Mickey Mouse Meets Darth Vader

I was very surprised when I read that George Lucas had sold Lucasfilm to Disney. Then I saw the video where he said he had been planning to retire for the last four years. This is a big deal.

Then Bob Iger says there will be 3 new films. Remember, at one time it was claimed that there were supposed to be nine films. The original 3, 3 that took place before (that would be trilogy #2), & 3 that took place after the events of SWIV (Return of the Jedi). 

The only question is the actors. Do you set it enough in the future (30+ years) that you can have Harrison Ford & Mark Hamill play their characters at real age? If they even want to do it. Or a different time frame.

And does Disney release new DVD's using that annoying business of "last chance before it goes in the vault for 10 years"?

Or is this deal just an excuse for Disney to get hold of a real special effects company, namely ILM? And will Lee Corso now have to dress as Yoda?  

ESPN Latest To Require Verification Of Cable Subscription

The shift in the last few months towards a verification model to watch streaming media is a last ditch effort by old media to keep their audience. While young people are talking about "cutting the cord", the service providers are fighting tooth & nail to prevent it.

First it was Comcast & the ugly My TV Everywhere nonsense. Two years ago you could watch streaming Olympic video just by clicking on a link on NBC's special website. This summer you had to sign in through your cable or satellite provider's website to watch. 

Two years ago you could watch World Cup Skiing simply by going on Universal Sports website & clicking on the video. Last year you had to pay $60 for the season to watch. This year you have to verify that you subscribe to the network through your provider.

HBO does this through HBO GO. But that makes sense because it's a premium channel. Now it's ESPN. I've always been able to watch pre-recorded games. I work on Saturdays, so I would watch college football on my days off, Mon or Tues. Never really watch live stuff. Last night on a whim, I tried to stream the MNF game. Now ESPN requires verification! And even worse, doesn't support Directv. Meaning even though I subscribe to Directv, I can't watch live because there's no deal between the two.

So what does one do? Here's something that may or may not be legal. A  European website called First Row Sports streams through ESPN America, the European cable partner. In fact they stream all Sunday games from Fox, CBS & NBC. No American TV commercials, all ESPN America ads for other games. Now do the cable operators know this? Do they care, or do they figure no one knows? I'm guessing a little of both.

Eventually this will be settled. The verification model will not last. Those in the know can get around it. Otherwise we will end up having to pay a subscription to watch online or by the event. I assume this is what the providers would like. But that model will eventually die.     

$329 For An iPad Mini?

This may be the silliest pricing ever for a tech device. Why exactly would anyone pay $329 for an entry level iPad mini when $499 gets you a full sized one? I realize that Apple fanboys are not the brightest shoppers out there & will spend any amount of money just because it's Apple, but really, cmon.

Since the Nexus 7 & the Kindle Fire are $199 I fail to understand the pricing for this. Except that since the days of Steve Jobs, Apple has been about massive profits upfront. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon has made it clear from the beginning that the Fire breaks even, & Amazon makes it's money from Kindle owners shopping in the store.

Google will do the same thing with the Nexus 7. Apple doesn't seem to care about convincing people to shop in the iTunes store. They know apps aren't that expensive, & most buy e-books from Amazon, so that justifies the pricing for the iPad. I'm not sure that's true. But the iPad does outsell the Kindle Fire, so maybe people really are hypnotized by the Apple name. I'm not & won't be buying one. But then again, I won't be buying ANY tablet. I have a full sized desktop. Works for me. 

The Dissapearing Mailbox

I live in a condo complex with central mailboxes. The one near me has a broken door, meaning instead of the door being locked until the mailman opens it to collect outgoing mail, it's wide open. Needless to say, this concerns me. So instead of dropping my bills in there, I went out on the street looking for another box.

I couldn't find a box on the street, so I had to turn around, go back in my complex & find another box. Here's my issue & question. There used to be a box on every corner. Now there aren't any. Is this because no one mails letters anymore or is the post office just using that as an excuse to cut back on pick up & delivery?

