In true testament to open systems and APIs. Xbox media centre's Python scripting support means it can be totally scripted. So when I read the news that Windows Media Centre now supports YouTube I just laughed. Xbox media centre has had this ability for months now. And it works so well now.
Category: Uncategorized
The current state of Tape it off the internet.com
So TechCrunch UK did a post covering Tape it off the internet. The review was interesting but I have problems with Tape it off the internet in its current state.
So first up adding a new show is simply a nightmare. I wanted to add the new BBC conspirancy Drama, The state within. But I couldn't find where you do this. Sheila also had this problem but she actual found it once. Now it seems the option is gone for now. My next problem is the RSS Bit Torrent support. It does work but I don't want to see the wrong episodes. Yes if you use your brain you can work out the correct one, but ideally tioti would automaticlly work out whats correct and whats not. My Bit torrent client does this with a simple Regular Expression, it would be great if tioti would also do this.
My other concerns are centred around the user interface. Its using so much ajax calls it actually becomes very ignoying. Unlike Flickr, it seems you have to do one thing then wait for the little red staus box to change before doing anything else. I'm sorry but if your going to use Ajax, use it so I can change many things at once. You might as well use page reloads if your not going to allow multiples changes at once. The user experience of Tioti is also really weird. It doesn't seem to make sense. For example on the episode guide why can't I also change the rating for the show here and maybe start a discussion? I think the episode guide should also be the centre of the experience. From there you should be able to download, discuss and rate a show. Then click on a season and get simlar behaviors. How cool would it be to click one button and get a rss feed for all the previous shows? It would certainly help people catch up.
I've posted up some screenshots with comments to cover the rest of my complaints regarding the UI
The social side of things is also bizarre. You can do the usual things like share a show with a friend and get into groups and discuss the show (like your going to do that in the closed walls of tioti instead of the real fan bases like lostcast). But you can't share episodes with friends, which should be fine because your only sharing the torrent file or link to the torrent file. Which is also where things fall down. See Tioti will recommend torrents but what I'm actually interested in is torrents which my friends have downloaded or are currently downloading.
So my recommedation for Tioti is a plugin for Azureus like how last.fm works now. I mean if you can get a plugin for most of the top torrent programmes then you'll be away. I mean imagine if Sheila started seeding episode 7 of Heroes and I'm on her friends and heroes list. Then Tioti could alert me to that fact and link me to the same torrent file. This fits in with the whole Azureus 2.5 share with a friend option and Tribler social p2p system.
What is going on at YouTube?
I got two of these today…
Dear Member:
This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Comedy Central Property claiming that this material is infringing:
Future Shock with Samantha Bee: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJrTlUv6EaA
Lewis Black on Advertising: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhSQxPH-YxMPlease Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide.
If you elect to send us a counter notice, to be effective it must be a written communication provided to our designated agent that includes substantially the following (please consult your legal counsel or see 17 U.S.C. Section 512(g)(3) to confirm these requirements):
A) A physical or electronic signature of the subscriber.
B) Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.
C) A statement under penalty of perjury that the subscriber has a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
D) The subscriber's name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that the subscriber consents to the jurisdiction of Federal District Court for the judicial district in which the address is located, or if the subscriberis address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which the service provider may be found, and that the subscriber will accept service of process from the person who provided notification under subsection (c)(1)(C) or an agent of such person.Such written notice should be sent to our designated agent as follows:
DMCA Complaints
YouTube, Inc.
1000 Cherry Ave.
Second Floor
San Bruno, CA 94066
Email: copyright@youtube.comPlease note that under Section 512(f) of the Copyright Act, any person who knowingly materially misrepresents that material or activity was removed or disabled by mistake or misidentification may be subject to liability.
Sincerely,
YouTube, Inc.Copyright © 2006 YouTube, Inc.
Yes YouTube got told to take down all the Daily Show, South Park and Colbert Report by Viacom representing Comedy Central. But now I'm hearing Viacom have changed there minds and has allowed the material to go back up. Crazy!
Vib Ribbon, one of the weirdest games you’ve never played
Trust me this game is nuts. On Monday I went to the games you should have played event at zero one in soho. I filmed most of it and it came up with very interesting games including Vib Ribbon which I've never ever heard of till that day. Remind me to look for a decent PSX emulator for my PC or Xbox one day soon. I'm glad these emulators exist and there mature enough to run these games. Otherwise such games would sink into the sands of time forever. What I find amazing about Vib Ribbon is the load into ram feature, hence the cut back on graphics I guess
Vib-Ribbon is a rhythm video game in the style of PaRappa the Rapper and Amplitude. The game was unique in that the software loaded into RAM, letting the player use any music CD to play against — the game could generate a unique level from any track. The graphics for Vib-Ribbon are simple, consisting of straight, white vector lines forming crude, angular drawings of the level and the character, a female rabbit named Vibri
Other games worth mentioning include my favorate IQ or as I prefer Kuruchi. Then Rez for having one of the best levels in gaming history. Oh and this moroccas game which needs no real introduction.
