Google has launched arguably its best new product in years, and no it's not a steam cleaning company (but more on that in a minute).

Knol is a new service that invites experts to write articles on niche subjects, with the idea that those articles will appear in search results when people go looking for information on Google. The bonus? The author gets to share in the ad revenue.

This is genius and a tremendously bold move on the part of Google to expand into the content business (something they've not done before - itself a big deal) and leverage their own ability to drive huge amounts of traffic to web pages, while simultaneously compensating the contributors.

Naturally, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is having to defend his position as Knol is inevitably being compared to Wikipedia in the media, and the new venture from Google could seriously challenge the collaboratively written encyclopaedia. At the very least it might tempt high profile Wikipedia writers away, drawn by potential riches at Google.

Google claims that it will not give its new project any special treatment in the search engine results, and that the 'knols' written by people will face the same search algorithm that all other pages do. On this subject I have faith - Google has historically shown complete fairness with search results. Only very recently for example did Google Translate show up in 1st position for the seach term 'translate', after years where Alta Vista's Babel Fish was 1st. Do a search for 'online video' and YouTube comes in at 14th position.

The name Knol is great too - short, sweet and subconsciously well known by people (the grassy knol?), but they have possibly made one major error in all this. It turns out that the domain name knol.com is owned by a Dutch steam cleaning business, and according to their website... they ain't selling!

Perhaps Google thinks that Knol is not really a destination site as the goal is for the pages to show up in search results. But I guarantee you this... if it takes off, as I think it will over time, that Dutch cleaning business may want to start their own fountain of knowledge site - the typein traffic is going to be huge! See the graph below for the spike in the steam cleaning website traffic in December, when Google first announced Knol.

I am actually quite excited by this project of Google's and I could easily see myself writing Knols as the mood grabs me.

But there's one major FLAW to both Google and Wikipedia's efforts, and not one that I can reveal at this time. Sorry if that's annoying, but you'll just have to wait and see...

Posted by Alx Klive at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night I was invited to a private screening of a new 3D movie coming out soon that could well become a 'killer app' for 3D movies.

Shot during U2's Vertigo tour in South America, U23D is possibly the best entertainment experience I've ever witnessed. I've been trying to think of something that tops it... and I can't. It really is that awesome.

The movie is a partnership between U2, National Geographic and 3ality Digital, the producers of the film, and uses techniques never before used in 3D cinematography. For example, it uses the most number of 3D cameras used at one time, and a spider cam that hovers over the crowd. It was shown at an IMAX cinema last night in Las Vegas and it blows away anything you might have seen in 3D before.

(continued)

Continue reading "U2 concert in 3D - even better than the real thing" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 02:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Media organization Gawker gets heavy with its blog writers

Talented and influential figure in the Ruby on Rails community kicks off a furore

Posted by Alx Klive at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last Friday a little bundle of joy arrived in my world, and it's all pretty darn incredible.

Eli Max is barely 5 days old but already he's providing way more entertainment than the TV in the corner. I find myself staring at him for ages in sheer amazement and disbelief.

He's a healthy little fella, a full 10lbs and 12 ounces! Fortunately mum is doing well and we're both simply thrilled to bits.

As a first-time dad, I find it amazing how all these seemingly adult traits like sneezing, hiccups, breaking wind, yawning and burping all happen in a newborn baby. I'd never really thought about it before... but I guess it makes sense. I'm also amazed at how much the little fella is sleeping! The impact on our routine so far has been negligible. I'm sure it won't last...

I have to say I particularly enjoyed putting on 'scrubs' in the hospital and wandering round the corridors pretending to be a doctor. It took three attempts by nurses and an increasingly beligerant midwife to finally get me to change out of them. The hospital staff themselves were incredible - we had our baby at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. It's a state-run (free) hospital but top class. The setting and experience of the staff were simply outstanding.

