T-Mobile blocks Twitter

This strikes a cord lately with cellular services like Verizon and then AT&T paying lip service to "open". And people say we don't need net neutrality laws? I can't wait to see what becomes of this issue.

From: Alternageek Technology Podcast > T-Mobile blocks Twitter? (updated)

"T-Mobile would like to bring to your attention that the Terms and Conditions of service, to which you agreed at activation, indicate “… some Services are not available on third-party networks or while roaming. We may impose credit, usage, or other limits to Service, cancel or suspend Service, or block certain types of calls, messages, or sessions (such as international, 900, or 976 calls) at our discretion." Therefore, T-Mobile is not in violation of any agreement by not providing service to Twitter. T-Mobile regrets any inconvenience, however please note that if you remain under contract and choose to cancel service, you will be responsible for the $200 early termination fee that would be assessed to the account at cancellation."

From: T-Mobile Turns Off Twitter?

I’m a T-Mobile customer and testing the issue right now, although I have received sporadic updates as recently as last night. It would be quite astonishing if T-Mobile is blocking an opt-in text messaging service considering how common they are and T-Mobile’s relatively small market share in the U.S. However, it wouldn’t be the first time the company has been at loggerheads with a third party service. Earlier this year, T-Mobile blocked VOIP-based free calling service Truphone, but eventually lost in court.

There's an bit more including some responses from twitter on it at the interesting customer empowerment site getsatisfaction.com.

GetSatisfaction.com > T-Mobile Shuts Down Twitter Service for Good?

Western Digital DRM Hard Drive, the most insane DRM implimentation yet?

When I read this I thought it was a hoax, but April is 4 months off.

From: Western Digital DRM'd Hard Drive Won't Let You Share MP3, DivX

Western Digital's 1TB MyBook external hard drives won't share media files over network connections (UPDATE: Don't install the "required" client software! See workaround below). From the product page:

"Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access."

It doesn't matter what the files are: If you try to share these formats over a network, Western Digital assumes not just that you're a criminal, but that it is its job to police users. You see, MP3, DivX, AVI, WMV and Quicktime files are copy-protected formats.

The list of banned filetypes includes more than thirty extensions. Some of them are bizarre: .IT files are banned — these are Amiga-style music modules composed with Impulse Tracker, a particularly well-loved tracking sequencer that hasn't been updated in almost a decade. I composed with IT myself, back in the day, and still have all my shitty compositions, none of which Western Digital would have me share. (Try MOD vs. Speak&Spell masterpiece Eddie Dreams of Women, if you dare: IT, MP3)

Isn't it cute how the only data it views as worthy of policing are music and movies? These are the only copyrights that matter under corporate monkey law.

It's the most astonishing example of crippled equipment I've ever seen. A DRM'd hard drive! Whatever next? Dreaming meat?

Mmm.... Dreaming meat.

Wait... what the hell is wrong with Western Digital!?

It's so arbitrary, and they've done it on such a large scale. This may end up being the biggest DRM debacle ever.... though it will be hard to beat Sony's rootkit fiasco.

Certainly someone is going to end up suing them over this.

youtube, censorship and the open conversation space

Re: Egyptian anti-torture blogger says YouTube shut his account. - Boing Boing

This is a very egregious case of censorship. I've been following the censorship issue on youtube as it has happened time and time again.

These issues of censorship will inevitably happen again and again and again because Youtube has little concern in safeguarding the rights of it's users. It has an fundamental incapacity and has no economic incentive to protect it's users rights, nor the rights of copyright holders. In short, youtube is a mess.

Whether the excuse be violation of youtube's terms of service or copyright infringement the bottom line is centralized closed systems like youtube are fundamentally bad for safeguarding diverse conversation and culture.

On one hand video bloggers should know better to depend exclusively on a service like youtube. In order for the space to be diverse, dynamic and safeguard free speech it must support a diversity of hosts including completely independently hosted video blogs.

You might accuse me of tooting my own horn here, but this is not me promoting mefeedia (a pet project of mine for several years), but this is WHY I started working on mefeedia in the first place.

