So how am I nuts? I don't know, why is this such an important topic? At least I know it's not just me. Still, a fair amount of people I know, their eyes glaze over when I try to talk about this sort of thing. Then again, most of them still listen to CDs.

[/blahblah] permanent link

RTSP wrapped in SMIL wrapped in RAM

Here is the structure of a video file from here:

Layer 1: RAM file (http://kcrw.com/smil/mb050414Nouvelle_Vague.ram)

Layer 2: SMIL file, inside the RAM file (http://kcrw.com/smil/mb050414Nouvelle_Vague.smil)

Layer 3: RTSP file, part of a playlist which is the SMIL file (rtsp://go.rbn.com/realkcrw/kcrwfm/g2demand/mb050414Nouvelle_Vague.rm)

Here's a question. Do I - or even SHOULD I - have the 'right' to pull out the direct RTSP link so I can put it in a playlist? The reason for the SMIL file is so that I'll have to watch something else along with the content. Is it wrong for me to bypass that? I guess not, since that's part of the appeal of Tivo (skipping the ads and other parts you don't want to watch). Would it be better for the ad or whatever content you want people to see to be in the same file, "embedded" as it were? That's the idea behind sponsorships on TV shows (American Idol being a recent example, Texaco Star Theatre in the 1950's being an old one), and of course product placement, where the product is unavoidable because it's in the freakin' scene.

Regardless of all that, wrapping a file in a file in a file isn't a very effective way of "protecting" your content.

[/playlist_research] permanent link

MySpace also say F YOU to Non-IE users

This shouldn't be a surprise, but MySpace's videos only play in IE:

Sorry, we currently only support Internet Explorer browsers with Windows Media Player 9+

Actually, they don't play there either, but there's no error message. A commercial will play, then no music video (which is what you came there for). Great stuff! I guess $500 million onlu buys you a web site that works PART of the time.

Update: it played the third time I tried.

Note: I don't care that much about the content, I was exploring the site because I was told by a Music TV personality that MySpace was THE place for new bands. Not news, but I figured I would explore their "services".

[/tech] permanent link

Moved Nowhere
More brilliant web programming:
Found
The document has moved here.

"Here" is this:

http:// (with a third slash).

That's not a typo. Nothing personal, I just like to show that even big sites that have a staff and a budget can screw up sometimes.

[/tech] permanent link

Subtle

Note: If you upload Porn, your MySpace.com account will be deleted.

Dang!

[/blog-on-blog] permanent link

Vlog, or whatever

After making a short film for the Howard Stern Film Festival (I'll release it once I hear whether or not I'm a finalist), I decided to check out what people are doing with online video shorts, starting with Video Blogs.

This playlist has a bunch of stuff so I figured I'd start there.

After watching just a little bit of the playlist, I have a question: what are these vlogs, or whatever they're called? Personal accounts of various stuff? Creative and/or experimental films? There may not be any real parameters, but unlike the numerous text-based blogs that keep being created (69 new blogs per minute according to this post, and that was in 2005), making a video blog requires some moderate skill, or at least a willingness to do more work than just typing away (sometimes incoherently). Maybe one day everyone will have a camera in their home and we can all watch whenever we want to (Rudy Rucker wrote about that way back in the 1980's).

The idea of a blog that offers original videos by the creator, on a regular schedule (once a week/month/day, whatever works) is intriguing to me. The idea of personal entries is about as appealing to me as homepages that feature pictures of your cat.

[/blog-on-blog] permanent link

9-11 Conspiracy Theories

For the conspiracy minded among us.

A bullet point version, for conspiracy theorists with other things to do.

[/news] permanent link

Nicely named playlists

Haven't linked to a playlist in awhile, so here's two:

The latter looks more promising, but HI! seemed too nice to pass up.

[/playlists] permanent link

More crappy software

I tried to install some old (circa 1999) children's software today and couldn't. The first problem was that my anti-virus program choked at a file called DSSAGENT.EXE. Just for yucks I disabled the a/v scanner, and tried again. No go, same file, although it just didn't want to install. According to this, it's spyware, and really stupid spyware.

I was first alerted to this suspicious-looking program by Mike of Voice Of The Public, which details the DSSAGENT app and several others on its Spyware page. DSSAGENT is a tool that lets software developers push a new splash screen into a program at any time, e.g. for bug reports and product updates--but I think it's probably more centered around advertising :( This program has been seen most often bundled with children's software titles from Mattel Interactive/Broderbund. I have also had a report of the module being installed by AOL 6.0 and hammering the DNS server with "MILLIONS" of requests for www.brodcast.net.

"The idea behind Brodcast was that the splash screen didn't have to be static and stay the same for the life of the program. It could be changed when there was some information that the company wanted to pass along to its customers. The availability of new versions or related products or services could be made known on the splash screen."

So it's mostly on children's software and it doesn't do much of anything of any use whatsoever. Nice.

[/software] permanent link

Software Bloat

I just installed (and then removed) the trial of the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Professional. It takes up over 2.5 GIGS of space. That is INSANE.

I'm not a programmer, but how can it be necessary to create a program like this? Are there actually that many more features or is it just lazy coding?

