Twelve Black Code Monkeys

It looks like the Treo 650 may soon be available to most of the world. For the last couple of months, it’s been exclusively available in one country (the U.S.) from one provider (Sprint) using a radio protocol (CDMA) that is incompatible with 99% of what the rest of the world uses (GSM). Last week we heard some rumors that Cingular (which uses GSM) would soon be carrying the long-awaited follow-up to the popular Treo 600. Today there is word that Pa1mOne has put up a page about a GSM Treo 600 without specifying a specific carrier, and writing that it is “coming”. This is good news for most smartphone enthusiasts who have been thinking of buying the Treo 650 because what this is saying basically is that Pa1mOne should be at least selling through their own site an unlocked GSM version of the phone which anyone who’s carrier uses GSM (most of the world outside the U.S. does, as well as T-Mobile and Cingular/AT&T within the U.S.) should be able to use without any problem. Just swap out your SIM card and plug it in and it should work immediately.

For some reason Pa1mOne has decided to remove the picture they put up, so it now links to a generic page, but Treonauts has a screen capture. Seems similar to another snafu that they made and then retracted later which leads me to think that either they aren’t communicating very well with their web team or else this is yet another stealth marketing move to create more buzz amongst the fanatics!

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On January 3rd, just as CES 2005 was getting under way, TiVo announced TiVo ToGo, a service they’ve been talking about for around a year now. As many of you know, this service will allow you to transfer your TiVo programs or movies to a computer, a portable media player, and eventually to a DVD. At least that’s the theory. In practice, things may be a little more complex. TiVo ToGo has an inherent problem, as far as I’m concerned. The problem is speed, both figuratively and literally:

Firstly, this feature has taken forever to get to TiVo owners. Ostensibly this was because TiVo had to allay the fears of the movie industry, TV networks, etc., by creating a DRM system whereby the content could not be easily copied and distributed. To do this, TiVo employs a code or “access key” that you type in when playing the content outside of the the TiVo box. This code is specific to you and your TiVo. If you then distribute that content on the internet, it has a signature pointing right back at you. While I appreciate that TiVo is trying to work with content providers to come up with a compromise that will help both their customers and the content providers, I think in the end this is crippling them, as TiVo ToGo was in development for at least year.

Now that TiVo ToGo has been announced, it is still going to take weeks before all TiVo boxes have the service. Some types of TiVo’s (ones that record to DVD), will not see the capability for what will probably be months. And DirecTV Tivo boxes simply will not offer the service, just as they have not offered TiVo’s home networking features.

Finally, the issue of speed is inherent in the actual functionality of TiVo ToGo. Even at the lowest quality of recording, an hour of TiVo programming takes up about 1 GB of storage. How do you get your content from your TiVo to your computer? You have to go through the USB port on the TiVo. You can either hook a wireless or wired Ethernet adapter to it, or potentially even hook it directly to a laptop. The problem, though, is that no matter what it’s hooked to, it is still a USB 1.1 port, the older type which was superseded with the ten times faster USB 2.0 around three years ago. This bottleneck means that no TiVo content can travel faster than about 4Mbps (bursts go up to 12Mbps, but average transfer speed is much slower), or about 1.8GB per hour. So, with this speed you can transfer a 2-hour movie in a little over an hour AT THE WORST QUALITY. Most people will want to record at least some content at the best quality level, which is about 4GB per hour, and this will take a whopping 2+ hours to transfer per hour of show, or somewhere close to 4 hours for an average movie. Maybe I’m spoiled, but this seems like an inordinate amount of time, and during this transfer, your computer will slow down to the speed of your computer from 10 years ago – so slow you will have to set transfers before going to sleep at night. Now if you’re transferring this to a laptop that you’re bringing with you, you can just wake up the next morning, throw the laptop in its bag and head out the door. But what if you don’t have a laptop and instead want to send your programs to a portable media player or to DVD? Well, you’re now looking at more time. Maybe another 10-15 minutes per hour of video to send to a DVD, or another 3-5 minutes per hour of video if you can transfer your files to your portable media player via USB 2.0 or Firewire. In any case, this starts to become a real hassle at some point unless you’re just transferring a couple of programs at a time. For a portable media players, you will probably also want to decrease the quality of the program even further in order to fit more onto what could be only 20GB of hard drive space, which means an additional conversion factor. TiVo does have plans to upgrade their USB to the significantly faster USB 2.0, but there is no immediate timeline, which probably means we shouldn’t expect anything until at least next year.

I happen to own one of those TiVo’s with a DVD recorder – the Humax DRT-800. I can record shows directly from the TiVo to DVD-R or DVD-RW and it takes all of 15 minutes for an hour’s show at the highest quality setting. This unit costs a bit more than an similarly sized TiVo and of course the discs cost money too, but at least the DVD-RW’s can be reused and I have much more portability (due to increased speed) than TiVo ToGo. Perhaps this is why TiVo has decided to not push their updates yet to those who own DVD recorders like the Humax.

If TiVo were to upgrade their USB functionality to 2.0, then this would become much faster and easier. However, it seems that the easier you make it to copy content, the more nervous content creators get. I think there’s actually an inherent conflict of interest between the attitudes of content creators and their customers. These companies want to be able to parcel out their content in a way that generates the most revenue as possible, and they see this being done only through commercial-filled programming, or through selling recordings on DVD or CD, or via subscription-based pipelines where part of that subscription fee is funneled back to them. Likewise, they would like for you to have to buy their content multiple times. Paying your satellite or cable company, or just paying more for products which are advertised during a program’s airing is only the first payment. If you also want to hold onto that show on a DVD, you get to pay all over again! Because the DVD format was created in order to prevent copying (albeit the scheme was subsequently defeated), you have to jump through some hoops if you want to then transfer that same content onto something that doesn’t play dvds themselves, but can play the dvd video files – like portable media players.

