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This web video called The Art of Motion is excellent. Really cheered me up - its no fun being ill.

Microsoft delays launch of Vista. No suprise there.

There is a cool project to map the UK’s underground pipe network in 3D.

Scott Kirsner: “This year is different, they insist, thanks to recently approved technical standards and the first faint signs of a tipping point”

BBC News: Apple tells everyone they are not happy about the French goverment’s plans for digital music. “iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with “interoperable” music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy”.

Following up on yesterdays NYTimes link, according to the The Hollywood Reporter it seems the first steps have been taken by the National Assembly to force Apple to open the door on its remarkably popular iPod. The music industry won’t be too happy about this, after all they probably only trusted iTunes to sell their music in the first place because of this lock in feature.

What did they expect? If all BMW cars were fitted with a special device that only allowed you to refuel with special BMW made petrol, how long do you think they would last before goverments would start to smell anti-competitiveness over the smell of the fumes?

I’ve mentioned several times over the last few months how impressed I’ve been with YouTube. Judging solely on the uptake with non-techie work collegues and friends I knew this thing was going to cause a big ripple. Interesting to read an article by Andrew Wallenstein who takes a Hollywood perspective.

Andrew Wallenstein: “However, the relationship between this Internet upstart and Hollywood isn’t as adversarial as you might assume. For every corporate lawyer firing off angry letters to YouTube, there are two more executives exploring potential partnership opportunities — maybe even an outright acquisition”

Got a secret? Why not post it?

Mark Cuban: “We will reach a point in the next few years where we are complaining about internet speed all the time”. Interesting piece here by Mark but I’m finding the comments even more interesting…lots of interesting ideas. Seems like everyone is still learning about all the net neutrality bandwidth issues.

NYTimes: “A bill under debate in the French Parliament may require iPods to be able to play music purchased from competing Internet services, not just Apple Computer’s own iTunes Music Store”.

Michelle Conlin of Business Week Online warns about the dangers of blogging: “Today there are two of you. There’s the analog, warm-blooded version…” “Then there’s the online you, your digital doppelganger; that’s the one that is growing larger and more impossible to control every day”.

Heather Green looks at the claims that Digg is being used for stock manipulation.

Jenifer Lopez to star along side John Travolta in Dallas feature film.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone: “So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun”.

The future of motion pictures as seen by Dolby. Quite a slick looking demo.

Cory Doctorow: “Marvel and DC comics jointly filed a trademark on the word ’super-hero’”. For god’s sake, where do these guys get off?

I listened to a podcast by Will Wright, the creator of the Sims video game, on IT Conversations about a year ago. I think it might have been this one. He seems like a real interesting guy. At the time he was talking about a new game he was developing based around evolution, where you started out as an ameoba and then evolved to land animals, tribes and eventually get out into space to discover how big the Universe is. Here’s a google video of a presentation of this new game which is called Spore. Thanks to Kosso and Doctoe for the link. I’m not a massive games person but this I could get into.

More chatter of net neutrality as the topic makes the shortlist of memeorandum. The original group of companies backing the idea included Amazon.com, the American Association of Libraries, EarthLink, eBay, Google, Match.com, Microsoft, Skype, TiVo and Yahoo. New to join are American Association of Retired Persons Adobe Systems, BT America, the Digital Media Association, Sony Electronics and the Business Software Alliance.

Anne Broach: “Executives at Verizon Communications, BellSouth and the now-merged AT&T and SBC Communications have recently talked about the desirability of such a two-tiered Internet in which they could choose to favor some services–especially video–over others.”

I haven’t seen any big film distribution companies comment on net netrality yet. That would be interesting. If digital cinema is to happen, getting the films onto the millions of digital screens around the world is going to take a serious amount of bandwidth whether its over the internet or via satellite. They are going to need very fast pipes that are highly secure and 100% reliable. Having to delay the release of the next big block buster because it hasn’t downloaded to some of the cinemas really won’t cut the mustard. Sohonet is another company I’d like to hear a comment from.

More net neutrality articles on IP Democracy, TechDirt and by Mark Evans.

I’m off to find out how unfit I am by playing in a charity football match. Oh boy.

I’ve been to many gigs over the years in London. The Bloc Party gig tonight at Fabric was without a dought one of the best to date. These guys really blew the roof off. All in all a superb night.

Oh yeah and happy St Patricks day…

Harry Mathias of NEC tells Scott Kirsner over dinner “by the time half the screens in the US are converted to digital, it’ll be hard for producers of film like Kodak and processing labs like Deluxe and Technicolor to make money in that business”.

Ali Menzies has started blogging at Indigofood. Wehey! She’s a very talented web designer, a healthcare therapist and generally wonderful person. I’ve been trying to get her blogging for a little over a year now as I know she’s got such a lot to contribute. She’s full of great ideas for the alternative therapy community and some interesting business ideas too. Check out Indigobloom and the soon to be Indigoimage. Welcome to the party Ali!

Brian Krebs: “Hacking made easy: automated tools gathering victims keystrokes”. “10 million U.S. households own a computer that is infected with some type of keystroke logging program”. Looks like controling your network of zombie machines is as easy (or easier) than controling my render farm. Scarry.

A good YouTube of Peter Jackson picking up his Empire Award together with some out-takes from King Kong.