I'm going to do my best not to become one of those people who now only speaks about fatherhood and creates photo montages of his baby, but with a little smunchkin this cute and adorable, it may be rather difficult!

A sincere thank you to everyone who's sent messages here and on Facebook.

Posted by Alx Klive at 07:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here in London, an unusually interesting political race is gathering pace with two colourful candidates facing off to become the next Mayor of London.

In the red corner, incumbent mayor and noted left winger Ken Livingstone (pictured left lurking behind Hugo Chavez), and in the blue corner, iconoclastic Conservative Boris Johnson.

Incumbent Mayor Ken Livingstone has been around an eternity it seems and is a passionate working class Londoner, who is not afraid of change. In 7 years of office he has introduced the controversial congestion charge, reducing traffic on London's roads by 26%, and has ploughed much of the money raised into public transport. He also took a key role in helping bring the Olympics to London in 2012. While he is not a particularly likeable character he 'gets things done', and most Londoners approve.

Boris Johnson on the other hand is extremely charismatic, in a playful, self-deprecating, and mischievous way. This makes him popular with students and other people alike, and unquestionably one of the most interesting politicians we've had in this country in decades. When Boris Johnson announced his candidacy for Mayor a month ago, Ken Livingstone became worried. In the past, Ken Livingstone had barely any concerns with re-election, as there simply weren't any likely candidates up against him. This time however things are different, and Ken Livingstone has a fight on his hands. Although surprisingly little has been made of it in the British press, he has begun acting in some rather extreme ways since Boris showed up on his bike and declared his candidacy.

Boris Johnson

The whole thing has a stench of bribing the electorate, to grease voters in advance of the Mayoral elections. But the MOST insane thing about these announcements is how he is going about it.

In short, Livingstone has signed a deal with probable dictator-in-the-making Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, to get cheap oil to run London's busses, in return for some consulting services on how to run a city.

If you don't know much about Hugo Chavez, on the one hand he has acted like a modern day Robin Hood, stealing money from Western oil companies to give to the poor. On the other, he is exhibiting all the classic signs of a future dictator in the making.

Here's three things he's done recently...

• Chavez has silenced his most vocal media critics and closed down a popular TV station
• He has changed the laws of Venezuela so that he can effectively rule by decree, without needing to go through parliament
• He is changing the laws of Venezuela to abolish Presidential term limits so that he can stay in power indefinitely

If that isn't dictator-in-the-making behaviour, I don't know what is.

But this isn't an argument over the pro's and con's of Hugo Chavez. The point is that the Mayor of London, has unilaterally done a deal with, at minimum, a highly questionable foreign leader, to finance a bribe of the London electorate, in a way that is remarkably similar to Hugo Chavez' own bribing of the Venezuelan poor.

How such a story has managed to gain just a handful of articles in the British media is beyond me.

Crazy.

Posted by Alx Klive at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A forward doing the rounds in England today is about Blackle.com, a black version of the Google home page which has absolutely nothing to do with Google.

The creators claim that a black screen saves energy and this is good for the environment. It's also very good for the creators as they are making money out of it from the ads.

Two things here - Firstly, the supposed energy savings are highly suspect. A black screen only saves energy on an old style CRT monitor and does nothing to save energy on an LCD flat panel monitor which most people use. You could also argue that because it is more difficult to read, you spend longer looking for what you want, hence more energy used.

The second issue is that this site is a clear violation of Google's Terms of Service. They offer no content, and you are simply not allowed to replicate the Google search function on your own site.

Be surprised if it lasts a week...

OCT UPDATE - Well Blackle does still exist. I guess it would have been bad publicity to take it down. For what it's worth, we had a not dissimilar site taken down a couple of years ago by Google for TOS violation. We should have put it against a black background I guess!

Posted by Alx Klive at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's a cool site which should appeal to lovers of user interfaces and technology nuts.

Fast Digg lets you scan the latest technology stories from popular site Digg.com, using only a keyboard for control, no mouse required. It's great if you fancy leaning back a little to take in a world of news - simply use the cursor keys to control, and an occasional CTRL-W.

