cubicgarden.com...

The apprentice, goodbye to the ice queens

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There was something in I think episode 1 and 3 which made me feel uneasy about the two Jennifers (Jennifer Maguire and Jenny Celerier). They ganged up and no douht bullied Lucinda. Serious you could see how upset she was and other housemates did little to help her. I think there was a point when even Sara, turned her back because she knew it wasn't possible to get a word in between the two Jennys. Anyway, when Sir Alan Sugar changed the teams Lucinda showed what she was capable of, and boy oh boy did she do a amazing job. So good that Lee was singing her praises. She made management look easy and she did in a way which wasn't aggressive or bullying. There's no doubt her management and style was different but in a good way. Shes always colorful and her honesty is unlike anything else I've ever seen.

Anyway, so this week both Jenny's got sacked, which was great to see. They both deserved to go and I'm surprised Sir Alan didn't sack Micheal too. The *uckup over Kosher chicken was beyond laughable. The turning point was when Sir Alan noticed the way both Jenny's used his words against the other housemates. The turn around meant goodbye.

Yes I know Lucinda, isn't going to be hired by Sir Alan, but no one deserves to be bullied and no I don't think shes like Katie from last year.

The two sides of Vigin Media

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Thanks Sheila for this link, ISP To Voluntarily Disconnect File-Sharers, Offers Free Usenet.

Virgin Media in the UK has announced that it is working with the music industry to chase down its file-sharing customers and disconnect them from the internet. At the same time, it will offer an enhanced service which will see its customers get free Usenet binaries access, untraceable by the music industry.

I like it...very sneaky. I have been thinking about switching to Virgin Media for a while, fibre to the home (fibre optic) speeds is very attractive. I do however wonder what their download limits are? I'm still doing about 140 gig a month.

Finally a dance download store I like

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So I finally bought some tunes legally for the first time in a long time. I checked out a service called Audiojelly.com which has a huge back story and did a quick scan through my Tunes to get list and picked up quite a few of them. Obviously all 320k Mpeg3's with no DRM. In the end I bought...

• apologies (original mix)conrad s
• cause you know (nic chagall remix) markus schulz feat. departure
• frozen (original mix) dogzilla
• heaven scent (greg downey remix)bedrock
• how long? (original mix)aly & fila vs. fkn feat. jahala
• in the dark (tiesto trance mix) tiesto
• industry (original mix)the green martian
• kalopsia (monogato's filth remix) the blizzard
• lost in moonshine infinity (original mix) planisphere
• s.o.s. (message in a bottle) (sander van doorn remix) filterfunk
• the fall (richard durand remix) way out west

I found Audiojelly really simple and quick to add and buy tracks. They also seemed to do everything correctly, for example I added loads of tunes into my playlist before even signing up. I only needed to signup when I wanted to buy them and even then everything was smooth. The price of the songs isn't as cheap as elsewhere but for dance music they seem to have a wide selection. Maybe not as many as beatport but its not as painful to use as beatport. The only bit of Flash on the page was the playlist and that worked well the rest of the site. You can do stuff like embed, bookmark and even send a chunk to a friend for their approval or something.

I think I'm going to get more into mixing. I've checked out a couple other dj applications for ubuntu but its a area which is in need of much more voices and effort. I would like to think my pacemaker will do away with the need for switching back to Windows to run Virtual DJ but it looks a long way off at the moment. I don't talk to me about virtualisation, it works but that split second difference is killer when mixing live.

Technorati Tags: virtualdj, mixing, tunes, audiojelly, downloadstore, musicstore

Cloverfield what a nice suprise

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So I watched Cloverfield one night while in Hamburg and it suprised me. I actually enjoyed it and liked the rough camcorder style of the whole film. But I really wanted to watch it big and in the cinema. So I did at my local Odeon in Greenwich and enjoyed it even more. I'm no saying this is the best film ever made or anything but if you just sit down and enjoy it, you certainly will. Its also not a turn your brain off movie either, its got some clever bits to go with the physiological horror of not know what the thing is or what its capable of. Thumbs up from me, but go see it in cinemas before watching it at home, this movie was made for the large sceen only.

