CNET showcases ten years of Palm handhelds (ahhh…memories) (CNET)
36 million users watching video by 2009? (Mediaweek via Jaffe Juice)
Alert Bear - An interesting RSS Reader (Digg)
(Edited because we clearly don’t know what day it is….)
An article in WSJ came across the old inbox a few days ago, highlighting a new product from BigChampage, called BCDash which “will bring together data from partners including Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, Yahoo Inc.’s Yahoo Music, Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes, as well as traditional retailers with online stores such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. also incorporate estimates of illegal file sharing activity for specific titles. ”
In the age of file sharing and downloading, as well as the multitude of digital download options (of the legal variety) this sounds like an excellent idea. Have to wonder, though, how the estimates are estimated, as well as which illegal file swap services they’re referring to.
Just a few notes from today - we’re collecting and compiling news from SXSW for tomorrow.
iPod reaches into the Vatican (even the Pope has an iPod!) (The Unofficial Apple Weblog)
Speaking of iTunes, the “sales ban” on some new songs leads to CD purchases (Slashdot)
Podcasting workshops in San Fransisco (via Boing Boing)
Releasing new DVDs is part of marketing new movies (AdJab)
Are full film downloads headed this way for iTunes? (Digg)
Yet another bookmarking site (Micro Persuasion)
It’s like someone heard me asking: Kottke stops taking micropayments (CNET)
In a totally less serious tone, two new Media sharing sites/applications hit today - Songbird (don’t even try to get on this site right now) and VideoBomb . What to make of these two? Don’t worry, I’ll take care of the painful looking through them on Friday!
Making a living at Second Life (Wired)
Make a living by giving away music on file sharing? (TechDirt)
Broadcast Flag hearings turn on iPod use (Engadget)
Name that Flickr Tag (LifeHacker)
And, finally, because its Friday - Beer + Robot = Marketing Goodness…if you like beer and/or robots. (Boing Boing)
Arstechnica discusses the possibility that Amazon will be getting into “Buy a DVD and download/stream the movie while you wait for the mailman to come.” This is funny, because I was just looking at my Netflix queue this morning and wishing that I could watch about half the movies in it right then, via download. Granted, there is a difference between renting on Netflix, and buying the movie outright on Amazon, but the “get it now and later” idea is close to how I use both iTunes video and Netflix, and the (rumored) Amazon model is a hybrid of the two that I really like.
As many of you know, I really love to download video off of iTunes, but I’ve often wondered, as I look at the MASSIVE amount video content in my iTunes folders - 1.5 Seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Season 2 of Lost and the first five episodes of Surface - how long I’d keep them, either in my iPod or my laptop. Right now I’d hazard a guess and say that within the next few months, I’ll decide which series I will purchase on DVD, and which ones I’ll delete for good (to make room for all those new downloads I haven’t thought about yet).
I use Netflix similarly – I rent DVDs (mostly TV shows on DVD) and either send them back with a “Gee, glad I didn’t get THAT” or I run out and buy the DVD shortly after I’ve returned the disc. Using Amazon’s (rumored) method won’t save me from buying something crummy, but if they (or others) could adapt to the “try and buy” method, I would be right there with them.
At the same time, the “buy and download while you wait for the mail” method gets over another hurdle I have with downloadable video – which is sometimes, its nice to have the DVD right there in your house. Until we have a fully converged media-web-home system (on which you can get the same entertainment you can get on DVDs now), I, at least, will want the option for both.
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