It works best in Firefox for the PC and Safari for the Mac. Unfortunately Internet Explorer is hopeless as usual.

Fast Digg

Posted by Alx Klive at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let me start in saying that I feel Facebook is the freshest and most genius site to come along in a long time. There really is 'genius at work' going on.

Since they opened it up to anyone and everyone it has grown in popularity immensely and is now crossing into Canada, the UK, South Africa and elsewhere. In the last couple of months, the number of users has doubled.

If you don't yet think that you need to be on Facebook then consider this a very firm 'wink' that you do. It's where all the action is and will almost certainly help reconnect you with old friends and find new people (and new distribution outlets) too.

If like me you were put off by the spam-a-minute MySpace and its still ridiculously pathetic search facility then you'll be very pleased to know that Facebook has nailed both these issues. Use of the site is a pleasure in comparison to MySpace.

Everything on Facebook is executed brilliantly and nowhere more is this obvious than the recent 'mixing desk' addition for adjusting the frequency and substance of your newsfeed content from friends.

Facebook is a much better and more grown up MySpace, and as a 'social utility', to connect you with old friends and keep you connected with existing ones, it fulfills its mandate brilliantly. Post some photos of your recent holiday, friends will be notified, find a link that you think is interesting, share it easily with your friends - text, audio or video.

Facebook's recent opening up of its site to outside developers means that new applications are coming along thick and fast, although I question the ramifications of this down the road. Facebook has a reputation for delivering in-house applications that 'just work' - they must have been sorely tempted to stay a closed system like Apple.

Growth of the site is mind-blowing. According to Compete.com they've grown 33% in the last couple of months to 20 million users. According to Alexa, which tracks better for global trends, they've doubled in size in the same period.

But Facebook and all social networking sites for that matter face a growing problem - the problem of fashion.

Social networking sites by their very nature are trend based. They can be fashionable for a bit, but after a while a new one comes along which is cooler. Switching between two social networking applications is becoming a right of passage, 'you're still using Friendster? That's so last year'.

Facebook have partly addressed this by pitching their offering as an application - a social utility. This is smart on their part, but by itself may not be enough to save them in the long run. The truth of the matter is that once you get over the initial euphoria of finding old friends, and becoming comfortable with the actual number of friends you have listed, your use of the site dwindles. Friendster faced this problem and has fallen by the wayside. Bebo, after initially even more explosive growth than Facebook, has now levelled off and is treading water.

So does this mean social networking sites are no different from trendy nightclubs or this season's clothes? To an extent yes. Websites have entered the world of fashion by exposing the site we use most to our friends.

It may well be that social networking sites transcend all this by continuing to offer genuine utility or huge lock in. MySpace is still huge, but that's because of the heavy customization it allows its users which Facebook has stayed clear from, and its URL structure. Users of MySpace are less likely to switch to another site than users of Facebook - there's more investment. Facebook almost makes it too easy.

Be interesting to see how it all pans out...

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

One of the problems as a webmaster turned web publisher comes when you start needing other people to access and work on your site.

If you have traditionally kept all your files on your own machine, happily FTP'ing them up to your own web server, you have a problem to overcome. It's partly technical but can be psychological too.

How do you move to a group web development process?

It's ok if you are all in the same location, you can setup a network and take it in turns to work on the files. The reality of many web publishers these days however is being constantly 'on the move', and working with developers in different countries.

Continue reading "Managing group web development with Subversion and Eclipse" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Air Canada is really annoying me, but somehow I'm not annoyed. It's all very confusing just like their bilingual magazine.

Air Canada is one of those airlines that never ceases to annoy you, but somehow they always manage to make you feel ok about it. It's like they have a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card that will pull you round again to their way of thinking. I call it 'Le Force'.

