Monthly Archives: January 2005

Gizmodo : NFL on iPod

In the first of what will likely be many attempts at commercializing podcasting, Gizmodo is reporting that the NFL has inked a deal with audible.com to make their games available for download via the Apple iTunes music store.

Complete recordings of games, including versions that feature local sportscasters, are expected to cost around $10 each, while highlights of games are expected to cost between $1 and $5.

It’s nice to be able to get games without the largely dreadful, completely homogenized national broadcasters doing voice-overs, or it would be if they were doing this for a better sport. The price seems a bit high to me though. Frankly, I’d probably spend $50 or more to be able to download all Oakland A’s games in a season, but I can’t imagine spending $10 a pop to download them one at a time.

AI Bots Pick The Hits of Tomorrow

Slashdot links to a story about the music industry using AI to choose hit songs. I can’t help but shake my head in shame. I’m reminded of a scene in the movie Dead Poets Society (excerpted here):

KEATING
Gentlemen, open your text to page twenty-one of the introduction. Mr. Perry, will you read the opening paragraph of the preface, entitled “Understanding Poetry”?
NEIL
Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech. Then ask two questions: One, how artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered, and two, how important is that objective. Question one rates the poem’s perfection, question two rates its importance. And once these questions have been answered, determining a poem’s greatest becomes a relatively simple matter.

Keating gets up from his desk and prepares to draw on the chalk board.

NEIL
If the poem’s score for perfection is plotted along the horizontal of a graph, and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness.

Keating draws a corresponding graph on the board and the students dutifully copy it down.

NEIL
A sonnet by Byron may score high on the vertical, but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will – so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.

Neil sets the book down and takes off his glasses. The student sitting across from him is discretely trying to eat. Keating turns away from the chalkboard with a smile.

KEATING
Excrement. That’s what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We’re not laying pipe, we’re talking about poetry.

My real problem with this isn’t that it is snake-oil. I suspect that this software works very well in finding records that maximize the success of record companies in producing music which sells. I merely think it is a tragedy to limit the music we hear to those few that some computer (or even a few record executives) thinks they can make a buck in promoting. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle of the banal, where generations of individuals grow up hearing only the most banal, market proven music imaginable and therefore don’t understand that music is more than that.

Tear that page out of your book, and stretch your own personal boundaries to find you own understanding of music.

Podcasting Police Fail to Stem Tide of Satire…

With the combination of my iPod suffering a meltdown and the Christmas holiday, I must admit that I am way behind on my podcast listening. While trying to catch up, I ran across yet another bit of “controversy” involving the PodFathers, Dave Winer and Adam Curry.

Apparently in a recent episode, Adam excerpted some bits from Yeast Radio, starring Madge Weinstein. Adam also conducted an interview with Madge.

The only problem is: Madge is just an act.

Actually, that’s not the problem. The real problem is their reaction to this “revelation”. I say “revelation” in quotes because I want to know who can listen to this podcast and be left with anything other than the certainty that this is a satire?

Apparently not content with looking merely foolish, Dave and Adam went off on a full-on rant in their Trade Secrets podcast, claiming that Yeast Radio wasn’t “appropriate podcast material”, and dismissing it with a f*ck you.

If I was charitable, I’d say they are just being asses to drive more traffic to their podcasts and more attention to their efforts. It’s dishonest and childish to behave that way, but it is perhaps possible to understand why grown men might react so childishly to the revelation of their own guillibility. But they assure us that that is not the case: that they are instead trying to enforce some kind of podcast ethic involving disclosure.

But if we assume that they are telling the truth as to their motives, they are guilty of a greater bit of stupidity: trying to act as the thought police for the podcasting world.

If we are charitable (and I’m less inclined to be so as time goes on and incidents like this mount), Dave and Adam together invented podcasting. But like all creative endeavors, just because you invented something doesn’t give you any special moral authority over it. You don’t get to be the king makers: listeners will do that. If someone wants to create a satirical radio show, I don’t think they should be forced to include some disclaimer to it to make it obvious to the slow witted that it is satire. If someone wants to create an entirely fictional podcast, describing their entirely fictional life, I don’t think they should have to get special exemptions. If someone later feels betrayed that the individual they thought exists is actually just a character, well, then golly, they can stop listening.

I’d stopped paying any attention to Dave Winer’s Scripting News when he decided to whimper and cry about the injustice of people not kissing his ass on New Years Eve, and Adam is following closely behind. It’s too bad, really. When their podcasts really were about doing something cool instead of providing a promotion machine for two individuals, it was a heck of a lot more interesting. Now we see just how bitter, angry, childish and downright foolish a nominally intelligent person can be.

You guys had a good idea, but it’s grown beyond the limitations of your vision. We don’t need your hardware, software, company, ideas or blessing to take it from here. My own sense of self worth is not tied to how many people download my podcast, or how many people consider me a pioneer, or how many BBC articles get written about me or how many times I appear on the Gillmor Gang. Most importantly, I don’t need your applause or your permission to do whatever the hell I want to.

Grow up. You are making the rest of us podcasters look bad.

Addendum: The Register had a nice article about the incident.

iPod returned!

iPod returned!My wife called and informed me that a Fedex Box had shown up from Apple with my newly repaired iPod tucked inside. Neat! Now I can catch up on all the podcasts I’ve been missing. Not bad, I mailed it in on the 13th, they got in on the 14th, and today is the 17th. Now that’s customer service.

