether listening to public opinion is really the best way to arrive at scientific definitions is questionable. But there is a suspicion that the IAU’s leaders may cave in to the pressure and find an excuse to reinstate Pluto at the next general meeting, in 2009.

I find it really hard to believe that anyone will still care in three years time. I suspect most will have accepted the new system and forgotten all about the controversy.

Read: The Economist

My final school year begins

Post ImageI started what had better be my final year of University yesterday. Three classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and one on Tuesday/Thursday. In every single one, the first class was just a review of the course outline and nothing else. In a way that was good, because we got to leave early, but in a way it was bad too – I had lots of time to kill yesterday. Here are some notes about the “back to school” experience thus far:

  • This year is going to be great: I can walk from my house (remember, I just moved) to class in Tory (northernmost part of campus) in under 20 minutes.
  • I am always amused by the first years running around like crazy people, worried because they don’t know where their class is. I was probably like that too, I know. I think part of the problem is orientation – the University itself should offer a simple, no-frills orientation that is a tour of campus and getting your ID card and nothing else. The SU puts a lot of work into their orientation events, but I skipped mine because there was too much “lets all be friends and sing songs and dance and play games and wear stickers all day.” I wonder if lots of students skip orientation?
  • Wireless in CAB seems much faster than it used to be. Maybe it’s just that hardly anyone was using it on the first day?
  • Also on the topic of CAB (I had to stop there, for old times sake) I found out you can buy stuff from the cafeteria using your OneCard now! Apparently this isn’t a brand new development…but it’s not like I was really on campus last year to know that 🙂
  • I met Andrew, Megan and Renee for lunch at the PowerPlant. It was good to see them and we had a good time, but the service was absolutely horrible. The Plant has a “new look” and stuff this year, but they apparently chose to ignore how impossibly slow their service is. I remember now why I stopped going there. Next time we’re gonna try the new Hudson’s (where Scholars used to be).
  • Construction on the new Sciences building is moving along! Well sort of, the are still demolishing the old buildings, but still, it was a very busy and active place.

Now that the “course outline classes” are finished, the real lectures will begin tomorrow. I am taking two 300-level economics courses this term, a first year astronomy course, and a 200-level EAS course (as you can probably tell I am filling in the gaps for my program requirements). So far it’s a tossup between the astronomy course and the environmental economics course for which one looks most interesting. Astronomy is the clear winner in terms of scenery though 😉

More PS3 troubles for Sony

Post ImageYet more disappointment for fans of the Sony PS3. Just think about all the bad news we’ve seen so far: critics had a field day with the early controller, pricing for the console is rumored to be really high, and then there’s the whole Blu-Ray issue. And now? Delays:

Sony will delay the European launch of its PlayStation 3 game console by about four months to March and cut its target for worldwide shipments this year by half, the company said Wednesday.

Flagging potential problems with the PS3 launch, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities last month cut by half its shipment forecast to 3 million of the new PlayStations in the current business year to March, citing Sony’s difficulties in procuring its cutting-edge parts.

Is it just me, or does an Xbox 360/Nintendo Wii combination seem more appealing than ever?

Read: CNET News.com

Podcasting University Lectures

Post ImageBlogMatrix has a post up today about podcasting university lectures – particularly appropriate since I start classes again for the Fall semester bright and early tomorrow morning. While I fully intend to go to at least the first week of classes, all bets are off after that. And no, it’s not because I am lazy, or going shopping or anything like that, I simply have a business to run. Sometimes business and school conflict, and you need to make a decision – which is more important, this meeting, or a lecture? Most times, for better or for worse, I choose the meeting.

I wouldn’t miss anything though if the lecture was being recorded and made available as a podcast.

While the BlogMatrix post is more a point-form plan for how to implement such a thing, and how it would work, it touches on a few important points that deserve to be highlighted.

Podcasting a lecture is for the students in attendance too!
Of course there will be people like me who skip the lecture to do something else and simply want to listen to the podcast later. More importantly though, podcasting a lecture is useful for the students in attendance, as BlogMatrix points out: “students, instead of taking notes (or only notes), would record the time of a particular interesting or salient comment”. That would be incredibly useful. This point needs to be made very clear to the decision makers in a University, as they will most certainly protest the idea initially, citing fears that no one will go to class. I think such fears are baseless – there is value in attending the lecture, such as being able to participate in the conversation.

(As an aside, if the lecture contains no interaction and is just the professor standing at the front talking, then I’d be GLAD if podcasting it made attendance drop to zero. It’s ridiculous that students pay $500 for something like that, because you know most of the fees go to paying the professor anyway. It’s examples like this that show just how antiquated and bureaucratic the university system can be.)

