michael’s thoughts

I’m a big fan of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on FOX. I didn’t start watching the show until earlier this year. But I then bought both seasons one and two from Amazon’s on-demand service to catch up. I also bought the first season on DVD and preordered the second season. I like the show.

So I was dismayed last night when reading that it’s unlikely to return for a third season. Which got me curious about the show’s ratings.

I used to be fairly informed about the entertainment business. Well television, movies, and music at any rate. I’ve never known much about the theater. A long time ago I had this idea I wanted to buy a television network (a story for another day). So I set about educating myself on the business.

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I have been involved in the Second Life community off and on for several years.  For a time I was very bullish on the project and I really thought it might take off and realize Neal Stephenson’s Metaverse concept.  But it doesn’t seem that it is going to get there.  I thought that if Linden Labs kept innovating they might make progress in that direction, but upon logging in recently I’ve realized that the whole architecture is flawed.

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I bought my iPhone as much as anything because I was sick of having RAZRs die on me, and I missed having a smart phone that let me easily access my e-mail on the go.  I’m finding that I actually enjoy my iPhone a lot more than I thought I expected.  It really is a very useful piece of communications equipment, aside from just the phone and e-mail capabilities.

The iTunes App Store really takes the phone to a whole other level.  In fact, part of the reason that I decided to get the iPhone was seeing David Pogue’s review (video) of the iPhone and App Store.  While I think that some of the most useful iPhone applications have yet to be written, there are already several killer apps available.  And they’re free which is even better.

Pandora Radio has an iPhone application that lets you listen to Pandora streaming stations on the iPhone.  The sound quality is good and when you are connected via wifi it upgrades to stereo.

There is also a free Shazam application.  The Shazam service has been around for some time, but I can’t say that I’ve ever used it prior to having an iPhone.  Their free application is wonderful and easy to use.  It allows you to “tag” music that is playing.  You press the “tag now” button and it listens for a few seconds, uploads the sample to their service, and then tells you what song you’re listening to as well as linking to the iTunes Music Store to purchase it and a video of the song on YouTube if one exists.  It saves the tag history which is great because there are so many times where I’ll hear a song on the radio while I’m driving and not be able to remember what it was later.  Now I don’t have to worry about that any more.

Although I am not as active in the social networking scene as I once was, Facebook has a great application for the iPhone.  It presents the information feed from the service in a format that is perfect for consumption on the iPhone.  It also includes a wonderful interface to viewing photos from the site that is very similar to the photo viewer that’s built into the device for viewing local photos.  Overall the application has a great interface design.

My TiVo informed me today that NBC has made pilots to four of their upcoming fall shows available for free via the TiVo and Amazon Unbox partnership. I have been looking forward to the new Bionic Woman ever since I heard it was picked up. I took the opportunity to watch the commercial free pilot today via TiVo and Amazon Unbox. It didn’t disappoint.

Tags: TiVo, NBC, Amazon, Unbox, Bionic Woman

After posting my previous entry on the availability of Unbox purchases directly from TiVo, I did get a notice on my TiVo screen announcing that feature. I also have received a message letting me know about the availability of the TiVo Mobile application for Verizon wireless cell phones.

I won’t be checking this out, as I don’t have a Verizon wireless cell phone; I’m part of the Cingular/AT&T camp. I don’t understand why something like mobile TiVo scheduling needs to be a proprietary application. Why not make a slimmed down mobile HTML site so that all wireless users could schedule their programs remotely.

I’ve not tried the TiVo Central site from my Blackberry 8700c, but I suspect that if it works at all the experience will be difficult. My bank recently launched a mobile banking web site that works great. I don’t understand why my bank can provide me financial services without a special application but my TiVo can’t let me schedule recordings the same way.

Tags: TiVo

I didn’t see an announcement on my TiVo about this, but I received an email from Amazon letting me know that I can set up a PIN to purchase Amazon Unbox content directly on my TiVo. I tried this out and it does indeed work. I think this is going to make Amazon Unbox all the more popular. I know it will drive my usage of it. Sometimes I’m watching TiVo and someone references a movie and I think, “Oh I want to watch that.” This will drive impulse purchases of that content if I can pause what I’m watching and grab the movie directly from my TiVo.

Unfortunately the available content for Unbox on TiVo is still pretty limited, but hopefully that will change down the road.

Tags: TiVo, Amazon, Unbox

I watched The Departed last night. Interestingly I purchased the movie via Amazon’s Unbox and watched it on my TiVo, but this post is about The Departed, not the Unbox on TiVo service.

The Departed is a classic undercover cop infiltrates organized crime story, with several twists. Instead of taking the usual plot approach of structuring the story around the undercover officer’s attempts at creating a case against the organized crime bosses, The Departed instead focuses on the cat and mouse game between the undercover officer who has infiltrated the crime syndicate and the crime syndicate’s mole inside the police department. They are constantly struggling to learn the other’s identity and provide useful information to their respective organizations without betraying their true identities.

The acting and cast was stellar. Martin Sheen, Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio – what’s not to like?

If you enjoy movies along the lines of Donnie Brasco or L.A. Confidential then you’re likely to enjoy The Departed.

Tags: The Departed, Movie, Donnie Brasco, LA Confidential

I got an account on the Joost public beta program today. I hadn’t been real aggressive about trying to get one, but I figured I may as well since they’ll launch it soon.

I accidently forgot to pay attention to the EULA as I clicked through it, so I’m not sure if there is some NDA stuff in there. I doubt it. I don’t have much to report in any case, as I have only played with it a little bit.

The idea for Joost is peer-to-peer legal television-quality programs on demand. Unfortunately right now the service is extremely content-starved and it’s clearly much more of a technical beta than anything else. There are some interesting documentaries and music video content, but if you’re looking for prime time US television, it’s not there. Yet.

As far as the technical features and interface goes, it’s not a traditional Windows UI app and that may cause some learning curve. It looks and feels more like a Flash web application. This isn’t necessarily a negative and it does make the interface feel fresh and trendy, but it may create usability issues for some.

The video codec they are using is fairly resource intensive. My computer isn’t the newest on the block (in fact, it’s becoming a bit out dated as evidenced in my recent experimentation with Second Life), but I have found that I need to close other applications and give Joost everything my system has.

As I play with it more, I plan to send them some feedback. So far it seems promising, but this platform will live and die by its content so it’s too early to say what the real prospects are for Joost.

Tags: Joost

Now that my TiVo is finally back online, I’ve been playing around with the home networking features. I’ve used them in the past, but my TiVo has been offline for a few months and I figured I’d check to see if there had been any improvements. Unfortunately it would seem not. Although the pre-release of the new TiVo desktop does apparently support moving non-TiVo video content to the TiVo, if it’s in a supported format, I haven’t been able to get that to actually work. It’s possible that the files I’ve been trying have been unsupported formats; I haven’t spent all that much time messing with it.

What interests me more is the music streaming capability. I keep all of my music on my computer (in iTunes) and sometimes I’d like to listen to it in my bedroom using my TiVo. I could get an Airport Extreme, but why invest the money in that when I already have a device hooked up to my television which should accomplish the same task?

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Alright kiddies, I know you may have thought I got over my little celebrity crush on Rose McGowan since I haven’t written about her in a while (prior commentary: 1, 2). But you’d be wrong. Just not much news on the subject.

I read this article earlier and I thought I’d share. Rumor has it that Ms. McGowan will be in both Robert Rodriguez’s as well as Quentin Tarantino’s slasher films. I don’t care for horror movies, typically, but I will be watching these.

I’m smitten. What can be done?

Tags: Rose McGowan