LIVEdigitally

links for 2006-11-05

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Digg gets more democratic; annoys geek-elites

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Back in the late 90s, workplace boredom often led to Web surfing.  The only thing is, the “discovery” element was pretty tricky, and you pretty much had to rely on word-of-mouth or links from Yahoo!.  Well, with the fun of Web 2.0, we have a bunch of new services that let people help each other find new and interesting stuff online.  Well, maybe not interesting, but at least new.

The top of these social bookmarking (as the term is called) services are Digg, Delicious (now owned by Yahoo), and Reddit (now owned by Conde Nast/Wired). I’ve recently started using both Digg (here’s my Digg profile) and Delicious (more on that in a few days), and find they really can help cure the “I’m bored and I want to surf for 10 minutes” syndrome. With each of them you can track your friends’ favorites and there are a variety of methods to see what’s new or what’s popular.  Only thing is “what’s popular” isn’t necessarily what the term typically implies.

If you want to to know the most popular movies, you can read the box office reports.

Most popular TV shows, Nielsen (which nobody really trusts, but nothing else is out there just yet).

Web sites?  Well, now you have a variety of unreliable services.

But for “Links of the day” you have things like the Digg home page.  Which is built dynamically based on some mysterious algorithm.  In the first era of Digg, the home page was pretty much dictated by the “Top 100” users.  The specifics of how to become a Top 100 weren’t exactly clear, but it basically was a self-rewarding process.  Once in, it’s nearly impossible to get out, and a new user has about 0 odds of getting in.  And the Top 100 were happy. 

Then team Digg decided to change their algorithms, to try to make it a bit more “fair and balanced.”  Sounds good, right?  Well, to everybody not in the Top 100, it’s quite good, as the “What’s Popular” list no longer reflects what they think is interesting, but what the entire Digg community thinks is interesting.  Which leaves the Top 100 feeling a little left out.

I do understand their feeling this way, as they spent countless hours contributing to the site.  Maybe they should have their own special section, or be an automatic filter of the home page or something.  They should get a little kudos and “thank-you” (and not just a T-shirt).  But the site has evolved, and its for the better.  It ain’t exactly a democracy just yet, but we’ll call it a Diggocracy and move on.

Hopefully they’ll work on fixing the “disappearing cookie” problem now…

Borat Review: Funny, but real or staged?

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Along with about 10 million college kids, I saw Borat tonight with some friends.  Despite trying to buy tickets on the Interwebs in the middle of the day, the best we could do was the 9:55 show in Daly City!  Here’s my spoiler-free review:

What is the movie?
It’s funny.  Laugh-out-loud funny.  Kinda almost nauseating funny.  Occasionally very squeamish funny.  A wee bit disturbing/disgusting funny. Often uncomfortably funny.  Completely politically incorrect funny.  Overall, it’s just plain funny. 

What isn’t the movie?
Clever, witty, deep, sensitive, brilliant, hysterical, thoughtful, or hygienic (according to IMDB, “The suit Sacha Baron Cohen wears when playing Borat has deliberately never been cleaned.”). 

But it might just have you fall out of your seat laughing.  If you just want to have a good time, and you can deal with 90-odd minutes of silly, then go see it.  It’s just that simple.

Mini-spoilers follow from this point (nothing to ruin a scene, but I will mention some scenes by name/location).

Continue reading →

links for 2006-11-04

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Birthing a Robot: History of the Robosapien V2

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Matt Whitlock put together a nice article with plenty of pretty pictures on the evolution of the WowWee Robosapien V2.  I just got my hands on, well, one of the shall-we-say “up and coming” Robosapiens and this thing is most definitely not just a toy.  I am stunned at the capabilities of the ‘bot, and if you’ve never taken a look at them, you really should check it out.  The Robosapien lineup is constantly evolving, and the newest ones have more programmable functions than you’d imagine.  There’s even a Web site (a few really) with robot experts building additional hacks to the products.  I’ll try my hand at some custom programming this weekend, which means in all likelihood mine will find a way to burst into flames.

links for 2006-11-03

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Out Damned Spyware, Out!

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Things like spyware, malware, spam, viruses, and the popularity of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan (although she was Hot in Mean Girls) all completely baffle me.  I understand that everyone wants to make a buck, but I just don’t get how people can really sleep at night.  Thankfully, for as much energy as the evil people put into developing their tricks, there is a lot of goodwill being done at the same time.  Our old pal Jonas put together a roundup of several free anti-spyware tools, and it’s a good read (unless you are on the Microsoft Defender team, in which case you have some coding to do).

Technology Emmy Award Nominees/Winners Announced

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It’s amazing to read, but the same organization that only last year lauded “Everybody Loves Raymond” with “Outstanding Comedy Series” is now recognizing Sling Media, Visible World, TiVo, Moxi, Revver, and other new digital media companies with technology-related Emmys.  This is great to see, as it’s important sign that the whole industry is moving forward to embrace such technologies and services. 

