Category: Media

Really. What’s holding you back from geting an iPod?

It’s been really interesting to watch as Apple has continued to lower and lower and lower the barrier to entry for people to buy their first iPod.

With the recent price drop, someone can now walk into the Apple Store and pickup an iPod Shuffle for $49.

It’s like now… if people ever wanted to try an iPod, they could just get an iPod shuffle. It’s $49. What do they have to lose?

I guess… if I wanted to learn from this, I’d ask myself that if I’m trying to sell product X how can I make it so simple that people would be like “what do I have to lose?”  It’s so easy and has such a low barrier to entry.

Real Video On-Demand

On Friday, I was walking out the door on my way to work and I realized that I hadn’t seen this week’s episode of LOST yet.  I stopped what I was doing ran over to my computer, bought LOST on Apple iTunes, and waited 15 minutes as it downloaded.  I then put it on my iPhone and went about my merry way.

Seems like things just aren’t where they need to be.

I’d get a season pass to LOST on iTunes but I only use laptops and I’m always running out of space on my hard drives.

I want some type of easy media server type of solution that will hold all of my media but when I sync my laptop and my iPhone I can pull media off of the server and put it on my iPhone.

It’d also be nice if there was a way to buy TV shows on the fly from the iPhone so that while I was walking to the subway it could have been downloading.  It’d also be nice if my phone could pull TV shows off of my media server.  I know with current cellular technology this isn’t possible but it’d be nice.

Wanna Know the Future? Ask Children.

As i’ve said before, we’re amidst a revolution.   Change is here.  The way we live our lives will never be the same.

Seems like I spend a lot of my 9-5 helping people to understand the revolution and that change.

A few times I’ve joked… that everyone needs to take a road trip to a local middle school and you’ll learn all you need to know about the future of the Web and media.  After more thought… I think that’d probably actually be a killer idea.

New York City VC Fred Wilson has some really cool analysis about the future of technology and media based on some experiences he’s had with his kids and it all seems really right on.

I don’t have children but should probably start hanging out with more of them.  For those of you who do have children, what kind of Web, technology, or media trends have you been noticing from them?

The Queen of England is Now on YouTube

The British Monarchy is on YouTube

I’ve always had a fascination with the history and the mystique of the British Monarchy… maybe because here in the United States we don’t have a king or queen.  It’s just fascinating  to read about and watch documentaries of.  But alas… it’s always been so far away (across the Atlantic Ocean)… until now.

The British Monarch is now on YouTube.  They’ve launched their own channel.

This rocks. They can upload videos from today and from years past.  You can get a peak behind the family and inside the history… my inner nerd is smiling.

And the thing is… I must not be alone because the channel itself has almost had a quarter million views (250,000+).

The Queen is going to even upload her Christmas message to YouTube so that its available there the same time its being played live on TV.

I’d post some of the videos but they disabled embedding… bummer.

Why do we still have video rental stores?

I’m home with my family for the holidays and thought maybe we all could go see National Treasure 2 which opened in the theater this week.   It lucks like a fun movie but I mainly wanna see it because the Library of Congress is featured in it.  Neither of my parents have seen the first National Treasure movie so we thought we’d rent the dvd.

So we go to one of the video rental stores in Lansing, MI but of course they don’t have it because I’m sure every family who wants to see National Treasure 2 who hasn’t seen the first one is probably having the same thought this weekend.

I guess I just ask myself.  Why do we still have video rental stores?

No… Netflix isn’t the answer.  The desire to have this video wasn’t planned out it was on an impluse so I don’t wanna wait the 2 days it takes to get dvd in the mail from them.

Why are we still dealing with the pains of physical media like dvds anyhow?

You could get the first National Treasure off of the Apple iTunes store but my family isn’t going to sit around my 13 inch MacBook and watch it.

I’m sure I could download it illegally from bittorrent (and probably the 2nd one too) but I’m not going to do that… it’s illegal and you’d still be watching the movie from a computer.

If we had an Apple TV, that wouldn’t help.  Apple TV’s only work with fancy high def tv’s.

It’s just frustrating.  There is media out there that we want to consume on a television.  We’re willing to pay money to consume it but we can’t get ahold of the media in a satisfactory way for this to happen.

Someone is losing money here. How can we fix this? There needs to be a solution to this problem.

Here’s hoping that Steve Jobs will announce a better Apple TV at the Macworld Expo.

So I missed Sunday’s Iron Chef America…

So one of my favorite shows on TV is Food Network’s Iron Chef America…  I was excited for this week’s episode because it was the first for the new Iron Chef Michael Symon.  Unfortunately, I missed it.

So now what can I do? Iron Chef America is not on iTunes.  It’s not on Hulu.  They don’t make it available from the Food Network Web site.    I could sit around and hope I magically get it when it’s being re-run but that’s not an option. So what can I do?  I could get a boot-leg copy off of Bittorrent… but that just doesn’t seem right to me (call me crazy).

I’m saying that I’m willing to pay money via iTunes for it or I’m willing watch some ads and have it streamed online.  Why hasn’t every cable network (including Food Network) seen this reality and started implementing these options?  I can’t be the only one who wants this.

Happy Birthday to Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV

Our friend and father of the Vayner-nation Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV turned 32 today and I want to wish him a BIG happy birthday today.

Drop on over to his video blog and give him some last minute birthday wishes.

Facebook Video Makes Video Too Easy; Video Messages vs E-Mail

Facebook Video

So to continue the conversation on Facebook, I thought I’d write about one of my favorite applications, Facebook Video. (I don’t want people to think that I’m completely negative on Facebook.)

Facebook Video is very simple, which I think is part of its charm. You can upload videos that you have on your computer or you can capture video right from your Web camera and send that to all of your friends or to certain specific friends as a video message.

Uploading videos that you have on your computer isn’t that exciting. That’s what we have YouTube for.

Being able to send video messages is what excites me. I have an Apple MacBook, which means I have a Web camera built into the lid of my laptop. (This is so genius of Apple.) So… all I have to do is literally open the “Create a new message window,” hit record, and start talking into the camera. It’s that easy.

There are times which I’m tired and don’t feel like penning War & Peace in the form of an e-mail. It’s so much easier to just to open up Facebook Video, type in the person’s name, hit the record, and start talking. I’ve been doing this with one of my best friends from college. It’s so much fun.

With video, so much more comes across. You get the emotion and personality so much clearer from the person that you’re talking to. It’s quite cool.

So you’re assignment for today, if you have a Web camera, go on Facebook Video and send me a video message and I’ll send you one back. As I said before, this should be incredibly easy for those of you that have Apple MacBooks.

You’ll see how much more fun it is then sending e-mail.

What Online Television Shows Do You Watch?

One of the sessions at BarCamp DC that I heard a lot of buzz about after words was Joe Price‘s discussion of the Future of Television.  I’m bummed I missed it but I was facilitating one of the other rooms.

Joe and I talked after and we thought it’d be cool to get an online thread going about what kind of online television shows people are watching.

I watch (in no particular order)…

What do you watch?  Leave me a comment.  Write a blog post about it.    I don’t have cable tv so I wanna hear about what new shows I should be watching.

I’d love to hear from as many people as possible.

It’d be especially cool to hear from folks that were at BarCamp DC.  Matt, Jason, Jackson, Cindy, Patrick,  Samantha, Brian… tag you’re it.  Post about your favorite online tv shows and then tag  more people.

Maybe you don’t watch much online tv.  If that’s the case, post about why and what’s missing.  What would make it a better experience?