New Year: New Look: Old News

Yes, I know, I'm guilty of not keeping this site as up to date as I'd like, so I hope that with a new look (featuring one of my favourite photos from 2005) that will change. Better still, the site's never looked this good in Firefox. New look aside, a new year doesn't necessarily mean much new to report, so here's a look at some of 2005's new treats, from podcasts to 102" Plasmas, audio books to MacBooks, and just some other stuff I think you might enjoy. Please let me know what you think of the redesign by leaving a comment.

Books, Books, Everywhere
There hasn't been a "Year of the book" since they finished the library in Alexandria, but 2005 might as well be one as far as I'm concerned. Thanks largely to Dan and a free offer at Audible, I really was surprised at how much I enjoyed listening to these. Ender's Game and A Confederacy of Dunces were particular standouts, the former passing the time en route to Europe and the latter en route from Greece to the UK. Not all the books I read were audio, however. I also went through all of Dan Brown's books, particularly enjoying the illustrated Robert Langdon novels, several Micheal Crichton books (which were equally delightful) starting with Air Frame, and a few others like Star of the Sea. And many, many, more - I probably could have filled my backpack with all the books I read last year. Which is what makes an invention like Sony's new eBook so appealing. The only drawback to all these new digital media gadgets is that the companies expect to sell digital media at the same price as their non-digital predecessors. You can't expect consumers to pay the same price (or more!) when we know that, in the case of books, there is no printing cost, paper cost, shipping cost, etc involved. This goes for music and video too (ahem, Apple). Speaking of Apple, and books for that matter, I've decided my next computer/laptop purchase will be Apple's MacBook Pro- it runs on an Intel dual-core processor (I expect multi-processor chips will finally win). I imagine I'll be able to boot it with Windows and OS X for whatever I may want to run.

And Then There Were Gadgets
While I was away for a good part of last year, gadget makers didn't seem as phased as I imagined they might be without me personally financing them. Take a look at this "Fly" pen-puter for kids, for example. Draw a piano on a piece of paper and then tap the notes and play/record/multitrack a song, just as an example. I bought Mariah one for Christmas, but I'm not sure who's been playing with it more. Or if you were one of the 14 million people that got a new iPod over the holidays, you may want to swing by this site of cool things to do with it. Or if you'd prefer to avoid the bandwagons, maybe check out the new Creative Zen Vision:M. I'm probably not the only one unimpressed with the iPod's lack of support for other video formats and iTunes' lack of conversion ability, after all. Then again, who wants to watch video on a little screen like that anyway - especially when you can watch on this ridiculously awesome 102" Samsung Plasma. Though I think I'd sooner spend the $100,000 on a projector and theatre seating - and lots of popcorn.

Let's All Go To The Lobby
Speaking of movies, there were a few exceptional movies last year, but I think that next year is more exciting. I don't need to tell you I loved the final chapter of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. And both King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia held up under scrutiny, if you can overlook exceedingly long movie runtimes and spotty child acting. But the highlight for me, aside from Star Wars, was the release of some of my favourite shows on to DVD. The Simpsons Season 6 is inside-outside (of the disc) classics, and Season 7 is not far behind. These are the two best seasons the show has had to date. And of course we're up to season 6 in Seinfeld as well, though season 5 has my all time favourite episode - The Marine Biologist. Not to mention Family Guy Season 4 and others. The girls in Greece somehow (hypnosis?) got me hooked on Desperate Housewives, too, which isn't relevant, but I feel I need to confess.

Music, Sweet Music
There were some excellent new bands last year that I really got into, but the latest development for me is podcasts. I've finally gotten around to it and I have a few podcasts to recommend. Wait, what's a podcast, you ask? Well, it's basically a show that someone puts together (like a radio show broadcast) that you can skip past boring parts, songs you don't like, and still get to experience some new music or audio. And you don't need an iPod to do it, contrary to popular belief, you can actually tune in with just a PC or any portable MP3 player. My favourite two, for the moment are CBC Radio 3, chock full of new Candian music, and the Ricky Gervais Show, Ricky being a hilarious British guy (creator/star of The Office and Extras) and the show being a talkshow. I must be getting old. But of course, you know I'm going to list some music I've just gotten into last year, so without further hoopla: Andrew Bird (mellow rocker), The Decemberists (mariner-sounding rock folk), Kaiser Chiefs (tasty as Franz Ferdinand, only half the popularity), Beulah (listen to Yoko first), Sigur Ros (Radiohead play Iceland), Arcade Fire (OK, so that was 2004, still... Canada plays rock), and a bunch of others (Dean gets lazy).

And so there you have 2005. Now I'm off to start working on the 2006 collection. Wish me luck!
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Everything: Coming Soon To An Internet Near You

It's been awhile, and if I wait much longer, I'll miss my chance to wish anyone still coming by the blog occasionally a happy new year, so... Happy New Year. Now that I'm back home, my blog will probably not be about anything relating to me, at least not very often, but probably more about things that cross my mind and my radar that I'd like to pass on. But before I do that, I should say that Christmas was great, very glad I made it back home to be with the family, though what a busy time to come back! Still, it made catching up a little with everyone quite easy. New Year's was good too, I worked as usual, we had a nice dinner, and then had a good time in the 'ol lounge with some family and friends that came by. I'm back at work now and enjoying that too, and that's about all I have to report at the moment.

