Fleeting Thoughts

Over the past year I have slowly moved away from TV, for several reasons. The big one was the loss of my favorite channel TechTV and the other was the advent of Podcasting. Very quickly my afternoons after school included less TV and more quality podcast time, and by the end of the summer all I watched really was live Auto Races.

Audio and Video Podcasting have very quickly changed the way I consume media. I have come to realize that I don’t need TV really besides for live events and I can only imagine that changing relativly soon.

I subscribe to roughly 60 podcasts audio and video. And all told they put out roughly 4-8 hours of content each day. Some is world news(War News Radio), some is tech(TWiT), other is comedic(Ask a Ninja). Combined though they produce all the entertainment and information media that I need. I don’t need G4 for video game shows I have Gaming Steve(and the one good G4 show X-Play is availible in podcast form).If I want punditry God knows I don’t need Bill O’Riely, instead I have Zefrank. It’s great!

But let’s be honest we al have to have The Daily Show and for that we have iTunes. The iTunes Music Store has allowed to watch almost all of our favorite TV shows anytime, anywhere. Yes it is too exxpensive but for now that’s a penalty I’m willing to pay. For those not willing to pay networks like ABC put out their top shows online for free. The downside being the ads and the lack of portbility. CNN has released it’s online only Pipeline channel that has very strong news content for those who have to have their CNN.

I no longer have to go to three record stores to find that indie rock cd I hve to have. I can go to eMusic for DRM free tunes or for convience I still have iTunes that has not only indie bands but all of the top record labels.

It’s interesting to see how fast this landscape has changed over a period of slightly more than a year. From a dictatorship to a Democracy, from static to portable. It’s all very empowering stuff and in the coming months it’s only going to continue.

Technorati Tags:
itunes, tv, media, iptv, podcast, videopodcast, askaninja, techtv, cnn

Let me preface this by saying that I love my Macbook Pro and wouldn’t want anything else.

That said, I have been one of many to have many problems with it, small and big. The first one I noticed was that the left magnetic latch didn’t come down and latch. Then I realized that the DVD drive was bust rejecting all but one blank DVD no matter what format and playing only a handful of DVD movies. And now most recently the battery shuts off without warning after 5-20min not to come back on until plugged in. The Magsafe adapter while great in idea the construction is terrible and is quickly falling apart and to top off the power troubles the batter is warped roughly 1/8in.

I’ll be sending it off for repair and we’ll see how it’s doing afterwards.

In other Apple hardware woes my 4G iPod has also died today. I got it for Christmas a year and half ago. I was hoping to wait and buy the new full-screen video iPod when Apple released it or an 8GB Nano. Alas neither have been realized and I need a new one.

Hopefully these hardware problems are not indicative of the overall quality of Apple products but from what I can tell it just maybe. Luckily for Apple it’s creating great products that make it worth putting up with the problems since AppleCare takes car of most of it.

technorati tags:apple, hardware, problems, macbookpro, magsafe, ipod, 4g, nano, videoipod, intel

Blogged with Flock

Here's a list of my Top 10 songs for the month of May:

1. Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
2. The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song - The Flaming Lips
3. Chop 'em Down - Matisyahu
4. Let's Impeach The President - Neil Young
5. The Christians and The Pagans - Dar Williams
6. Bucky Done Gun - M.I.A
7. Down With You - Ellie Lawson
8. You're Beautiful - James Blunt
9. Title and Registration - Death Cab For Cutie
10. What to Do With Michael - Candy Butchers

Everyone right now is posting their predictions for the coming year, so I decided to mix it up and post some items that I hope will happen next year.

• Apple will release their Intel products quickly with little to no trouble and Rosetta will be a dream come true. They will also continue to grow thanks to the exposure the iPod has given them and there market share will top 8%+.
• Broadband proliferation will continue with greater rural penetration, so that America will be able to catch up with the rest of the civilized world. And bandwidth will rise as well as stabilize in price (5-10mbs for $20/m or 15-20mbs for $40).
• 3G wireless services will continue to grow and expand as well as a price drop that will greatly increase the rate of adoption.
• The Xbox 360 will finally get a killer app (Halo 3) and will trounce the newly released PS3.
• Schools will encourage students to use laptops and other technologies such as RSS to further help students learn better, hopefully with less stress and anxiety.
• WoW will top 10 million subscribers and will finally bury SWG.
• Podcasting will continue to grow at a rapid rate and slowly but surely kill satellite radio.
• Democrats will sweep elections and reclaim their rightful places in Washington.
• Bush will make a fool of himself (Both a hope and prediction really).

Welcome to Fleeting thoughts.