There must be an "open alternative" to the walled gardens like youtube. Mefeedia is approaching 30,000 video blogs and audio podcasts and they're hosted on 14,000 websites. Which include 300-350 video or audio specific hosting sites and the rest completely independently hosted endeavours. These videoblogs and podcasts reflect a quality and a diversity that is not found on youtube. This includes everything from the entire CBS nightly news (hosted by CBS), to independant endevours like Alive In Bagdad.

In a marketplace / conversation where people can host their own media or choose from a variety of competing services that marketplace can support the innovation and the diversity of the whole world and those people can safeguard their own voices from censorship.

Youtube may have had an early lead, and I bear them no ill will, but they have simply become the AOL of video. Just like AOL before it is not an ecosystem which can meet the diverse needs of a global conversation. The conversation must be decentralized, diverse, and remixable.

These means independant hosts of content, and independant places for sharing, searching and discussion of that content. It is not just about Wael Abbas' right to securely post his videos of human rights abuses, but also the right of the individual to comment and discuss them independantly of Wael Abbas's domain. The videos are the very article of discussion. As such they must not be bound to any one host or domain and to do so it to restrict and censor the scope of that conversation.

The future is open, Verizon to support any device or app on it's network?

Some people may overlook the importance of this.

Verizon opens up, will support any device, any app on its network

However, the end-to-end (aka. common carrier, aka. network neutrality) principal of the Internet is slowly taking over how other networks operate as well.

These networks are increasingly finding themselves *competing* with the Internet and they cannot do so without opening themselves up and creating a level playing field for innovators as well. You can see it with cellular networks (competing with wifi & the infinite array of internet services), traditional telephony (competing with VOIP), and to some degree cable TV, which is now competing in a very direct way for the attention of younger generations.

What this eventually means for Verizon customers is:

• Good bye having to *rent* the GPS features on your phone.


• Good bye ridiculous 10 cent text messages.


• Good bye paying $2.99 for ring tones.


• Good by buy or rent stupid applications like "weather" on your sell phone.


• Good bye having to pay $10 a month extra just to be able to blog photos from your camera capable phone.


• Good by having to choose a cell phone based the scant choices your cellular company provided.

What this means is in the long run a veritable cornucopia of services will be available to you on your phone, whatever entrepreneurs or anyone else can dream up, and all you'll have to pay Verizon for is the bandwidth you use.

What Verizon looses off charging service fees for few obtuse services they will MORE than make up for selling bandwidth for the 100,000's of thousand mobile services that will increase the utility, use and validity of their network.

Verizon no longer gets to tax based on the contents of the package or the type of service. Unlike the cable companies they no longer get to pick which content makers get to use their network.

They're now pledging to be a "carrier neutral" shipping company for bits. This throwing away of arbitrary and frankly stupid criteria can now mean innovation can really happen. Verizon will no longer arbitrate the winners and losers instead the playing field will be open to ALL comers. All, specifically meaning anyone who has access to the Internet or a cell phone. This means potentially billions of users can use or offer services or benefit from services on their network instead of the few dozen services Verizon offers its customers now.

It is funny to watch how the cellular provider "tax" on items like the absurdly overpriced 10 cent text message and other capabilities of cell phones have shifted and distorted innovation which has routed itself around them.

This taxing has been going on, and will still continue to go on for a while, but with Verizon declaring its cellular network neutral, the apple iPhone challenging traditional rules set down by cellular carriers and above all Google throwing down the gauntlet in helping create an open source mobile OS the paradigm for these closed networks like cable, cellular, and traditional telephony seem to be opening up.

The future is open.



Related article: Apple to Unveil Faster IPhone, AT&T's Stephenson Says - Bloomberg.com

Six things to be thankful for in technology, 2007

From: Six things to be thankful for in technology, 2007

Number 1:

Finally, DRM is dying

Ken Fisher: 2007 is the year of the infamous Steve Jobs open letter on DRM, the year that EMI got brave enough to kick DRM to the curb, and even Universal is considering the idea. I've long argued that DRM isn't about piracy, it's about selling your rights back to you. With the growing backlash against DRM, smart players are realizing that their customers don't want to be treated like thieves, even if the MPAA has the gall to suggest that they do. Yet, even the MPAA knows that customers are tired of seeing their fair use rights trampled, coming out earlier this year to call for a change in the industry.

