Internet TV: The future today

TV & Movies
Anyone who hasn't heard of Hulu should probably be checked for signs of brain damage, obviously caused by the weight of the rock they were living under for the last year or more. Basically, it gives you access to American TV over the Internet without needing to install anything except Flash.

But the problem is that it's only available to if you live in the United States. Or is it...

Proxy servers aren't a new thing, but they're typically a mess to find and configure, and often they've been taken offline before you find them. That's where Hotspot Shield comes in quite handy. And here's a little YouTube video to back me up.


Live Sport
The other thing I like to do is watch live sport. The easiest way I've found is to install SopCast which is a P2P video streaming application. This means that when I want to watch Chelsea smash every other Premier League or Champions League team about, I can.

All I have to do is find a SopCast link for the content, in much the same way that you would look for a BitTorrent link.

The sites I use for football are:

• http://livetv.ru/en
• http://www.myp2p.eu

Tangible Enthusiasm

On a recent wine tasting trip out to Coonawarra (think Australian Sideways), I ended up at Rymills - a nice modern building with a viewing deck over part of their vineyard.

After tasting some typically great Cab Sauv and a surprisingly coiffable Sauv Blanc, I decided on the ideal mixed case. The guy who was manning the cellar door sales was this great old guy, full off insight and armed with more than a little cynicism.

So after insisting he'd walk the case out to the car for us, he thanked us for visiting and for our "Tangible Enthusiasm", ie. actually purchasing something and not just drinking a load of free samples.

Brilliant.

MCs are to DJs what are tits are to a bull.

I listen to a decent amount of electronic music - drum'n'bass, dubstep, minimal, electro, dark... As a result, I download loads of mixes.

But I've yet to figure out what purpose the damned MCs serve. Whether I'm at the gig, or just on my iPod, MCs are just plain annoying. I'll eat my hat if someone can show me a mix where the MC actually makes it better.

Web vs Books: The Road to Victory

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7667610.stm
Use it or lose it.
Love it.

But remember, every day you live, it gets harder to use the damn t'Interwebs:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/middle-aged-users.html

And like Peter Gibbons says:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-81WdyD-8Ro
"Each day that you see me... It's the worst day of my life."

Nokia 7610 Supernova Campaign

brand tvc introduces central concept "my phone knows everything about me" and the main characters...
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=K7K7NvxnnfI

web video (from stills)...
http://www.scaryideas.com/video/8933/

anna's facebook...
http://www.new.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Randall/57295095008

voyeuristically look through the characters life via their phone...
http://annasphone.com/ --> http://www.somebodyelsesphone.com/anna/

think the whole thing is really well written - the language really fits the audience.
plus it's a nice way of creating a short-format digital media soap opera.
tv works really well when it's just an entertainment teaser with more detail in short & digestible pieces online. plus the potential for 2 way story development through user interaction is really interesting.

wonder how long before a tv content creator creates a proper tv show using the same core concept?

Microsoft Seinfeld v1.0

Had heard this was being produced. And I must say, I do like this trend where advertising is becoming entertainment, loosely based around a brand. Like the Cadbury's chocolate stuff from last year. And with the limitless media available online, you can get formats like this 4min 30sec piece from Microsoft.

So the model moves toward using traditional TV advertising just for short & focused teasers that lure the viewer online to experience the rest of the entertainment. Obviously TV itself is changing too, with more interactivity being available in the social atmosphere of the living room.

I see this stuff as being extremely positive for consumers. However, if TV advertising keeps getting less effective and revenues keep declining, how will good programming be paid for? Will everyone need to pay, or do we rely on the government initiatives like BBC, PBS or ABC? *eek*

iPhone

Today I caved in and bought an iPhone.
$70/mnth with Virgin buys me:

• Free phone
• $520 calls/mnth @ 80c/min
• 1Gb data

Firstly, I had to restart the wireless router to connect it to the webernet.

Also... I called Virgin to check if I needed to enable the 3G data stuff, and apparently you do (?), but they didn't actually tell me whether it was already connected or 3G coverage was lame where I am. Mobile coverage here is generally poor anyway, so I thought calling them couldn't hurt. Bottom line: it now works.

The interaction is really nice but, as everyone knows, the keyboard is a tad difficult - we'll see how much I get used to it.

After syncing my Gmail, which is dead easy, I discovered you can only natively sync Outlook Calender (lame!). Thankfully there's NeuvaSync which converts your Gcal to an Exchange format. Ez.

And then there's meebo.com so you can instant message or the AIM application.

Fun fun fun.