Category Archives: On the Net

| TV, Video

Emmy “Interactive TV” award just a gimmick

Al Gore was just on stage at the Emmys to receive an award for “outstanding achievement for interactive television” on behalf of his broadband “TV” network Current.tv (Gore actually got the website’s name wrong, calling it “current.com”. That website quickly crashed under the load of Emmy-watching visitors.) The presentation of this inaugural award came complete with a lame live video feed from MySpace’s Tom Anderson (is he too good for the Emmys already to be there in person?).

The show wasn’t clear on what exactly “interactive television” is. Its call for entries for the award is somewhat more specific, but still leaves a lot of questions. Here’s their explanation for the three categories they have in this area:

  • Interactive television “Program” is defined as a single show, originally aired or transmitted during the eligibility year that is delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, and that incorporates one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
  • Interactive Television “Series” is defined as episodic programming that has been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks, incorporating participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience.
  • Interactive television “Service” is defined as a television network or other distributor of programming offering one or more participatory interactive features that enhance the viewing experience across a range of programs or series, and that have been or continues to be available during the eligibility year and delivered via broadcast, cable, satellite, broadband, or mobile networks.

So an interactive show is defined as a “show” (how specific), delivered by just about any medium, with “participatory interactive features” which are also not explained.

If the Emmys want to get into online videos, that’s one thing. Then everything original uploaded to YouTube could be eligible for an Emmy.

But that doesn’t seem to be what they’re doing here. Instead, they go after the mainstream web publishers like Current, have them pay the $600 entry fee, and then explain to the judges what’s so great about their “interactive” programming:

(Entries must include) A linear / non-interactive video recording that demonstrates the viewer experience and highlights the features and functionality of the interactive television program, series, or service. The video recording must not exceed 6 minutes in length and must be submitted on Beta SP or Digi Beta tape format. It must provide a minimum of either two minutes of, OR the combined total running time of, the interactive elements in the program, series, or service, whichever is shorter, and must include the interactive feature(s), either contiguous or edited, in an order that is closely representative of the actual viewer experience.

The academy needs to decide if it wants to include online-produced video in its eligibility criteria (fortunately, it’s at a point now where there’s still a dividing line between television and online video). If it does, then why not include DVDs, advertisements, wedding videos, or any other form of video? If not, then it needs to stick to television as we know it and stop with the stupid gimmicks.

| Montreal, On the Net, Technology

Become part of the Google landscape

Google’s Street View is in the process of collecting pictures of Montreal streets. When complete, Google Maps will be able to show street-level photos of major cities in Canada like it does for New York and San Francisco.

Street View works by having someone in a car with lots of cameras on the roof drive through the city and take pictures. They’re then thrown into a giant database which creates a street view you can move around in.

Of course, if you happen to be walking along a street when the car passes by, you’ll become a permanent part of the view of that street. And that can lead to some embarrassing pictures.

Canada’s privacy commissioner has already raised concerns that, because Google doesn’t ask permission before taking photos, they might be violating Canada’s privacy laws.

| Media, Video

Newspapers’ online video ventures are still lacking

The Globe has a video by Anastasia Tubanos about couples who do video podcasting. Of course, no such list would be complete without Rudy and Casey of Galacticast, who are interviewed in it.

The video is somewhat typical of the state of newspaper-produced video. Since they have no clue what they’re doing, and don’t want to spend any money building a web media infrastructure, they leave everything to the individual producer, from the credits to the music selection. Videos range in quality from atrocious cellphone-quality badly-framed talking heads to semi-professional packages with unnecessarily-long credits.

The quality of content, of course, is always more important than presentation. So I can forgive the tinny audio or inconsistent lighting, especially when producers don’t have sound or lighting technicians. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is all just a gimmick to them, that the newspapers are feeling around in the dark and hoping they can get by without knowing what they’re doing. And independent producers, without formal training or direction from editors and managers, are doing the same.

| Business, Media, On the Net, Web design

Google the wires

Speaking of wire services, Google News, which used to be an aggregator of news content with links to full articles on their original sites (and for some reason annoyed content owners who I guess don’t want traffic from the biggest website on Earth), has come to an agreement with Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Canadian Press and the U.K. Press Association to host wire stories on its site (as evidenced by that CP story hosted on Google).

The result of this is that when you see mention of “Canadian Press” or “Associated Press” in Google News results, that link will take you on a page at Google instead of some cheap generic small-market U.S. network TV affiliate who just republish unaltered wire copy online.

What it doesn’t mean is that you will be able to directly scroll the wires on Google. You still have to go through the Google News homepage. Fortunately there are other places that give you almost-direct access to unedited CP wire copy.

It probably won’t mean a huge deal, but you’ll note that wire copy on Google is much simpler and less ad-riddled than the places you’ll usually find it, which I think will lead to more people linking to stories off Google when given the choice.

| Montreal, Technology, Video

Passing the envelope

Google has launched a collaboratively-created video to promote its Gmail service. It features dozens of people all handing over a big red M on an envelope. Among them are a couple of Montrealers dancing, which, because it appears at the exact halfpoint of the video, is the preview image YouTube uses for it.

From Alain Wong:

Just a bit of news. Feel free to bash Google, or flatter them for coming up with this collaborative video idea. I think we’ve just become the most viewed Montreal swing dancers, with over a million views in two days.