Music companies want you to pay for the song you hear on the radio by charging the radio network, which then compensates by getting advertisers to buy ads which in turn drives up prices for their products. Even if there are no ads, like with satellite radio, you are still paying a monthly fee, which is in part going to back to these content providers. Then if you want to have that recording at your disposal to play any time at a good quality, you need to pay an additional fee to buy it on CD, or more recently on the internet. But if you pay for it on the internet, say via iTunes, you then can only play it on a limited number of devices. Finally, if you want to hear the song as a ringtone on your phone, you are charged yet again for this same content.

TiVo’s CEO, Michael Ramsy, has finally “left” TiVo, although he is still remains as Chairman of the Board. Some believe he was pushed to leave due to the poor performance of TiVo’s stock. I’m no expert in the stock market, but I can certainly understand why TiVo’s stock has diminished in value, even with the advent of TiVo ToGo and an increased TiVo subscriber base. TiVo, it seems, took the road of trying to placate content providers and potential competitors as opposed to just going it alone. Alas, in business, or in particular in the entertainment business, this seems not to work. Instead of full cooperation for its trying not to step on any toes, the only thing it’s gotten is a lack of actual litigation. On the other hand, you have companies like NBC trying to defeat TiVo’s functionality by starting and ending shows differently then their schedules indicate. Other channels, like Comedy Central in particular, refuse to code their programs as repeats or first run, making the process of recoding a series that much more difficult. Even partners like DirectTV seem to be backstabbing TiVo. TiVo partnered with DirctTV so that they could build combo TiVo/DirecTV receivers (DirecTiVo’s as they are called) that would work in an integrated way. But now it looks like DirectTV may not be a TiVo partner in the long run as they are coming out with their own DVR that will compete not only against the TiVo hadware, but the TiVo subscription service as well.

I’m worried about TiVo’s future. That’s why I’ve refused to buy their lifetime subscription. I have no idea whether TiVo will be around in two years, when such a subscription starts to pay off, but more importantly I don’t know if TiVo will have lowered their prices or morphed into something else, or whether other options will become available that make TiVo not the best choice for me. I want TiVo to succeed, I really do, but I think that there needs to be some radical shifts in TiVo’s way of doing business:

1. First thing, as I’ve noted, is to stop kissing up so much to all the content companies. TiVo tried being nice and it hasn’t gotten them very much at all. It’s time to say “screw it!” and not try to get permission for everything they do. This has slowed down their development considerably, and caused them to fall behind some other hardware and service providers so they are no longer on the cutting edge.
2. “Placeshifting” – in other words portability – is the new key. TiVo was revolutionary in letting people “timeshift” in order to watch what they wanted when they wanted. Five or so years later, though, technology has progressed to a point where video has become more and more portable. Portable Media Devices are an up and coming device category (when Apple finally releases one, they will truly be mainstream), laptops are ubiquitous, portable DVD players have gotten incredibly cheap, and PDA’s, and even smartphones have become powerful enough to handle video. Part of making a functionality “easy” for people to use it, is to make it practicle, and speed is a big part of this. The fact that a driver update could make a USB 1.1 port into a USB 2.0 port and thus provide 10 times the speed or more, should mean that this update should be getting priority over most other projects. During this entire year between TiVo ToGo’s first being mentioned and it’s finally being released, why wasn’t part of TiVo’s resources put to updating this and if they were, what on earth could be taking so long?
3. Placeshifting in reverse – just as people want to take their TiVo’d programs with them on the road, there’s a definite need expressed to take content we get elsewhere and send it back to our TiVo so that we can play it on the larger screens in our living rooms. Already third parties have come in to allow for this kind of functionality. I see more and more of these “wireless multimedia boxes” that allow for bi-directional communication between a TV and a computer over a wirless network (using the faster 802.11G) or more direct connection. What would you send back to a TiVo? How about video clips you find on the internet that you want to share with the whole family, or content licensed in Creative Commons or Public Domain? A home video that you like to watch and share with friends a bunch of times without having to risk wearing the tape out? There are tons of reasons.
   4) Work more with hackers and third-party software developers and open functionality up to all users – TiVo has been more friendly to hackers than most companies, I’ll admit. TiVo’s are built with the Linux operating system, a favorite of hackers, and with hardware that can be removed and tinkered with fairly easily. This is great for hackers and tech-savvy people, and hackers have created programs that greatly expand the functionality of your TiVo. For example, one can basically operate one’s TiVo remotely over the internet with one such program. But just installing such programs requires some computer hardware and software skills that that probably a vast majority of TiVo owners don’t have and won’t bother to learn. TiVo needs to take these great applications and make them available as real parts of the TiVo system to all users. Maybe part of the reluctance in the past was that these programs were developed in an open-source environment that would not want TiVo to charge for them. When TiVo introducted it’s Home Networking feature, it charged for it and only after some time realized that it was not going to get enough people to pay an additional fee over TiVo’s original fee (which some people object to anyway) and until last. Maybe now that TiVo realizes they aren’t going to be able to charge additional fees for added functionality, they will offer gratis something which they are getting for very low development costs (since third-parties are developing these programs) to all their customers.