DRM isn't dead yet, but the writing is on the wall. DRM for music will likely not last another year. DRM for video is another matter, as those players remain convinced that their products need protection. Once DRM dies in the music scene, however, the pressure will be on Hollywood to explain why it continues to trample on fair use.

Number 3:

The big disrupter: the iPhone

Eric Bangeman: I admire many of Apple's products—and I've been a Mac user for 22 years—but I also find myself irritated by some of the things the company does. But this year, I'm truly thankful for a game-changing product from Apple, the iPhone.

I've been a smartphone/PDA junkie for close to a decade and have used just about every mobile OS known to humankind during that time. The iPhone has truly made my life easier with its innovative UI, ease of use, and incredibly tight integration with Mac OS X (something no other smartphone has ever achieved). It makes me more productive (NewsGator's iPhone RSS interface is simply amazing), entertains me when I want to be entertained, and in its jailbroken form allows me to add extra functionality as I wait for official third-party apps to be released early next year.

The iPhone is significant not just because it is such a compelling product, however.The iPhone is sending a message to people at Apple and indeed everywhere that phone lock-ins aren't cool, and that the product can and will be made better by its community. In just a few short years, we'll look back and see how the iPhone caused a mobile revolution much like the BlackBerry did in the Enterprise.

No further commentary necessary. :)

Is there any potential for youtube high definition?

For those of you who don't know a few weeks back Vimeo.com, one of the leading hosting services for video creators offered a high definition hosting service. Last week Youtube announced their own intentions to do so. Note, no youtube service yet exists.

This brings up a very valid point.

What use is their in HDTV for youtube?

Youtube has in effect created a service that fundamentally gives creators neither freedom, nor security.

Censorship of content is completely at random and widespread on the service as is copyright infringement to the point it's entirely impossible to track where the infringement ends and the censorship begins.

Authors have had whole histories of 100's of video deleted on a whim. These and all comments and discussion on them are gone from history has if they never existed. Youtube takes no responsibility for safeguarding creators works and simultaneously takes no responsibility for protecting copyright owners.

Worst of all youtube fundamentally requires ownership of all materials posted to it. Requiring users to give up all liberty / freedom of their content. This means there shall be no profiting and no innovation on youtube except by that by which youtube deems fit. Furthermore there should be no illusion as to whether any potential profit shall be taken by the users or youtube given youtube's sale for $1.6 billion to google and given creators have signed away all right to such profits on any materials posted.

This sort of lopsided structured agreement (if you can call it an agreement at all) is not a conducive environment for creators of valued content.

One must therefore question whether their is any chance for youtube's service to become anything more than the simple experimental playground it is. One must question whether it has any potential to grow up into a content provider that offers anything more then at best fair use clips, viral video clips, experimental clips from home users and other such elements of so called "clip culture" or at worst copyright infringing materials.

Personally I see no future for youtube as a host for any content worthy of HD. It's not a host for artists, not a host for videographers, not a host acceptable for film shorts, not for documentaries, not for sitcoms, fundamentally not acceptable given it's censorship for forms of news, societal critique, critical dissent nor any other form of valued content.

In short youtube has defined itself as a proprietor of only the most base form of video and has no capacity or potential for greater value to either the general public or the traditional media companies whom are pulling out of it in droves. Youtube has defined itself as such, and is now stuck in a rut. It is no longer the nimble young company it is and no longer has the capability to redefine itself as a worthy proprietor of content.

On the flip side mefeedia.com (disclaimer: my hobby of the last 2.5 years) has tracked to date almost 30,000 video feeds coming from over 15,000 different hosts. These vary from Vimeo, to blip.tv, to over 350 similar professional video hosting services. However the vast majority of these 15,000 hosts are independent creators.