But before I finish with the holidays for another year, you absolutely must see this. It's a house with Christmas lights set to music and much more amusing than it sounds, hosted on Google's new Google video service. It also helps form a nice segue for me, so enjoy!

Christmas House of Awesomeness

So, with that out of the way, I had started this post some time ago as a preview of some of the 'unknown' features Google has. You know, things like if you type in "2^2+4*(6+5)" you'll get the answer, or "5 fathoms in metres" it'll do the converstion, or "465.66 USD in CAD" will tell you Google's share price is in Canadian dollars as of market close today (yeah, I bought some earlier this week), or "define perspicacity" brings up the definition, just as a few examples. What other ways has Google made itself the best search engine? Well, they keep making it smarter. Try a search for "Athena Restaurant Saskatoon" and look what's at the top of the list. Tried googling a movie lately? Go ahead. Google "King Kong". At least for me, it comes up with a list of showtimes in the city, with the averaged rating from different sources before it puts all the other links I might want to read. Same for music. Google "Frank Black" and you'll see that you get a link to the discography, reviews, and all sorts of goodies right there at the top. And the list goes on: stock quotes, quick facts, books, maps, weather, and one thing I also like is the wildcard: "Saskatoon best * in the world" and it will fill in words for the * and return everything that Saskatoon is best at (according to the web).

And I guess since I'm at it, here's something else that's very cool and I've just set up (and you can too). Google is my search engine, email, and news collector. It grabs news headlines from sites I select (like CBC, Slashdot, and others) but there's a feature they've had for some time that I bet many of you haven't used. If you have a google account/email - and if you don't you can sign up in 30 seconds - you can easily create a personalized homepage like the one I've pasted below. REALLY easily. You just select from a list the content you want and bam, there it is. You can even move it around the way you want it. If you look at the screenshot on the left, you'll see I have my Gmail inbox, global news, CBC news, Slashdot (news for nerds), yet more news for nerds, and then on the right, up to date weather, quote/word of the day, and, yes, for the purpose of this example, the site feed from my blog.

But enough on features. Here's how I see Google becoming ever more prevalent, incited by some insight from the past week's CES show. First of all, they have a brand that you can't buy, a reputation for being the best at what they do, and also innovative thanks to the massive quantities of brain power they've amassed. Let us not forget that, so far, they've mostly lived up to their "don't be evil" slogan, which certainly helps. Now, with all the features I've outlined above, they're positioned to essentially be the web portal of choice. Because even with all those features beneath the surface, their website still retains a clean, quick interface. Their search engine sticks to text ads (which I'm going to try on this site just for my own curiosity) and the breakthrough there is that the ads are relevant to what you're looking for. Imagine if you watched television and there were no ads for things that didn't relate to things you were interested in.

Enter Google Video, and lest we forget, the inevitable convergence of internet, television, movies, etc into the all-in-one media centre, which is already (finally) happening and has been predicted for YEARS. And there's one other phenomena that I think a lot of people haven't considered, and that's the amount of movie/tv show downloading that goes on today. We'll ignore the movie piracy for the moment, and I'm not even talking about the shows with available DVDs, but TV shows - why are they so popular that people take the time to encode them, distribute them, and then download them? Well, no commercials is one feature, but I don't think the driving force. The fact that it's available ON DEMAND, that you watch it when YOU want it, not when some executive in Toronto or California or wherever has scheduled you to be home and watch it. Look at Tivo? Why do you think it's so popular? On demand is the future.

Bundle video on demand with the internet, and you suddenly have the capability to deliver that content. And who better to index and provide that content than the site already being used more than any other: Google. Now, at first, what I think we'll see is a lot of pay-per-view type downloading, and covered in all sorts of ugly DRM (copy protection). $1.99 episodes of many popular shows are already available in the US a day after they air. Google is taking that route, too, for now, which will put them head-to-head with Apple's iTunes and many other up-and-comers. I don't think this strategy will win the day for Google, though. Here's what will, it's the same thing that television networks already use today to generate the massive revenues they do: advertising. The best part is, Google is already placed to deliver the goods in that better than anyone else in the world.

So, picture this. If you have an account with Google, they already know a lot more about you than any of us is comfortable thinking about. Searches, ads you've clicked on in the past, sites you've visited, or pretty much anything you've ever done on the web - even if it's just playing hours of Web Sudoku (see my new link on the left). You take that knowledge, combine it with ads indexed (by Google) with information that helps determine target audience, and suddenly, you have television with targeted ads. And best of all, you are able to provide all these shows that others are charging $2 (US) a download for absolutely free. You make money on a percentage of the ads, with the rest going to the network that supplied the show in you're watching. What's more, suddenly DRM isn't an issue, because the content is free anyway, so users can take it and put it on any player you want. As far as I'm concerned, everybody wins.

And, with a stroke, television as we know it ceases to exist. Now you watch video when you have time, and, if you are an avid fan, perhaps the day it's "released" not "aired". Nielsen ratings are a thing of the past, because you now know EXACTLY how many people are watching, and all sorts of demographic information you never thought possible before. The recent format wars for DVD's replacement (HD-DVD or Bluray) will not matter 10 years from now when everything is on the internet anyway. We like to think of all the ways the internet has changed our life, but the reality is we've only just begun to realize the enormous potential of a converged internet. Which, inevitably, will have Google at the helm.Read More...