I'm writing this sitting on a flight from San Francisco to Toronto, and to my surprise and no insignificant delight, they have a 110v power outlet on the back of the seat in front of me. In fact all seats in economy have their very own AC outlet.

This can't be safe

Continue reading "Air Canada is Schizo - it's official" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just finished watching an interesting debate between Robert Scoble of Scobeleizer and Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.

The debate centered on the issues of 'quality content' and content marketing, but perhaps more so... text versus video.

While perhaps not the easiest audience (it was an Internet TV conference), Mike Arrington said what many people in the room know if they are honest with themselves - that producing video content is much more labour intensive than text.

From his perspective, the effort to edit video is simply not worth the investment for him personally, or worth the expense of hiring people to help him "at this stage..."

"I can write an article in 30 mins, and that provides a much higher return on investment than the (effort) involved in editing video", he said. He has a point.

Robert Scoble had a different perspective, but then as he said "I have a 6 figure deal from Seagate to do it". Michael Arrington quipped "How many times do you need to say the word Seagate today?"

It is certainly true that video is a lot more effort to produce and edit, assuming you give a crap about the production values. Working in TV we used to spend a day or two shooting 1 to 2 hours of footage and then a week doing post production. All this for a 4 minute story.

Running a blog is a different proposition but the challenges remain. I still haven't got round to editing some rather cool footage I shot in the former USSR, and that was 2 weeks ago. With each passing day it gets less relevant.

An interesting debate and intriguing to hear both speakers in person.

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

London has some of the most ridiculous traffic wardens in the world.

Last night outside my house some unfortunate guy left his van running while he went to knock on a friend's door, and came back to find his van engulfed in flames.

This morning he got some more bad news when he returned to find a $200 parking fine.

(View a video of this on YouTube)

Posted by Alx Klive at 12:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Incredible news from soccer land this evening. Footballing legend David Beckham has signed for the LA Galaxy in what must surely be the most significant event in US footballing history and the largest such deal in the world at $250 million. This is a brilliant coup for US soccer and will surely lead to an avalanche of great players coming to the States to play. How brilliant is that? No wonder Posh was reported to be out house shopping in LA recently. What a move by Simon Fuller who apparently orchestrated the whole thing. Kudos.

In celebration, we've launched a site covering all the latest LA Galaxy News at LAGalaxyNews.com.

Posted by Alx Klive at 05:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's the nature of the Internet today that we surf from site to site, interest to interest with barely any premeditated thought. One minute I was reading a page about rescuing Linux root passwords, the next I was reading a Washington Post article on the reaction to the Sadam Hussein execution video.

A few seconds later I was on the WorldTV Charts looking to see if had shown up there (it hadn't), and the next I was looking on YouTube to find it. Never at any point during this whole procedure did I stop to think about what I was actually doing or what the result of my efforts might lead to. A simple warning about possibly inappropriate content was all that stood between me and watching DeathTV.

I started watching the footage and all of a sudden a strange feeling came over me. The realization that I was about to watch someone be killed. It's easy to be apathetic these days, there really isn't very much left that's taboo, but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I didn't want to watch it. The truth is, at that very moment I realized that despite all his undoubtedly horrific behaviour, the alleged crimes, the wars, the suffering he certainly caused, it was not right to take his life in revenge.

According to the translations, in the seconds before his death and as he was taunted by the spectators around him he is reported to have said "Is this how real men behave?"

It's an astonishingly valid question.

Posted by Alx Klive at 05:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My buddy Chris Parandian based in Washington, DC has started a Wireless News Blog called the Mobile Diner. He's been threatening to do it for a few months now and it's great to see it finally up and running!

If you ever have any need of a wireless industry expert with his ear to the ground in Washington, Chris is your man.

Congrats on the new site!!

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TV channel Paramount Comedy in the UK is currently running back to back episodes of Scrubs everyday at 7pm. If you've never seen this show before, and you like surreal intelligent stuff, it really is one of the most original and groundbreaking US comedies of all time.