This content represents the true vitality and future of the video space. These creators and OWNERS of their content represent the true scope of humanity. They vary from hobbiest and home recorders to professional artists, videographers, hollywood types, even the largest traditional media companies. They represent from simple video snapshots as one would shoot and record photos, to the entire CBS news, feature length movies in the public domain, to critical political dissent, to the politicians themselves.

This is a diversity that is not reflected in youtube and which can fundamentally only occur where the creators retain their ownership, and with that ownership both their freedom and security of their speach.

This is fundamentally important because this space is not simply about entertainment or any of the more traditional forms of media, it is above all about communications. Not mass communications, as in communicating to the masses, but mass communications, as in video henceforth will be another means for the masses to communicate with each other, like email or the telephone but infinitely more powerful.


The following is what Jakob Lodwick had to say on the same issue. Hopefully he will not mind my putting it forth in it's entirety. It is not a subject that I feel can be made sound bytes or pull quotes of.

A lot of people are asking me what I think about YouTube’s vague HD aspirations. My response is the same as to any other YouTube product announcement.

YouTube is an illicit organization built upon a self-destructive philosophy. This is not an academic point: all businesses depend on their philosophy. Whether that philosophy is determined though conscious design, or whether it accumulates randomly over the months, is the choice of the businesses’ leaders.

YouTube acts upon the premise that the creator does not have a right to his own creation. Claiming safe harbor under the DMCA is the cop-out of the decade. If they valued digital property rights, they would proactively delete stolen content.

Today, the quality of YouTube vids is so abysmal that it’s not an alternative to the iTunes Store or television. But releasing HD will bring YouTube one step closer to the legal decision that either cripples them or shuts them down entirely. It will only hasten the fury of the creators, both corporations and individuals, who hate seeing their hard work ripped off so that other corporations have a place to advertise. Both those groups have tremendous power: the corporations because they have billions of dollars, and the individuals because they’re creating the videos that are being watched in the first place and can easily post them elsewhere.

YouTube still has the opportunity to adopt a legitimate philosophy. They could adopt a policy of protecting the rights of the people who make videos. But do you really expect it from Steve Chen, who has uploaded two videos in the past 10 months, or Chad Hurley, who has zero videos? If you are a creator, these guys do not give a fuck about you, neither as a person nor as a demographic. They do not understand your values nor why you are valuable; why do you think this will change?

PS: I imagine they feel deeply guilty, consciously or subconsciously, about their current evil policies, and this explains their goofy non-profit “cause” efforts. If these guys truly want to “make a difference”, how about doing the right thing in the first place? One limp ‘right’ does not reverse the damage of a collosal ‘wrong’.

F.C.C. Planning Rules to Open Cable Market

"The Federal Communications Commission is preparing to impose significant new regulations to open the cable television market to independent programmers and rival video services after determining that cable companies have become too dominant in the industry, senior commission officials said" I'll believe it when i see it and not a minute sooner!

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Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!

I thought I should blog about this.

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we've created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they'd find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren't aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us 'til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer...

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul

I think what he's trying to say is go download his album.

Pay $5 if you like for a 320kbps mp3 or lossless flac version, or try the 196kbps mp3 version for free. He may be more poetic, but he's one of the few people who's wordier then I. Great song writer, bad copywriter. Get to the point buddy, we have short attention spans here! :)

Seriously though. This is the future, wordy copy writing doesn't mean a damn thing. Even if he had misspellings it wouldn't really mean a damn thing in the big picture. Such things miss the point. Being personal, building an honest direct relationship with your fans, that's what this is all about. Saul and Trent are just doing what huge corporate conglomerates have been doing for years, cutting out the middle men. This is just a first step, no need for perfection. Musicians have all the time in thw world to polish their communications skillz.

I must admit, I haven't listened to Saul's latest album yet. (Six minutes remaining till download.) However I have very much enjoyed what I've heard of his previous work in all its untamed rawness especially his music video, List of Demands. Since I haven't listened I don't know what I can say about this new album other then, "Why not go download it for free and see if you like it?"

