Year: 2008

Categories
Media

Netflix sees Starz

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In a game altering play, Netflix has contracted with Starz to add the entertainment channel’s movies to the Watch Now instant watching options AND to provide a live stream of Starz to the Netflix web site.

This means that highly rated first run movies such as Ratatouille and No Country for Old Men, in addition to older classics, TV shows, and other material, are now filling out the Watch Now queue. I spent a happy 20 minutes this morning filling up my queue with shows, and I’ve not even scratched the surface of what’s available.

What makes this deal particularly intelligent on the part of Netflix is that it doesn’t have to try to strike deals with every movie studio— it can just strike a deal with channel providers, instead. In addition, in an interesting move, Netflix also provides a live Starz stream you can subscribe to directly— allowing you to bypass the DVD queue, completely. This moves us closer to the Netflix dream of streaming content, only.

The hottest little digital device on the market has just become the inexpensive Roku box, with its ease of use and setup, and inexpensive price tag; especially when you consider that you can get a Roku box for about the same amount you’d pay for a month of cable service.

The Starz deal follows other breaking stories recently about Netflix making a deal with CBS and Disney, Roku providing an open SDK for others to build channels, in addition to Netflix releasing its API today. With the API, we’ll now be able to integrate Netflix queues with other applications.

Of course, today’s also the day that Comcast starts its bandwidth capping. How soon before this capping comes up against the new internet video capabilities is a toss up—but with Christmas looming, and Netflix streaming available in an attractively priced Roku box, in addition to being included in new blu-ray and game players, I expect a bandwidth show-down beginning next year.

In the meantime, I feel quite smug for having made my Roku purchase, before the rush.

Categories
Political

Are some Christians stupid?

Washington Post article about ministers violating tax laws by urging their flocks to vote for McCain:

Asked why he felt the need to discuss the candidates by name and to be explicit in rejecting Obama and his pro-choice views, Johnson said he must connect the dots because he is not sure that all members of his congregation can do so on their own.

Categories
Writing

OpenOffice for Aqua

Last week I made the switch from NeoOffice to OpenOffice for Aqua on the Mac.

I’m impressed with the overall appearance of the application, and the functionality. Most importantly, I was able to process Word documents with templates without problems and without loss of functionality.

The application is very fast and responsive on my PowerPC laptops, and from what I’ve read elsewhere, it’s actually better on the Intel-based machines. It doesn’t have the lag that I’ve found with newer versions of NeoOffice when clicking on a menu item and the menu contents displaying. Nor does it seem to absorb as much of the machine’s resources.

I can open and work on several different types of documents, at the same time, and not have performance or stability problems. Overall, it’s quite efficient, as well as including all the features most, if not all, of us need from an office toolset.

OpenOffice includes the following tools:

  • A fully featured text document editor, including support for both macros and templates, as well as all features necessary for sophisticated document creation and management. You can also track and show changes, as well as autocorrect and format, embed tables and images, add a media player, and incorporate a bibliography database.
  • A spreadsheet tool that provides any number of formatting capabilities, simple to use chart creators, all the spreadsheet functions you need and want, and some interesting Scenario and Solver tools I haven’t had a chance to explore.
  • A presentation tool with templates that can incorporate any number of graphics and themes, providing slideshows, the ability to package the presentation— the usual presentation software suspects.
  • A database creation tool that also uses ODBC and JDBC to connect to an existing database, either remotely or locally.
  • A drawing tool that provides a good deal of functionality in order to create nice looking illustrations.

The application is still in candidate release status, so you may want to wait until the finished release. However, if you’re a Mac user, with either a PowerPC or Intel-based machine, give the application serious consideration.

Did I happen to mention it’s open source?

Categories
Stuff

Deep breaths and baby porcupines

The economy is all over the place today, and a lot of people are uncertain and more than a little worried. Now is the time to take deep breaths, not over-react, or look for the nearest tall building from which to jump.

Good, commonsense discussions about what all of this means can be found among the doom, gloom, and tales of complete economic failure.

In the spirit of the times, the following is a recipe that comes to us from the Great Depression.

Baby Porcupines

1 pound ground round steak
1 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
4 tablespoons chopped onions
2 tablespoons chopped green peppers
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
3/4 cup raw rice
1 cup tomato soup or tomato puree
2 cups water

Mix all but last 3 ingredients. Shape into small balls and roll in the 
uncooked rice, Heat tomato soup and water in heavy pan with a tight 
fitting cover. Place balls in the tomato mixture cover and cook slowly
 45 minutes or until meat is tender and the rice is done.
Categories
Internet

Game over?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

From GigaOM:

There are other participants, some that are well known, like HP with its HP MediaSmart Connect, or TiVo. And some are upstarts, like Vudu, Zv, Verismo and Sezmi. But the future belongs to Amazon, Netflix or Apple. It’s still too early to tell which one will win the race to your big-screen TV, but they all have the right combination of size, recognition and content to get there.

The move to stream video to your TV from the Internet it too new to declare a winner. For instance, of the set top boxes the author of the article mentioned, he forgot a major one: your PC.

When the prices of computers drop into the 400 dollar range, and even Apple sells the Mac Mini at a reasonably affordable price, expect to see more computers hooked to TVs. Through our computers we can not only get iTunes, Unbox, and Netflix WatchNow, we can also access cbs.com, abc.go.com, Hulu, and a host of other video streaming sites.

The opening shots in this battle have just been fired. We ain’t seen nothing yet.