Forget me - or not

Facebook Friendonomics: "friendships, like long-forgotten photos and mixtapes, would distort and slowly whistle into oblivion, quite naturally, nothing personal." [Scott Brown, Wired 16.11]

Love the point about a "Fade Utility" - sort of the same way your rss reader could do with a "sort by actually reading" button. There is too much information, too many posts, tweets and articles to have any chance of seeing it all - never mind responding or reflecting on it.

Social overload as the next disorder? ADHD taken to the next level? Do we need to loose touch with some in order to maintain touch with ourselves? Or is the net helping us expand our social capabilities and the ability to fade people in and out?

testing blogthis bookmarklet, still missing labels, but otherwise fair enough

witcher enhanced out on tuesday - and a console version announced, time to get playing

wORD - open

Via NRKBeta; a short post from Make - links on to the interesting thing - the base .fla file used for making the video. Have to download it again tomorrow and have a quick peak at work, see if we can't get something up and make a plug out of it. [like this...]

(and the Guild s2e2 is out - 'buff me' :D)

Keep going, keep improving

Evening Reconnaissance Mission by merlinmann

A wonderful and inspering post on how you need to keep on going in order to improve your skills as a photographer.

Doesn't matter if it is "just" a hobby - the way to improve and get better is to do it, over and over. Get the basics inside and on automatic. Digital means endless supply of "film" - so there is no need to skimp. [Found by tweet from f.day]

And if you need some more inspiration or guidance, there are several good podcasts on photography out there (Tips from top floor, photowalkthrough, martin bailey,...)

Not to forget a recent post on eirikso - gives some visual aides for different ISO, aperture and shutter. Now get out there and make your own test and flip thorugh them in picasa.

...and the sun fades fast this time of year...
sidenotes;
-finished Rep.Commando - True Colors today (good yarn, fun stuff, need to get Order66)
and picked up the Clone Wars dvd along with Kung Fu Panda
for some nice animated fun over the days ahead

Bit by little bit

What is next and now in terms of streaming video? The Adobe Media Player looked really neat when it arrived, playing up CSI episodes full screen even over here in Norway. But now it seems to be a bit quiet on that side of the aisle.

Several companies are working on changing the underlying logic, much like bittorrent did for distirbution of files. Here are some notes and thoughts on tow of them - BitGravity and Move Networks.

Bitgravity caught my notice due to a nifty "multiview" experiment one of their people put up, and I think it was CC who tweeted it.
They got a bit of funding back in august (2.5m)- and uses a flash interface making them at home on most computers;
"challenged conventional methods for delivering content" - "automatically detects end-user bandwidth quality ... adjusts the stream’s bitrate to optimize it for the user" - sure sounds nice and comfortable.

Move on the other hand got their hands on quite a bit of funding this spring (46m), they have a solid roster og clients ( ABC, FOX, ESPN, the CW, and Discovery.) - but have been based around a dedicated player.

However, there was talk of the solution becoming a part of Silverlight (v2 most likely?) - and MS also put up some cash. But little readily available info on what has happened since march. A good sign that they are doing a solid job, or another case of times moving on?

With MS partnering with Akamai; "Smooth Streaming (SmoothHD.com) from our partner Akamai. Smooth Streaming will be available in a public beta in Q1 2009. " - and that ties into the Open Player initiative.

...and the sun, oh the sun...

Too small to loose

" lesson is that more is different. The Internet, by giving everybody access to a market of hundreds of millions of people, can work at participation rates that would be a disaster in the traditional world of non-zero marginal costs" - The miraculous power of scale (C. Anderson)

And isn't that the beauty of it all? When everybody can get the same stuff, you can have a core audience spanning the globe, across ages and education backgrounds - and still with something in common that makes it work. Be it Wikipedia or DeviantArt. Combining a sense of community effort, partaking in something bigger - while at the same time using those "spare cycles" to create something more than just filler.

It is actually okay to have a solid share of 'lurkers' - or readers as they are know in the traditional media. Because that 1% (or less) that produce the opinions and content make it worthwhile for the other 99% - and then some. It's all good, as the saying goes...

...and the sun is much missed - 'tis the season to get another pot of tea brewing...

Silver lining?

"in most cases, Flash video streaming is still more expensive for content owners to deliver, especially for those with a lot of traffic" (full post and comments)

Could Silverlight seriously push aside Flash as the main format for more advanced web applications and experiments? With javascript apps eating away at the other end of the market, losing the video/animation focus could seriously dampen the way forward.

Several media companies are already promoting Silverlight as a Mac/Unix option for their exsisting WMV streaming, thereby helping spread the installed base and user awareness. And solutions like the JW makes it even easier to play around.

Short term? No worries... long term? Netscape, Real Networks and Wordperfect anyone?

Customer first

"Similar to Apple’s own ‘Remote’ app for iTunes, Sonos today released a free download that turns an iPhone into a wireless controller for the company’s Multi-Room Music System." - from post over at Last 100 (including a video clip demo)

Wonderful move, making it easier for their customers to both enjoy and show off their cool system to friends and visitors. And giving them serious insight along the way. At almost no cost.

Score another point or five for the Touch - a true multipurpose tool for the digital age.

Engage me

Chevron had some interesting ads in Wired a while back, and after hunting around a bit on their site I found what I was looking for; Energyville. It is a game/simulation developed along with the Economist- where you set up the mix of power supplies for a major city, seeing how it affects economic, environmental and security levels. Then some random events occur to affect your current situation, and you get to refine your choices for the next time period.

Captivating and informative at the same time. Good fun and a great example of using the net to extend information (and in this case a wee bit marketing) by "simply" adding interactivity and a bit of randomness


And on the topic of engagement - apparently Two and a Half Men is "it" right now. NewTeeVee had a piece on comparing viewership with online engagement ( reading, rating, sharing, linking and inviting). The show stacked up an average score of 9.5 interactions per viewer - while House got some 3.3 interactions and the most viewed, Greys A., got a rather modest .74

So does it give any good indications of the loyalty of either group of viewers?
Perhaps not as a one of (single week comparison), but given some time and comparable data it could be a nice addition to the toolbox (and perhaps the option of adjusting the scores for various activities on the fly - reading might be a better goal for a news show, while sharing could be key for a new show getting started - could even predict future viewership potential and be correlated)


...and the sun is long gone - it is getting close to 11, on the 11th day of the 11th month...

Don't play inChrome?

At least not if you intend to do any changes to your blog on Blogger. Because adding in new gadgets to the page, is a one way process in the Google browser. The "remove" button doesn't work. Which is kind of strange, considering how they touted their huge base of test-pages, you would assume they made sure their own actual services worked without major hitches.

Makes me not want to risk posting with Chrome, which was supposed to be on the agenda after doing some layout adjustments. Reminds me of when they added in the first version of the spellchecker - and it didn't include blog or Blogger... the joys of division of labour