The Wisdom of Crowds
Or in this case, the wisdom of students in the class. Let’s assume students can bookmark parts of the lecture – perhaps the most important or interesting parts. As noted in the BlogMatrix post, this is powerful stuff: “Collecting all these bookmarks across all students (and potentially across time) will provide collective intelligence/data mining/insight into what is really import in the lecture”. The ability to tag lectures and specific segments would further this collective wisdom.

Is security really an issue?
I don’t think so. The University doesn’t want people getting the lectures for free – I understand that. But how is making an MP3 file available any different than having some random person walk in off the street, sit in the class for an hour with a recorder, and put it online later? Especially in a lecture with 400+ students, I am surprised this doesn’t happen more actually. As long as sensitive or personal information is not included in the podcast, I don’t see security being much of an issue. I do agree with BlogMatrix though: “I don’t believe it’s the place of the vendor (i.e. me) to dictate requirements to a client”. If a university really wanted to integrate security, it shouldn’t be that difficult, as all universities have pretty extensive systems in place already.

Now, let’s look at this from the perspective of Podcast Spot (if you want a test account, email me). Could our technology support such a thing? With a few tweaks here and there, I believe so. We’ve got all the basics covered (like tags and comments), as well as a few of the more interesting requirements (such as random access). And there’s a bunch more features on the way too (such as improved methods of working with segments). It’s not going to happen (because I better graduate in April) but it sure would be cool to see Podcast Spot being used in my school. Maybe I’ll see it as an alumni 😉

I think podcasting will catch on in schools and other similar institutions, but it will take time. People inside the education world need to grok the benefits of podcasting, and still more have to lose their fear of the technology. When that happens, I think everyone will benefit.

Read: BlogMatrix

I still like magazines!

Post ImageDon Dodge asks whether newspapers and magazines are dying. I’ve been in this discussion before, at least for newspapers:

I hate almost everything about newspapers. I don’t like the size of the paper. I don’t like the way it makes everything black. I don’t like that every page has to be jammed full of stuff. I don’t like that the pages are not full color. I don’t like that once I find something interesting, I can’t do anything with it (like send it to a friend, or blog about it with a link, etc).

Needless to say, I think newspapers are a dying breed. Or if not dying, at least drastically changing (I still read newspaper websites online, for instance). The physical newspaper as we know it, won’t be around too much longer.

Magazines, on the other hand, will be around for a while I think. I’ll give you two pieces of evidence to support this. One is Chris Anderson’s mainstream media meltdown which shows that while newspapers, television, music, and others are losing eyeballs and subscribers like crazy, books and magazines are somewhat mixed. This suggests to me that people find magazines more valuable than say, a newspaper. Not the content itself (I am not suggesting that people don’t find a TV show valuable) but the medium – I think people like physical magazines and books.

Which brings me to my second piece of evidence – the magazine itself! Despite still not being able to do anything with the content in a magazine, the size is usually comfortable, and the pages are cleanly laid out and colorful (and don’t make my hands black). I often will refer back to a magazine article (and the articles themselves are usually longer and more indepth than your typical newspaper story). Don thinks the outlook for magazines might be worse than newspapers because newspapers are local focused. Perhaps he’s right, but I think it takes longer for a magazine article to be out of date than a newspaper story. There’s hope for magazines yet.

Don also asks: “What are your reading habits? How do they compare to your parents reading habits?” Probably not fair for me to answer that question, as my parents are fairly young and very tech savvy. My Dad subscribes to the Edmonton Journal online, and I doubt they read any other physical papers except the local “Inuvik Drum” (which I think is probably the norm in towns of only 3000 people).

Bottom line – newspapers will disappear and I won’t be sad to see them go. Magazines may disappear too, but it will take longer, and until we have digital books or magazines*, I’ll be sad to see them go.

Note: I’ve never actually subscribed to a magazine. I’m very a much a “buy on the spot when I see one that looks interesting” kind of magazine shopper.

* – by this I mean a physical book or magazine that looks like one today, except that it wirelessly connects to the Internet to update the content to be whatever I want to read. So pages don’t have “print” on them per se. This gives you the full benefits of say, a laptop, but with a form factor that is more natural and easy to read. And believe me, it’s coming.

Read: Don Dodge

Visualizing Information

Post ImageOne thing that really interests me is the different ways in which you can visualize information. Most often, text is simply not the best way. A picture really is worth a thousand words! Audio and video or animation of some sort can also be quite helpful in trying to comprehend something that may be difficult using just words. A good example is this post put together by Matt at the Signals vs. Noise blog:

Science presents some of the most interesting challenges for information designers. How do you help people grasp sizes, distances, and ratios that are nearly unimaginable?

You’ve got to check out some of the images he found, especially if you’re a teacher or parent. There’s some really interesting stuff! My favorite is the image of our solar system.

Read: Signals vs. Noise