The Kid from Brooklyn is really not that impressed with Starbucks. If you don’t like the f-word I’d stay away from this but I had to link to it as it just made me laugh so hard when I got into work this morning.

Hey my great friend Val is coming to London next week. I can’t wait. We were at school together in Brussels all those years ago. She’s now a fabulous fashion designer and owns a label called Girls from Omsk. Keep an eye out for her stuff.

Boy it sure has been a busy day, hardly any time even to post little things. If there’s one thing that’s made my life easier today its the wireless headset I just got for my office phone. Sure I look like I’m right out of star trek but when the shit hit the fan it sure made it easier to fix the problem fast.

Heading off to Farbic for a Bloc Party gig and a well deserved beer.

The Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival opened its doors last Friday and runs until next Sunday. Its just reminded me of how much I am in need of a sunny holiday.

I’ve got a school reunion comming up pretty soon. Scarry stuff. Lots of emails flying around from people that I haven’t seen in a decade. Rumours of husbands or wives and babies and pregnancies. Some I know to be true and others not. Good to see that a decade apart hasn’t stoped the wind ups.

TechCrunch: Amazon launches grid service web storage. It is a storage service backend for developers that offers “a highly scalable, reliable, and low-latency data storage infrastructure at very low costs”. Looks like you could store a 2K feature film for around $300 a month (not including the one off transfer fee). Thats pretty reasonable. I bet they have pretty big capacity. It’ll never happen though.

Sponsor a monkey. I happen to know this one and he’s top notch.

Reuters: “Google Book Search would allow publishers to set the prices for their books and make them available through a reader’s Web browser.”

As a school project C.Ronson came up with the ipod hoodie. He’s already received over 15 000 orders and is in talks with various places in China to get them made. At £15 a go thats a nice little earner. I want one.

Reuters: “Movie theater owners are considering asking federal authorities for permission to jam cell phone reception in an attempt to stop annoying conversations during films”. I favour the introdction of a cinema vigilante / neighbourhood watch approach - make it legal for other cinema goers to slap the loud mouths.

New Scary Movie trailer on YouTube. Funny.

Randolph J. May: “Adoption of a broad Net neutrality prohibition will impose monopoly-era public-utility-style regulation on new broadband services in an era characterized by competition”. Randolph takes the other side of the argument believing government net neutrality to be a bad idea in the long run.

Marguerite Reardon: “The broader discussion was what exactly Net neutrality means and whether legislators are discussing a solution to a problem that doesn’t yet exist”. In the same article Blair Levin analyst for Stifel: “I am hopelessly confused about Net neutrality”. At least I’m not the only one.

Nice little piece by Cyndi Greening of Cinematical about blogging in the film industry. She’s at SXSW…it looks like fun.

I’m really enjoying my new style of blogging. It’s really just the start of things at the minute. I’m usually very busy at work during the day and so only really have time to cut and paste a few quotes from things I find interesting in my world and link to them. I’m hoping to also get better at these bits, the bits where I just type and put accross some of my ideas about stuff. You know the more personal bits. I’m not that good at those yet and bound to suck for a while but you can always read somebody else’s blog.

Been thinking about Dave stoping blogging and I think I understand his thinking, in as much as you can understand someone you’ve never met or talked to…hey I’m just a fan.

Thought that I’d mention for future reference that I reserve the right to stop this blog at anytime for whatever reason and without warning (though I’d probably wave).

The Washington Post defines net neutrality. I’m still not clear that everyone is talking about the same thing.

The Common Cause website: “Network neutrality is the principle that Internet users should be able to access any web content they choose and use any applications they choose, without restrictions or limitations imposed by their Internet service provider.”

If you google image net neutrality the first thing that turns up is an AT&T logo with the caption “Net neutrality will triumph”. Are people saying they are lying?

Texas Instruments anounces the Digital Cinema Pioneer Awards which is being help at ShoWest, for extensive contributions to the advancement of the industry. Something to aim for I guess. [Thanks to CinemaTech for the link]

DCinema Today: “TI announced this week that 1,195 DLP Cinema projectors from customers Barco, Christie and NEC are now deployed worldwide, and up to 33,000 additional digital cinema systems are scheduled to deploy in North American in the next few years.”

I only realised a few months ago that ShoWest had a film component to it. I’ve got some friends that go to the music part every year. I hear they know how to thow a party.

This article by Reuters is a little old now but it suggests that “Digital cinema may not be ready to roll“.

FHM gets into mobile TV with the launch of “FHM TV” for mobiles. “It has been designed to deliver the subscriber with immediate satisfaction at any point”. Yes indeed.

Gabe Rivera’s memeorandum has over the last few months really changed the way many poeple view the blogosphere, at least for tech and politics. His new memetracker WeSmirch should bring the hole thing a little more into the mainstream. Dig the dirt on anyone. Wow and its got pictures, nice touch.

Hot topic right this minute in the smirchosphere: Kate Moss is horny! Well well roll on the liable cases.

Hey Gabe, we need one that covers the world of digital cinema, post production, cgi etc. That would be great!

Thinking about it WeSmirch is basically a live version of Heat Magazine except you get bloggers to be reporters and paparazzi/stalkers. Wowzers this could get messy.