DTV and the RSS enabled Television

DTV Beta screenshot

Broadcast TV is indeed dead in my house. I'm hearing about good things to watch via friends and family and downloading them via UKnova and other torrent feeds. Its working so well except one thing.
Managing all these RSS feeds is becoming difficult. At this moment I have my bloglines feeds which I use on my laptop and desktop machines. I also finally got PocketRSS to read straight from bloglines and build a subscription list from the OPML. But I have another set of feeds which I use in my torrent client Azuerus for TVRSS type downloading. It works well but more and more podcasts I'm subscribing to also deliever video media.

I orginally thought FireAnt would do well in this new role but It seems to want to take over from my torrent client, RSS reader and video player. Sucky indeed! But there something new which I spotted recently. DTV Beta. It seems to have everything which FireAnt has but is GPL and is backed up with the Broadcast machine.and supports Yahoo Media extensions along with standard enclosures. I'm expecting the next version of Windows media player will also do simular things, but it looks like iTunes 5.0 will be first out of the blocks in the same area. I'm assuming the majors will deliver your big name content and leave small producers out in the cold again. Anyhow, roll on the Windows version!

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Social news with digg

Diggnation video

I have been thinking about using some other tool to capture news content which dont quite make its way into slashdot and boingboing. Metafiter is one which Tom uses religiously but I dont quite like the old style of web product it is. Del.icio.us popular is good, but the content tends not to be totally news. Sometimes you get the links related to the news, instead of the actual news. This also applies to technorati popular.

So I'm testing out Digg which has a slashdot type model but allows for a much more longtail approch via friend aggregation as well as the whole digg nation. Talking of which, there is a show hosted by Kevin Rose and Alex Albright called Digg Nation where they take the top few stories from a week on digg and simply talk about it. Its kinda of slashdot review but with comments turned on. The show comes in audio and video podcast forms and I have to give huge kudos to Jon for making there feeds compatable with a RSS TV setup. Do check it out if you have a Azureus with RSS automation type setup. But back to Digg Nation for a moment. Currently Digg Nation only deals with the most digged/popular news. But theres nothing stopping someone doing a show about the most digged/popular content between certain groups of friends or a certain category. If they adopted a tagging option too, it would be endless.

For now digg is getting the thumbs up for me. I know I would love to see digg move away from the website. What I mean is tools and applications which mean I dont need to log into digg to do everything. At the moment you can get RSS feeds for pretty much anything in Digg, but it woud be great to see APIs for posting and digging news. Maybe directly in the RSS reader via a RESTful url like how a trackback ping works. So you can see what being digged and dig it by simply clicking a link at the bottom of the entry.

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The matrix revisited, this time by the fans…

Matrix remixed

From the CCB the editors of The Matrix Dezionized, a special fanmade edition of Matrix – Reloaded and Matrix – Revolutions.

We got the idea, when we finally watched Matrix Revolutions and couldn't believe, how bad it was, pathetic, without purpose. The most important thing is, to realize what is wrong, why is this movie not working, what makes it so bad. We decided that the complete plot string about Zion and Zion's battle against the machines was rather distracting from the main Matrix plot than improving it in any way. So we edited both DVDs, took out plenty of scenes, wherever needed and made a new edition, about 90 minutes smaller (the length of an entire moive, yes) and combined them to one final Matrix chapter.
What you get is a complete story, the story of Neo and his being the one. Plenty of people already watched this and the feedback was nothing but great. Still we had to redo the thing over and over again, just to get rid of possible flaws, bad cuts or whatever seemed unnecessary to us. Of course you can have a different opinion. And if you do and still like the idea of a better Matrix 2 movie, make your own edition and let's watch it. Choice is the problem of the Matrix universe, but choice is the thing that means freedom for us. We all like to be able to choose between editions and switch to the one we like best, no
matter who has created it. This is not meant to take any credit from the great Wachowski brothers, we admire your work, we are not interested in credit at all and absolutely not in making profit or money. Our interest is to improve an already existing work of art. See for yourself, decide for yourself.

Watch the trailer here (encoded using Xvid)

I'm currently watching another remix titled The Matrix Regenerated. The Matrix regenerated has an alternative ending and seems to be a little more suttle with the cuts. There is a point between Part 2 and 3 which has the cliff hanger about neo, well they did some very good work to change that and make it a smooth flowing section. Generally I would have like to have seen a better quality 2CD version, as some scenes are a little pixelated due to the low bitrate. The sound is also plain stereo which sucks because the Matrix was made for a AC3 surround sound system. But I imagine editing in AC3 is still really difficult. I guess these people like myself already bought the dvds and copied them to there hard drive for editing, it really makes me want to do the same for a couple of films I own – Donnie Darko and Matrix included.

Wired did a shamefully small piece about the greatest graffiti artist I have ever seen – Banksy. Just on a side point, I grew up in Bristol and that means living and seeing Banksy anywhere and everywhere. But I was flicking through his latest outdoor collections and came across this one and some text, which I've copied into real text.

