YouTube Watch
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 Mr Interested
The boys and I like to look at train videos on YouTube from time to time. Trainspotters the world over have taken hold of YouTube for the distribution of their work and dads with young boys are benefiting hugely.
Anyway, that’s not what this post is about. Browsing around YouTube (it’s impossible not to), I saw quite a lot of people posting “responses” to original content videos. This is not a facility provided by YouTube but rather something that seems to be springing up organically from the user community. People are making response videos to whatever they see and posting “Re: Flying Cheese Monster Hits Light Pole” wherein the virtues and failings of the Cheese Monster are discussed.
I watched a few of the responses. They’re all horrible, horrible rubbish, without exception. Anybody who’s made one of these things should be ashamed. This garbage adds nothing of value to my YouTubing and frankly I want that bit of my life back that I wasted watching them. Oh, and I’ll just say that when you’re making a video of yourself, people, look into the camera. The whole watching yourself on the computer screen while you’re filming yourself annoys the snot out of me. But I digress.
My assessment of the worthlessness of this content doesn’t mean that it’s not worth-ish-y. I’m not quite the best when it comes to spotting trends and value on the Internet because I still don’t see the point of MySpace, but it seems to me that this could be the next big thing. What’s more Internet than monotonic emo children preening and complaining about something they just watched on YouTube? Nothing! It’s MySpace redux.
So that’s what this looks to be becoming, a form of video MySpace. YouTube’s next big challenge (and a gauge of how sharp they are or aren’t) will be to provide new and innovative bits of functionality to handle their becoming MechaMySpace, like built in response handling. If they succeed in doing this, they win. Again. If they don’t they could lose out big to the next up and comer that makes socializing in this more bi-directional manner a core part of the product.
Radical Worldview, for the week of 2007-02-18
Sunday, February 18, 2007 NBEHTM
There seems to be quite a bit on the net claiming this fellow a lier, but what I don’t understand is why his message is not accepted or echoed. That is the issue here; he is claiming full rejection of his Muslum Mosque to his statements & that doesn’t seem to be the focus of the Mosque’s rebuttle. Check out one of his interviews & come to a decision:
Interesting Interestings for 2007-02-17
Saturday, February 17, 2007 NBEHTM
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Tonight’s the night Daniel (Harry Potter) dares to bare
How far would you go to break a stereotype?
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Frog in amber could be 25 million years old
Jurassic Park anyone?
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Ricky Martin defends anti-Bush gesture
Like Bush or not; why do we care so much about what celebrities have to say?
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Mauritania pilot outwits hijacker
Action must be taken to remove power from desperate people.
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Nuclear deal fuels Kim’s celebrations
He Crazy!
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Spain hopes for Madrid bombs justice
We must to more to fight to fight terrorism.
Can’t Get Away From Apple
Saturday, February 17, 2007 Mr Interested
Sorry - Apple’s my fixation. Some interesting things have popped up recently and they bear on the iPhone, my current pet peeve. First, the Chinese company Meizu is showing a device that looks remarkably like something we’ve seen before. I’m certainly not surprised. How long will Apple be able to retain its brand coolness when everybody has something that looks the same? Are the white earbuds going to be enough? Though FIC wasn’t able to get the look down, they’ve got a full-screen device on the way in March. Linux based, it’s not going to rule the world but it’s another leak in the dike. This list shows that the full screen mobile device market isn’t quite an empty field that Apple wants people to believe it is - remember what I said about the vicious nature of cell phone market? (Look specifically at the section entitled “Awakening the Sleeping Giant”) For my money, this device by Samsung looks really nice - I wonder what the candid response by Jobs would be to it? Is it worthless because it actually includes a keyboard? Somehow I don’t see that as a liability.
Enough doom and gloom - it appears that Apple is still doing well, despite the critics. Their recent earnings set a new record. What is really interesting here is that for the first time in a while the most popular item on their web store was not the iPod, but rather was the Apple TV box. This is profound. Apple is now going to see a surge in sales of media through the iTunes store as people are able to share their movies and TV shows with the family. These media sales have got to have a pretty good margin for Apple. After all, selling more episodes of the office from their web store isn’t going to require Apple to open up new research offices in Berkley or outsource anything to China or India. They’ll pretty much just make more money.
So, Apple as the media giant - is anybody nervous or do we all welcome our new overlords?
Robert X Cringely has an interesting take on Apple TV. He thinks that Apple TV is expensive if all it is is a media hub, in the vein of a slingbox. Cringely’s thought is that a 40GB hard drive is overkill and that means that Apple is trying to “trojan horse” some sort of other functions or features into customers houses. He thinks that this means that Apple TV is really just a fancy Bittorrent machine which will give Apple control of the most powerful distribution channel in the whole of the media industry.
Interesting thoughts, but I’m not buying it. Apple would have to make customer participation in such a network “opt in” if they wanted to maintain good relations with their customers. Given that, how many people would agree to let their Internet connections be used in such a manner, with space on the 40GB hard drive that they (the customer) bought and own fair and square be used by Apple to increase Apple’s profit margin? I’d guess not many.
Rather, I think that the hard disk is there so that I don’t have to have a powered computer running in order to watch TV. Seems logical to me. Occam’s razor.
Interesting Interestings for 2007-02-16
Friday, February 16, 2007 NBEHTM
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Thats right you read it right, Laser Comb. Turns out it increases your hair density.
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More chiming in with Jobs. This certainly seems like a great PR move on Job’s part.
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I guess the fact that you can throw 2 Gig’s of information on a wee stick isn’t enough, there is a trend to make the USB drive do more. I think it should stick to what it does best, store information with minimal space. :-D.
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Hrm, an open source phone; I like it. :).
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YIKES! This trend best had not continue. :(.
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SQUIRREL! :-D.
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Ooooooh!
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What would it mean to be immortal? I doubt it’s all that it would be cracked up to be.
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Ahhhhhhhhhh!
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Cool pic.
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Ooooooooh.
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Dang. :).
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WOW! What an awesome looking building.
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Taking note.
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In today’s world, we all should take note. :-D.
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AWESOME!
Interesting Interestings for 2007-02-15
Thursday, February 15, 2007 NBEHTM
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Yikes!
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:-D. Hey this sounds like a simple, good idea.
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Interesting use of the Zune. -
YIKES!
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Strange.
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Mixed emotions.
Interesting Interestings for 2007-02-14
Wednesday, February 14, 2007 NBEHTM
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This should be interesting in the least.
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This is simply a fascinating idea. It’s amazing how the room feels using this simple product. :-D.
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As a former competitive swimmer I can see the value in a product like this.
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Perhaps this is more viable than I originally thought.