Xbox mediacenter hits 2.0
I just upgraded my xboxes to the latest version. Xbmc keeps growing from strength to strength.
Team-XBMC and The XBMC Project is proud to announce the release of XboxMediaCenter 2.0.0. XBox Media Center (XBMC) is an award winning, free and open source media player for the Xbox™ game-console. The XboxMediaCenter 2.0.0 point-release source code has now been set in our CVS. We consider that the current code in the XBMC CVS is as stable as a point-release should be. All XBMC users are highly encouraged to upgrade to this stable Xbox Media Center 2.0.0 point-release. Remember, the XBMC source code needs to be compiled with the XDK, and requires a modded Xbox to run. Our thanks goes out to everyone who has tested, reported bugs, and helped fix them in order to make this release possible.
There are many new features and functions that have been introduced since the 1.1.0 point-release, that we cannot list them all here. A few that are especially worth mentioning are; the enhanced GUI/skin-engine, the Project Mayhem III skin, DVD-Video menu/navigation support (with ISO/IMG image parsing), RAR/ZIP archive parsing, a new audio/music-player (PAPlayer) with crossfade, gapless playback and ReplayGain support, Karaoke CDG-file display, Xored Trainer Engine (gaming-cheats), XLink Kai (online-gaming) front-end, iTunes 6.x DAAP and UPnP-clients, and two surprise features; read-only support for FAT12/16/32 formatted USB Mass Storage Devices up to 4GB in size, and a brand new “skinnable” 3D visualizer.
When’s the xbox 360 going to be hacked?
Not the DVD firmware hack or even the HD/Memory card reading, I'm talling about the (proper) run unsigned code type of hack. I said it would be done within a year. Well theres about 2 months left now. The amount of HD content on my network is growing and I got nothing except my workstation to play it all back on. Plus the Xbox Media Centre has pushed the Pentium 3 733mhz chip to its absolute limit now and the Xbox 360 simply isn't up to scratch for media playback sorry.
Rocketboom 2.0 with Joanne Colan
Stowe Boyd, sums up exactly what I think of Rocketboom 2.0 Daily With Joanne Colan.
Well, they were able to get off a credible start to Rocketboom 2.0, with Joanne Colan as the Anchor 2.0. She's doing a good job, but its not the same show for me.
Note that she refers to herself as the interim anchor, after ducking all the tomatoes.
Although seeing the bit with Baron seemingly driven mad was pretty funny.
Rocketboom was one of the few video shows that I actually turned to frequently, and it had grown on me. Just like I don't think the Daily Show would be the same without Jon Stewart, I feel the same about Amanda and Rocketboom 1.0.
I would also add one more thing. What the heck was this weeks casual Friday videocast about? I also didn't catch the whole Amber Mac meme being the next Rocketboom host. That would have been weird but you know what could have actually worked. Amber certainly has her style and its very different from Amanda.
Unboomed, Rocketboom split before hitting the mainstream
I've not really mentioned the rocketboom split, I only found out when I noticed nothing was not being downloaded since the start of July. So I checked out the site and read the announcement
Amanda Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood.
We wanted to meet her demands to move production out to L.A., however, we are a small company and have not been able to figure out a way to make it work, financially and in many other ways at this time. While we continue to remain with open arms, Amanda has in fact quit and left Rocketboom. So sadly, we bid Amanda adieu and wish her all the best.
Rocketboom goes on.
Andrew Baron, the founder and creator of Rocketboom, will stay with the company in New York and will continue to produce and direct the show. We are in the daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda.
While Amanda will be sorely missed, we have big plans for Rocketboom and are determined to make the show better than ever.
After Field Week and a week on hiatus, we know that you are hungry for the news! Rocketboom will be back with a news episode and an interim host this MONDAY, JULY 10.
But of course I followed a selection of links from the blogosphere and hit across a selection of, well lets say views and insights. Bear in mind that at the time Technorati's number one search was Rocketboom and sixth Amanda Congdon. First up this great thought from Tom
Amanda Congdon teams up with Cory Doctorow and friends and produces BoingBoingBoom? Quick, someone with a fashionable blog, write about it and tell Nick Douglas – it's a meme-in-waiting!