Microsoft recently started providing a version of Windows called Windows XP for Media Center Edition that provides DVR functionality, and many other companies are coming out with DVR’s, multimedia boxes, or even pumped up portable hard drives that all provide functionality that TiVo doesn’t. TiVo really needs to catch up, or they will eventually be relegated to AOL status – marketed to a diminishing pool of completely non-technical people who don’t mind paying a premium for an interface that dumbs down everything for them. I don’t think AOL is doing all that well these days. Then again neither is TiVo, or at least not according to their stock price!

The latest new feature we’ve heard about from TiVo is an high definition-capable TiVo, but apparently this won’t be available until 2006. What I want to know is what the point of such an announcement is if the product won’t be release for a year or more? Take a lesson from Apple and surprise people with new products instead of telling customers how long they will have to wait as well as notifying competitors way in advance of your plans so that they can come along and trump you – which it seems is becoming increasingly easy due to how slowly TiVo introduces new products and functionality. I personally have an HDTV and at this point my only hope is that another company like Humax will come out with an HD-compatible TiVo, preferably one with DVD-writable capability. Whether TiVo creates this or a third-party partner I guess doesn’t matter that much if customers are still going to buy a TiVo subscription. Who knows, maybe TiVo’s real purpose in announcing this so long before it becomes a reality is to actually motivate current or partners to develop their own HDTiVo’s?

What is so frustrating about all of this is that TiVo was the first out there with set-top DVR technology and so basically revolutionized how we watch TV. They’ve provided at least somewhat of a lightening rod for content companies, allowing us to just sit back and record things the way we wanted to (although this may be starting to change). Whether they go all out the way I wish they would, or simply continue to play the middle-man between the end user and the content providers, they are a major force that is at least trying to provide as much content in as flexible a way as possible to as many people as possible. If they get usurped by individual cable companies and satellite companies, this flexibility will be constrained even further since these many cable and satellite providers are also owners of much of content themselves. Microsoft, on the other hand, so far is not a major owner of content. Because of its size, it could wield real influence and be able to handle whatever litigation content companies throw at it, but it is unlikely to wage those kinds of battles. With its own music stores, DRM support, and history of monopolistic practices, it would be a shame if they were to replace TiVo as the dominant player in the DVR market.

In the end, TiVo may need to really do some radical things. It seems like they may be starting to go in this direction based on some reporting from PVRBlog about a Home Media Engine that will be in a future system update. It will theoretically provide the third-party development I talk about above. Getting this kind of software functionality added as well as providing USB 2.0, enhanced wireless speeds (802.11G or even 802.11N when it is standardized), and even some new hardware features or options (Ethernet ports, firewire, more types of audio and video input and output, more USB/Firewire ports for hot-swappable external storage, etc), will be key in keeping TiVo from becoming a has-been. TiVo should also upgrade its hardware in general which is beginning to really feel its age not being as fast to get things done as it could. TiVo has become a familiar name and even a new verb in the language, but it can’t just rely solely on this reputation and rest on its laurels.

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Oops they did it again. Well, the USDA has taken a crack at revising their food guide recommendations, as they do every five years, and what has all the latest science provided for in this most recent document? Not much.

Going through the guide, I noticed that much of it was basically the same old advise that we’ve been hearing for year, but which either haven’t worked, or more likely which have only resulted in the U.S. getting even more obese. But let’s look on the bright side for the moment – here are the only valuable additions to the recommendations:

1. Avoid Trans Fatty Acids: hooray, the USDA has finally come out with a recommendation to avoid these harmful things found in processed baked goods, shortenings, margarines, and some dressings. The problem is that no specific recommendation is made. Instead it is just recommended to consume “as little as possible.” But who knows how much is “little”? Of course previous documents have basically said that there is really no safe minimum level, and hopefully the new labeling laws that will require these to be listed on labels will maintain the momentum that is motivating food companies to rid their products of these. The other problem I saw is that Trans Fats were lumped in with saturated fats and cholesterol as items to avoid in order to avoid congestive heart disease. Considering that plant-based saturated fats like coconut oil are now being seen as healthful in many quarters, and the fact that dietary cholesterol has been shown not to be a major factor effecting cholesterol levels in the blood, it’s disappointing that Trans Fats were grouped with these other two.
2. Increase fruits, vegetables, and whole grain consumption. Most people would agree that vegetables and fruits provide a great source of nutrients. With most vegetables these even come without the added risk of large dense carbohydrate or sugar loads that effect insulin levels and subsequently can cause health problems in some who are sensative. Fruits are a bit more prone to having large amounts of sugar. Grains, of course, are high in carbohydrates, but the recommendation is to increase whole grains, which have much more fiber which is not converted into sugar thus raising insulin levels. However, if you look at the recommendations, they basically suggest increasing whole grains by about 200-300% from the 2000 recommendations, and to keep the refined (they call them “enriched”) grains the same. So while you may be getting more fiber, they are actually increasing your total carb load.