[/software] permanent link

HTML Hell Page

Eric S. Raymond's HTML Hell Page is amusing, but dated. Thanks to template-based software to make blogs, there are fewer and fewer painfully ugly web sites around. They still exist, but the irritations are different and, I think, less frequent.

[/tech] permanent link

AJAX File Uploader
A cool looking tool. From here.

[/software] permanent link

RTSP with Quicktime, doesn't really work

This is the first time I've seen RTSP that will only play in Quicktime. In addition, the embedded player won't work in Firefox, but it will work in Internet Explorer.

Video found here.

Here's the page with the video that only sort of works.

Here's the direct link, which despite being RTSP, won't play in Real Player:

rtsp://www.dqtech.net:7070/BubbaCrash.mov

It will, however, play in QuickTime.

[/playlist_research] permanent link

Free White Paper About Paper

If there were a Saturday Night Live that focused exclusively on the tech indisutry, this would be a top story on the fake news.

Basically, this a white paper that tells us to use better paper in our printers. It creates better quality for our customers and improves our bottom line. ISO 9000 and shit. I don't know.

Once tech hypermeisters are focusing on paper, I think we've hit rock bottom.

[/tech] permanent link

Buzzword Bingo: Mashup Camp

(Make your own cards here and here.)

We now return you to our regularly schedule blog entry.

MashupCamp stokes the Web app fire, from ZDNet Blogs, seems to be a forum for application developers. For example, This morning's session on monetization and business models for mashups and API revenue extraction attracted the most attendees so far.

I'm all for people making money from, well, anything (shoot, this guy does okay, as does this fella). This is just to continue to point out how the tech industry desperately needs to name things, and in this case, 'mashups' seem to be a phrase du jour. Without knowing too much about it, it appears that the concept was co-opted from the musical mash-up community, which I don't think is sitll considered cool, but has certainly become more mainstream (and maybe those two things went together - lack of coolness and mainstreamness). Here's an example of a mashup, at least as they are discussing it in this ZDNet entry:

Weatherbonk, for example, integrates 21 data feeds and overlays some of them on Google maps. For example, with the real-time weather radar feed overlaid on the map, you can see the fog rolling into San Francisco. You can also click a set of points along the map and see the weather patterns of the route plotted. Users can also add Web cams to the maps, and there is a mobile version of the both mashups.

Okay. So it's mashing up feeds, data, etc. from multiple sites and making stuff happen with it. Okay, that is cool. And the term is even descriptive. But you know what? It isn't COOL the way rock bands are COOL or movie stars are COOL (you may not think those things are COOL, but I think you know what I mean - COOL in the way that James Dean was once COOL). It's all HYPE. MAKE ME SOMETHING I CAN USE.

More to the point, try not swiping a term from a subculture that's gone totally mainstream and doesn't have much coolness left in it. Here's a thought: make up your own term! Then we can all play some Buzzword Bingo.

[/tech] permanent link

Reinvigorating old fogies' interest in music

Lucas points to an article in the Boston Herald (Buy iTunes? Folks say bye iTunes!), in which it is written:

For the first time in 25 years, I was able to hear new music from sources that were previously unavailable to me, I had become a new music fan again - and at age 60!

This happened to me, but it wasn't iTunes. It was music sites like Webjay. I remember the day I found Archive.org's Live Music collection while surfing for audio (this was in the early days of Webjay's evolution). I was so excited to be able to dig through tons of free and legal audio, including bands I had heard of. Granted, this wasn't the Celestial Jukebox that many of us dream of, but it was still more music than I would ever be able to listen to. Now there is an explosion of music sharing sites (some with legal stuff, some not - I'm not talking about P2P, just regular web sites): OddioOverplay is a great one, and I've got a few listed here and here. Basically, you could spend all day, every day, surfing around for music, even sticking only with the legal stuff, and never run out of things to listen to.

This isn't news. The point is that my own re-interest in music started (a) with all of this new technology that the RIAA/et al wanted to kill off as soon as it appeared, and (b) with the availability of free stuff easily available online, no subscription, spyware or guilt required. I hadn't bought a CD in maybe 10 years before I began surfing around the WebNet looking for tunes, but since then I've bought many. Okay, maybe that's not news either, but since the lawsuits from big-ass content creators aren't exactly going away, perhaps it bears repeating.

(Note: The article appears to be about other things mostly, such as iTunes lack of customer service. Anyone who expects customer service from a web site, even one run by a giant company, is delusional. They may be right to expect it, but it's not gonna happen. However, that's not what I wanted to write about.)

[/bizness] permanent link

AJAX! (hype) IT WILL SAVE US ALL!

Through various news lists, I get an email like this at least three times a week:

Five Earth-Shattering Things You Should Know About AJAX and You Don't
Of course, you already know everything about AJAX, don't you?
Ajax is hotter right now than Nicholas Carr's backside after coming out of Tim O'Reilly's Web 2.0 woodshed. You have heard, haven't you? If you're not sure then go Google "Ajax" right now. You can read over 23 million detailed entries all about it. Literally. Though you will have to skim a bit.