If you do like it be a patron, add to the tip jar and pass on the good word.

P.S. Love the references to David Bowie's stage persona Ziggy Stardust.

Read more on Saul Williams/Niggy Stardust on wikipedia.

Also, It's important to acknowledge that Trent Rezner and Saul Williams are obviously following the lead of Radiohead with their freely downloadable, name your own price album In Rainbows (wikipedia) which came out in the last week or two.

This release follows the exact same model as Radiohead's In Rainbows. Trent Rezner and Saul have learned from Radiohead's rookie mistakes making sure it's much easier to find the new album on the website and are using Amazon's muchos scalable S3 hosting platform to handle the anticipated rush of downloads.

We are definitely at the very beginning of something big here. After years of it running over the damn is finally letting go. Let the music flow!

Update: Upon second, third and forth reading, I love Saul's copy.

Comcasts' leaked talking points memo

I had to repost this. It's just amazing. Lying to your customers is step one for Comcast. I think this pretty much makes the case for the need for net neutrality laws.

Re: Leaks: Comcast's "We Don't Throttle BitTorrent" Internal Talking Points Memo

All,
You may get customers who are contacting us with regard to several articles which were published recently, accusing Comcast of blocking or otherwise filtering customers' Internet traffic. An in-depth AP story suggests Comcast is hindering our customers' ability to use BitTorrent, a peer to peer file sharing program. If a customer contacts us to inquire about this, please use the following talking points.

Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent

We respect our customers' privacy and we don't monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as which websites they visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site...

We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good experience online and we use the latest technologies to manage our network. This is standard practice for ISPs and network operators all over the world.

We rarely disclose our vendors or our processes for operating our network both for competitive reasons and to protect against network abuse.

If a customer asks:
I read that Comcast is limiting customer access to BitTorrent. Is this true?

Respond:
No. We do not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent. We also respect our customers' privacy and don't monitor specific customer activities on the Internet or track individual online behavior, such as which websites they visit. Therefore, we do not know whether any individual user is visiting BitTorrent or any other site.

We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good experience online and we use the latest technologies to manage our network. This is standard practice for ISPs and network operators all over the world.

Are you working with Sandvine as these reports claim?

Respond:
We rarely disclose our vendors or our processes for operating our network both for competitive reasons and to protect against network abuse.

Please do not deviate from the responses above. If you have any questions about this issue, please reach out to Brian Becker, Gene Bridges or myself.

Thanx...
________________________________________
Michael S. Groman
Manager / IP Support
MD-DE-RCH Region

IP, it's not intellectual property, it's Intellectual PRIVILEGE.

Trademarks, Patents and Copyrights are not physical goods. They don't behave like physical goods. They cannot be stolen like physical goods. They are not rights. They are economic incentives. It's time we start calling them what they really are. IP is "intellectual privilege".

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The Best of Lonely Tree: Fog, Tree, Road

I'm honored to have one of my photos chosen as The Best of Lonely Tree :)

IMG_6711 ---- fog, tree, road, originally uploaded by MichaelMeiser.

(via)

Keychain GPS

GPS technology is getting there. And by there I mean the proverbial cheap and simple.

I've been telling people for a while I'm waiting for a GPS unit that costs $50 or less, has an on/off button, can record for 24+ hours, has a USB port and fits on a keychain. No screen, no maps, just a button an on/off button and a USB. Bonus points if it can run on a standard AAA or AA battery you can pick up anywhere.

Why? I don't need to know where I'm at. I don't need some complex device that I need to keep charged constantly.

What I need is something I can throw in my pocket or keep on my kechain that can passively record my bike rides and other various activity for fun things like route sharing, mapping, analyzing the proverbial fitness data like speed, distance, vertical footage and other data easily deriveable from GPS data, and finally syncing the GPS location/time data with other data such as photographs and videos for geo-tagging and mapping happiness.

So where are we at on this little dream?