Rat pouring away toxic sewage

Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall – its wet.

If your not quite getting the connection between banksy and the matrix remixes, your missing out on remix culture. Not until now have I really thought about banksy being the perfect example of remix culture. His help pages are a inspiration to all those involved in remix culture.

  • Think from outside the box – Be highly creative
  • Collapse the box and take a fucking sharp knife to it – If the box is too restrictive, take a fucking sharp knife to it and build your own. Creative Commons and Bit Torrent is a great example of this in action.
  • Leave the house before you find something worth staying in for – Dont sit on your arse and simply consume. The internet was always meant to be a read/write medium, take advantage of that fact. Why cant this read/write ability apply to other mediums?
  • Remember crime against property is not real crime. People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access – Theres lots of parellels between graffiti artists and internet remixers. Its a crime yes, but there not really villains.
  • The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don't go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit – This is very much the net too. Fame is a by-product of your actions online. You are no one till you start leaving a digital footprint.

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The matrix revisited, this time by the fans…

From the CCB the editors of The Matrix Dezionized, a special fanmade edition of Matrix – Reloaded and Matrix – Revolutions.

We got the idea, when we finally watched Matrix Revolutions and couldn't believe, how bad it was, pathetic, without purpose. The most important thing is, to realize what is wrong, why is this movie not working, what makes it so bad. We decided that the complete plot string about Zion and Zion's battle against the machines was rather distracting from the main Matrix plot than improving it in any way. So we edited both DVDs, took out plenty of scenes, wherever needed and made a new edition, about 90 minutes smaller (the length of an entire moive, yes) and combined them to one final Matrix chapter.
What you get is a complete story, the story of Neo and his being the one. Plenty of people already watched this and the feedback was nothing but great. Still we had to redo the thing over and over again, just to get rid of possible flaws, bad cuts or whatever seemed unnecessary to us. Of course you can have a different opinion. And if you do and still like the idea of a better Matrix 2 movie, make your own edition and let's watch it. Choice is the problem of the Matrix universe, but choice is the thing that means freedom for us. We all like to be able to choose between editions and switch to the one we like best, no
matter who has created it. This is not meant to take any credit from the great Wachowski brothers, we admire your work, we are not interested in credit at all and absolutely not in making profit or money. Our interest is to improve an already existing work of art. See for yourself, decide for yourself.

I'm currently watching another remix titled The Matrix Regenerated. The Matrix regenerated has an alternative ending and seems to be a little more suttle with the cuts. There is a point between Part 2 and 3 which has the cliff hanger about neo, well they did some very good work to change that and make it a smooth flowing section. Generally I would have like to have seen a better quality 2CD version, as some scenes are a little pixelated due to the low bitrate. The sound is also plain stereo which sucks because the Matrix was made for a AC3 surround sound system. But I imagine editing in AC3 is still really difficult. I guess these people like myself already bought the dvds and copied them to there hard drive for editing, it really makes me want to do the same for a couple of films I own – Donnie Darko and Matrix included.

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Makoto Shinkai somewhat in Conversation

Blury shot of the conversation

So yesterday I did make it to the NFT for Makoto Shinkai in Conversation which kicked off a short season of Anime at the NFT. To start off we were treated to She and Her Cat followed by the insanely popular Voices of a distant star. The nicely air-conditioned NFT2 cinema was perfectly dark, specially when compared to the Filmworks cinemas where half the lights were on through out the film (highly distracting). After which the somewhat conversation started. There was tons of clapping while Makoto Shinkai walked down the cinema followed by his translator. Well it seemed that way at first. See the translator was very tired and didnt want to translate slightly difficult questions. She was struggling with questions about what anime Makoto is looking forward to this year! When I asked the tricky question about what Makoto felt about remixes, fansubs and re-versions of anime for other audiences (such as the uk one). We must have spent about 10mins on it. In the end Makoto answered with a interesting answer. First he was not totally aware of alternative versions of his films but he believes in building on top of peers work which involves taking other peoples anime films apart is a fine. When you post it to the net for others to learn and build upon your in tricky ground. He some what supported this but followed with a comment about his publishers and producers would not support such a movement.

Other questions included the usual what influences you, did you really make the anime yourself, what applications do you use? Adobe Photoshop and After Effects. A japanese lady asked in japanese how old he was and did he have a girlfriend? Makoto covered his mouth when he replied out of shyness, but at only 32 he's still looking like 24. After the questions and answers Makoto signed tickets and DVDs (got mine done) outside in the lobby. Generally it was good event let down by the translator, which I understand is a bloody difficult job but its what you do.

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Please tell them to give it a rest…

Give it a rest please!

