Entries from December 2007 ↓

With the setting of the sun comes the dusk of 2007.  This year has been a memorable one for myself and for my trusty blog CutEdge, and hopefully for you too.  I wish you a happy new year, and a great 2008!  I know I’ve certainly got a ton of stuff planned for this blog (a GUI I’m going to stick with, for one thing).  Thanks for reading and I hope you stick around in 2008 to continue to watch the blog grow!

I had a blast during my stay in the states, visiting various places and seeing sights that are hardly available in Toronto. Plus, the Winter was much milder, making the trip that much better. Unfortunately, that meant having hardly anytime to use all those services that piqued my Canadian interests! Luckily, this evening I had a chance to take a quick look at Pandora - which I must admit, is very similar to Last.fm. Thank goodness that’s still available to us.

Pandora loads very quickly, and it guides you through the whole experience very closely. The only difference between Pandora and Last.fm so far as I can see is that Last.fm needs to be downloaded onto the computer to enjoy the total experience, whereas Pandora is fine just on the internet. Basically, all you need to do is input a beloved artist and out comes the results - some new music to explore, as well as probably some of your old favourites.

Pandora’s GUI is great! It’s very user-friendly and it’s a lot more flexible than Last.fm - no need to register, no need to download the client. I’m sure that if I registered, a lot more features would have been available to me; sadly, I don’t think it’d be very realistic to sign up for a service I’m going to lose access to by tomorrow.

Being the picky listener I am, I already found one thing to whine about - the skipping limit! It was a real pain in the behind to know that I wan’t allowed to skip as many songs as I wanted to, due to some “restrictions”. Last.fm actually didn’t have this problem last time I checked. I realized I had used my quota and I gave up Pandora that instant. Might’ve been a hasty decision, but I didn’t have much of a choice anyway - I’m leaving for Canada tomorrow.

It’s probably a bit overrated by Canadians, as Pandora isn’t really that much better to use than Last.fm - in fact, they’re arguably at around the same calibur I daresay. However, I must also emphasize that I haven’t used Pandora to it’s potential yet and this is just a very quick judgment - I can be proven wrong, but it’s just a bummer to realize how restricted it is to an unregistered user. I’m still glad I had this eye-opening experience though - looks like we still can survive without Pandora. And we might have to for a while, because the RIAA hasn’t invaded Canada yet.

At this day and age, I’m quite surprised that even just a concept of the Weave has been so widely accepted into the world. With viruses and hackers running rampant, I didn’t realize that our metadata was vulnerable enough to have to be stored on a server, as opposed to in our brains. It really does seem like our future is here now - doesn’t it?

Source: http://people.mozilla.com/~cbeard/weave/weave-logo.jpg

The Weave is a new project introduced by Mozilla, which promises to sync all your metadata (saved passwords, cookies, all that good stuff) with a server - preferably your own, yet possibly ones provided by Mozilla - with both being available. How considerate! This means that all your data will be available when you open a Firefox session, and will be automatically synced - wherever you are - including at a restaurant on in your dear grandmother’s house for a nice family gathering.

My main concern with this is how the metadata will be accessed in a secure method. I would assume since metadata consists of such important information, it will be a very sought-after target for hackers. Will the metadata be accessed via a username and password, or will there be a more creative, original method of access? The metadata will all be stored on a server, and you have a choice of either using your own or one provided by Mozilla. I’d like to see how Mozilla handles the situation of teaching an average user how to create their own server, or use part of their computer to store or stream the metadata elsewhere.

Source: http://people.mozilla.com/~cbeard/weave/services-overview-v1.png

The actual server should be very safe from intruders otherwise - if Gmail can keep such large volumes of data safe, I believe that Mozilla, a company so successful with their secure browser Firefox, then I think that they can do the same, if not better, with Weave - where they realize security will be an issue. I also think that this will grow to be a convenient service, but I don’t think it will be a revolutionary one. It’s a step in the right direction though.

Weave provides a promising look into the future, but I’m not sure whether it will be one for better or for worse. Such a tactic makes me wonder if humans are getting lazier - so lazy that they are unable to memorize a few passwords - but alas, that’s a total other social issue. I think it will be great for collaborative purposes as well, as partners will be able to use each other’s data to collect information twice as fast, essentially. What convenience, and what a conception.

Official Information:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/12/introducing-weave/

Day-to-day Applications/Use Cases:

https://labs.mozilla.com/forum/index.php/topic,392.0.html

For the past demi-year, Hulu has been officially open as a beta to consumers. But as part of the Canadian public, I’ve lacked the opportunity to try such a service as it was unfortunately unavailable in my region at this time. Either way, I’ve finally arrived south of the border, and I’m dying to try this service out. Luckily, I was able to access the service - if I weren’t, I might’ve died.

Hulu has a wide variety of shows, which all seem to appeal to me. They are all hits on TV, and they are all widely available on the internet - something that Hulu is trying to discourage by officially offering a medium to watch such shows. However, I must object - when you are trying to discourage piracy, please try to include the rest of the world - just something to take into consideration.

A spectrum of features are made available - in fact, something to the most minute detail like changing the background colour is available for the comfort of your eyes. The overall GUI is pretty and goes well with the whole glass look of the new Web, as well as Vista. They also go so far as to offer summaries and user opinions of the shows they offer.

The most important feature of a video site has to be the playback - which I must admit, disappointed me a bit. I must mention that I am using wi-fi, so I might not be getting as strong a signal as I could be, but I still think that streaming a video should be much smoother. I had to wait a while for the video to load, as it was quite choppy at first. Also, it’s resolution isn’t as nice as something like Veoh’s, so I think it wasn’t really worth the hype. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still above Youtube par, but I was certainly expecting more.

Hulu looks very promising at the moment, and if it progresses then it should be a feasible alternative to piracy. However, I’m begging Hulu creators to please make the service more widely available, and to make the videos load faster as well as in higher quality. If you’re still in Canada right now, then you’re really missing out.

It’s now the twenty-fifth of December in 2007, and undoubtedly you’re probably sitting at home or at a relatives house just enjoying Christmas. I myself just arrived in Connecticut today after flying in a pretty small plane, which in itself was a very interesting experience to say the least. I hope you have a great day and had fun unwrapping those presents.

Sincerely,

Herbert