Tivo HD vs Apple iTV

Jen and I talked about Baby Tivo recently. It’s a paltry 40gig, single-tuner. But, sans-cable, it serves us well.

Today, Apple announced their iTV, shipping sometime next year. Priced at $300, plays HD video, HDMI ports, wifi, Front Row (or something like it), everything you’d expect (maybe a DVD drive?).

Then later today, I received an email from TiVo announcing their HD Tivo Series3. 300 hours, dual tuner, THX-certified, all the TiVo goodness – $800+ monthly service plan.

Uhhhh. Hmmmmm.

I agree with Kottke. It doesn’t add up. Especially since I know some early adopters who were less than thrilled.

TiVo’s great – but only because there’s no alternative worth talking about. Apple just might make this interesting. For a difference of $500 bucks, I’m cool with watching this play out.

I’ve Never Been to New York or New Orleans

Last year’s Katrina disaster in New Orleans is a far more important event in our nation’s history than today’s date.

Katrina told us we’re unprepared for predictable, frequent, and common events. That’s bad.

Nothing wrong with being unprepared for rare and spectacular events.

“In many ways, the success of 9/11 was an anomaly; there were many points where it could have failed. The main reason we haven’t seen another 9/11 is that it isn’t as easy as it looks.” – Bruce Schneier

There’s something in here about comparing these disasters to technology:
“The impact of technology is often overestimated in the short-term and underestimated in the long-term.” (credited to Bill Gates).

A Million Pieces & LonelyGirl15 – Reality is Irrelevant

2 From the ‘So What?’ Department:

  1. LonelyGirl15 isn’t a ‘real’ person, just an entertaining video project
  2. James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces not a ‘real’ memoir, get your money back

To me, both of these are non-stories and stories with illiterate audiences. There’s no reason for readers or viewers to feel cheated if they were entertained. That doesn’t change if the character can give a DNA sample.

We might as well go after all fiction, every movie, book, and television program with non-real people (characters).

Think I can get a refund for my Hitchhikers collection for expecting an actual Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, instead getting a highly entertaining science fiction story?

UPDATE: On a related note:
“…we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today’s society in order to participate fully in our democracy…” – Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic.

(Thanks for the pointer Chris).

Lifehack: Put Empty Garbage Bags at the Bottom of the Garbage Can

It started with the Diaper Champ. After forgetting to replace the plastic garbage bag liner, dropping in a fresh, full diaper, and hearing a empty thud as it splats against the bottom of the bucket.

After the third or fourth time of kicking myself for not replacing the bag, I put a few empty garbage bags in the bottom of the Diaper Champ. Now, when I pull out a full bag – look, there at the bottom, another bag – ready to go.

I’ve done the same in the kitchen garbage can.

Sure makes collecting the trash go just a little bit faster.

Dan Kuykendall’s PodPress on Behind the Mic

A while back, Dan Kuykenall downloaded my WP-iPodCatter plugin, mixed in a Flash mp3 player, some other bits and released the PodPress plugin.

He and Mike Geoghegan talk about the PodPress project in a recent Behind the Mic conversation.

Dan’s plugin is full-featured. Capital F – Full. Though he’s nicely solved a couple small problems I’ve been pondering of addressing in WP-iPodCatter, I found it overwhelming. That said, my experience with Apple’s iTunes podcast directory has been so awful all around that I have a hard time getting excited about it.

Thanks Dan.

5th District Candidates: Consistent

Mr. Sponge’s More Debate post @ Minvolved is a good read. Looks like everyone’s at least consistent – for better or worse:

  • Ember: I’m a woman, I’m not going to talk about my positions on Social Security and charter schools and I think of the children
  • Paul: I’m ethical, I lean to the side, I have a lot of gel in my hair and my campaign ratted out the guy standing next to me
  • Keith: I’m progressive and grassroots
  • Mike: Here’s what I’m going to do and here’s how I’m going to pay for it

NYTimes on Redfin & The End of Real Estate Agents

“Some economists wonder why agents fight so hard to maintain this pricing system when it is making so few of them rich. In every housing boom, the number of new agents entering the market tracks the climb in home prices. As a result, the average agent sells far fewer homes and makes less money.”

“If agents don’t like [Redfin], then it must be better for consumers.” – Matt Bell

Demo FeedSeeder – Check


(image thanks to PFHyper)

The FeedSeeder demo went pretty well tonight at MinneDemo. I’m pleased. Thanks to everyone there for letting me share it with you. Thanks to Luke & Dan pulling us together.

If you weren’t able to catch it, I’ve added the most recent Quicktime screencast to Feedseeder.com (~60mb, ~7min).

If you’ve already seen it or want to see more, or talk about some of the concepts behind it, you know how to reach me.

I Don’t Care What Everyone Thinks

“…when it comes to choosing what I read and what is relevant to me, I’m only interested in opinions from people i know and trust.” – Shel Israel

A while back, I re-grouped all the feeds in my aggregator – notably the ‘Everyone’ group contains authors that said something interesting once…but that I neither know personally or consider consistently insightful. A clunky hack to be sure. All the other groups; my feeds, ‘Friends & Family’, ‘Minnesota Blogs’, and of course ‘Must Reads’, are all a higher priority than ‘Everyone’.

I’m in full agreement with Shel. The aggregation tools we have today make it easy to read what the entire world finds interesting. Still, there isn’t an easy way to glean the conversations, emerging and otherwise, within the comparatively small group of people I trust. It’s really a simple question:

What are the people I trust talking about?

This is one of the problems I’m hoping FeedSeeder will help with, at least for me.

Something’s in the air – Ross Mayfield calls it MeMeme.

I found Ross’ post just after saving my Intro presentation for tonight’s MinneDemo.