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MacMini Lasted Two Minutes!!

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So, I went and bought myself a nice new MacMini to use a home dev box and for some other video stuff. So, I unpack it all and plug it all in, and the power button:

*BONG* it said, and happily went about welcoming me in lots of different languages. Then we start setting it up and saying what language and keyboard I have…. THEN…

…. *NOTHING*. It just turned off! And i WONT TURN BACK ON! WTF!!?????

The power brick seems to be buzzing gently, so that’s OK. But the MacMini just will NOT TURN ON AT ALL!!!

I am PISSED OFF!! It means I’m going to have to traipse back into town tomorrow to replace it.

I found a couple of pages online for troubleshooting (after TWO BLEEDIN’ MINUTES!!) if your MacMini won’t turn on. But they do not fix my problem. This sucks. BIG time.

Apple! WHAT THE F*CK??????? It’s CRAPPLE, so far!!! GRRRR!! Not a good first experience. At all.

OMG

In-Flight InterNot

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I was just reminded of the time when Boeing invited a load of bloggers (including Chris Pirillo, Scoble, Eric Rice, etc.) to go and try out their Connexion service providing 5MB/s internet access from 30,000 feet. And it occurs to me that we still don’t have enough solutions for this yet.

Hey Boeing / Virgin!! If you want a transatlantic tester for anything, feel free to drop me a line! 🙂

Anyway, today I found this story from 2001 (!!) where they announce that Virgin Atlantic will have wifi by the years end (but using a caching store and forward system, as opposed to direct access for messaging and file transfer) – but here we are in 2006 and it’s still not there on Virgin.

Now, I’m a big fan of Virgin Atlantic for all sorts of reasons, but they really do let themselves down (surprisingly) when it comes to consumer technology. They have ALL the right mojo to be leaders in that field. I’ve even heard Richard Branson effing about the fact that they didn’t come up with the iPod. I love the fact that they did some podcasts about destination cities. Though they have not been updated in quite a while (hey, Richard, give us a call 🙂 )

Also they have a deal with Linguaphone, where they could be producing ‘linguacasts’ for passengers to zap onto their mp3 players and learn the local lingo. These could also all be pumped through the seat back entertainment systems (Linux-Based) through an in-flight aggregator. Hmmm.. ideas…

Back to the wifi issue : Virgin has an option on the seat-back thingy which says internet, but I have never had it work ever. I think it’s a walled garden anyway as opposed to full web access.

Since November, I have travelled 35971 miles with Virgin Atlantic, in Economy, Premium Economy and Upper Class and not once have I had any internet access provided. This is crazy.

Also, there was not even any wifi access available in the brand new Virgin Upper Class Lounge. Shocking! They had a few pcs to play with, but who can anything useful on a machine that’s not their own these days?

Come on Virgin! I expect much better than this from you, these days.

podcasts

Electronic ID is already here

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While reading this article on creating a more tasteful MySpace page, it occurs to me that all these social networks online provide so much aggragate data on an individual and his or her habits and influences that it seems to me that electronic ID tagging and profiling of everyone (the kind that gets everyone all hot and sweaty when governments suggest their introduction) is already upon us. And it raises millions.

Interesting story here (CNN via AmyLoo) that shows a person's blog led the police to find a dead body in his bedroom cupboard.

The future is certainly going to be interesting with respect to our identities and profiles – and the multitude of ways that people can (already) feed, splice, dice, mix and mash that data through all sorts of interesting algorithms.

feeds, future, identity

Yet Another Flash Video Sharing Clone Gets More Funding

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A Clone of the TacksIt's interesting this: that yet another video sharing clone site has got funding. A site called Veoh has just secured a series B round of VC funding – yet it looks EXACTLY like YouTube (who got funded a while ago) – which has many clones, with slightly different ideas on how the person who shared the video can make a cut of the profits from ads too.

Veoh must have some serious content juju through Michael Eisner – ie: Possible deals with the likes of Disney etc to 'share' THEIR content on this type of site. The big media companies have been looking closely at places like YouTube quite alot, since people started ripping off, uploading and sharing their copyrighted content. So, they will probably try to shoehorn their content in there, amongst the dancing schoolgirls and street ninjas, then hope all the rad kids click on the stars, pumping the content up to the top pages. NOTE: No RSS found yet here. Very odd.