According to the huffingtonpost Joanna Colan is going to replace Amanda.
And of course before long, a link to Amanda's unboomed site and the now famous upside down map videocan also be found here). Its also worth reading in full Amanda's for the record post and the 180+ comments.
Recent xbox media centre changes
Recently the Xbox media centre team have been working on a stable 2.0 version. This means there is a code freeze while they iron out any outstanding bugs. But this hasn't stopped the innovation around xbmc.
So first up, xbox media centre took both game and multimedia 2006 sourceforge awards. On the side, Azureus won overall winner which like Jon is a permanent fixture in my video viewing. Good to see xbmc winning awards like this. I really believe its one of the best open source projects out there at the moment.
Some innovation which I haven't quite worked out the possiblities of yet. In the recent update to xbox media centre (march betas), is the ability for xbox media centre to connect to FTP servers. This is pretty crazy, because the only limitation is now the pipe, as you will also see in the next innovation. I've connected to my personal cubicgarden FTP server and a couple of annoymous FTP servers. It works really well and you can browse around for any media which is on there. It would be good to connect to Webdav servers but I'm sure thats coming soon. Reminds me to suggest that in the forums.
The next thing is the send media URL to Xbox media centre. Its been in xbmc for quite sometime but the application to get it working has been a windows only application. And there was no way I was going to run some odd application just to quickly post a media url to the xbox. But now someone has wrote a Firefox application which does this. Its really cool too, because all you need to do is set the ip address of the xbox and then right click on the link you want to send. And within seconds the xbox will start streaming the media link. Oh and for you mac fans theres is also a Dashboard widget, i'm sure it won't take long for it to be a Yahoo/Konfabulator widget too. Obviously the pipe/bandwidth is still a issue. But damm its quick and easy. This fits perfectly with Keep Vid.com however you can't get stuff from You Tube because its in FLV format and the xbox won't play back flash video files. Ideally the xbox would play back flash formats or Keep Vid would transcode it to something more playable like avi or mov. Then people could also take it away and play the media on there psp or ipod.
Macmini, the perfect media centre for my living room?
It was odd, I usually find my views are usually much closer aligned with Doc Searls than Steve Gillmor. But during a short time period while this weeks Gillmor Gang, Dan Farber, Doc Searls, Mike Arrington and Dana Gardner start chatting about the Apple Minimac announcment earlier in the week. Well Doc and others were saying it was no good as a home entertainment box because it had no Tuner input, while Steve was saying screw that its got a network port what more do you need?
And you know what Steve is right on this one. IP delivery is where its at. Yes it nice to have a digital TV tuner card but that whole PVR time shifting thing is over rated in my view. (Saying that, if Bit torrent was to go away tomorrow I would run out and buy a Twin Tuner Freeview PVR straight away). I keep hearing about the huge leap from scheduled programming to time shifted, and it is. But its also equally a huge jump from time shifted to on demand. This is not new ground, many people are exploring the world of on demand already. For example I was out at Wiki Wednesday today and missed the UK Apprentice, but it does not matter because by the time I wake up tomorrow, it will be downloading without using any of my attention. And even if i wait a week or even a month I could still get that same episode somehow without too much searching. Thats on demand. No actually that's the 3rd era of so called broadcasting.
Anyhow back to the Mac, Front row's new features are no match for Xbox media centre but I'm sure they will get better over time. If not there always other options like the Xbox 360 (if you can get your hands one), Playstation 3 (if it comes out before 2007) or even a nice shuttle PC.
Lets have deeper look at what makes the Macmini a nice machine for my living room. Well first its now got a Intel Core Duo which means it should handle 1080i HDTV with AC3 surround sound without too much problem. Like I said although Front row is no Xbox Media Centre and a long way off Windows Media Centre. Its looks pretty good for that living room remote control domain. I really need to go into a Apple store and try it out sometime soon as its kind of hard to tell just from pictures. Optical out should mean 5.1 surround sound isn't that far off. Its got a DVI output and does not seem to contain that DRM standard HCDP which means we won't get that scary Windows Vista thing where it will switch off the video unless you have the licence. I don't believe the Xbox 360 has this, but its hard to tell till its been hacked.
However there are lots of disadvantages to using a Mac. The DVD drives tend to be region locked which will make my old DVD's from America a pain to play on this machine. The remote is simple but thats the problem, its too simplic. I'm use to doing things like queuing up a selection of podcasts and videos then let it run through-out the day, it doesn't seem like you can do that from that remote? On the sound front, the Mac does not have a dolby digital chip like the xboxes, so I'll have to say goodbye to the upscaling of Dolby Surround to Dolby Digital.