Technorati Tags: cloverfield, horror, drama, love, physiological, cinema, film

The Real Hustle goes stateside

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Not only have they decided to move the Real Hustle to Las Vegas (yes you can watch it now on iplayer) part 1 and part 2 but TruTV or as it use to be called CourtTV have bought the rights to do a american version of the popular UK show. Shame they got some Magician and actress to join Apollo Robbins whos actually good at what he does. Anyway you can watch most of the shows on the real hustle site.

Technorati Tags: realhustle, hustle, trutv, con, conartist, socialenginnering

Amazon please for goodness sake, stop teasing us and open the UK Mp3 music store already

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From ZDNet

Online retailer Amazon.com said Sunday it will begin an international roll-out this year of its digital music store that offers songs without copy-protection technology known as digital rights management. Amazon said it is the only retailer to offer DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as thousands of independent labels.

I'm actually considering getting a couple of tunes legally and I don't want a CD (believe it or not I've not a audio CD for over 10 years!). No I can't use iTunes because I'm on Linux and hey do I really want to give Apple any money? Napster, Rhapsody and iTunes don't have a great dance selection either. Beatport do have a great selection of dance music including but oh my goodness I hate that interface. Amazon please launch in the UK and kill off these bunch of pretenders.

Technorati Tags: mp3, amazon, musicstore

Some amazing TED talks recently

[ All media ] | Tags: David Gallo  JJ Abrams  Daniel Goleman  tedtalks  ted  videos 

Don't get me wrong, TED talks are always great but just recently there have been some simply un-missable ones, here's my top three.

Underwater astonishments: David Gallo on TED.com

David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a shape-shifting cuttlefish, a pair of fighting squid, and a mesmerizing gallery of bioluminescent fish that light up the blackest depths of the ocean. Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 5:21.)

The mystery box: J.J. Abrams on TED.com

Filmmaker J.J. Abrams traces his love of the unseen mystery -- the heart of Alias, Lost and the upcoming Cloverfield -- back to its own magical beginnings, which may or may not include an early obsession with magic, the love of a supportive grandfather, or his own unopened Mystery Box. Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 18:02.)

Why aren't we all Good Samaritans? Daniel Goleman on TED.com

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, asks why we aren’t more compassionate more of the time. Through psychological experiments and a story of the Santa Cruz Strangler, he shows how we are all born with the capacity for empathy -- but we sometimes choose to ignore it. Recorded March 2007 in Monterey, California. Duration: 13:13.)

Technorati Tags: ted, tedtalks, video

Life explained on film, Video Jug

[ All media ] | Tags: learning  learn  videojug  video  web 

VideoJug: How To Clean A Laptop

Sheila showed me a site I've never seen before. Videojug.com, explains how to do things in real life. Its a simple concept and honestly when I first saw it, my first thought was so what? But then I started thinking, this is actually really good idea. Its like Sclipo but centred around those situations in life where you may or maynot know how to act, behave or start. I started watching "how to choose the right Television" just to see if the information was correct and upto date. And I got to say I was pretty impressed with the information and tips it gave in the short time.

To most of us the idea of using a web video to teach us how to cook a Rib Eye steak, check your prostate or even How To Fold Trousers Without Creases seems silly, but actually think about it. Where did you ever learn this stuff? School, College, Parents, Friends or even TV shows? Well he's a great site if you ever missed out or was ever too proud to admit you don't actually know.

I have to do my eight things you don't know about me post one day soon, and I was thinking about some really abstract ones. Well this is great because I can now throw some really weird ones in and link to them on Videojug. Nice!

Technorati Tags: learning, learn, videojug, video, web

Steal this film II

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Steal this film II is out but what's more interesting is the next project the League of Noble Peers are working on - The oil of the 21st Century

'Intellectual property', said Mark Getty, 'is the oil of the twenty first century'. Getty is chairman of Getty Images and one of the world's largest intellectual proprietors. His comment offers a unique perspective on the conflicts evolving around information as it penetrates and shapes every aspects of our lives -- from nutrition to medicine, from markets to civil liberties.