And that is one of my big problems with the recommendations. Despite all the recent studies which suggest merit with decreasing carbohydrate levels, at very least refined carb levels, the new food guide recommendations still is basically a low-fat/high-carb diet. Not that I expected anything different. After all, the USDA’s main purpose it to support the agriculture of the United States. That agriculture is primarily grain-based, and so there is an obvious interest in promoting grains – and thus a horrible conflict of interest. The USDA’s food pyramid is nowhere to be seen within the current recommendations, but apparently it is in the process of being modified to match the new recommendations. But I can’t really see how it will change much. The base will still be about grains, the top will still be fats and sugar. Perhaps they will rewrite the portions recommendations so that it doesn’t look like you need to eat 11 bowls of pasta per day in order to meet the requirements for grains, but we’ll see. The previous pyramid has developed a great deal of criticism except for the old guard nutritionists who basically use whatever the USDA puts out as their bible.

The unfortunate thing is that this will do nothing to educate or help those who know little about what to eat. Their recommendations are a set of basic guidelines (misguidelines if you ask me) which don’t really teach people why they should eat a certain way, but just tell them to.

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I had this idea, kind of random. A lot of people post their wish lists (mostly Amazon.com wish lists) on their blogs or websites as a reference for family and friends. I’ve always thought how cool it might be to get a random item from my wish list sent by someone I know, or even someone I don’t. Actually, whenever I receive a birthday present from someone I never expect to, it’s always a pleasant surprise. It doesn’t matter the size of the gift, just the fact that the person took the time to send something – heck, even a card – was something.

I’m not always the best gift giver or even card sender. We have such a huge circle of friends now, it’s also very hard to think about who we should buy for, and most of the time I lame-out and just let my wife figure it out. Of course this doesn’t work when I need to get her a present! Being someone who’s easily distracted and who has a myriad little projects and other occupiers of my time and attention, being organized enough to be able to send cards out to anyone aside for some close family’s birthdays is somewhat of a pipe dream.

With that in mind, I thought it would be a kind of cool “project” to take the whole sense of obligation and expectation out of the gift-giving process. The idea was to look up a friend or family member’s wish list, if you know someone who has one, and send them something from it. Anything. It doesn’t have to be for any occasion, and ideally it wouldn’t be for any. That way it would be completely unexpected. If you don’t know of anyone personally, perhaps you know a blogger or someone else with a website who has a wish list online? I’m not suggesting myself, I swear! Googling for “amazon wishlist blog” gives a whole bunch of random bloggers who publish their wish list.

Some might say this idea is a bit self indulgent – or at least publishing your wish list is self-indulgent. Maybe this is true, who knows, but in defense of the idea think about those people you know who are really hard to figure out a gift for. If they had their wish list online, you would at least get a sense of what they would like, even if you don’t buy something specifically on the list. Likewise, when posting a link to my wish list, I would never expect someone to just buy something for me for no reason. Family members know where to look for my wish list and have used it often to buy me stuff, because apparently I am one of those people for whom it’s tough to buy presents. (I think it’s because I generally lust after gadgets that are in the $100′s of dollars or more, but can never think of anything smaller and more practical that I need). But I do think that like other things you might share with your readers, a wish list is just another way for them to learn a little more about you, your tastes, etc. Often I just use my wish list as a kind of bookmark holder for things I’ve heard about that sound interesting, or to note down a piece of equipment that I think should be in contention when I consider buying that type of product, but a lot of my wish list is filled with books and music that I think probably says something about me – what I don’t know!

So, that’s my suggestion, anyway. I’m planning on doing this, but I haven’t figured out who to yet. Hopefully whoever it is won’t think I’m some weird internet stalker, or that I’m sending it as a late Christmas present! If you think this is an interesting idea and plan to do this yourself – or have already done this sort of thing – I’d love to hear your comments.

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Just a note that I just started a DVD Giveaway contest on my DVDMon.com site:

For many Baby Boomers, Woodstock was a defining moment in their lives, musically and otherwise. For gen-X’ers like myself Live Aid was not quite that defining, but it was still one of the most memorable musical events of my teen years. Warner Strategic Marketing recently came out with a 4-DVD set of this mammoth 1985 concert containing over 10 hours of live music. As luck would have it, we happen to have 3 copies of this DVD set to give away! That’s right. All you have to do is write a small story about how you remember the event in your own life. If you were too young to remember it yourself, ask an older sibling, an aunt, uncle, or friend. We’ll review the answers and post the 3 winning ones here. This contest starts today, January 12, 2005, and wraps up at 11:59:59 PM EST on Sunday, January 16, 2005. Unfortunately, we can only afford to pay for domestic shipping, so we will have to limit the contest to those who want their dvd’s shipped to addresses in the United States. We’ll announce the winners as soon as we can, hopefully by Monday. Good luck! Email your stories to us at levi@dvdmon.com [Actually if folks want to leave their entries here as comments, that would be cool too!] . More about the dvd set can be found here.

UPDATE: Well, it looks like my timeframe was a bit too short, or people have gotten tired of contests. I’ve only gotten a couple of entries so far. To make things a bit more fair, I’ve decided to make the contest a bit more open-ended. I will keep this open until I get 7 more entries, for a total of nine, which means that each entry will have a 1 in 3 chance of winning. Pretty good odds for writing a paragraph or two, if you ask me! Anyway, here’s a direct link to the page with the contest as I will be putting up new news on the site which will push it off the front page: http://www.dvdmon.com/individual.asp?keyNewsID=189

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As some of you know, I also run a website devoted to DVD news and reviews. DVDMon.com has been up now for over five years. Recently I got to review a new DVD set put out by Warner Home Video of the first season of the WB series Everwood. I thought I’d include the review here too, because in it I talk about issues around dvd releases, content distribution, and the dilemma that some of us can be faced with when we coming into a series fresh after it’s been going for a while, and still running strong:

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My TV watching has declined a lot in recent years. Part of this was due to moving in with my now wife in a condo that got bad reception and refusing to pay for the high prices of Washington DC cable. Since we moved out to the suburbs, bought a new TV, and a TiVo, we’ve been watching more, but still not large amounts. Part of my problem is that I want to be able to watch a series from the beginning. Coming in on the third season seems like coming into a movie in the middle.

