Well, I seem to be slowing down, or things are getting ahead of me. Not sure which. However, the beautiful weather of the last 2 weeks here in Dublin may have just something to do with it. Had to do some gardening to keep up appearances in the neighbourhood, haven't touched the camera for ages, and have only just today finished my presentation for the next Wireless technology conference in Prague on the 9th and 10th of May. In fact, in the last 2 weeks I hardly had time to listen to my podcasts, so for the last few days I have been in catch up mode.
So, now I have some time to get back to looking for some interesting new sites to comment on.
A reader had posted a comment recently and invited me to look at a new site that I have not yet looked at, namely Viewmy.tv. So I did. For someone such as myself, living in my new 'homeland', and knowing so many expatriates living in other countries, this is an excellent find, so thank you for bringing it to my attention. What the site does is to deliver what appears to be 'free-to-air' TV feeds of various countries categorized into genres such as news, sport, music, drama etc. and into various continental locations such as Africa, Asia and Americas, and then specific countries. Pure IPTV. The quality is acceptable for what appears to be terrestrial TV rebroadcast for mobile TV. It can play reasonably well in full screen, but is designed for small screens, my guess is mobile TV. The sound quality was fine. To test my theory, I logged onto the site with my PDA, but although the video may be designed for the small screen, the website is not and it proved impossible to negotiate it on my PDA (an O2 XDA IIi). Well, I guess it is in beta and undergoing improvements, so I presume at some stage they will produce a PDA/Mobile version.
I watched BBC News and some French TV (I cannot speak French, but that doesn't stop me...). Then switched to some Aussie sport channel. The Chelsea vs Liverpool football game is on and is now entering penalty shootout, so if things seem a bit disjointed, it may be that I was distracted. OK, it is all over. Liverpool has done it. Let me get back to business here. Quite funny that the Aussie channel happened to cover a football game when I watched, not rugby. Well worth exploring if you're living away from home, or even if you just have an interest in the rest of the world and other cultures. I watched this from my wireless connection on my laptop, and the quality was fine. Not to the level that Joost promises to deliver, when it eventually gets going, nor to the level of pure WebTV, but a welcome addition. I have seen something similar recently, but cannot find it in my del.icios.us bookmarks. So, for now, this is it. All the other sites that I have looked at is more about videos and WebTV, therefore the quality was generally slightly higher. Different media for different audiences I guess.
Been listening to Leo Laporte and Amber McArthur on Net@nite talking about the web on my podcasts again. The show is a bit long for my liking ( around and hour plus, I prefer 15 to 20 minutes, 30 minutes tops, as it fits in with my driving schedule), but very interesting and both very likable presenters of the show. I think I will subscribe to this one as well for a while. The discussed a number of YouTube videos, a list of most hated sites/words on Google, then most loved etc. On another show Leo referred to his Google account, which gives him access to all his online searches with Google. That made me feel just a bit uncomfortable. When I buy from Amazon, they use cross references with others who have bought similar items to recommend other things I may be interested in (mostly books on religious history - my current pet fascination). However, the idea that every search I type into Google is stored on a server somewhere is a bit scary and enough reason for me to switch my searches onto other search engines such as Yahoo and Ask.com. Leo was fascinated by it because it showed him his most frequent searches, the days and times he uses Google most. But to me this all smacks just a little bit too much of Big Brother thank you very much. I like to search for things, but I like it to be anonymous. If it can't be, then I will rather spread it around a bit, so as to sow confusion.
One of the other things they discussed in the middle of the show, was Leo's move from Twitter to Jaiku. Leo explained his concerns about the confusion. You will recall in one of my previous postings I gave a quick review on this as Leo had made some comment on it in the weekly TwiT Podcast. He gives some interesting differences between Twitter and Jaiku, which you can examine a bit by going to his Jaiku page, Essentially Twitter is pure and simple locational communication - 'Where are you' or 'What are you doing?'. Jaiku seems to take this to a slightly different level, allowing comments to be posted , RSS feeds to be linked in and various other links to be connected to it. It becomes a bit of a mini dairy for daily activities I guess. he stated that it becomes addictive, so watch out if you decide to dabble! You have been warned by no less a lofty public figure as the ChiefTWiT himself, so pursue it at your peril. ;-)
If you are interested in music, Leo also discussed a new site on the show for bands and their music, called www.virb.com. I have not yet had a look at it, but will let you know more about it in my next blog. I will be a bit more industrious this week, I promise.
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