This film explores those conflicts. Established and developing economies wage war on each other through restriction and promulgation of information, with devastating consequences on lives and ways of life. Nations like Britain and the US, once information 'pirates' themselves, now support the rights of massive corporations to protect their pharmaceutical patents at the expense of lives in developing countries. Meanwhile, burgeoning Asian economies exploit difficulties with enforcement to create multi-billion dollar pirate industries that are increasingly seen as a real threat to Hollywood.

oh by the way I noticed the abstract blur was filmed at Ravensbourne College, I have thoughts who the blur could be but I'm not going to say in public.

Tiger Team a review

[ All media ] | Tags: tv  courttv  penterationtesting  intel  heist  spy  tigerteam  exploits  socialenginnering 

Ok I take it all back, I was wrong. Tiger team is great. I thought it would be all style and no substance or really boring. But actually its very short (less that 20mins a episode) cut together into a reasonable paced documentatry. Its split into 5 pieces including part 4 the heist (yes 2 members of the camera crew do follow them into the heist) and part 5 the debrief. Its actually all good stuff and you get a good balance of social enginnering and computer exploits. For example they use a USB trojan and some social engineering on a receptionist to gain access to the internal network. Theres some technical material details but not enough to bore most people and maybe not enough to really be used for copycats. For example they don't say which software there using or how they pick locks. There's alot more analysis on the show in the Schneier blog post about the series. I wonder what some of these people would say about the real hustle?

The first episode was good but the second one really good because you could really see that it was a real challenge and they almost got caught too, which adds to the suspense. I really don't hope they don't cancel this series before it plays out. More photos here and because its not available in the UK, links to the torrents.

Technorati Tags: tv, courttv, penterationtesting, intel, heist, spy, tigerteam, exploits, socialenginnering

Anywhere is possible...

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So I saw this trailer while browsing around my rss reader. Looks like a decent action film but what struck me was the concept seemed to remind me of a excellent William Sleator book titled Strange Attractors. From memory the book has a character who can teleport anywhere and ends up meeting a couple other people who can do the same. Those other people don't quite have the same ethics about teleportation and hence the start of a plot. Anyway it looks we will have to wait till the day after Valentines day to watch this in UK cinemas. Luckily thats only a day after most of the world.

Technorati Tags: cinemas, jumper, film, trailer, williamsleator, strangeattractors, teleportation, teleport

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

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Can I just say how excellent Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events is. When they going to get around to doing a few more films based on the follow on books? I considered a while ago buying the series on ebay as I love the darkness and wit involved in the books.

Technorati Tags: lemonysnicket, book, film, ebay

Penetration testing on TV?

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I've heard some strange ideas for TV shows but whoever thought up this one must be barking mad. First heard on a NPR podcast then later on the register

Tiger Team follows a group of elite freelance security consultants hired to test organisations' security by using social engineering, hacking, and physically defeating security mechanisms. So we expect to see our heroes picking locks and going through the trash to get clues all the while maintaining an uneasy relationship with their clients and law enforcement officials.

Even the register are sniffing out this show long term appeal.

The plot elements have appeared before in films such as Sneakers, starring Robert Redford. It's hard to see how a story arc strong enough to sustain interest over the course of a TV series can be sustained from these elements.

The first programme is due to screen at 11pm on Christmas Day on CourtTV, which is hardly a recipe for a large audience. On the plus side, those watching will be probably too sozzled to notice any plot holes or technical errors.

Technorati Tags: tigerteam, tv, media, courttv, theregister, Penetrationtesting, Penetration, testing, security

BitTorrent and PBS Pair up for Distribution

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Public Broadcast on a public tracker: BitTorrent, Inc. received an endorsement of sorts from the US government, as the subsidized television network PBS (Public Broadcasting System) has agreed to distribute shows on the BEN (BitTorrent Entertainment Network). The announcement made today will bring many of PBS' more popular shows to the online store.

Is there an arguement that every public broadcaster should be doing this with content they have 100% cleared? Hummm what happened to our deal with Zudeo/VuzeTribbler?

Freestyle scratch like your only 8 years old

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Actually these kids really are 5 and 8 years old. Spied via Facebook's friend rss feed. Nice scratching and I can hardly believe their ages.