Everwood was a show that I remember hearing about when it came out a couple of years ago, but at the time we just didn’t get the WB network due to poor reception. Luckily Warner Home Video, as they and others have done with many other series, have made the first season of Everwood available on DVD. So I sat down and watched all 23 episodes in less than a week! Yes, I got hooked. And of course when you have an entire season at your disposal, it’s just too easy to say “well, what the heck, let’s just watch ONE more.”

Everwood, for those who haven’t seen it, is about a famous neurosurgeon, Dr. Andy Brown (Treat Williams), whose wife dies in the pilot. Fame had to do partly due to his dedication, but this translates into being a “workaholic” especially when it means missing almost every important event in your family’s life. His 15-year-old son Ephram (Gregory Smith) despises him. He was amazingly close to his mother, but practically a stranger to his father. Delia (Vivien Cardone), Andy’s 9-year-old daughter, is still too young to have garnered anything but love and admiration for her father. Soon after the death of his wife, Andy decides to move the entire family to the small mountain town of Everwood, Colorado where he opens a doctors office where he sees patients for free. So, Ephram hates him even more for taking him totally out of his element (one which he apparently had a shakey grasp on to begin with – being somewhat of a geek-loner), and even Delia struggles to make even one new friend. The main thrust of the first season revolves around Amy Abbot (Emily VanCamp), who befriends Ephram in order to get his father to operate on her boyfriend who is in a coma. Her father, Dr. Harold Abbott (Tom Amandes), also happens to be the town’s only doctor before Dr. Brown and family come to town. His ornery, persnickety nature is only made more so by the freewheeling Dr. Brown who often displays the tunnel vision of an idealist. But Dr. Abbot is not the one-sided villain to Andy’s Hero that you would get from a predictable show. Everwood constantly surprises you by foiling those stereotypes. No one is a villain and a hero so much as they are all humans with their own flaws as well as strengths.

I think of Everwood as kind of a mutated Northern Exposure, but with a lot more family relationship stuff thrown in. Like Northern Exposure, it’s about a New Yorker (or New Yorkers as the case is) going someplace far from home where he experiences culture shock, meets lots of cute small-town characters, and becomes in integral part of the community. The family stuff, though, adds a powerful supplement to what could be seen as a formula, and the excellent writing and acting, similar to Northern Exposure, is always a valuable asset. Everwood doesn’t shy away from controversial issues like porn and abortion, and I found myself cringing a few times, which I suppose is a good thing in a way. The treatment of these issues is ultimately sensitive and multidimensional, but due to their nature if they were handled with too soft a touch, you wouldn’t get the impact that they really should have on many of us. Feeling a little uncomfortable sometimes I think shows that a show is really touching some buttons. And Everwood touches a lot of buttons, not so much because of contrived situations that make us sad, or music that helps it to tough on the heartstrings, but by some dialog that is honest and sometimes brutally so. It’s character development is such that we really understand the impact when one person does or says something to another, we feel it ourselves much more than in cardboard cut-out clichés that make up much of what TV and Cinema has become.

The DVD set comes with 6 DVD’s containing the 23 episodes. In addition to these, there is a 24-minute making of featurette that fills in some of the history of how the pilot was developed and filmed, and then subsequently how Everwood made its way through its first season. Another feature is a short clip of video that is taken first by Gregory Smith, then my Emily VanCamp – basically just candids from behind the set. Finally, there is a series of 10 or so deleted scenes both with and without a commentary track. These were helpful in giving even more insight into the characters. Apparently they often shoot more than the allotted 45 minutes for each episode and have to throw away at least a little for most episodes. So theoretically there might have been even more of these on the cutting room floor, but these give a nice enough taste of what we might have if the show were a bit longer, or without commercial breaks. Warner Brothers also provided commentary tracks for 4 of the 23 episodes – the pilot, the 5th show “Deer God”, the 20th show, “Moonlight Sonata,” and the finale, “Home.” The constants in these were the executive producers Greg Berlanti and Mickey Liddell, but Treat Williams is in most of them as well. In addition, Tom Amandes is in a couple and Gregory Smith and Emily VanCamp are both in one respectively. Generally Berlanti and Lidell do most of the talking in these, although Treat Williams can get a little talkative as well. The others are generally much more quiet. I did enjoy the commentaries and they of course gave a lot of additional insight, but I do wish they would have included more of the actors and allowed those actors to talk more. Instead it seems like the most talkative of the groups got to drown out everyone else. The other thing that bothered me a little was that Treat Williams was constantly joking. It was obviously a very amiable environment on set and that was reflected in these commentary tracks, but especially when some pretty heavy scenes were being shown I would have rather not had Treat goofing about his beard or some other piece of silliness. Nevertheless, these are somewhat minor quibbles; in general I really enjoyed the commentary tracks as well as the other special features.

The first season of Everwood (I don’t know about the 2nd or 3rd), was filmed in standard 4:3 aspect ratio, although apparently they letterboxed the premier episode and the finale. Nevertheless, none of these episodes are enhanced for widescreen. The picture is still very good, although I’m hoping that future seasons get put on HD video. The sound is also quite good, and while it is a very dialog-centric series, of course, the creations of Blake Neely add a lot to the sound of Everwood.

