Geekout
Sling Introduces New Box, Symbian Support
The Sling Media team is on a bit of a high this week. A few days after being acquired by Echostar (DISH), the Foster City, CA-based company is introducing a new product called the Slingbox SOLO. The sleek and very attractive device connects to a set-top box and streams video in either standard digital or high definition. It costs $179.99.
Sling Media also announced a new version of its SlingPlayer Mobile software for S60 software on Symbian OS platform that Nokia N-series and E-series phones. The new software costs $29.95, but will be free for N95 customers. If you remember, Sling CEO Blake Krikorian had showed up with a 3G Nokia N95 phone with this special software installed on our The GigaOM Show. Here is our beta review.
Apple TV Now Playing YouTube: Hands-On Video
By guest columnist Jonathan Greene.
I just updated my AppleTV with the latest software to get access to YouTube and I have to say that the H.264 quality is excellent! We all know what the majority of YouTube video looks like, but this is something well beyond what you normally see and bodes very well for the iPhone when it’s released next week.
Once you connect and login, you can see your favorites and rate or report video. You can’t however see your own videos or those of your friends / subscriptions which seems like an oversight to me. I would expect to see that in a future update since that’s a large part of the community aspect within YouTube.
I shot some video of the process which should give you some insight into the update process as well as the quality of the experience. It’s not the most exciting of videos, but here you go:
Jonathan Greene is a long-time contributor to GigaOM network. He is an entrepreneurial marketer focused on bringing the benefits of ROI-driven direct response techniques to the digital arena.
Bird Watch is on at Craigslist
Which will come first — an overload of “Craigslist has gone to the birds” headlines, or an Internet traffic jam to the webcam on company founder Craig Newmark’s back porch? Right now we are giving even odds, after reading the Wired post about a research project that will let Internet viewers remotely control a bird-watching camera affixed to the back porch of Newmark’s rustic rural (for San Francisco) home.
Called the CONE (for Collaborative observatory for natural environments) Sutro Forest, the Cal-Berkeley project is the latest step in a series of nature-cams, of which there have been others before. But since this one involves the no-billions-for-me nice-guy Newmark, we’re betting the attention level will ratchet up a bit, from the mainstream media as well as from Internet time-wasters who will simply think it’s cool to control the cam on Craig’s porch.
Ostensibly there is going to be some real bird-watching going on, but we are also thinking of offering a betting line on how long it takes some geek to try to turn the camera around for a peek inside Craig’s house.
(Seagull photo by Paul Kapustka)
HOW TO: Make Internet TV
As much as I love online video, that doesn’t mean that I don’t think most of it is crap — crap I say! Shaky hand-held shots zoomed digitally, terrible lighting, no scripting or storyboarding and audio that sounds like it was recorded with a cell phone (which it often is). Don’t try to argue that the clip of your cat licking its privates is an attempt at making a Dogme 95 statement. Yes, it’s video, but it sure ain’t filmmaking.
Enter Make Internet TV, a newly released site from the Participatory Culture Foundation that also brought you the Miro, nee Democracy player, Broadcast Machine and other free, open-source alternatives to offerings from Microsoft, Apple and Google.
SuperHappy Start to Video Blogging Week
In a meta-moment, Justin of Justin.tv had a chat with MTV’s Real World veteran Irene McGee at this weekend’s SuperHappyVlogHouse in San Francisco. The event, along with others put on across the country, was part creative salon, part policy summit, part evangelical revival and pure geekout to kick off Video Blogging Week 2007. There was an anarchic, dadaist feel to the evening of what I’m calling “Surreality TV.”
That Was Fast: Apple TV Hacks
Just a couple days after the Apple TV ceased to be a figment of the imagination and started showing up on shipping trackers, hackers worldwide have already begun to explore and expand the device’s functionality. Of course, what does it say about the device that it ships so hobbled it can be upgraded by hobbyists in a matter of hours?
A Gizmodo reader has done what Apple should have done months ago, when the device was announced — expand the hard drive. In this case, they managed to triple the internal storage to something more in keeping with a box you could fit four iPods in. And if you think it’s incredibly complicated, Make Magazine offers a guide to cracking open your Apple TV in four easy steps. Then it’s just a matter of shoehorning an aftermarket drive in there.
Five Features Flash Should Have
I love Flash-based video content. It’s lightweight, widely supported, and can do neat things like embed across sites and ping servers even when played locally. QuickTime is a venerable institution, and Windows Media Player has its fans (I guess), but the usability and functionality of web video took a huge leap with Flash Player 8. Still, there are a few features that I’d like to see become more universally implemented.
Jeroen Wijering’s Flash player (above) has a lot of these features without abandoning extant standards like SMIL, RTMP and ATOM, and the code is licensed under Creative Commons so it can be used non-commercially for free or licensed for a paltry €15.
‘New Voyages’ Treks New Frontier
Leave it to the fans of the original Star Trek to not only spend the kind of time and money it takes to recreate the original show, but to bring back some of the groundbreaking storylines and characters that made the original so compelling to a generation of outsiders.
The latest episode of Star Trek: New Voyages, a fan funded and produced continuation of the original series, will be based on a script written by Next Generation veteran David Gerrold called “Blood and Fire” and will feature the homosexual nephew of Captain Kirk, Peter Kirk, in a plotline about a blood-borne pathogen that’s intended as an allegory for HIV.
Blinkx Launches Video Search Wiki
Video search service Blinkx has put together a white paper detailing how to optimize your content for video search and a wiki where the online video community can update and advise each other going forward, launching today.
The document covers everything from title to metadata, where to post and how to syndicate with mRSS. It’s a rare move for a search engine to actually offer detailed search engine optimization guidelines, or even to be transparent about the process in general. Definitely something to look at if you’re marketing your video, especially if you have deep archives.
Though I’m not sure if I’m just surprised Blinkx announced something, anything, besides yet another partnership with a video site.
SXSW Reflections: The Video-Tech Dance
SXSW REPORT — If last year was the year of ‘Web 2.0′ at South by Southwest Interactive, this is the year that video killed the Internet rockstar. A total of fifteen panels at the conference are, for the first time, cross-listed in both the Film and Interactive conference schedules, and have featured the likes of Adobe, MTV, JetSet, Cinematech, Amanda Congdon and the producers of Lonelygirl15.
Not that there haven’t been great panels that are pure geekouts, like Phillip Torrone and Limor Fried’s keynote yesterday. And frankly, some of the web video panels have been kind of boring. But then, if you only come to Austin for the panels, you’re missing out on most of the fun.
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