Shoot 'em up, is like forbidden candy

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Sometimes I like the high adrenaline fuelled action films that the film industry puts out. The last film like this I watched and loved was Crank, hence I'm also looking forward to seeing War at some point in the near future. I watched Smokin Aces recently and was let down by its highly ilogical plot and how it tried to take its self somewhat seriously. Shoot'em up like crank doesn't take its self seriously and delivers just 90mins of pure adrenaline rushing, mind numming, laugh out loud, entertainment. The only time it slows down is for sharp pieces of dialogue. Its just what I needed after a difficult weekend.

I'm not the only one who loved the film, check out this imdb review titled Perhaps the Most Shamelessly Ridiculous Film Ever Conceived.

Are you tired of all those heartless, senseless, generic and cliché, action-driven Hollywood films? That honor style and blood over character and plot? Well then I have news for you: don't go see "Shoot Em' Up".

But it's a shame that you won't. The film whose trailer I pointed to and said 'that's what film-making has come to these days; all attitude and no heart', turns out to be the most fun and riotous satire I've seen in a long time. "Shoot Em' Up"--a relentless, simultaneously energizing and hilarious movie--is a surprisingly smart confection. As conceived by writer-director Mike Davis its an over-the-top send-up of every action film ever made; a wink and a nod (as well as a parody of) to the bloody overkill of "Die Hard" and "Rambo", the gleeful excitement and charm of "Indiana Jones", the cornball abandon of "James Bond", the who cares of "North by Northwest", the heroic terseness and ease of "Bourne", the ultra-stylized and preposterous overdrive of "The Matrix" or anything ever made by John Woo (particularly a love for "Hard-Boiled"), and even in one scene the splendid lunacy of "Raising Arizona".

The whole project, through controlled chaos and witty abandon, is made as a single, continuous in-joke. As in most films that take themselves too seriously, Clive Owen's hero (enigmatically titled Mr. Smith) quite literally never stops shooting. He shoots while having sex, he shoots while in the middle of free-fall, he shoots the umbilical cord off of a baby, he shoots with his fingers broken. Davis takes over-the-top to a whole new level; poking fun at action movies by taking their ridiculousness to its brinking point.

Yes the sex scene was perfectly delivered and unlike other films (except crank again) not pushed in for the sake of its self. I urge you to see this film in the highest defination you can get (cinema if possible) as there's no slow downs or clever camera tricks. Its just all the way out there action and before you know it the film will be over with a bang. Yes I won't be able to look at Carrots in the same way again.

Cashback (the film)

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After a painful break up with his first girlfriend Suzy, Ben, an aspiring artist, develops insomnia. To take his mind off his problem he spends his nights working at a local supermarket, where he meets colourful characters. He falls in love with his colleague Sharon. He lets his imagination run wild. In particular, he imagines that he can stop time for others, so that he can walk around in a world that is "frozen" like in pause mode of a film. He imagines female clients standing frozen in the supermarket, so that he can undress and draw them.

This film Cashback was reminded me of my earlier life working in Tesco over night, except the drawing them part. Anyway worth watching, as its a good well executed feel good British movie.

My Media Consumption Diet

[ All media ] | Tags: media2.0  media  human  consumption  meme  blogmeme 

So Improbulus tagged me for this social meme a while back but I didn't actually notice. The meme was started by Jeremiah Owyang who is also in the Media 2.0 group along with myself. Anyway from the man himself...

I’m hoping to start this meme, that others will join in and share their media consumption diet, in hopes, that we’ll start to learn how they get information or be entertained. I’ve sort of mixed up mediums, and media types, but after some thought, that’s the best way to organize it.

 

Improbulus also asks the tricky question about what is media anyway which I may get into later in this post.

Web: I get all my news from the web, mainly I read news via Greatnews my personal RSS reader, anything I miss tends to get come via email links from friends. I am currently subscribed to over 300 feeds you can check them all out here because I sync with Bloglines. Obviously I keep my private RSS feeds to my personal RSS reader. I did consider switching over to Google Reader with its offline ability but what tends to happen is when I'm offline and looking at my RSS feeds I can read through 1000's of items in a couple of hours. Google Reader with Gears only stores about 1000 max and isn't as flexable as GreatNews.

