dcinput

Its April fools day today so watch out! I slept in till late so no one managed to get me.

I’m blogging using the OPML editor and it seems to work pretty good! Houray. You can find the instructions of how to set it up to work with your Wordpress blog here.

You might have noticed a lack of presence the last few days. I’ve been really quite ill all week and it’s been pretty unpleasant but I’m on the mend now, finally.

While I was ill I started buying good old fashioned newspapers and actually had time to read them cover to cover, with all the supplements. Really quite refreshing. Some interesting articles.

Did you know that in the UK the Sale of Goods Act offers rather a lot of protection against faulty goods even when the manufacturer’s guarantee has run out? The act says the goods must last a reasonable time and can be anything up to 6 years.

The article in the Guardian that I was reading gives the example of a faulty ipod. Even after the 1 year waranty has expired you should be able to demand a complete refund so long as the fault lies with the goods manufacturer rather than abuse to the machine. I’ve had to get my ipod replaced a whoping 4 times so far so this might come in useful for when it fails out of waranty.

I’ve ended up about a week behind in my listening to the Daily Source Code due to being ill. So I’m currently playing catch up. Adam is running a golden ticket competition. They have chosen 1 listener at random who ends up with a slightly different show to everyone else’s. I guess when this person listens to the show they get told they’ve won. Great idea for a competition.

Looking at his weblog no one has claimed the prize yet. I’ve still got like 5 shows to listen to…it would be funny if I was the winner.

Nice April fools from Scobble. I’ll admit he had me for about 2 paragraphs. It made the top of memeorandum.

I’m loving using the OPML Editor to blog but I can’t find an easy way to stick pictures in the posts. Maybe I’m just being dumb.

Looks like I didn’t win the golden ticket

Josh Oakhurst has been making good use of Netflix to do some documentary watching. He lists his top 10 great documentaries.

Fox anounce that they are going to make a Simpson’s movie.

The Hollywood Reporter: “Phone and cable company executives contend that they need to be able to charge some companies premium prices if they demand secure networks, virtual private networks or higher speeds for the transfer of movies or other large files. They contend that their pledge not to harm consumer access is enough”. Hollywood wakes up to net neutrality.

According to Joe Barton, who is pushing the Net Neutrality Bill, “We just had eight gentlemen that represent the largest trade groups and the brightest minds in the country, and not one of them gave a concise definition”…”We’re tied up in knots in this bill, potentially over something that we do not yet even have a universally recognized definition of what it is”.

Ha ha so no-one understands it yet. You got to love it. I’ve held my hands up all along saying that I was confused about this topic. I think the penny is starting to drop though. The one thought that I keep coming back to is that I don’t think people understand what the net actually is, today, as in now.

The question people need to answer first is “What is the Web?”. You might think that’s an easy question but I get the feeling that it’s actually a very big rusty can of worms.

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”.

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.

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.

Dave Winer: “Why not let me go, quietly and peacefully, I’ll stop writing my blog, I’ll stop developing new stuff, you can be me if you want, I won’t be in your way. How about it?”

Quite appropriate that this should be the first entry in my new blog format. I really hope Dave doesn’t ever stop his blog. I would really miss it. A lot.

The Forbes Billionaires List: Ronald Perelman who recently bought the parent company of where I work is number 94 with $6.1 bn.

Which Muppet are you? The Muppets Personality Test. I’m Gonzo!

Google Mars - you ‘ve got to be kiding me. Hmm Mars sure seems pretty small these days.

Wired magazine reports that “Sweden is one of the worst places in the world when it comes to illegal sharing” due to bit torrent.

OM Malik writes that MySpace is about to release a Messenger service cleverly called MySpace Messenger. I’ve never quite figured out the point with MySpace. I mean sure I have an account (can you guess what the login is?) and sure, trying to get as many hot girls and famous bands as your friends is fun for 10 minutes, but whats the point? It will no doubt be a success though.

The New York Times: “Hewlett-Packard has a mode on its new R-series that it says removes the 10 pounds a camera is said to add”.

Mitchell Szczepanczyk wrote a piece called the “The death of the blogosphere” a couple of weeks back about how big businesses were in the process of creating a multi-tiered internet which will kill “net neutrality” and eventually destroy the web. He was also interviewed on the small WORLD podcast a few days ago about this. The topic has been aproached several times by Adam Curry on recent episodes of the DSC.

I need to do some more research on the subject as to be honest I don’t really understand that side of the argument that well yet. I’m not even entirely sure we’re talking about the same thing. It’s definitely something that could have a major impact on the roleout of d-cinema over the next few years. I’ve recently heard several convincing arguments why a multi-tiered system would help the world of d-cinema. I’d love to hear people’s views on this topic.