First aired in 2001, and devised by Bill Lawrence (creator of Spin City), it features a brilliant cast, no phony laugh track (a big part of its appeal), and some outstanding writing. Sarah Chalke is particularly good as the zany ex-girlfriend of the lead character played by Zach Braff. It's set in a hospital, but don't let this put you off. It put me off at first, and now I kind of regret it.

Unlike other great US sitcoms like Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and Married with Children, Scrubs is very accessible and you will probably enjoy it from your first episode. You'll then have over 120 more episodes to enjoy!

Scrubs DVD sets - Amazon UK & Amazon USA

Incidentally, if you have ever wanted to watch a good introductory episode of Married with Children (a brilliant comedy itself), track down an episode called 'The Wedding Repurcussions' from Season 7. It's easy to watch the wrong episode of a TV show and be apathetic to watching more, but this one, although not the funniest, is less harsh than others and probably a good starter for that reason.

Posted by Alx Klive at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Chinese Government is to introduce a single standard for mobile phone chargers to reduce the massive amount of waste caused by people throwing away their chargers when they upgrade their phones. This follows similar plans by the South Korean government announced a couple of weeks ago. The standard will include a standard for data connections meaning all after market accessories can work off the same connection(s).

This is a very progressive move and I hope it quickly dominoes around the world through all countries. It makes so much sense and consumers will completely welcome it. I'm pretty sure the after market accessory manufacturers will welcome it too.

I have no idea what the energy footprint of a charger is, but it must be a fair amount. I'm surprised the mobile phone crazy and ecologically minded Scandanavians didn't think of it first...

Posted by Alx Klive at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What is up with Google's web apps? For the last couple of days, I have started getting the same crash on both Google Analytics and Google Adsense in Firefox. The same 'Alert TypeError: window._content has no properties' javascript alert has popped up in Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0 on the PC. Now I just got it on my Mac too.

I've figured out how to recreate it reliably. Log into Google Adsense, and click anywhere that isn't a link.

Crazy.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Posted by Alx Klive at 09:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Monty Panesar has opened his account at the Ashes cricket tournament. For those who don't follow cricket (and there are many) this is a pretty big deal and a rare bright spot for us Brits in an otherwise forgettable tournament. If you fancy an easy-on-the-eyes orientation on the world of cricket, here's an interesting video.

Posted by Alx Klive at 04:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here in jolly England we've had 6 months of HD television, and the selection so far has been adequate, but still fairly limited.

At the time of writing there are exactly 13 HD channels, which include 4 movie channels, 4 lifestyle channels, 3 sports channels, 1 general interest channel and BBC HD. The latter is basically just a preview channel at the moment with various 3-5 minute selections of footage from BBC Dramas, entertainment shows and natural history programming, which are all universally being shot now by the BBC in high definition.

The promise of all this is breathtaking and the channel makes a very nice showcase to have on if you have friends round or whatever. But it is just that... a promise, a tease.

The BBC certainly has enough HD material to fill a round the clock channel, but for whatever reason they are not doing so. It's probably arguments over funding, scheduling or some other typical BBC politics.

For a couple of hours per day however we are treated to some full length HD programming, and no better example is the absolutely stunning, gasp out loud amazing natural history series 'Planet Earth'.

For many years the BBC has had its specialist natural history unit spirited away in a regional town called Bristol, about two-and-a-half hours outside of London. These guys (and girls) are literally the very best in the world at what they do, and in my personal opinion more talented and dedicated than the very best feature film directors or cinematographers. I used to work as a cameraman, and what these people do leaves me speechless.

No better example of their sheer talent and determination is apparant than in this new series Planet Earth. With the venerable David Attenborough as narrator, and with HD at their disposal, the natural history unit in Bristol has come up with the most amazing natural history series you have ever seen in your life.