As you can see in my subscriptions I have many different folders.

• Cubicgarden - feeds related to myself, this includes my personal lifestream.
• Design - is a mixture of inspirational feeds with design feeds
• Development - use to be development blogs but this got a little strained with the design and xml development folders
• Education - feeds related to educational blogging, I use to have lots more in this about 3 years ago
• Events - this was my way of keeping a track of what was going on socially but this has been replaced with ical feeds in Outlook 2007, soon to be Plaxo 3.0
• Friends - Feeds from my friends, I'm trying to update this one regularly but I don't add everyone unless I think there blog is useful
• Fun - Uhhhhh what do you think?
• Gaming - This isn't just gaming, but ARG and hardware type stuff
• General News - This is where stuff like Boingboing, Slashdot, Digg, techmem, etc go.
• Interest - bit of a misc folder, which I hope to move in the future
• Internet Law - This is where my copyright, DRM, Creative Commons, type feeds go
• Lifehacks - This is one is useful but I tend to review it once every month
• Media - This is where all my lost feeds go, in the future I'll start adding Bit Torrent feeds and other media related feeds
• Podcasts - I'm planning to move all these feeds out of here in the future but the idea was to have all my podcast feeds in one folder. This is simply not practical because many people attach enclosures willy nilly now.
• SmartComms - This was going to be a mix of mobile phone type stuff and human social networking type feeds.
• Tracking - This was always going to be a place for temporary feeds like ebay searches and offers, etc
• Watched projects - These are feeds for projects, startups, etc. This folder is very useful for keeping an eye on projects which I may have forgotten over some time
• XML development - this is where my xml and semantic web type feeds go, in the future I'll start mixing regular development with this folder

You will notice in my feeds I don't subscribe to feeds from mainstream media including believe it or not the BBC. I tend read BBC news in Twitter right now but don't follow any other except sometimes the Guardian's technology and game blogs.

Another different thing about my media consumption when it comes to news is Particls. Particls is a personal desktop attention engine. Its seriously amazing and changed the way I read my news. I tend to use it at work a lot just to keep an eye on whats going on during the day. Its alerted me to many things which were related. Its also been useful for sending people upto the minute information.Its a couple of steps beyond a RSS reader and I'm honestly very impressed with it. I would like to see it on Linux but I'm going to try virtualising it with VMware or Xen in the near future.

Right backing out of news. I use Firefox for everything except really really dodgy sites. Opera is reserved for those sites because of the ability to turn off Java, Javascript, etc in a second. However I do tend to browse the web with Javascript and Flash turned off using a combination of Flashblock and No-Script extensions. I use Tabs a lot and once in a while will del.icio.us my spare tabs. I don't use startpages because I use load previous tabs. I use a Dell PC laptop for most of my browsing. I never use IE7 unless its for Automatic updates and will unlikely install any other browser except Opera (yeah forget about it Safari).

Communication - I own a cracking little phone, Orange SPV M700. It has everything including Wifi, Bluetooth 2.0, GPS and 3G. I use it a lot for mapping now I have GPS and iGo. I wish I could mount the phone to my scooter so I could use it even more but generally I do walk around new cities with my phone in my hand. Yes its a Windows Mobile 5 phone but honestly I like it. I choose the phone with no keyboard because I own a Bluetooth keyboard and I can type very fast on the on-screen keyboard.

I hate using my phone for making calls but I do mainly using my new Stereo Bluetooth headphones from itech. I don't own a Mpeg3 player, I did in the past but saw earlier on that I could use my phone for music and more often podcasts.

I email a lot and use Thunderbird 2.0 as my main mail client of choice. I have to use Outlook 2003 at work because the BBC uses exchange mail servers. I hate outlook 2003 for email, specially when I've got Outlook 2007 on my laptop. I own a ton of email accounts which I've setup on cubicgarden.com as my way of dealing with spam. I also own about 3 gmail accounts as backup and one hotpop account for unsecure mails. Yes I've setup the others with SSL and TLS using Thunderbird, so no one can snoop on my mail while on a shared wireless point.