Well, the Freedom Keychain GPS still retails for anywhere from $80 to $100 so it's a bit over my $50 price point but it's extremely overshot all my other expectations. It can run for 10 hours without a charge and it turns out there's no need for USB output. It has Bluetooth. All the better. With Bluetooth it can theoretically add GPS support for any bluetooth compatible device from your smart phone to your laptop.

There's only three questions that aren't clear.

1) I don't see anything about passive date/time recording. Can it actually record time/location in a standard format like GPX?

2) What kind of software is available for my Mac?

3) Apple has announced they're opening the iPhone up to developers in February. Soo... when am I going to be able to get software for my iphone that lets me tap into this GPS data in realtime and mash it up with things like google maps?

I've got to say. Other then the fact that it doesn't seem to passively record time and location (at least in so far as I can read) it seems like it's already well exceeded my expectations.

I'd also like to point out pretty much every new cell phone has GPS built in. The only reason we don't have more GPS aware apps that mashup google and gps data over wireless data is because cellular providers are morons. Not just any kind of morons, but evil morons.

3 major things that annoy me about Apple Quicktime on the web

It has became abundantly clear that Apple Quicktime has some major failings for video playback on the web. There are many issues but right now I just want to focus on three extremely obvious things Apple is doing wrong which is pushing video makers, video watchers and video hosting sites away from quicktime.

1) lack of fullscreen playback in web browsers

2) lack of support for linux

3) conflicting keyboard shortcuts make playing quicktime videos in Firefox and safari painful.


Quicktime has no fullscreen playback in the browser

I could name off the top of my head over two dozen video hosting websites from Blip.tv to Youtube to Vimeo.com that have fullscreen playback as a stock feature of their video players. Nearly every single video hosting company today uses Flash as their default playback mechanism and nearly every one has a button right in the default player that allows for the immediate playback of their videos in full screen.

Counterpoint this to Apple Quicktime. Apple just recently stopped requiring users to pay $30 to buy a Quicktime Pro license to be able to play videos in fullscreen mode among other things. Having to pay to play videos fullscreen has always been a thorn in the side of quicktime authors and their fans and thank you apple for finally allowing fans to view videos in any manner they choose... but... Apple has not included in either the menu or as button in the web browser player a fullscreen playback option.

In an age where everyone and their mother has fullscreen playback as a default feature of their video Apple has fallen way behind.


No quicktime support for linux

I've been dabbling in linux for years. For the last year or so I've been using the very nice linux distribution Ubuntu on my primary desktop computer. My one major failing with the Ubuntu platform is there's no browser plugin for playing back all the quicktime formats in the browser.

Quicktime is available for Windows so why hasn't Apple released a version of Quicktime for linux or at least worked with open source developers to create a plugin that will play back Quicktime videos in web browsers on linux. Clearly linux and particularly Ubuntu are a large part of the future of desktop computing.

Macromedia Flash does have an available plugins for linux, which is yet another reason why it's so popular with video sharing sites. So why not apple?


Apple Quicktime has conflicting keyboard shortcuts in Firefox and Safari

I recently upgraded to Firefox 2.0.0.8 (a very nice release) that makes the browser much more "mac-like" in both appearance and usability. There is however one thing that they carried over from Safari that's just plain wrong.

Firefox now uses the key commands "command-option-left arrow / right arrow" to switch between tabs. They copied this shortcut combination from Safari.

The problem is in their infinite wisdom the Safari team had used the same key commands to switch tabs as to play quicktime movies forward and in reverse. Therefore if you have have any Quicktime video in a web page and you flip through your tabs left or right it will automatically start the video playing in forward or reverse.

Add more tabs with more videos and what you have is a major mess with multiple videos playing, your speakers squawking gibberish, and very quickly these videos start stuttering and skipping as your hard drive and your processor get over taxed and up comes the "multi-color spinning pizza of death" (or "the spinning beach ball of death" as some prefer to call it) mouse cursor as your system becomes somewhat unresponsive making it increasingly hard for you to undo what you've just started in .5 seconds by skipping between a few tabs using command-option-left / right.

That my friends is piss poor experience and usability do to one of the most obvious errors in usability. First do know harm. Or better the number one rule of implementing quick keys: First make sure no other commands use the same key combination.