Currently airing in Britain on Sunday nights for a second run, and in HD, it is appointment to view television like nothing I've experienced. The wife and I literally look forward to Sundays at 9pm so we can sit down, with lights turned off, and travel to a world we're unlikely to ever see in person. I can't remember the last time I felt like that about television.

Last night was a show about the jungles of the world. Stretching from the rainforests of South America, to New Guinea and back to Africa, you get to see creatures and plants that you simply had no idea even existed. There are the fungal spores that absorb themselves into insects such as ants, move through their bodies into their brains, send them mad, kill them, then grow out 'Alien style' from their heads. I'm not joking. There is the spider who lives on the outside of an insect trapping plant, who rappels down into the plant to steal the insects trapped within, narrowly avoiding death itself. There are the male birds of paradise in New Guinea (see pic), who in a role reversal of humans, put on incredibly bizzare, costume-like displays, to attract the rather boring and dull looking females.

If you get the chance to see this series, do not hesitate, do not pass go, buy an HD television just to watch it. You will never in your life be so taken back and surprised by the world that exists around us.

I particularly like how at the end of each show you get to see how the filmmakers achieved some of the 'how-did-they-do-that shots'. For the birds of paradise segment, one cameraman spent 5 weeks, for up to 15 hours in a day, waiting inside a hideaway, for just three shots. The result is something that has never before been captured on camera.

Bravo and kudos.

Posted by Alx Klive at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When are equipment manufacturers going to realize that certain things should not be buried away in menus. There are two things in life which should never, under any circumstances, categorically, 100% (!), be anything other than a physical switch - the ringer mute on a cordless phone, and the sleep button on a TV remote control.

There are probably many other things too, but these two get me fuming the most. Do the owners of these companies not use their own products?

Posted by Alx Klive at 01:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fellow London blogger Asi Sharabi has put together an analysis of the types of videos most watched on YouTube. He breaks them down into categories like music videos, commercial promos, user generated content.

His focus is on user generated content, and he calculates that 86% of the most watched videos on YouTube in July are UGC. But I have to completely disagree with his definition of what is user generated content.

He defines it as follows...

As I see it, everything that has been uploaded without commercial / marketing / promotional purpose in mind is UGC. That includes clips that were on TV, movies etc and for some reason been uploaded to YouTube, like sports great moments, or a bit from Paris Hilton TV Show.

Now as someone who has been championing user generated content since the 90's, I must take issue with this definition. How can clips that have been ripped directly from TV or a movie, and uploaded without any changes be considered user generated content?

Over on vcritic, he explains his thinking further...

Isn’t organising, recommending, rating or linking etc., in essence creating content? So we have user generated content and user organised content and user distributed content….people are content!

Well... yes, in a way. Recommending, rating or linking to content is in itself content, but it's not the actual video content itself. A person who finds a good bit of video, and uploads it to YouTube is categorically not the creator of that content. If it were anything else, anybody who ever used Napster or Limewire or Kazaa to share an MP3 with others, could claim they were the creator of that Eminiem, Green Day or Metallica track. On the contrary, that person is simply the uploader, the researcher, the critic if you like.

Asi does go on to concede...

So, surely there are different levels of UGC and there is a big difference between uploading a 30sec clip from your favourite show to producing/directing/acting/editing/mash-uping a 5min video, but the way i see it, they are just the different end of the same UGC line.

He goes on to say however...

If someone bothered to cut and upload a beautiful goal, 9/11 dreadful moments, spoiled Paris, a classic scene from a movie etc. with the inttention of sharing it with the world then this is user generated content for me - as long as there is an individual (or peers) user/s on the other side that has uploaded the content without any marketing/profit intentions.

The issue of marketing or profit intentions is interesting, but I would suggest that User Generated Content CAN have profit or marketing intentions. Why the %$#! not? Isn't that the whole plan?? Aren't we all heading (and perhaps hoping?) for a place where talented user's can create content, make money out of it, and stick it to the man???

Phew!