To combat spam, like mentioned before I use multiple accounts with different levels of use. I do have a spam system on the mail server and did have a greylisting system a while ago thanks to Miles and Mark. But generally I find the multiple accounts work well and Thunderbird''s spam filter works enough for me to work on email without too many problems,

I do use instant messenging a lot and use Twitter via IM a lot. I use Pigeon (previously called Gaim) and then connect to 4 different networks (Jabber, AIM, Yahoo, MSN). More and more I'm dropping MSN and would like to drop the others except Jabber. This is becoming easier thanks to Google. I also love the idea of im on the phone but recently its been hard to find a im client for the windows mobile platform which doesn't charge a stupid a mount of money. So in the mid term I'm using tinytwitter a java application with twitter as my substute for mobile im.

I do have email on my phone too but just plain old IMAP and POP. No Push email for me. I do however have a work phone (nokia N80) which really sucks and makes for a bad 3G modem for my laptop.

Music and Podcasts : My phone currently syncs with Winamp and I have 2gig of space to fill up every day. I tend to fill up my phone with new podcasts once a week. I do listen to music, but generally its mixed together already. I simply don't buy music because the music I listen to is so expensive and tends to be hard to find. So instead I use a bit torrent site called Trancetraffic.com to get mixes from the likes of Tiesto, Armin Van Buuren, etc. I do download singles too for my own remixes but if I was to take up djing a little more seriously would start buying the tunes from somewhere. What Trancetraffic does which all the online stores miss is have a community of active users who you can see what they have downloaded. So I can see how many people have downloaded a tune or through the seeds, etc how  Also if your in any douht the trancetraffic community upload trance packs and uses the forums. So you can really get a clue about which tunes are hot and which

ones are not.

I do have a Last.FM account which was adopted from audioscobbler before it. I tend to only use it to track what I'm listening to and maybe sometimes for a couple of recommendations but generally Trancetraffic does a better job. I don't use Pandora and only listen to streaming radio statio

ns ckground music. I love soma.fm and di.fm for streaming radio.

 

I use Azureus for downloading all bit torrent stuff, which will make sense when you check out the TV section.

On the podcast front I use Juice to download all my podcasts. Thankfully juice supports remote opml files, so I point it at the same opml file as my bloglines account. Juice then downloads any enclosures from any of my 300+ feeds. This might sound over kill but it means I never miss any enclosures ever.Both Azureus and Juice are running on a ubuntu desktop machine under my desk, whcih I treat like a home server. I then use Synctoy on my laptop to sync my music and podcasts across to my laptop everyday.

TV : I don't watch tradional tv but I watch lots of TV shows. What does this mean? Well I don't actually turn on the TV and watch whatever is on. I also don't own a PVR or DVR device so don't actually record anything. I don't watch live TV because I have no reason to do so. Yes I download every single TV show I watch.

I use TV RSS in Azureus to do all my bit torrent downloading. Currently I use a combination of  ShareTV.org, NewTorrents, UKNova and Mininova for all my TV downloading. Some would say my TV viewing is strange at best and are quick to point out the off the schedule nature my activities. Personally being off the schedule is a good thing and this is really on demand. I tend to watch a combination of UK stuff like Doctor Who, Jekyll, etc with American stuff like Lost, Heroes, etc.

The way I actually watch most of the shows is via a 32 inch wide screen TV set and a hacked xbox. The Xbox is running unsigned code by a community project called Xbox Media Centre. The purpose of the hacked xbox running xbox media centre means I can play anything I download on my large screen. In the past I have hooked up my computer to the TV but generally having a computer in the same room as the TV kinda sucks unless you live in a small apartment of course. The xbox isn't exactly beautiful but its small and quiet. It means I can access all the media on my network including podcasts, music, pictures, etc.

I do own a Freeview box (free to air digital tv) and a Ondigital box (same but much older) but they rarely get turned on. And they certainly get no action since the ariel fell down off our roof.

Pictures : So we currently own 2 cameras, not including our mobile phones. One is a Canon 6 megapixal point and shoot (like DLR style) and the other is the Sanyo HD1. Me and Sarah over time have built up quite a few gigabytes of pictures. Every trip or event adds a little more. I tend to store everything and only upload the best ones to Flickr.com.