We're talking pretty basic and obvious stuff here.

I find it both funny and extremely bad that Apple, who's focus on usability is legendary, has completely missed this point with perhaps the most used application on the mac OS, Safari. I find it even more humorous that Firefox has replicated the issue by bringing the same keyboard shortcuts conflict to the Firefox browser. No doubt many people are running into this usability bug on a daily basis in some shape or form.

The only workaround I know at present is to use control-tab and control-shift-tab in firefox to switch tabs. This works on mac, not sure about windows or linux. No idea on a work around in safari. You also cannot change these keyboard shortcuts in safari, firefox or quicktime with the Mac OS system wide "Keyboard Shortcuts" control panel because none of them can be selected via the menu so they're not scriptable. I've also checked the "about:config" settings in Firefox, and done some initial digging around in the system and library folders on the Mac OS. Still there appears to be no way to change these settings. If you know of any please leave a comment. :(

In summary

In summary it has become increasingly clear that Apple Quicktime supported formats such as MP4 have huge advantages when it comes to video syndication and distribution. They scale well to high definition, they're downloadable and portable unlike many Flash videos and they're playable on a wide range of devices from iPod's to Tivo to the Zune and Sony PSP. However, when it comes to web based playback of video Flash is kicking Apple and everyone else's butt (including Windows Media and Real Media).

Flash has become so popular for web based playback because it has such highly customizable playback interface and streams so well. In many ways flash is fulfilling much of the promise of what many used to call "interactive television" or "interactive media".

Instead of being able to click on the skirt of model as she walks down the runway to get more info on the item or purchase it... Instead of "choose your own adventure" in video interactivity has been primarily obsessed with a few key features such as the ability to share a video via a wide range of options and the ability to click through and view a whole host of alternative videos, content, links and meta information that goes with the video (and don't forget commenting). While these forms of interactivity are nothing like the slick ideas we were so focused on in the past they are in many ways far more powerful, robust, interactive and meaningful then anything we'd previously imagine. As I'm fond of saying: The future is nothing like we thought it would be and yet so much better.

Where as purchasing a skirt worn by a model on a runway is one of those silly ideas of the past. The present reality of interactivity is thousands of people seeing a video on a website like youtube, sharing the url with their 14 million friends via IM email and other means, favoriting it, downloading it, remixing it, posting it to their own blogs and thereby potentially effecting great change in the "hearts and minds" of a nation. The later example may not be as slick and shiny an idea of interactivity as the first but in is in it's simplicity of technology and the sophistication and ubiquitous social nature far far more power.
web-services

As the market evolves instead of these online viewing and offline viewing paradigms converging they seem to be at least for the moment diverging. While the the iTunes Podcasting Directory and podcasting with it seems to go one direction web-services like youtube seem to be going another. Both are equally as important though.

Meanwhile the core user group, video bloggers / video podcasters and the web-services that best represent their interests like Vimeo.com and Blip.tv are increasingly offering MediaRSS feeds that contain many different enclosure formats for playback in various situations including Flash for playback on the web, low res Quicktime for playback on the iPod and various hand held devices, and the latest greatest buzz high definition MP4 or h264 encoded videos for playback on HD television and/ or with video aggregators like Miro.

The point is video will get more ubiquitous. Platforms will become more varied. They will become simultaneously higher definition and lower resolution. They will also simultaneously become longer in form and shorter. More personal and more aimed at entertaining or informing a general audience. Simultaneously more interactive and more passive.

The cell phone and ubiquitously connected wifi handhelds like the iPhone are one of the next hot platforms. And more and more videoblogs are also finding their way onto high definition TV screens in the living room via media centers and set top boxes like the Tivo and AppleTV. And of course with great new linux distro's like Ubuntu 7.10, aka. Gutsy Gibbon, increasingly a larger share of the general public is going to be using operating systems other than Apple and Microsoft. Let's not forget all the proprietary operating systems in handheld devices and set top boxes either. While web playback is the key the video space is increasingly becoming about far more than just the two primary operating systems Apple and Microsoft.

