Joost and My Silver Mount Zion
Most of you have probably noticed the addition of the Tech Ramble RSS feed (thanks Terry!) to the DamagedGoodz webpage, and if you had taken one step further to actually view one of the postings, you would realize that I have not ranted recently about tech. I would just like to say that I intend to ramble soon enough, once I stop being so lazy and actually put together a list of tech topics I’ve had on my mind, but in the meantime, I do have a few words.
So, I’m sure many of you have noticed that Viacom has recently requested that Google remove their content from Youtube. Given that much of that content is currently available on comedycentral.com, you could say it’s not a big deal. However, I think I finally understand why Google bought Youtube. I’ve found that it is nearly impossible to find the clips that used to take a few seconds to find on youtube. Yes, I have all of the recent Daily Show and Colbert Report episodes downloaded, but I definately don’t have the search mechanism on my system to find the clips I want to see, and especially when friends are over and we just want to recap on some really funny clips…well, you get the jist. Anyhow, I’d really like to say that Viacom really dropped the ball; I find it unbelievable that they weren’t able to work out a deal with Google, especially given that they seemed to find an agreement with Joost, a company started by the creators of Kazaa and Skype (aka P2P applications).
Speaking of Joost, does anyone have a spare invite to the service and is willing to fork it over to one curious tech user who no longer watches real television? For those of you who don’t know what Joost is, it’s a video P2P service that essentially replaces cable by provided cheap access to HD video channels on the internet. It is still in beta, but according to their website it should be public by the summer. Although I ultimately standby on-demand content, I feel that Joost is a good start to get the television industry migrated over to an internet platform.
And finally, I’ve got to plug this amazing podcast I stumbled upon last year called My Silver Mount Zion. For those of you not familiar with the band Silver Mount Zion, they are an offspring of Godspeed You Black Emperor, both bands of which are post-rock, I guess you could say, so that is primarily what this music podcast covers. They play a variety of independent music, and the hosts are entertaining but not overbearing (meaning they still play a lot of music but have fun with it). They have a hiatus, I guess you could say, but a new episode was published this month, which I am currently enjoying. I highly recommend it, please check it out!
Godspeed.
-Chief