I met a guy on a train who promised to make me a guitar god in six months. After suffering through the usual band nonsense for a couple of years, and getting tired of always having the guitar player decide he wanted to sing, I figured it was time to turn the tables and make this singer a guitar player.
6 months? That sounded good.
And then I lost his number.
I'm still stuck on the same 5 chords, I can barely keep time, and the best way to describe my skill level might be guitar amoeba. Maybe someday I will advance up to the stage of a simple vertebrate. I'm hoping guitarnoise.com will get me there.
It's a site that embodies what the web could be. Free information provided by people willing to share their time and skills, a community, and a learning resource. It may not make me a guitar god, but it might just get me out of the primordial ooze ...
dot-bomb cynics and people with a clue, for example, might find buzzwords and hype to be very annoying. Some people might even go so far as to find the abuse of these buzzwords to sell inferior products downright evil. And some people might just bow their heads and laugh silently to themselves.
Video on the web has experienced a major comeback. Thanks to the mainstream adoption of broadband, it is now possible to actually watch videos on the web without wanting to tear someone's hair out. Google has done its best to provide you with an easy collection of clips, hosting has been taken care of by things like youtube and some, like current, are turning things around and using webvideo to decide what should be shown on broadcast.
And now we have IPTV. How might that be different from these other services already available?
Well, most of the time when people are talking about IPTV they actually mean delivering multiple streams of full screen or even HD mpeg2 or H.264 video over broadband, preferably to a set top box, or your computer. Major Telcos in the states have been busy doing their best to jump into the broadcast ring, and most pundits now view it as a viable alternative to standard broadcast or satellite delivery of television programming. In other words, IPTV would be just like digital cable or sat, with multiple channels, and maybe some video on demand of standard TV shows, movies and the like. Just delivered over the internet.
Most people use IPTV to differentiate between a full video delivery service and a loose collection of small clips. There are a few people out there who seem to be less picky though, and iptvshows.org is one of them. They follow some of the newer videoblogs and post links to various online video offerings.
Ever since I had my SE t630 I have been hooked. Yes, bluetooth syncing is cool, and getting a heads up on screen when a call is coming in is a nifty dog trick, but the really cool thing is using your phone as a remote control. For your computer.
Newer SE's actually have the needed software built in. It supports Windows machines, with profiles for windows Media Player built in, but since I don't have one with bluetooth, I couldn't tell you how well. I know it supprts basic mac stuff, and you could use your phone as a mouse replacement if you really wanted to. But you can't use it to control software specific functions. Like iTunes control.
Unless you download some freebies from the Salling Clicker website. Salling Clicker is a commercial product that supports loads of phones and both macs and windows, but if you are a cheapskate like me, then you can probably settle for the services that their free downloads provide.
They offer HID profiles for things like iTunes, VLC, DVD player, and Keynote. They only cover the basics, but they work.
Users of older SE phones and Nokias may want to take a look at Romeo. It's a remote software for the Macintosh that does most of what Salling Clicker can do, but for free. It doesn't seem to work on newer phones, but if you have the old t610 or t630, a Plam PDA with bluetooth or the Nokia 3650 or 7650 then things are shiny.
Completely free stuff for older phones and Macs irowan.com/romeo
And if anyone knows of software similar to Romeo for Windows users, please let me know.
Funkfeuer
Was a webtip a couple of years ago. I know it seems cheap to repeat a tip, I thought it was appropriate considering the discussion that has been going on. Besides, Neks reminded me of it in a mail, so I figured if he hadn't seen it, maybe some of the rest of you hadn't either.
Anyway, Funkfeuer is out there trying to build up a freenet. Freenets are good. A freenet saved my sanity while visiting relatives back in the states. Confronted with a month without access and a bunch of stories to write, my heart melted when I found the freenet node in the apartment complex I was staying in. Happy, happy, joy, joy.
So make some other people happy by hooking up with the people from Funkfeuer and help build up the local net.
Just answered my unspoken wishes. He sent me a link yesterday to the homepage of a new organization that's just getting on its feet. Metalab.
The idea is to provide a real world meeting place and resources for people who want to do some funky art-tech type things. They are currently looking for a space but already have a long list of things they plan to do once they have one.
Some of it was stuff that I actually bought and used, and even more of it is old gear that friends dumped on me, because they knew I like to break stuff while trying to make it do something else.
Unfortunately, the time has come do get rid of it. I have faced my inner schweinehund and know that I'm just not going to get around to making these things do what I had hoped. The trouble is, I can't bear to see good gear go to waste, and I can imagine lots of uses these things might have for less fortunate members of your community. But what's a guy to do?
I don't know, but I do know what a bunch of guys and gals could do if they really wanted to. They could form a foundation like Free Geek. A foundation that recycles old computers, refurbishes some, and trains people how to use them, donating machines to low income families and non-profit organizations. It's volunteer based, and people who are interested in helping out can even get training in refurbishing the gear, and after 24 hours of help, they even qualify to get a refurbished machine themselves.
Now if we could just combine something like this with a group dedicated to developing and distributing open source e-learning projects, things could get really interesting. That's the kind of thing I would really like to do with my time.
Wien | 25.3.2006 | 11:58 
