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December 22, 2003
colin on commons.
i love creative commons. partly b/c of what they do. partly b/c of how they do it. now i take a trip over to activefreemedia and find that good man colin is featured in their latest cc promotional flash movie. i don't think i'll be able to sit in another youth rss meeting again without thinking of a walking cc logo.Posted by yatta at 1:45 AM
December 19, 2003
jahshaka - open source realtime editing and effects system
check it: open source realtime video editing and effects system. it succeeds by using the gpu instead of cpu cycles for processing. runs on linux, os x, and windows. drazen gave me a demo of this earlier today and it's pretty sweet. download the binary then head over to the jahshaka community site for more info. the rastas are developing some of the most exciting linux based sw out there. yeah mon! (sorry. i couldn't help myself.)Posted by yatta at 7:46 PM
December 15, 2003
video of screensaversgroup july 4 performance online.
eric has posted a video of the screensaversgroup performance from on top of the red square building on july 4, 2003. visually, you get a good sense of what the night was about (although i wish there was a soundtrack to kinda represent the hype energy that was up there.) there's a proposal on the table to reassemble the resources from the performance as a public art+media toolkit. so if you know anyone with money to hand out for participatory public art projects, send them our way. :)Posted by yatta at 6:57 PM
December 12, 2003
world summit on the information society
Just found out that good man Riddle is over in Geneva at the world summit on the information society. Wish i was there. Fortunately, a collective blog site has been set up over at The Daily Summit. So far it sounds a lot like what went on at the world conference on racism. Or maybe it's just b/c The Daily Summit feels similar to YC's durban diaries project.Posted by yatta at 8:15 PM
"Crashing The Party" - Josh's Thesis Document
Josh posted a draft of his thesis project which is to merge yury's magicbike with the Graffiti Writer project by the Institute for Applied Autonomy. It's a good read and an excellent project.“Crashing the Party” seeks to develop a tactical-media performance tool that merges activism online (cyberactivism) with direct action protest in real space in an effort to protest the2004 Republican National Convention in NYC. The challenge of this project is to create meaningful dialogue in popular culture through tactical mappings of messages and locations inrelation to the political event.
Posted by yatta at 8:06 PM
December 10, 2003
technology is to food....
just a quick thought i wanted to jot down before i left off on my day's journey:i've read recently that there is no money in whole foods. the only way to make a profit is to find a relatively cheap foodstuff, break it down, and reconstitute it as a mash-up of a product. i started wondering if the same rule will come to bear on the technology sector as more and more functions are defined in software. although you might be able to receive "radio" on your computer, the consumer may not want to deal with the complexity of configuring their own device. and looking at devices like the ipod makes me think that the profit margin on a radio device might be high enough that it may make more sense for companies to build specific devices instead of parts that extend functionality. (functions that compliment each other like telephony, messenger clients, and pims may be the exception.)
Posted by yatta at 2:15 PM
browsetv video now available.
it's about 30 minutes long, but you can now see last week's episode of browsetv online. it's a http streamed realvideo file (i'm working on the quicktime server! i know, i know!) and i've only been able to test it at the broadband bitrate. let me know if you have any trouble with it.i've also posted links from last week's episode.
Posted by yatta at 1:53 PM
screensaversgroup
had a good time at the screensaversgroup gathering yesterday. eric's back from africa. and it was good to see josh at the mtg. josh presented his revised electronics for the hacktivist flashpoint projector. just before the meeting i had dreams of hundreds of these strobing in an array. when i got there i found out that a bunch of us did. this is very good stuff.Posted by yatta at 12:46 PM
December 8, 2003
toronto's video booth
i've been doing my research into creating a cheap version of the video booth, an idea I presented at an acm conference back in nineteen ninety something. anyhoo, came across toronto's speakers corner again. i keep on forgetting about that one (probably b/c it's considered proprietary tech, although it might be cheaper to buy one nowadays. it seems to be a well made box, and i can stand to learn a lot from it. supposedly there have been many more placed throughout canada and the states. i really need to go searching for these things.Posted by yatta at 6:08 PM | Comments (2)
a la carte broadband tv in hong kong.
also found today on gigaom.... pccw is offering broadbandtv in hong kong. and it's delivered via copper at 4.5 megabits per sec.I actually wanted to excerpt what I thought was the interesting part of this article. If TV goes broadband, it allows providers to break everything up and charge per channel. The biggest issue consumers have with cable providers' is the constant increase in rate hikes. Cable providers have blamed it on the rising cost of "popular" sports and premium channels that they then have to pass on to the subscriber base. Channels charge more, consumers complain, and prices keep on rising.
Given this situation, I think providers would jump on the chance to sell channels a la carte. Sure they'll still offer channel "packages" for consumers who don't want the complexity of choice, but if you pair this with the current Powell-led deregulation, it isn't difficult to see a market where the FCC tries to put an end to must carry channels like local origination and PEG in the name of the market. Sure, maybe PEG will be listed as a free offering, but who's to say that people will subscribe? Is that the wake up call for PEG operators to clean up their presentation?