Recently I've been very slack with Flickr because I'm not naming or adding lots of meta-data to my pictures. This also applied to the files on the server. I hope one day to sort out my collections, sets and geodata. Getting that data back on to the server is another question.

Movies : I sometimes watch films in the cinema, sometimes I download the film and watch it while working away doing something else. It really depends on what film and what mood i'm in. For example just recently I watched Sicko in a cinema after deciding to help micheal moore in his efforts to wake up america to the joys of universial health care. I'll maybe go home (i'm on a plane flying between Exeter and London right now) and download it for my friends who maybe won't watch it otherwise. Being July 4th now too, I did promise to go watch Die Hard 4.0 tonight with a friend but we shall see how jet lagged I am. Generally Die Hard would be a film I would normally download.

DVD rentals I use to do via Amazon a long time ago and before that Blockbusters. I've not rented a DVD in about 2-3 years now.

Gaming : My only contract with gaming right now is the 1up Show podcast which is excellent because it focuses on gaming culture instead of doing long boring reviews. I always feel energized after watching it but I can't afford a next generation console, plus. I'm also not interested in the Xbox 360 because it can't play unsigned code - aka no xbmc! The playstation 3 looks good but at 480 pounds much for me plus I don't see where a Blu-Ray or even HD DVD player would fit into my media consumption diet? The Wii is my next choice but I'm not going to order one quite yet, although I have a wiimote for something else already.

Books : I tend to buy quite a few books because I like to lend them to people who maybe don't like to read on screen. For example I bought the Cluetrain Manifesto in book form so I could lend it to my friend Carl. He still has it but hey it was worth it becuase he wouldn't have read it online. I tried to read at night but it doesn't work for me because I fall a sleep quickly and am usually near a machine I can read the RSS off. I also have a hard time reading a book because of the line lengths and size of the text. It just doesn't quite gel with me. So I could easily sit down and read a PDF on my phone quicker that a actual book. I would love to have a real ebook reader but I can't afford such luxuaries, although I was considering using my old tabletpc as one. I'm a odd guy, I don't really read fiction that much any more, I tend to prefer the visual feedback of TV and Film.

Magazines : I only buy magazines .net and wired when I'm getting on a plane where I can't open my laptop till I'm all the way up in the air.

More to come....

Right my turn to tag some people.

Tom Morris, Miles Metcalfe, Duncan Barnes, Black belt jones and Phil Windley

Sicko - the Universial Heath care question

[ All media ] | Tags: michealmoore  cinema  canada  healthcare  universial heath care  sick  sicko 

So I just returned from watching Sicko in a Canadian Cinema (don't you know).

The experience was quite different. Although watching from the outside looking in on this massive problem the united states has with its self was the same, you certainly got the feeling that Canadians were shocked at how bad the problem really was.

Spoilers ahead

Micheal Moore this time around does a fantastic job not getting too muddled in the politics and conspiracy areas. Instead uses peoples stories to tell how bad things have got. Even if the stories stretch the truth, they were powerful enough to cast a couple of tears from peoples eyes. Micheal looks at the Canadian, British, French systems, but what really hammer the point home is the visit to Cuba with some 911 helpers. Micheal Moore is a genius for that one which looked to be a stunt too far turned into something very meaningful. The Cheque for the Anti Micheal Moore site owner was clever but could been seen as another stunt or a act of humanity. I thought humanity but I could see how others would think the opposite.

The movie is well worth watching even if you can't stand Micheal Moore. I went to the cinema because I want to support Micheal Moore's efforts in this one but you can also get the film online if you don't like the guy.

ShareTV just needs a social network and a client

[ All media ] | Tags: sharetv  torrents  tv  bittorrent  social  social networking  player 

ShareTV.org is my hot tip for the future of TV online.

For a long time I've been wishing that Tioti.com (Tape it off the internet) would get its act together, but it never so I gave up on it about 6 months ago. Since then I've noticed ShareTV and TV nanny move closer into the area which Tioti occupied. TV Nanny I don't kow enough about because I don't really like installing clients on my desktop machine and its only windows based.