Now the only thing I need is Everwood Season Two. This brings me to something else I wanted to write about – TV Series on DVD. As I mentioned, I’m one of those people who like to see things from the beginning and in order. Now that I’ve seen the first season of this series on DVD, I have a dilemma. Do I just read the season synopses of all the episodes from Season 2 and 3 that I’ve missed and start watching from the middle of the 3rd season? Or do I refuse to watch anything on TV at the moment and wait until Season 2 comes out on DVD? If Season 2 were out now, I would gladly buy it, or at the very least rent it. I realize that getting a whole season of series like Everwood onto DVD is a chore, let alone two seasons. And I know some of this is marketing decisions. I guess it’s figured that doling out a little of a series at a time will garner more hunger for it. But on the flipside of this is the fact that if a new viewer is created by the series making its way to DVD, wouldn’t many of those would-be new viewers (for the show in its current season) be created if all the episodes were available so that these new viewers could “catch up” completely? Maybe I’m the exception to the rule, I don’t know. Maybe I’m also a bit spoiled by my new TiVo, but my basic preference now is of course to be able to view the content that’s been produced and not have to wait for some arbitrary decision by a marketing executive. But maybe that’s just me. I had a similar dilemma with Six Feet Under. I saw the first season live, then didn’t have HBO when the second season aired, and got it back when the third season started. But the availability on DVD always lagged by a couple of seasons, so I could never catch up and get current – especially since I didn’t even have TiVo for most of this time. What I’d really love to see is for content companies to provide these shows to us in a much more flexible way. I know a lot of this has to do with being able to make money with these shows – on TV or via rentals or sales. But I would be perfectly willing to pay if it meant that I could get whatever episode of a series I wanted at any time, streamed or downloaded of the net from the content provider’s site. Hopefully these companies will get wise and offer something akin to this soon. Currently my only choice is to go look for a copy of the show online, a prospect whose legality is questionable at the very least. Offer choices and people will bite, lack of choices often cause people to create solutions for themselves – solutions that don’t make these companies any money, but only causes headaches for both the potential viewer as well as the company trying to prevent unauthorized copying of their intellectual property.

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Andrew over and Treonauts just reported on a new device that may provide true wifi capabilities to both the Treo 600 and the Treo 650!

I’ve written previously about how a hacker recently was able to make modifications to the Treo 650′s firmware as well as modifying drivers for Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for their Tungsten PDA’s and was able to accomplish Wifi capability for the Sprint Treo 650′s that are currently out. That was great and many will end up using that as a means of getting a high-speed connection. However, the two things it didn’t address were Treo 600 users and the much greater energy usage of wifi. Not to mention having to alter the firmware which is not the most user-friendly proposition.

Enter Enfora. (as an aside, this company name sounds very funny to me because we have a Greek Diner here with a very similar-sounding name – Amphora!) Apparently, they have developed a Wifi-capable hardware add-on to the phone which includes both a wifi receiver as well as large battery for compensating for this added power drain. The big downside, of course is that this basically double the size of the phone, and probably more than double the weight. But while this will decrease the mobility factor of the phone, will it do so any more than Pa1mOne’s Wifi card for which you will have to either carry around an AC power supply or an extra Treo battery or two?

The next obvious question is whether this will allow for VOIP (Voice over IP – internet telelphony) functionality. I don’t know if this can be built into software, but Skype apparently does something similar to VOIP and so theoretically they could create a PalmOS version of Skype. Of course you could always look into Vonage’s newly announced Wifi phone, (or Broadvoice’s that’s been around for almost a year) that will do just this, but then of course you have to carry around yet another piece of equipment, and that’s what we’ve been trying to get away from! What we really need is a purely software version of VOIP implementation like Skype that can work on many different platforms, including Smartphones.

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I haven’t devoted a whole entry to podcasting yet, only referring to it here and there, so I thought I’d do something a little more detailed. For many this will be old news. Podcasting has gotten a lot of mainstream media attention lately even though it’s only been in existence for 6 months, perhaps a bit less. For those who are tech and internet-savvy, if you’re not listening to podcasts yet, then you have probably known about it for a while now.

What is podcasting? Basically, it is a method for downloading various audio files to your computer in an automated way. More specifically, it is kind of a combination of internet radio and blogging. Adam Curry, former MTV VJ and creator of MTV.com before corporate entities like MTV had a clue about the web, created podcasting with the help of some programmers.

To get more detailed, we have to explain a bit about blogs and RSS. Part of the success of blogs in my and many others opinion has a lot to do with a technology that is intimately related to blogging called RSS or Real Simple Syndication. Blogging services and software create RSS files that include the actual content from your blog as well as meta data like when it was written, what category it fits into and so forth. News aggregators check this file either on a scheduled basis or by the blogger “pushing” it to the aggregator. Users employ applications (news readers) which can subscribe to “feeds” via the aggregators. Feeds are basically these RSS files that contain the content from X number of posts by the blogger. Because of the meta data and the intelligence of the news reader software, one can keep up to date, delete old posts, or keep certain posts for future reference, much like you could clip articles or hold onto specific issues of a favorite magazine.