One of the problems with this model, though, is that it almost lends itself to a price war among service providers with diminishing returns. One of the supposed benefits of TV over IP is that it opens the market up to competition. If video is just a data service delivered via IP, that means anyone can provide video channels (in the form of high quality streaming) to any computer on the network. But past experience in the ISP wars of the 90s tells us that the competition won't last long. Big service providers will eventually price out the smaller video service providers leaving three or four money-rich companies to divvy up the market.
Despite this, I think there's still a market there for non-major channels and clever brands (like magazines and clubs) that can act as video aggregators (TV tech _will_ learn from blogs! Mark my words!) What if WBAI had a TV channel they never had to rebroadcast? Needless to say, I'm working on an article that suggests just that.
Posted by yatta at 12:35 PM
wireless gigabit.
check this from gigaom: wireless gigabit. my future contains always on, always connected devices that receive everything as IP data packets. the only difference between my cell phone, my radio, and my tv is the software codec and the I/O devices that allow me to interact with the device. i like my future.update: whaddya know: a press release touting a 150Mbps wireless chipset.
Posted by yatta at 11:28 AM
canon camcorders are good b/c of the lens.
so sez camcorderinfo. i've always liked robin liss' reviews. they've always seemed a bit more real-world than the fluff that comes across in the trades every month. plus she reviews the consumer stuff. no one else really does that in any useful way except maybe steve's digicams and he seems more of a photog than a video guru.Anywho, this time around Robin talks about the reason why canon's consumer cameras look so gosh darn good: the lens. canon pays a lot more attention to the lens than anyone else in the consumer category. robin even provides a bit of interesting thought about why this is:
Sony, Panasonic and JVC actually have an incentive to keep quality features out of their consumer lines - protecting the sales of their high end lines. Sony is possibly the worst offender, leaving off manual control features on their consumer camcorders, which could be put in for probably $5, forcing people who want to tweak their image to buy the $1,800 or $2,500 Sony model.i've been recommending sub-$700 canons for my friends this holiday season with the blessing to pick up the vx2100 for those who want a pd150 but wouldn't mind saving a couple grand in lieu of xlr inputs. (go buy a beachtek.... yo - and jandr has it for $2500! sweet!) personally, all i wanted was a camcorderinfo site redesign where my eyes weren't visually assaulted every time i visited. i'm glad i got my wish. :)
Posted by yatta at 11:03 AM
browsetv.net redux
okay. i slapped the browsetv website together before i was ready. i took it down, fixed the css, and now it's back and better than before. (or at least, just easier on the eyes.) there's a forum for viewer feedback and streaming video of the episodes will be up once the darwin server is up and happy. it'll be soon. i promise.Posted by yatta at 4:19 AM | TrackBack
in search of the hackable.
oh boy. it's 4.00a and i should be sleeping. i have a dentist appointment at 8am and i'm searching the web for hacking sites for the cybiko wireless entertainment system instead of sleeping. why? b/c i found it on amazon for about $15 a pop. it's this wireless (900MHz) email, gaming, and instant messenger "toy" for teens. it's been modded to no end, but i wonder if there are any other possible uses for such a device. there's something interesting here, methinks. especially heading into next year's convention.oh yeah, speaking of next year, better get your flashpoint DIY projector ready: create a projector out of a disposable camera, some tape, and a 9-volt battery. more yay for rtmark!
Posted by yatta at 4:14 AM | TrackBack
December 4, 2003
werblog on voip
The FCC had their voip hearings the other day (to regulate or not to regulate...) So I dialed up cspan and let it sit in the background while i worked. little did i realize that not only was kevin werbach, superexcellenttechnogeek, testifying at the forum, but he was blogging it as well.As far as media/telecom legislation goes, nothing concerns me more than voip. I sorta see it as a precursor to what's going to happen when tv goes ip as well.
Posted by yatta at 1:40 AM | TrackBack
December 1, 2003
irate radio
here's an interesting one: irate radio which seems, on first hand, to be just another mp3 downloader, until you notice its collaborative filtering options...iRATE radio is a collaborative filtering client/server mp3 player/downloader. The iRATE server has a large database of music. You rate the tracks and it uses your ratings and other people's to guess what you'll like. The tracks are downloaded from websites which allow free and legal downloads of their music.Gotta check this one out....
Posted by yatta at 10:49 PM
hip hop, firewire drives and uncle yatta.
been a little busy the past couple of weeks. still doing work for h2ed - trying to get an online database of lesson plans up and going this month. firewire drives keep on going down at mnn (hint: buy the lacie d2 drives and stay away from the lacie porsche ones.) plus my sister just had her baby on friday (i'm an uncle!) in the meantime, i've been working on my grand unified theory for community television and building a youth media rss service. i'll post more as i finish.Posted by yatta at 10:30 PM