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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 02 Issue 01
------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine -------
Vol 2, Issue 1
Happy New Year!
I hope you and your family had a wonderful celebration together
to ring in the new year. Things were pretty low-key around the
Peters' household this year. With the new baby, midnight was
kind of a far shot, so, instead we got together with some friends
for a quiet dinner and rang in the new year at midnight (OK,
midnight in the Azores).
This issue kicks off the second year of this missive and with it,
I'm going to hit on what may be the future of "television":
Hulu.com. Hope you get a chance to check it out!
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: A Vision of Television
2. Blog Posts
3. Shameless Self-Promotion
4. The Fine Print
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1. Article: A Vision of Television
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Many years ago, when (figuratively) dinosaurs roamed the earth,
streaming media first happened upon the scene. The early
pre-cursor to Internet Radio catered primarily to the techie
crowd -- and only the techie crowd would put up with it. On the
best of days you were lucky if it sounded like a cheap AM radio
going through a tunnel. The audience from that era would be
pleasantly surprised by how far we've come -- Internet Radio with
stereo or even CD-quality sound, YouTube videos springing up all
over the place -- streaming media has evolved to an amazing
degree. So what could possibly be missing?
How about some premium content?
Don't get me wrong, there is some really fun stuff over on
YouTube. Some is inspiring, some laugh-out-loud funny, some of
it just plain bizarre. Sometimes, though, at the end of the day,
all you want to do is kick back and watch an episode of "The
Office" or chuckle over one of the classic "commercials" from
Saturday Night Live. For some reason (copyright issues?) those
don't seem to be available.
Well, now they are.
Hulu (hulu.com) is a service supported by a number of the big
studios, including NBC Universal and FOX. They stream both full
episodes and short clips from a variety of their shows. In
addition to "The Office" and SNL, mentioned above, the catalog
includes current shows such as "Chuck", "Heroes", and "Bionic
Woman", shows that were crowd pleasers in their time, like
"Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly", and even a few
golden-oldies, like "McHale's Navy" and "The Outer Limits".
The video is of exceptional quality and can even run in
full-screen mode, if your computer has the power. In the smaller
screen mode, even my older Thinkpad notebook computer can handle
the video speed. In addition to simply viewing the video, you
can also rate and comment on it and even embed the whole video or
even just a clip in some other location (such as a blog) similar
to what you can do with YouTube.
You get all of this and you don't even have to install any new
software. The video plays in a Flash-based player, similar to how
YouTube works.
So, what would you expect to pay for all of this?
It turns out the service is free (for now at least). The videos
have a sponsor and there are commercials during the showing. In
a two-hour episode of Firefly, I think there were *six* 30-second
spots in all (probably as many as you would see in a single
commercial break on broadcast TV) -- hardly an unbearable price
to pay.
The Hulu main site is still in private beta. You can sign up for
an invitation to take part and hope that you get one. It might
take a while. If you'd like to check out some of the offerings
right now, though, you can go over to OpenHulu (openhulu.com) and
access the videos from there. You might want to check it out
quickly as there is a news blurb on their site which indicates
that their site might be moving.
If you do end up checking out this service, I would love to hear
your opinion. Drop me a line at gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com and
let me know what you think.
Copyright 2008, Greg Peters
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2. Blog Posts
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Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the
last year:
Sunday, December 23, 2007 -- Remember The Milk Add-On
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/12/remember-milk-add-on.html
"I just wrote about 'Remember the Milk' in my e-zine this past
week. It's a great tool to keep track of all of the tasks you
might have to do in your everyday life. A number of folks who
follow David Allen's 'Getting things DONE' teachings apparently
swear by it..."
Saturday, January 27, 2007 -- Clearing the Mental RAM
http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/01/clearing-mental-ram.html
"I've been reading another good book lately. It's called 'Getting
Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity' by David
Allen. I checked it out from the library and, ironically, didn't
get a chance to crack it open until just recently..."
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3. Shameless Self-Promotion
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The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg
Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data
Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better
web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us
on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your
webmaster.
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4. The Fine Print
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