ShareTV features

Anyway, back to ShareTV. This bit torrent site focuses on yes you guessed it Television programmes. Its clean cut and lacks a style. This makes it super easy to navigate around its pages and discover new areas without feeling lost. Right from the start they included RSS feeds with direct links to the torrent files. Not only a global one but per programme and the last 30 shows feed. Both of these make it really simple to setup a TVRSS setup using Azureus, UTorrent Democracy or something else. Another key feature of ShareTV is it only selects one torrent of each episode of the programme. Aka you don't have to choose which version of the programme you want to download. This might sound like a disadvantage for those who really like downloading those 1gig 720p HD versions of Heroes but for the rest of us its fine. I'm sure in the near future they will build feeds with all HD episodes which can be used.

ShareTV also indexes currently about 100+ shows including UK shows like Jekyll and Doctor Who (which I'm currently missing due to be in Toronto). They rip the details for each show from TV.com so you can get the full details about a show before downloading it. Recently they have included previews so you can get a idea about a show using a streaming flash player in the page. This is being extended by it would seem them watching links in del.icio.us and Youtube pointing to episodes, so you can actually watch the whole show there in your browser if you choose to. I don't know how successful this will be but thats not the most interesting part.

Recently if you log into ShareTV you can do a whole bunch of new stuff. Voting for a show is new and interesting because you are able to gage per show what people thought of the show. You can vote either a thumbs up or thumbs down. Less interesting is the fact you can add comments to each episode. Tv.com has the same thing, so the duplication isn't  that welcomed. Now its possible to add your favorite shows to a personal list and keep a track of just those. I didn't notice a RSS feed for them yet but I'm sure thats coming soon. Another nice thing ShareTV does is a calendar view of TV shows like a 9 day TV listings, But it looks possible that this can be applied the shows you favorite too. Meaning you get a personalised TV listing guide.

Getting Social

So most of this is exactly what Tioti does but Tioti was a mess.for things like picking torrents. Whats missing from ShareTV is the social aspect. Now I have my personal schedule or TV listing of my shows. I want to share this with other ShareTV friends or buddies. I also want to share my schedule with the world. You know stick it in my blog or even in my facebook profile. Once you ShareTV allows RSS, this will be easier but I still want some simple to share widget too.

Something which bugged me about Tioti was the show tracker, it required you to say I've seen this episode, I've seen that episode. But it was a pain. I suggest ShareTV use that voting feature to assume people have also seen that episode at the same time. Ideally ShareTV would have a public API behind it but personalised RSS would be a start, so the feed would have up to date metadata about if you watched the episode or not. I was at one point thinking about using a iCal feed with the free/busy status switched if you've seen it or not but it seems over kill.

Points system

I forgot to add this to my first post. ShareTV now have a points system for your account. This level of participation is both playful and community building. Some of the core elements I would say for making the site more social.

You get points by participating in the site. The more points you have the higher priority you get when downloading off our tracker or streaming videos.

Action	Points Given
Create Account	+10 points
Rate Show	+1 point per
Place Comment	+2 point per
Upload new Torrent	+3 points per**
Submit new video clip	+4 points per**

** You also get plus/minus points for each vote on the torrent or video you submit, so make sure you submit stuff other members would like

Ideally it would still be great if your bit torrent client or mediaplayer device could say if you've seen the episode - You could imagine something like Last.FM for TV (last broadcast) with plugins for the Xbox Media Centre, Windows Media Centre, Apple TV, Democracy, BBC iPlayer etc. But thats a long way off and seems the demand won't be there till we get over the whole downloading TV shows thing. I actually think shareTV would be a great place to try such a service but even if ShareTV could consume someone elses service that would be great.

I mean it would only take ShareTV a while to add some kind of distributed Digg like system through peoples personal desktop widget engines. Or they could create some simple application using Xul or Air (formally known as Adobe Apollo). Geez if there was a API again, I would try writing the other part myself.

These are the things Tioti promised but never quite delivered (or at least got over complex on). I don't want to be harsh to Tioti and Paul Pod (who I hope to meet in Edinburgh)  but the illustrations of the features of Tioti were amazing and the result has been a big let down. ShareTV is closer to the vision of Tioti that it may actually know and it would be a shame if it went in a different direction now.