This scene still sends chills:

Had such a good time at the show last night: Trey Anastasio at Terminal 5 in NYC.  His set was a great mix of world music, big band, and everything else too.  What a versatile musician he's become.  

So for Christmas this year, I gifted [sic] myself a sanyo vpc-cg1010 hd camcorder from Radio Shack.  I managed to resist the video urge until I discovered some amazingly creative works on vimeo.  In case you've not heard of vimeo it's basically youtube but with higher quality videos that show more creativity and less chit chat. 

 

Here's the first vid I posted of the Christmas Tree in NYC's Rockefeller Center. [though HD is not available unless you watch it directly on vimeo.]

Christmas Tree at Rockefeller Center NYC from sean 808080 on Vimeo.

 

 

Here's an example of a lovely video that I can watch over and over.

New York Life (aka Union Square bokeh) / 2009-11-24 / SML from See-ming Lee 李思明 SML on Vimeo.

here's another mind bender:

Night Light from Colin Hesterly on Vimeo.

all this is a long winded way of saying that you'll hopefully be seeing more video from me in addition to the many photos I post on flickr.

 

Merry Christmas to you and yours. To a very happy and healthy new year!

I'm sure you've heard of Hulu?

This service is a partnership between various broadcasters to put their shows online for time-shifted viewing.  That's just a fancy way of saying 'you can watch it when you want instead of when we put it on air'.Well Hulu was OK when it was introduced as a website.  The website approach meant you had to watch the shows in a browser window that took away from the viewing experience....until now.A few weeks ago, Hulu released HULU DESKTOP.  This is a program that runs on Mac or Windows and provides a different way to access Hulu.  Finally, the Hulu experience on a computer approaches the smooth and seamless approach that our AppleTV gives us on the telly.

If you haven't tried Hulu yet, now is the time to give it a try.  Download the application and setup an account.  This takes less than 3 minutes.  Once you create an account, you can subscribe to shows that interest you and as a bonus you can subscribe to clips so that you can watch only the bits of shows that interest you.

As new episodes and clips get added, the ones you subscribe to will be added to your 'queue'.  It is all very userfriendly and efficient.  No more switching channels looking for something to watch.  Now it's a tivo like world where the shows you like are waiting for you.  There are commercials but they are much less obtrusive and numerous.

Hooray for Hulu Desktop!

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so all this talk about convergence has finally started to make sense to me.  have you heard of JOOST?  well its a new technology company that a lot of media powerhouses are backing.  basically its a program that you download that lets you watch tv when you want for free.  there are all sorts of channels that appeal to all interests. things like national geographic, euro-music, recipes, documentaries, and silent movies and cartoons of all sorts. 

so the joost gods require you to create a free account. thats so you can pick and choose the channels that you want to be part of your line-up. 

do _i_ really want the sports illustrated bikini channel? i think not!

then you can pick a channel and see what programs are available.  it's totally about video on demand and if you've got a computer [pc or mac] that has enough memory and a fast internet connection, then you're on your way to hours and hours of video goodness.

right now joost is invitation only and they're slowly expanding their audience.   i have invitations to give out so if you'd like one just email me and i'll add you to my invite list.  it really is worth a peek if not just to see the future of video on demand for the masses.

to recount....on my first day using joost i discovered a documentary that i hadn't heard of about iraq.  i was mesmerized as i got a glimpse into the day to day existence of real iraqis that we don't hear about in our mainstream media.  of course, i  blogged about it here.

i like technology that interrupts your regularly scheduled programming and gets you to consider things that weren't necessarily on your agenda.

viva disruption!  happy monday!

Have you heard of boxee? It's a free application that's currently in alpha testing by invite only. The software runs on linux, mac, and AppleTV.

I tried boxee about 6 weeks ago on my mac and it froze and made my mac act like a sluggish PC. I immediately deleted it and all traces of it from my machine.

Fast forward a number of weeks and after reading the gizmodo article on maxing out your AppleTV this week, I figured I'd try it on my AppleTV. It worked much better than I remembered [progress!] and the best part was though it was alpha and crashed at times, the features that did work were the features that the AppleTV didn't have.

Some great features that boxee brings to the table are things like:
-lastfm integration
-a visualizer that made the hdtv screen sing
-playing video files that were not converted to play in appletv's specific format.

The article that got me re-motivated in boxee is here: http://gizmodo.com/5082130/how-to-max-out-apple-tvs-potential-with-boxee

Another huge advantage of using boxee? Being able to subscribe to your hulu queue so that the shows you like to watch on hulu are waiting for you right on boxee's video list. Being able to watch hulu shows on the appleTV is a huge hit around here!

Here's a sample from my Hulu queue with shows and movies that I've subscribed to:

With the relatively good experience I had on the appletv version, I figured I'd give the boxee another go on my macbook. The current version is much more stable and doesn't make me think i'm running a PC any more. It is much more responsive and although it does crash from time to time [it's alpha!] I can actually use this and keep it on my machine!

I really look forward to the continued progress on this app. great stuff! While it's not really ready for mass consumption yet, when it is ready it will be _very useful_!

Cheers to the boxee crew and everyone else who are working like mad to make boxee FANTASTIC!!

http://boxee.com

http://hulu.com