Infinity and Beyond

joost

Joost, the CBS-backed alternative to the hugely successful NBC/News Corp. backed Hulu has relaunched today. Joost is relaunching with 46,000 “professionally produced videos” which means it is already leaps and bounds beyond TheWB.com. The site even has some content that crosses the aisle, with ‘Friends’ and ‘The Daily Show’. The second coming of Joost comes a day after CBS and YouTubeannounced a deal which CBS and Showtime programs would be made available on the site. I’ve only been a member for a few short minutes but already I’ve noticed some clear differences. While it is more clearly organized than TheWb.com it clearly lacks the plain and simple categories and organization that makes Hulu so easy to navigate. I’ll have to take a closer look later but it looks promising. There is an interactive element that seems to be more prevalent than found on Hulu but bottom line for online video sites is content. Whose got the best shows to watch and the widest variety of movies? Right now, it’s still Hulu. Not that there isn’t competition from ABC.com, TheWB.com, joost.com and, IMDB.com which has the unique ability to take content from several sources to accumulate it’s library. Lastly, it looks like joost has a wide selection of music videos. I’ll report more later and get some screen shots up.

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http://daringfireball.net/2008/10/contains_spoilers

Seems to ruin the excitement of today’s “Spotlight on notebooks” event, so don’t read unless you want to know what is likely the most credible roundup of the new notebooks…

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Here are the links for some live coverage pages for Apple’s “spotlight turns to notebooks” event on October 14th, 2008.

Live coverage sites (I’ll finish the links when they become available)

• Engadget
• MacRumors Twitter/SMS Coverage (check out their full Rumor Roundup)
• CNET
• GearLive
• The Mac Observer
• Gizmodo
• ArsTechnia (including rumor roundup)

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To follow up to Jason D.’s Financial Meltdown post, here are some stocks that may or may not make up most or all of my portfolio….

Stock Market Falls

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AHHHHHH!

-That is all.

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Via MacRumors, Adobe’s Sr. Director of Engineering, Paul Betlem, comfirmed that an Adobe Flash player for iPHoen depends entirley on Apple’s approval.  He did hint however that it was basically ready to go.  This would fill one of the largest gaps that customers, including myself, complain about with regards to the Safari web browser.  I hate getting the damn little blue lego box showing me that whatever Flash app on the page won’t work for me.  Granted, this doesn’t happen too frequently, but it’s still really annoying when it does.

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The Netflix blog announced that, along with a host of new shows and movies, the dev teams at Netflix have been busily working on getting a Mac solution ready.  No firm date was given, other than “by the end fo the year”.

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Films are being sold with a higher profit margin on the internet and on cable than on regular DVD. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner said that each movie purchased electronically produces $13-$14 in profits for the studio while a DVD is about $10. Along with the increased profit margin Bewkes also noted that the increase in availability of content online, especially high-definition downloads, has lessened online piracy. Bewkes is quoted as saying that piracy has “flattened out” over the past 18 months. For the movie industry that is great news as piracy over the last decade has caused major concern for studios who were afraid of suffering a similar fate of the music industry.

Taking the example of the music industry to film studios are working hard to get as much content available as easily as possible to the consumer. Apparently people will buy movies if they have the option in front of them and are simply more likely to get illegal copies when the only other option is to go to the store and try to find a physical copy.

As pay-per-view technology increases and content levels increase I predict online piracy not just flattening out but over the next 5-10 years taking a slow move downward. There will always be a certain level of piracy in the online world but I think we’ve reached our ceiling.

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Woah. As we approach our 1 year anniversary here at Infinity and Beyond I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth.

First off the Olympics started last Friday and my breaks at work have now been filled with the Canadian Broadcast Channel and one of the many NBC/Universal channels carrying Olympic coverage.

Secondly, just like Jason T., I too have a white shiny new iPhone. As of right now our site isn’t iPhone capable (soon to change) so my remaining spare time has been spent on the phone which I can’t post from, yet.

Oh, and I’m in the process of renting out my house, also just a little time consuming. So, I apologize for the lack of posts as of late and hope I can get back up to speed.

It almost seems pointless to post about some of the stuff that has happened in the past few weeks just due to the nature of this industry. Once a day or two goes by it’s no longer new and exciting news and everyone has moved on but here are a few of the things I have been reading about in the past few weeks:

Digital Dead.

Olympics Coverage.

Facebook friends with your teachers.

Harry Potter film delayed… stupid writers strike ruining 2009 movie slate.

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I know this isn’t a Twitter but I wanted to quickly link to a story that fits right into our blog.

 Go here to learn about creating a home entertainment system using Wireless Home Digital Interface (WHDI) from Sony and Samsung.

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