Here’s the entire list:

  • The Emmy Award for Pioneering Development of On Screen Display (OSD) for Setup, Control and Configuration of Consumer Television Equipment:
    • RCA 
  • The Emmy Award for Streaming Media Architectures and Components:
    • Microsoft
    • Adobe
    • Real
    • Apple
  • The Emmy Award for Pioneering Development for Combining Multiple Transport Streams Which Are Already Encoded, Using Rate-Shaping and Statistical Re-multiplexing:
    • Terayon Communication Systems 
  • The Emmy Award for Development and Implementation of Automatically Assembled Dynamic Customized TV Advertising:
    • Visible World
    • Weather Channel 
  • The Emmy Award for Technology Advances in Serial Digital Interface Solutions, Enabling Over 20 Years of Seamless Studio and Broadcast Infrastructure migration:
    • Gennum Corporation
  • The Emmy Award for Privately Owned and Operated International Satellite Company Primarily for International Video Services:
    • Rene Anselmo, PanAmSat
  • The nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Synchronous Enhancement of Original Television Content are:
    • DirecTV Interactive Sports – DirecTV
    • HSN Shop by Remote – HSN
    • NBC Olympics Now – BIAP Systems, Inc. 
  • The nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Non-Synchronous Enhancement of Original Television Content are:
    • CNN Enhanced – CNN/Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
    • Fantasy Football Tracker – BIAP Systems, Inc.
    • Passions Vendetta – NBC.com
    • Sopranos:   Crime. Organized – Deep Focus
    • The Cultivated Life:  Thomas Jefferson & Wine – NetBlender
    • The-N.com Video Mixer – The N 
  • The nominees for Outstanding Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Creation of Non-Traditional Programs or Platforms are:
    • Entriq, Inc. Mobile Technology – Entriq, Inc.
    • Switched Broadcast is Transforming TV – Big Band Networks
    • The Slingbox – Sling Media
    • Vid-Wave – Boxx Communications 
  • The nominees for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of Personal Media Display and Presentation Technology are:
    • Screen 3 – Hill & Knowlton/Motorola
    • Sectional Navigation Architecture – GoTV Networks
    • Xross Media Box – SONY
  • The nominees for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of “On Demand” Technology Over Private (closed) Networks are:
    • Guided TV – ABC On Demand – Disney – ABC Television Group
    • Moxi Adelphie On Demand Browser – Digeo
    • Time Warner Cable’s Start Over – Time Warner Cable, Concurrent Computer Corp., Big Band Networks, Harmonic Inc., Scientific Atlanta. 
  • The nominees for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for the Best Use of “On Demand” Technology Over the Public (open) Internet are:
    • ABC.com Full Episode Streaming Player – Disney – ABC Television Group
    • AOL Music’s Top 11 Countdown Show – AOL, LLC
    • GameTap – GameTap, Turner Broadcasting
    • Revver.com – Revver
    • Stim TV – NPOWR
    • Vongo – Starz
  • The nominees for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media Technology for Best Use by Commercials in Creation and Use in Non Traditional Platforms and Technologies are:
    • ABC.com Full Episode Streaming Player – Disney-ABC Television Group
    • Ravenstoke – Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc.
    • TiVo Interactive Advertising Platform – TiVo Inc.

More from the official Emmy site here. Conspicuously absent are YouTube, DivX (codec and/or Stage6), MSN Soapbox, and other online plays.  Maybe next year…

Mobile Web Biz Plan Competition

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In an interesting alliance, Nokia, the government of Finland and Red Herring have come together (it’s gotta be the herring) to offer a competition to who can put together the most compelling mobile Web business plan.  This is excellent timing in my opinion (read this story at GigaOm if you don’t believe me), as the only space on a par with the excitement of Internet video is mobile technology and mobile lifestyle (with the combination of the two being at the peak of JT’s fictitious hot-meter).

The Web-2-Mobile Business Plan Competition is open to any “qualified” entrepreneur, which is an interesting choice of words – who exactly is an unqualified entrepreneur anyway?  It’s probably just to deter people like that crazy Omarosa woman from the Apprentice.

The nitty gritty is as follows…

  • Schedule
    • December 10th: applications due
    • January 2nd: finalists announced
    • January 27th: winners selected
  • Signing Up
  •  Prize/What you can win
    • Profile in Red Herring magazine
    • Invitation to Nokia labs to develop the application(s)
    • 1 year’s supply of smoked herring (prize not guaranteed) 

I hope this event encourages some of those who might be too timid to go down the scary VC route of funding a company to try something new.  I believe there is a ton of opportunity to innovate in the mobile lifestyle space.  Some ideas I’d love to see launch in the next few months/years:

  • Mobile travel lookups and booking: I don’t need all the features of Travelocity on the road, but I’d love the ability to quickly lookup and book some simple itineraries (think: “find me the next trip on United from LAX to SFO).  Throw in location-based services for hotel bookings and there’s a nice winner here (the incentive?  how about the 12 million Windows mobile phones that are likely shipping in 2006? nice market). 
  • Mobile bus/public transit routing:  While I am building my own simple interface to the Bay Area’s 511 trip planner, making a full-fledged mobile Web/SMS mechanism for finding routes is a nice idea.  Not exactly sure what the business model is here, but I’m sure some clever team can figure it out.
  • Massively Multiplayer Mobile Gaming: Is that a term?  I should probably just google it and not be so lazy (google results: the term is barely in use).  I kill a lot of time with solitaire, nethack, and sudoku.  If there was some simple multiplayer game I could jump in and out of for 10-30 minutes at a time, I’d sign up.

Ok, that made my brain tired.  Time to watch Heroes and get all happy.