So far, all of this stuff is relating to written text. What Curry wanted to do is to extend this to audio recordings since he had been doing his own internet radio show for a while. And in fact there was no reason that this couldn’t work because RSS has the ability to include file attachments. But news readers didn’t have the ability to really keep track of these recordings, download them, etc. So Curry built iPodder, the first such program. This allowed users to subscribe to specific feeds that contained audio content, and to have these downloaded to a specific directory so that they could be easily listened to on the computer or transferred to a portable device.

As I’m sure you know, the Apple iPod is the most popular digital music (mp3-player) device out there, and so the term “podcast” stuck, however, you can get podcasting applications that work with Windows Media Player and many other MP3 players and even smartphones like the Treo 650.

In addition to iPodder, the main application that I use these days, both because it seems to be well-built, but also because it seems to have the fastest development cycles which result in the most features, is Doppler Radio. The most recent release, version 2.0, has a couple of new features which seem particularly useful for me as an iPod user. One is additional management of podcasts on your iPod. Previously you would have to manually go through and delete old podcasts, but now you can specify a method by which Doppler will decided to remove older ones. The other nice feature added is that Doppler can now convert any audio file, be in an MP3, a WMA, or something else, into Apple’s proprietary m4b file type that allows for “bookmarking.” Normally MP3′s don’t have any bookmarking capability because they were originally meant primarily for music, which is usually only 2-10 minutes long, and which you don’t have to hold in place – you just replay a song if you want. But with spoken word audio (and especially lengthier ones of thirty minutes or even more), you want to be able to keep your place as in a book. The other great thing about m4b for those with the latest iPod models (4th generation or “4G”), is that you can play the files at variable speeds – normal, sped up 20% or slowed 20%. This is particularly useful in order to get through what has become an onslaught of content at at least a slightly faster speed. While these sped-up versions have a few more audio “artifacts,” their pitch doesn’t change as in the old chipmunk voices I could make by changing the recording and playing speeds on those old micro-cassette recorders from back when I was a kid…

The other thing to note, though is that Doppler currently is Win-PC-only, no Mac or Linux versions. It also requires .Net framework to work, which might be incompatible with older versions of Windows.

As I mentioned, there is a growing list of podcasts out there, and these will continue to grow, like blogs. There are millions of blogs out there, and like blogs, it may take a while to figure out which podcasts are your favorites. But because podcasts are a little less immediate then blogs, it may take a little longer. It’s not just a matter of clicking on a link and scanning a couple of posts. Instead, one has to subscribe, download, and then listen to a podcast for at least a few minutes, but probably a lot longer, to figure out whether one is of interest. Because of this, I’ve only been listening to a few select ones so far, but I continue to look for new ones. The few that I listen to are:

Engadget (link to podcast) – I read Engadget’s tech blog religiously, and this is a nice extension of that. However, it is not an audio version of the blog by any means. Rather it is more of a rap (rant?) session by Engadget’s Phillip Torrone often with guest podcaster Lenn Pryor of Microsoft. Whereas the Engadget blog is somewhat matter-of-fact, the podcast is anything but – it is much angrier and “activist” then most of what you see by those at Egadget in written form.

The Dawn and Drew Show (link to podcast) – I’m not really sure what this show is about. It’s not really about anything per se, but just more like listening in on a conversation, one that is just plain goofy sometimes. Dawn Miselli and Drew Domkus are a married couple living in rural Wisconsin and just talk about whatever most of the time. Dawn has this magnetic quality to her voice that just keeps you riveted and in stitches most of the time, but damned if I know why. She continually talks about World Domination, and perhaps her voice is her secret weapon for those plans. Dawn and Drew are one of my few “guilty pleasures” in that I know I’m not getting anything practical out of the show, but I suppose maybe laughter being healthy can be spun to be practical, right?

Morning Stories (link to podcast) – Tony Kahn hosts this NPR show that’s produced at the Boston NPR Afflilate WGBHa show on stories that are produced in a similar way to NPR shows – with care for detail, professionally edited and produced. Consider them a kind of NPR light for podcasting.

Leo Laporte (link to podcast) – Leo Laporte used to be one of the main hosts on TechTV (and ZDTV before that), which was a cable channel that eventually got bought out by a rival computer gaming network which subsequently killed most of its content. He now hosts a local show in Califonia called The Tech Guy where he talks about current news in computers and helps mostly less experienced users get better acquainted with the latest technologies and issues. But Leo’s demeanor is so friendly and informative, that he’s always fun to listen to, and even those of us who consider ourselves tech-savvy can get some useful information out of the show.

Finally, one of the features that might be new in version 2.0 of Doppler Radio (but maybe I just didn’t notice it in my earlier version?) is the ability to search for a podcast. I believe it not only searches the title field, but the description as well. As a lark, I decided to type in ‘NPR’ and I came up with a podcast titled “All Things Considered.” Doing a bit more research, it seems like NPR is experimenting a bit with this new media form. Not only is All Things Considered (link to podcast) being made available, but so is American Public Media’s Future Tense (link to podcast) and New York Public Radio’s (WNYC’s) On the Media (link to podcast)!