I think it's the latter. Yes people are e-mailing & texting, but bills still come via the mail, as do magazines. Yes you can pay bills online, but what does that really mean? It means combining all your bills under a single account, usually a credit card. but how is that paid? Surprise, a bill that comes in the mail. I'm not sure companies want to set up accounts to withdraw funds from bank accounts, & I sure don't want them to know my bank account number.

So this means the old way of doing things is still the best way. You may not like mailing money but until a better system comes along, this is the way to go. 

Music & Lyrics Online

I don't know why it is, but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to combine digital downloads with song lyrics. Why this is I don't know. iTunes policy is that you can paste or type in lyrics on your iPod, but that's not really a perfect system.

A better system would be to have the lyrics embedded in the file. I'm guessing that the reason this hasn't been done is another example of copyright nonsense.

When I'm on my desktop this is what I can do, & in fact did this morning. Open two tabs on my browser. One on You Tube or iTunes for a particular song, the other tab or window on songlyrics.com, a site that allows you to find the lyrics to thousands of songs. So find the lyrics to the song, return to the other tab with the song, hit play then switch your browser to the lyrics. It works, but it's not perfect & again, you can't transfer the printed lyrics to your iPod, iPhone or whatever device.

At some point there is going to have to be a better way. Mind you, the music industry is against anything that is in the best interest of the consumer. If it doesn't enrich them, they are not interested.  

The Funniest Tech Podcast

I love to watch tech podcasts. I watch several of the TWIT podcasts. They have changed over time. I started out watching TWIT(This Week in Tech) & TNT(Tech News Today). The problem is that both specialize in spending lots of time on phones & tablets, two things I don't own & have no interest in owning.

Then I found Frame Rate, which is mostly about TV & video & the devices you use to watch. This works for me because I am interested in this. A lot of time is spent on streaming video & outside things like Roku & Boxee. You know, set top boxes for streaming internet content to your TV. It also helps that hosts Tom Merritt(TNT) & Brian Brushwood are quite entertaining & have a good rapport.

Today I tried a new one I hadn't seen before. It's called The Giz Wiz, & features Leo LaPorte(TWIT), the guy who owns the TWIT network & Dick DeBartolo of Mad Magazine. Essentially it reviews gadgets. Not cell phones, silly stuff. I mean one segment is "crap we found on SkyMall". For the uninitiated, SkyMall is that magazine you find on every airplane. Hundreds of pages of ridiculous stuff to waste your time while you sit in you seat while flying.

So what were the gadgets today? How about a touchless toilet? Thats right, it was supposed to raise when you approach it & lower when you're done. Of course it didn't work very well. It took forever to raise & then didn't go all the way up, & of course, didn't lower at all. Highly entertaining. Lots of laughs from everyone involved.

But wait! There's more! Mechanical birds. That's right. The silly video was showing how this was a perfect pet. Don't have to feed it, & it doesn't poop. LOL. Of course the video shows people watching this idiotic thing, including little kids. Tell me, what kid wants a fake pet? Best part was one of Leo's employees actually has a real bird, & had it come over to look at the two fakes. It was chirping at the robots that move apparently based on movement. This was hysterical. Most sitcoms aren't this funny. I will be watching Modern Family in about an hour, I wonder if I will laugh as much as I did at this.

So be sure to check this out. There are a lot of good shows on the TWIT network. One caution: The site seems to have a problem with video this week, so download from iTunes or look on You Tube.    

Will Hulu Be Dismantled?

Thanks to Frame Rate (TWIT's show about movies, TV & devices used to watch), I read an article on Fast Company about Hulu. It's mostly about the CEO & his fight's with Hulu's owners.

