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March 18, 2009
Boxee/Hulu Battle
I’ve seen a number of articles in the last week or so, detailing the game that Boxee is playing with Hulu (Hulu keeps blocking Boxee, Boxee makes a change to get around this blockade, rinse, repeat).
I don’t know the Boxee architecture in any depth, but it seems like the answer is to simply set the User-Agent to appear as if it is MSIE, etc and then have the client (i.e. end-user) fetch the actual video. Hulu then immediately has no way to identify who is a user coming to their site via a browser vs a Boxee user.
Or it is more complicated than that?
Also, Fred Wilson tweeted the link for the Windows Alpha of Boxee the other day. You can get it here (requires sign-up)
Posted by davehod at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2009
Sharing Videos on top3Clicks
Bacon has a post up about the latest top3Clicks release – video sharing.
Users have been able to create channels for their favorites (The Clash channel has been a particular favorite of mine. More of users seem to have American Idol for some reason…) and were able to share a channel with a friend. Now top3Clickers can go one further and recommend a specific video to a friend.
There were a number of challenges getting the sharing/video functionality working properly. A heavy combination of FBJS, FBML and elbow grease were *almost* enough to get it working. We did hit one roadblock with the fb:swf tag not working in a certain use case. Jerry Cain of Facebook was extremely diligent in tracking down and fixing this issue (he is now an official member of the BaconMarathon Hall of Fame). Thanks Jerry!
Check it out and let us know what you think.
Posted by davehod at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2009
Pete Townshend at Brixton
The guys at Wolfgang’s Vault (started after Bill Graham’s untimely death) have put up the full Pete Townshend show from Brixton Academy, 11/02/1985.
Portions of this show were released on the album (remember those??) “Deep End Live”. Band includes David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and a full horn section.
Great start to the weekend, check it out
Posted by davehod at 08:59 AM | Comments (1)
March 06, 2009
ReadWriteWeb Post on MySocial, Friendfeed App for Firefox
ReadWriteWeb has a new post up today about MySocial (Friendfeed sidebar app for Firefox) that I’ve taken on from the previous developer, Sandosh.
Also, the app was approved on Wednesday as is now an “official” Firefox app, having graduated from the “experimental” stage.
Let me know if you have any bugs to report/feature requests.
Posted by davehod at 09:03 AM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2009
MySocial 24x7 Submitted as an Experimental Add-on
Sandosh has agreed to have me take over maintenance/new features for the MySocial 24x7 Friendfeed Firefox add-on. (Previous post here)
The add-on is now officially an “experimental” Firefox add-on, meaning it is available in the Firefox Sandbox and, once approved, will be available as an approved add-on, as shown below.
The latest version, 0.51 can now be found here.
Posted by davehod at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
Facebook Copies Another Feature from Friendfeed
Mark Zuckerberg has a new post up detailing a host of new features that Facebook is rolling out.
One that caught my eye were the changes to the news feed – specifically, the news feed will show updates in real-time:
We're also going to make some changes to the home page. The new home page will let you see everything that's shared by your friends and connections as it happens.
Last month, Facebook copied the “Like” feature from Friendfeed. This month, they show news in real-time, which Friendfeed added last October. I guess sometimes “innovation” really means “watch what the competition is doing and emulate it”
Posted by davehod at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2009
Thoughts on “Why TV Lost”
Paul Graham has a great post up today entitled “Why TV Lost”
Money quote:
Facebook killed TV. That is wildly oversimplified, of course, but probably as close to the truth as you can get in three words.
Paul focuses a bit on, as he says “TV networks”, by which I think he actually means network affiliates.
The TV networks already seem, grudgingly, to see where things are going, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, online. But they're still dragging their heels. They still seem to wish people would watch shows on TV instead, just as newspapers that put their stories online still seem to wish people would wait till the next morning and read them printed on paper. They should both just face the fact that the Internet is the primary medium.
I think the folks with the most to lose here are the cable companies and the network affiliates. I definitely want to watch the latest version of “The Office” – however, streaming it off Hulu (i.e. from NBC, not an NBC affiliate) works just fine. In this instance, the only reason I *might* need cable would be for the connectivity/bandwidth.
If I were a network affiliate who paid hundreds of millions of dollars for my license, I’d be wondering if my station was going to be valued for local news only. If I were a cable company and spent billions of dollars building out and maintaining government-granted monopolies, I be even more worried – panicked actually.
Now, when does Tivo get on this train and let me record/stream from Hulu? I can already stream from Netflix and Amazon, so I’m sure the hurdles aren’t technical.
Posted by davehod at 03:22 PM | Comments (0)