I like Asi's blog, and I like his intentions, but I can't help but feel his definitions need some tweaking. It is misleading to suggest that 86% of the most watched videos on YouTube last month were user generated content, when many of those were simply direct copies off TV shows, movies etc.

I would be remiss not to finish this piece without of course my own definition of UGC... Anything else would be uncivilized.

In my opinion, user generated content is anything produced or remixed substantially by a user. It can contain content from other sources, just like music producers sample segments from records, it can even have all its content come from other places, just like TV show producers source material from stock libraries. But it must be sufficiently mashed up, edited, remixed, changed, or had significant value added to truly be called user generated content.

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

On 30 September, 1929, the world's first television broadcast took place. It was an experimental transmission by the BBC, and it lasted for only two minutes. There was no sound, which was broadcast later, but John Logie Baird, the inventor, was very pleased to know that at last, a real television transmission had taken place - even though only 29 television receivers were in existence. A crude, 30-line experimental system was used for tests three years later, but in 1936, television broadcasting began in earnest. The BBC, using a 405-line system, had begun regular transmissions. But there were still only about 400 receivers, and even they had to be used within 30 miles of the transmitter.

Continue reading "Electronic Miracle" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Been delayed with this, but am still getting jiggy with blogosphere memes.

Basically a big thank you to all the above mentioned blogs for linking and/or reviewing the Internet TV Charts. I'm still a relative newbie to the blogging scene, and it's refreshing and rewarding to find such well respected blogs, willing to provide some link love.

Thanks guys!

Lifehacker - Recommending stuff to save you time
MicroPersuasion - How social media is transforming media, marketing and public relations
ResearchBuzz - News about search engines, databases, and other information collections
Paul Katcher - Interesting finds on the web, from the Upper West Side

Posted by Alx Klive at 05:21 PM | Permalink

In just the few short weeks that the Internet TV Charts have been live, I've begun seeing some clear trends in online video.

1. YouTube and Google Video's most watched videos are not neccessarily the best, or highest rated.

2. Google's chart in particular doesn't change a great deal from week to week.

3. Homemade karaoke-style versions of well known music videos are very popular.

4. Corporate types are beginning to seed videos on YouTube, particularly music and film promos.

5. The Digg and Videosift charts are generally more 'high brow' than YouTube and Google Video, and clips featuring Stephen Colbert or the Daily Show are extremely popular.

Continue reading "Internet TV Zeitgist - Aug 2006" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 11:50 PM | Permalink

One of the most Dugg stories of the day (and if you don't know Digg, you should make it part of your daily routine immediately), is a link to a website for a company called DV labs, who have a very impressive flash video sample on their homepage.

The video sparked a lot of debate on Digg about what technologies might be behind it, and I wanted to delve deeper to find out if there was indeed any magic.

Continue reading "Secrets of the DV labs video revealed - alas no voodoo!" »

Posted by Alx Klive at 07:49 PM | Permalink

If you're looking for a guide to get you started with Internet TV, and have a preference for the more traditional players (MTV, ABC, Disney etc), Jeff Pulver has put together an excellent list of around 80 websites where you can find this kind of fare.

Posted by Alx Klive at 09:11 AM | Permalink

An old friend is getting married in a couple of weeks and this past weekend saw us heading off to Middle England for a 4 day stag trip on a boat. For some reason which will never seem clear to me, it is actually possible for 16 men to rent two narrow boats, with no previous experience, and head off onto the crowded waterways of Great Britain.

Needless to say there were a number of incidents, but surprisingly only 6 complaints lodged against us. The picture shows one amusing 'running aground' issue, as our own boat 'the sensible boat' took advantage and overtook the less sensible boat.

So if you ever happen to be in England and fancy a boating holiday, Clifton Cruises are pretty cool. Quite how they managed to get the unmarked barge pole back, which we dropped in the water several miles away, I'll never know.

(Clifton Cruises are at +44 1788 543570)