What I don't understand though, is when the people at Veoh are asked by the VCs: "So, what differentiates you from so-and-so (YouTube, for example)?" – What on earth do they say? "Errrr….. YouWhat? Never heard of it – *ahem* Video2.0!!! "… ??

I'm sure that people from Spark, such as Bijan Sabet will also bring some clout with their track record when it comes to developing the business partnerships that could no doubt follow soon. He's had his eyes on web delivered media for quite a while.

Maybe people should do a quick search on 'video sharing' on Google and find lots of comparison reviews around like this one, from DV Guru.

People say 'Ohhh, the Flickr of video'.. etc. But that's simply not the case. YouTube for example, lets you upload your videos, which they then run through an encoding server to convert to Flash Video (.FLV) and then serve then up for people to rate, tag and comment on – and them to make healthy ad revenue from all the hits (thank you very much). As far as I know, you CANNOT download the original – or another fomat, like Google video's PSP, Divx, etc format options.

My money is on systems like click.tv, and jumpcut and the like, which let you annotate the content with time-triggered text (eg: searchable mojo) and other media and stuff. [btw: I am also building such a system]. Come back SMIL, all is forgiven!!!

This content needs ENRICHING – by the viewers/listeners/readers.

UPDATE: Just found another great url with a matrix comparison of 40 online video sharing systems. SO MANY are identical! I also note that Revver lets you download the originally uploaded video files.

UPDATE2: Just read this on We Are The Media where it appears that Veoh had once 'hijacked' video podcaster and bloggers' content and pumped the content into thir system with no credit to the original authors/producers. Ooo.. bad! 

funding, video

Podshow Texas Hold-Em Jack Lette Ching$$

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I see the the podshow stable of sites (poshow, podcastalley, etc) have started to show ads for Casino / Poker / Roulette, etc sites. I have heard that the gambling sites pay the best for ads, but I bet quite a few people will get turned off because of them. Hardly relevant and totally obtrusive. imho.

IMHO, podcasts

I’ve decided to get a Mac

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Yes folks, now that the Mac will support booting into Windows and Mac OSX, I’m going to get myself a Mac with the dual Intel processors!

As a designer and a programmer of websites for people who have the choice, I have to be able to test out functionality on all desktop systems (within reason). Also ,as a programmer of websites in various scripting languages, I need to be able to build systems and scripts, which will run on the target server – usually a Linux box.

So, having the opportunity to switch/boot back and forth and get the best of both (all) worlds is a “createc’s dream”. I’m looking forward to using apps on OS X which are suited to the job, like video editing. Photoshop, Flash and Director make no difference to me, as they run the same on both, more or less (given a few speed differences on start up). I’m looking forward to trying out Front Row, and developing some video podcast channels for that. I’m looking forward to building and compiling cool Unix based stuff in Mac OS X Darwin – apart from a few things, it’s just the same as being on the command line on my remote Linux box.

Lots and lots of things to do. I have heard that Windows running on these things is ‘the fastest I’ve ever seen Windows run’. I quite like the Mac OS X interface, but I have been a Windows user for so long, I get annoyed with the way that Apple do some things. It’s really not that intuitive, imho.

Now, the question is : Which one to get? I think it’s going to be one of the laptops. But I bet they’ll release a wider MacBook Pro, just as I buy the 15 incher. Also, the idea of having a MacMini sit above a cupboard acting as my home server / gateway is very attractive. It will depend on the noise levels. Also the 20 inch iMac is great value, but isn’t a versatile with where I can put it.

So, probably the super-duper-pumped-and-jacked MacBook Pro. I can’t wait! But, I’m going to have to, as Easter is upon us and we’re off to Bonny Scotland to se the Doc’s family. Heh. They have wifi now, so I’ll still be able to get a fix online 😉 [and do some more WORK!]

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Since Getting a video iPod

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I have had a mixed experience of pain, joy, confusion and wonder, but best of all is CARTOONS. Channel Frederator, from the people who brought us Cow and Chicken and The Fairly Odd Parents, etc put together a great video podcast of animations they get sent from people. Easy to forget how atomfilms used to be the only place you could get this kind of fix, in one place. No more. Love it.

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