So I went and watched the Skeleton Key with Sarah on Wednesday night at the Filmworks, and walked pass this lit up poster. Its one thing to warning people not to record the movie but to start throwing together the words terrorist and pirates. I wont even get started on the single words which have been twisted and abused recently (last 20 years). But all I can say is, this is a seriously worrying trend. Without going into a huge post about the perception of piracy in this day of age. I'll stop here and repeat what Sarah said. In her own words, What idiot would pay money for a DVD when they could download it for Free? (big smile) You got love a little humour on such a negative subject.

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Saxon 8.5 with collection()

Via Cafeconleche some really good news about the new version of Saxon.

Michael Kay has released version 8.5 of Saxon, his XSLT 2.0 and XQuery processor. Saxon 8.5 is published in two versions for both of which Java 1.4 or later is required. Saxon 8.5B is an open source product published under the Mozilla Public License 1.0 that “implements the 'basic' conformance level for XSLT 2.0 and XQuery.” Saxon 8.5SA is a £250.00 payware version that “allows stylesheets and queries to import an XML Schema, to validate input and output trees against a schema, and to select elements and attributes based on their schema-defined type. Saxon-SA also incorporates a free-standard XML Schema validator. In addition Saxon-SA incorporates some advanced extensions not available in the Saxon-B product. These include a try/catch capability for catching dynamic errors, improved error diagnostics, support for higher-order functions, and additional facilities in XQuery including support for grouping, advanced regular expression analysis, and formatting of dates and numbers.” Besides bug fixes, version 8.5 adds Unicode normalization and enables the collection() function to process a directory.

The collection() function is of interest because it gives XSLT the ability to read a file system metadata without any prior knowledge of the file system, like in the document() function. This was one of the useful things Cocoon does really well via the directory generator. Anyhow, more details can be found on the Xml hack blog including exactly how to call the function.

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Social networks vs social tools

Honestly I dont really go for these social networks for the sake of social networking. Linked in, Friendster, etc have been some I've looked at but have not been that interested in. The one I invested the most time in is Microsoft Wallop, which is still an invite only beta. At the moment its simply reading my RSS feed from this blog and using it as a base for my own wallop blog. Weirdly enough, it also counts anything I link to as a resource of my own which it then stores. Anyhow, i've recently started using O'Reilly's connection beta which is another social network but focused around developers, net type people and designers. The ability to get FOAF data out seems really simple and I have to admit it seems quite simple and not this super elaborate affair of wallop or orkut.

I do however have to wonder once again, how long I'll stay with this one? All the social networks I use all the time tend to be more like social tools. Del.icio.us, Flickr, Audioscrobbler and even recently Yahoo's new killer/social tools, seem to take a different view of social networking. There much more intergrated into daily life that a place to hang out. If O'Reilly's connections was to open things up a litle more, so for example using other services for job listings, etc. Then maybe it would stand a better chance at staying relveant. I do have a feeling that they will base it around there books and conferences in the future but will that be enough? I mean is it a career development site? no is my gut answer but what room is there for connections in face of the other tools?

I was kinda of upset that it didnt import my current FOAF profile. I mean I would have uploaded if they liked, but I would expect it to look at my website url and read the linked FOAF file without a bother. But oh no, I need to add all the data again via multiple html forms, which really sucks. Isnt this the point of FOAF in the first place? I have no idea if there's the ability to see inside the network from outside? For example here is my profile view and the FOAF data which is created from it. Please note, although I said I was based in the UK, it still puts US in my FOAF data. Maybe this is a bug in there processing? It must be because for some reason it hasnt even got my surname – forrester! I'm also not happy about the fact it uses many redirects to make up the FOAF data. http://connection.oreilly.com/users/profile.public.php?user_id=1671/ is not my homepage sorry.

There is no way i can use this as my FOAF profile till its sorted out and reliable. Also note everyone in FOAF profile has to be registered with Connections for it to add a entry to my FOAF data. This is deeply inward looking and this is why I think Yahoo 360 will succed where others failed. I mean think about it for a quick second. Buy a social network/tool like flickr with millions of users and billions of user generated data then buy yourself on to peoples desktops through Konfabulator. The possiblities are pretty endless, now I can see where the 360 nature comes from.

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Great Night at Donnie Darko in the Park

The screen from our spot

We had a great evening and night at Donnie Darko in the park. Listening to the national symphony orchestra playing live versions of Donnie Darko theme and background music was great while people found places to sit. My favour titled the Tangent Universe was very enjoyable to hear live. Then about 9:30pm there was a short interview with Richard Kelly, where he thanked us all for attending the showing and supporting the film. He also talked about his new film which he's currently working on. Kelly sounded confident in proving the critics. he is not a one trick pony. After which the film started with a lots of clapping and cheering from the now huge audience. When I first sat down, I never expected people to be sitting all the way at the entrance which was some distance away from the screen, but it certainly happened. I'm so glad the version they played of Donnie Darko was the orginal version not the watered down directors cut. No offense, but that was obviously made for those who didnt quite get the orginal version. I highly recommend this experience if there is a Stella screening with a film you really enjoy.

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