This isn't exactly news, that AJAX is being hyped beyond belief. I just think it's funny how the tech industry, especially where this old Interweb is concerned (I think that's the hip thing to call the Web/Internet), has a need to HYPE SOMETHING AT ALL TIMES. MUST CROW LOUDLY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY OR I WILL FEEL LIKE I AM IN A LOSER BUSINESS.

Um, we're all in loser businesses at one time or another. Take a chill.

[/tech] permanent link

Your Next Phone Might Be Running Linux - Should You Care?

More about Linux going mobile:

Right now there is a Linux handset for every 13 people in Japan. So speaketh Linux World Magazine.

[/tech] permanent link

OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative
From Linux World Magazine. Linux breaking into the Mobile OS market is kind of like the Democratic Party trying to take back the White House from the current Bush Administration: if they can't make any headway, they should pack up and go home.

[/tech] permanent link

If XSPF is not RSS, can I still hear the music?
A post from Gonze.com addressing the question "Why not RSS?"
As I understand it, XSPF works like RSS in most user applications, although I admit that I could be completely wrong about that. As I see it, XSPF is a playlist format (like PLS but more robust, like SMIL but less annoying, like ASX but more open, and so on), whereas RSS is something else. These two posts are linked to from Gonze.com, and the latter says that "an XPSF feed is basically an RSS feed without some of the elements that are optional in RSS anyway."
My understanding of XSPF is limited mostly to it's applications on Webjay, but it seems that the attempt is to create a playlist format that works well, is open to all, and is a combo of a playlist and RSS - hence the description Shareable Playlist Format.
This is one of those topics that seems like it's a big who cares, but it actually is pretty important. Whenever you listen to or watch media on the web, view/listen to content on your local computer, or even when you use a Tivo, a DVR, or a Media Center PC, somewhere in there is a playlist format. Wouldn't it be nice if it was a format that played well with others?

[/playlist_research] permanent link

Damn

Hey, sorry dude. You could've just asked me not to do it. As it is, I'll leave up your lovely missive, and replace the photo of Gunther with another image.
For what it's worth, the traffic you would incur from my faggoty leeching of said image is minimal at best. This isn't exactly Gawker here.

[/life] permanent link

Gunther Videos

I'm alone in the office so I put on a Webjay playlist of music videos. I forgot that these Gunther videos were in there, three in a row. They might be the most ridiculous songs ever created. One is about someone who touches his Tra-La-La. One features a duet with Samantha Fox. One is called 'Tutti-Frutti Summer Love'. All are very, very frightening.

[/videos] permanent link

Que Es Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 for Designers

Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into “microcontent” units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we’re looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways. That's the kind of sentence that confuses my mother.

[/bizness] permanent link

Web irritation of the day - email edition

People who send email with no subject. This is usually folks with AOL accounts, but not always. The main problem from a practical standpoint is that my spam filter frequently tags such mail as spam, because, you know, it has no subject, so who the hell is sending it? I understand that this may be unfair, but the truth is, JUST ADD A SUBJECT. It'll take you, what, four seconds? This is especially true of someone I don't know who is sending me mail. That is, people I know tend to (a) put a subject on the message and (b) if they don't, they are likely to be whitelisted and won't get tagged as spam, PLUS (c) I know them, so it's not such a big deal that they aren't putting in a subject line. Someone who I don't know, they should be MORE inclined to put in a subject line, not less. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Oy.

[/bizness] permanent link

Yet another way to play online video

This URL:

http://yahoo.eonline.com/Video/ram.jsp?clipID=14542&adCat=mmgallery

Will yield a file called 'ram.jsp' whose contents are this:

Here's the direct rtsp link if you want it: rtsp://audio1.eonline.com/On/Shows2005/soup_kong_12_09_05.rm

Via EOnline (the video is of "Brokeback Kong", which is kinda funny.)

[/playlist_research] permanent link

AJAX
It looks like AJAX is officially the next big thing in web programming.

[/tech] permanent link

Web irritation of the day redux

Once again, it's web sites that JUST START PLAYING AUDIO. THERE IS NO OFF BUTTON. NO WAY TO MUTE THE SOUND. IT IS ALMOST AS ANNOYING AS WRITING THAT IS ALL CAPS.

Actually, it's more annoying, because writing that is all caps can't distract you from a phone call, cause you to miss instructions on a long-winded voice mail loop, or just give you a headache.

There should be a feature in all browsers that allows you to block all sound that is generated by said browser.

[/tech] permanent link

Que Es SMIL?
SMIL (pronounced "smile") is an XML application that enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations. I thought SMIL was, like HTML, a markup language.
More here: MobileMag WebServices.org W3C (should have the real story)

[/playlist_research] permanent link

Spamming Myself

SpamAssassin tagged a LogFile email from my server as spam because the contents included a URL from the SURBL blocklist:

[/software] permanent link

Que Es Un Podcast?
I know I must be the lamest person alive to ask this, but what exactly is a "podcast". I assume it has something to do with an iPod? You know what? It's not the stupidest question in the world. It may be a stupid ANSWER, since in truth, the 'pod' part is not remotely necessary.

[/software] permanent link