Comcast to raise broadband speed

CNET News.com reports:

With Baby Bell local phone providers making inroads with cheaper but slower DSL service, Comcast and other cable companies hope to fight on speed rather than price. Comcast’s faster service, added at no extra cost to customers, will begin rolling out this quarter, the company announced on Sunday.

As previously reported, the nation’s largest cable and broadband provider’s current download speed of up to 3mbps (megabits per second) will jump to 4mbps. Upload rates of 256kbps (kilobits per second) will reach 384kbps, the company said. Customers of Comcast’s more expensive 4mbps service will see a 50 percent increase to 6mbps downstream and 768kbps upstream.

I must admit I’ve been entirely satisfied with Comcast as a cable modem provider. I do wish they would give you dedicated IP addresses, and didn’t have usage agreements forbidding servers, but still, overall their quality and uptime has been rather good

Russell reacts to Referer Spam…

Russell Beattie Notebook – Home

What I really want to do though is to be able to mark a URL as referrer spam, then the next time someone hits my machine with that URL as a referrer, a lethal electric shock is sent back through the internet into their computer, killing them and all of their referrer spamming family. (I’m thinking it’s a genetic trait to be such an asshole, might as well wipe them all off the planet in one shot). What do you think? Too severe? How about just torture instead?

One metachlorian short of a Jedi…

One last, long campout for ‘the Star Wars guy’

Jeff Tweiten lives on a periwinkle blue, fold-out futon on the sidewalk in front of the Cinerama Theatre.

He is not homeless, but camping out for 139 days. Waiting.

For Godot, you wonder? An organ transplant? The end of the world?

Jeff Tweiten is already waiting in line outside the Cinerama in downtown Seattle for the next “Star Wars” film.

Tweiten is waiting for “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” which opens May 19.

One correction: if you are camping out for 139 days waiting for the next Star Wars movie, you are unemployed, not a graphic artist.

Elektra

I had intended to go catch Elektra, the latest of the many Marvel epics, last night after Wil Wheaton’s booksigning, but by the time we got out of that it was after 10 and we really weren’t up to it. So, instead we waited till this morning and caught as a matinee.

On the way there, I read yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle review which showed the little theater guy sleeping in his chair. The reviewer mused that if Jennifer Garner continued doing Elektra, that we’d look back fondly on her appearance in 13 going on 30 as the apex of her acting career.

Having seen the movie, I think that’s a bit harsh. If Spiderman and X-men represent the apex of the pantheon of Marvel properties, then I think that Elektra, while not reaching those lofty heights, does not belong in the sub-basement with Daredevil, Catwoman and Hulk.

The story is very similar to the Batman theme: seemingly rich child suffers the death of her parents, leads a troubled life, guided by an older mentor who tries to guide her back to the path of good. If it was a man, he’d be Bruce Wayne. As a woman in red lingerie with sais, she’s Elektra.

Because the plot is so predictable, I won’t really bother giving any details. It is neither poorly nor masterfully done: it was a decent matinee, and I neither feel that my $5.75 was stolen, nor am I putting it on my list of much have DVDs. I give it a solid C+: if you are a fan of the genre or Ms. Garner, check it out.

Note to future casting directors though: Ms. Garner is radiant when she smiles, so try to give her a role where smiling occurs at regular intervals. It’s money in the bank.

Brainwagon Radio: Wil Wheaton’s Booksigning

Where your host forgoes his usual activities at Chabot Observatory and instead accompanies his wife to Wil Wheaton’s booksigning at the Border’s in Union Square.

As is true of many things, it was actually my wife who took notice of his blogging activities. I’ve read his blog off and on for quite some time, and have just become more and more impressed as time goes on. What I find most attractive about his day-to-day writings is that you can see the conflict that we all have within us: the conflict between our ego which tells us we are great and our doubts which tell us that we are failures. As an actor (and a struggling one), Wil experiences this inner battle with a frequency that may be higher than your typical individual, but we all can empathize. What I think is really remarkable is that while he still fights these battles, he’s clearly winning. Not winning in the sense that these battles no longer trouble him: only conceited asses never suffer from self doubt, but rather in the sense that he seems satisfied with the ride. He takes joy in his wife and children. He can now look back on his Star Trek experience, and he can look forward to a bright future as a writer, as a speaker, doing improv, and probably a bunch of things he hasn’t even thought of yet.

It’s great to see such a nice guy survive his early success and become a well rounded adult.

He also took time in the beginning to mention how terrificly empowering blogs are, repeating some of the themes that I’ve mentioned from time to time in these pages and in my podcasts. He’s a guy who realizes the power of the Internet is that we don’t have to approach so called “gatekeepers” for permission to participate in popular media: we just need very modest computer equipment and an Internet connection. He was really plugging the Internet as a vehicle for public expression. Right on!

Wil went way over on time, and then patiently signed and posed for photographs, doubtlessly listening to dozens of people’s stories, nodding patiently and good naturedly. When my wife went up to sign, he wrote a very nice note thanking her for her support, and noted that she had one of the very early copies of Dancing Barefoot. Wil, you get my thumbs up. Keep up the good work.