This is not be a winner take all game. In fact there's room for many different codecs and many different formats, sizes and resolutions. The web browser as in so many markets is the key platform. However as this market evolves whomever pays the most attention to and puts the most resources into bringing video these evolving markets like linux, cell phones and set top boxes is going to obviously take a key position in this market.

Right now Flash has very quickly (really since the advent of youtube only a couple years ago) taken the upper hand with web based playback. Apple has a very strong position with portable devices with the iPod and AppleTV (bringing media to the pocket and the living room). Apple would also seem to have a lead in the cellular market with the iPhone, but Flash has very bright prospects there as well with it's ability to be customized for streaming and playback over 3g and wifi. We'll see how it all plays out.

Will Apple Open the iPhone?

From: Will Apple Open the iPhone?

It's rumored that some major players already have been given the iPhone development kit. The list is said to include gaming software maker Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Google (GOOG), which has already built versions of Google Maps and its YouTube video site for the iPhone. Electronic Arts declined to comment, while a source at Google indicated that the search company hasn't been give early access to the iPhone kit.

Meanwhile, companies that specialize in software for wireless phones are jockeying for Apple's attention. "We've been working with the Web interface for some time but would love to embed our technology on the iPhone itself," says Brian Bogosian, CEO of Visto, a privately held software outfit that specializes in e-mail software for mobile phones. Similarly, a startup named iSkoot, which offers an application for making Skype (EBAY) phone calls on mobile devices, says it's eager to adapt its software for the iPhone platform.

All I want for Christmas is a new iPhone which works with my choice of VOIP carriers so I can make free calls anywhere there's wifi. I figure that adds an immediate $150-$250 to the price as skype phones start at $150. But it's way more than that in long term benifits. The convienience of VOIP on the iPhone will make it even more compelling still over the long term. And this is just ONE application that can be brought to the iphone overnight. Once apple opens the doors to the long tail of innovation the network effect takes over. The true value of the iphone will skyrocket blowing the value curve/ value proposition for all other cellular companies. They will eventually have to stop playing favorites with controling services and features on phones on their networks with bullshit service charges like text messaging, and streaming video feautres and accept that allowing others to create and market these feautres which will run on these phones will cause the value of their cellular networks and the utlizization of their cellular networks to skyrocket, just like web services created value for internet service providers to sell broadband.

The problem is *sshat cellular companies still think we're in a cable tv paradigm where they can block millions of innovative services and instead opt to sell you one or two like text messaging at ridiculously inflated prices. That paradigm is dead or dying. User perceptions in the market are changing rapidly. Customers will no longer be willing to pay greatly inflated prices for a very limited selection of services. They will come to expect on cell phones as they have on the web best of breed apps regardless of who the cellular carrier intends to favor. The iPhone is perhaps the greatest symbol of that change. If cellular carriers don't respond to this shift in paradigm from service provider to common carrier access provider innovation will route right around them, just like VOIP on WiFi.

youtube, free speach and the tyrany of private public spaces, v2

"Youtube. This account is suspended."

This is a story we're starting to see time and time again. Youtube deleting user accounts completely without any due cause being given to the owner of the account. Traditional media companies abusing the DMCA to silence critics.

It's an issue I've written about before.

As covered on newteevee Pubdef.net "an online destination for video reports from St. Louis and the state of Missouri published by Anotonio D. French, a newspaper reporter who was frustrated with local news coverage" had his entire youtube account deleted on accusations that one of his videos violated Channel 5 St. Louis' copyright.

The video (embeded below) was critical of Channel 5's unsubstantiated claims that an local alderman took bribes in a realestate swindle. Was it fair use or copyright infringement? View it below and be your own judge.



Pubdef has re-hosted the video on his own site. Of course the majority of the other 200+ videos are gone. You can read his original post over on pubdef.net.

What disturbs me most about this is it's hard to feel sorry for the guy and his readers when he apparently has gone right back to hosting his videos on youtube under the the new userneame PubDefTV. Dude! Move to a reputeable host like blip.tv!