This maybe the first time I have read about owners of something hating the fact that it's successful. The 3 owners of Hulu are News Corp (Fox), Disney (ABC) & Comcast (NBC). The original heads of the content department that created Hulu are gone. They have been replaced by corporate shills who hate their own site because they believe it canibalizes viewership. In other words, people watch shows on Hulu, rather than on the networks, & they make more money from ads on TV than on the internet.

So they keep making things difficult, & complain about free content. This is why Hulu Plus was created: to shut up the complaining, which was mostly from News Corp. Gee what a surprise that someone working for Rupert Murdoch wouldn't want content available. After all, Murdoch has stated in public that he thinks everyone should pay to watch online.

Will Hulu survive? This is the question. Some shows that were on Hulu are now on, or being offered to Netflix. Some content is actually being offered to You Tube, which is ironic, since according to the Fast Company article, Hulu was created to keep network content off of You Tube. 

Video Fails On Tech Site

You would think that a technology site wouldn't have issues with video but you would be wrong. For the second time recently, the TWIT network has an issue on it's site.

A few months ago it was doing this, along with Google warning that malware was on the site. I guess the bad guys don't like being outed. But this is different.

When you go to the site & try to watch any of the dozens of podcasts, nothing happens. There is a black screen with nothing to click. Since Firefox updates a ridiculously number of times, I decided to try out (horrors) IE9. Sorry, no difference. I am not sure what the issue is. My Adobe Flash is completely updated, & works on every other site. Whether it's You Tube or video links on the Huffington Post or others, they work. And anyway, if I download the podcast from iTunes it works, so hopefully the issue will soon be resolved.

And speaking of iTunes, why when updating do I have to reinstall the entire program? I did this today & it took a half an hour. No other software program does this. Heck Firefox updated this morning from 15 to 16. It took a couple of minutes.
Seriously, why such a silly way of updating a program that is way too bloated. If it didn't insist on using Quick Time & the store was online rather than part of the program,  it would be a lot smaller.

Window Update Problem

After being informed that an important update needed to be downloaded, I tried to do it manually. This was a waste of an hour this morning. No matter how many times I tried to download the update, it would fail.

So I went on the Microsoft forums, only to find that this is a apparently corrupted update. Some people have been able to get it to install, but others haven't. I must have tried 10 times. If I go in the update file, there are a lot of listings for this failed update.

The listings in the forums go back a month. I wonder when Microsoft intends to do something about this? I had a problem with my anti virus not updating a week ago. Avast! fixed it within a day.  For Microsoft not to fix this after a month is unacceptable. I believe this is a security update for IE9. Too bad 10 isn't out yet, because that might just override the problem.

Avast! Flops & NBC Fails Political Stream

There is something about anti-virus software. It doesn't like me. I used to use Avira until it started misreading Microsoft updates. Namely it started listing nonexistent problems under the name "hidden objects". Not just a couple, but rather 70 or so. This is when I switched to Avast!

Today Avast! decided it didn't want to update anymore. It had, up until now, been more reliable at updates. Sometimes Avira would go days without updating. Avast! would do it as soon as I started up my system. Until today. And I couldn't do it manually either. And when I went on Avast! forums, there were a ton of people with the same issue.

This is the problem with software. I usually ignore iTunes updates because of their reputation for screwing things up & now my anti-virus is doing it. I will keep my eyes open to see what happens.

Then there's NBC. Tonight there was a presidential debate. There is no question that this should have been streamed on all stations broadcasting the event. But NBC & MSNBC weren't, or at least I couldn't find a way to do it on either website, using multiple browsers. Why is this even an issue? I finally found it being streamed by CNN. Makes sense they would have it, but what was NBC's problem? Old media sometimes has problems with new technologies, but this is just silly. There is no excuse for this. If it's a way to force you to have to watch it the traditional way, sorry, that doesn't cut it. Huffington Post was streaming it. How I don't know. I assume they had a deal with one of the cable channels.

This should not happen & these broadcasters have to realize that they have to serve all possible viewers in as many ways as possible. Hopefully by the election, they will have it figured out.