I’m glad that NPR is making their content available in this way, but I wonder where it’s going. Up until now, the only way to get NPR content as an archiveable file was to either record it yourself, or to order a recording either from NPR itself or through Audible.com. When I first got XM Satellite Radio, I asked them why they didn’t have any NPR and they said NPR didn’t want to provide its content outside of affiliate stations because these stations would then not have a commodity that they could then fairly request donations for. They do have a point. If you are paying for satellite radio on a monthly basis and getting your NPR fix through it, why would you donate to keep a local affiliate alive? In essence you are paying NPR directly instead of the affiliate. In the same way, if you are retrieving your NPR shows off the internet in order to listen to them whenever you want and wherever you want (via your portable device), then why would you pay your local affiliate? Again, you are paying NPR directly. I don’t know a lot about how the whole affiliate structure works for NPR, but I wonder if all these new media formats including internet radio, satellite radio, and podcasting will eventually spell the death of radio as we know it, including NPR? Most affiliate stations, I think, still produce some of their own content. For example here in the DC area, WAMU produces the nationally syndicated Diane Rehm Show. So I wonder if they can somehow get compensation from NPR for producing conent? What really seems strange to me is that these affiliates have to purchase shows from NPR proper, and yet as more people become more tech-savvy and as average internet speeds and access continues to grow, more and more of their listenership can simply avoid them entirely and go right to NPR. The other really odd thing surrounding all of this is that NPR is publicly funded. Does this mean that it is legally obligated to provide its programming to anyone who wants it for free? If not, is it ethically obligated? I don’t know the answer, but as someone who listens to it, donates to local affiliates, I sometimes wonder about how the mix of public funding, member funding, and large donations by corporations and philanthropists collide and create competing interests. As a fan, I want to see NPR continue. I’m a little less sure about individual affiliate stations, except that I do enjoy the content that was created at these various affiliates. I wonder then, whether NPR should just centralize all the funding stuff and not require it’s affiliates to pay for content. Instead, affiliates could use the money donated to them only on their own home-grown content which could then be offered to other stations in trade deals or for free. Of course I’m talking out of my ass here, but it just seems unlikely that the current structure will make sense in a few years – if it even does now.

At just around 6 months podcasting in general has quite a way to go to become a “mature” media format, but its fast rise in a relatively short period has obviously made some big waves in traditional media. Perhaps print and broadcasting taking the blogging phenomenon for granted for so long and because of it suffering the consequences have motivated a much fast reaction and even adoption of podcasting by these same dinosaurs in an effort to avoid extinction. Traditional media is far from extinct, of course, but there’s a big danger. Even now podcasters are beginning to get small sponsorship deals akin to NPR. They are not commercials in the modern sense, but just paid little blurbs describing a product or site. As convenient as Doppler has become, it can’t get around the problem of the source material. What I mean is that I’ve had the problem that with a bunch of podcasts, only the last episode or the last few are referenced and thus retrievable by the application. Obviously one could easily become overrun with archived podcasts, but it seems like a good option to give people who might want to and have the time to “catch up.” Even now there are some who are not just using audio but actually doing video podcasting. I haven’t tried any of these out partially because my portable device being an iPod, I can’t view video on it. And of course video is much more costly in terms of storage space and bandwidth than audio. Eventually, though, we may see the Internet providing a place for ordinary people to create their own equivalent to TV programming just as podcasting has become an alternative to radio. The broadcasts are in enough trouble as it is, and young people today are apparently turning away from the TV more and more and opting for spending at least some of this time online. I’m hopeful that what blogging has done to smash the traditional media’s hold on what information we receive will be mirrored in a similar way by audio and eventually video podcasting. Such democratization of media can only be a good thing. Traditional journalism has its strengths in professionalism, editing, and financial resources, but many of these are double-edged swords. I don’t think we will see less “professionalism” in these new forms of media. After all, many blogs out there produce such reliable, professional, and thought-provoking material, that they make most of what “professional” media produce look like a joke! Yes many podcasts are generally not quite as streamlined, but this will come with time, especially as former pro journalists become podcasters themselves, and as journalists to be start considering podcasting as a viable career path in addition to traditional journalism.

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First, let me apologize for the lack of content here recently. I was traveling for the holidays, developed a cold that made doing anything a real pain, then came back and have been trying to catch up on reading all the gadget news. With CES just ending, it’s been a landslide of content. I just figure it’s still going to be a while, so I want to start writing something. I thought I’d give you a few quick items that I’m planning on writing about in more depth in come days. I figure posting a little bit about them now will give you at least something and it will keep me honest! The theme is definitely content overload, as you will see:

I happened across a program/service that is supposed to act like TiVo but for your radio. If you are a big talk-radio fan, or just a radio fan in general, this might prove really useful. I’m a big NPR addict myself, but I just don’t get the time to listen to the shows I want to all the time. I get busy and it’s really a shame they haven’t come out with something like this already, it would be a lot easier than a TiVo because you don’t have to deal with video and my sense is that scheduling is much more regular for radio. It does this by listening to streaming Internet radio broadcasts and recording these as mp3 files. It will even send them to iTunes so if you have an iPod all the better. The application is called Replay Radio and they have a demo version if you want to try it out. I am probably going to purchase the full version and give a more detailed piece about soon.

Speaking of TiVo, there’s a lot of TiVo news recently, most notably about the newest feature called TiVo ToGo, which will enable people who can use this service to download their TiVo content to their laptop, portable media player, or even to DVD. However, there are some inherent problems that I see with the implementation, which in my mind make it more trouble then it’s worth.

As I think I’ve mentioned here before, I’ve only recently started using TiVo myself, but I purchased a TiVo unit that also records to DVD. In fact, it does so much more easily than via TiVo ToGo. The unit is the Humax DRT-800. I’ve only seen one review of this unit, but I figured I would write a review myself that concentrates on the dvd writing part of the picture and the other things that separate this unit from your average TiVo.

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