Montrealers as thumbnail in the official Gmail video by Google.
http://mail.google.com/mvideo

Google ran a contest last month in order to build a collaborative video through Youtube for Gmail. The idea was to pass the Gmail logo (an M envelope) in a creative way through video. Ann Mony and I (swing dancers from Montreal) submitted a video of us swinging out with the envelope, and we made it onto the final cut!

Selected from over 1,100 clips from fans in more than 65 countries. We’re proud to represent Montreal.

| Fun, Montreal, On the Net, Sports

Out of the way!

I’ve always thought it would be fun to do some sort of street luge on one of Montreal’s steepest streets. Peel, Mountain, St. Jacques, any street in southern Outremont…

This weekend some people fulfilled that fantasy on Camilien Houde. Though the speeds they reached weren’t exactly super-sonic, the view from inches above the ground is a lot different at 100 kph. It’s all part of Top Challenge, an annual Bud Light-sponsored (Bud Light? Ick!) gravity-powered street race. (The video of last year’s race gives a good idea what’s going on)

The results are here, and photos on Flickr.

If the popularity of this increases, we’ll probably be seeing more videos like this of people doing this on their own.

| Blogosphere, On the Net

All blog but no bite

Some local bloggers are flogging what’s called “Blog Action Day“, where on one day (Oct. 15), every blog around the world features a post on a particular subject (in this case, the environment).

This may shock and amaze you, but I’m taking a somewhat cynical view of this.

First of all, it’s not like the environment needs to have awareness raised about it. It’s the cause célèbre du jour, for crying out loud. It’s like trying to raise awareness of Facebook.

Secondly, it’s kind of gimmicky. Like that Live Earth concert that was more about music than the environment. I have a feeling this will be more about bloggers than the environment.

It’s well-intentioned, and I wish them well, but I just don’t see it doing anything concrete to help the environment.

| Blogosphere, Montreal, Navel-gazing, Video

I like to blog during the summer

Laurent has put up video from the August Yulblog where he went around asking people what their favourite summer activity was. (He’s been making the questions easier each month since people have had trouble answering — he threatened to make next month’s question “what’s your favourite colour” if people were still having trouble)

Of course, what you’re looking for is at 1:49: Me.

Me at Yulblog

I got at least one comment that I wasn’t recognizable from the nose up in that tiny photo at the top of my blog, so here you go. That’s what I look like.

Ladies, the line starts here.

| Business, Montreal, On the Net

The TVboxset.com scam

This story from this morning’s Gazette is hilarious. Apparently customers are complaining that they’re being ripped off by Montreal-based TVboxset.com, which has been promising them great deals on DVDs of TV shows, and then never delivering them.

What’s interesting is that those who do get the DVDs delivered quickly find out that they’re low-quality pirated versions recorded straight off of cable (they even have the network logos in the corner).

A quick scan online shows plenty of other people with similar complaints. In some of them, a representative of the company responds with a form letter about “misplaced orders”, but never answers the charges of blatant pirating.

The article quotes him as saying they “buy bulk and resell”, and that they don’t verify stock before they send it out. As if any idiot couldn’t spot such obvious fakes from a hundred feet away.

Garcia Media Group, which owns the website, isn’t under investigation by the Quebec consumer protection bureau, because apparently nobody’s complained to them yet (isn’t bureaucracy wonderful?), the Better Business Bureau can’t do anything because the company isn’t a member, and the police won’t say whether they’re investigating. Only Canada Post is looking into the matter.

Hopefully, unless the claims that this is all a smear campaign from a competitor are true (right, sure), this company will be quickly shut down and its owners prosecuted before they scam more people.

UPDATE (Oct. 7): Slashdot has a story on the lack of action in this case.

| Business, On the Net

Wikitravel: A new beginning, or the beginning of the end?

Evan Prodromou has announced that he is reducing his level of involvement in the management of Wikitravel, and his wife is pulling out altogether.

Evan doesn’t say whether he thinks this is better or worse for the project (other than saying he’ll miss his wife’s contributions). I can’t help but be somewhat pessimistic. Going from people who have lived and breathed their own baby for years to a group of faceless developers in some far-away 9-to-5 office doesn’t scream “great new beginning” to me.

Hopefully I’m wrong.

| In the news, Video

Protesters gone wild!

The protests in Montebello this week had one major difference from those in Quebec City in 2001: YouTube. Videotape evidence is the great truth-teller in a world where denials are cheap. It’s what turned Rodney King from just another crazy-talking black guy exaggerating a routine police matter into a media sensation and a giant black eye for the Los Angeles Police Department.

Militant protesters who see police brutality as the norm rather than the exception are increasingly using video cameras to safeguard their rights and prove the police are out to get them while they plant flowers peacefully.

One of the videos out of Montebello shows an interesting idea that seems to be gaining popularity: That those violent rock-throwing mask-wearing protesters are actually under-cover police officers and government agents ordered to provoke a violent altercation between police and protesters to give police an excuse to move in and start beating people up.

Today I received an email from a group which includes Jaggi Singh (who himself has been quietly accused by some paranoid crazy-thinking friends of mine of being an undercover cop), and it links to the video with some conjecture:

Is there a cover-up of the police agents that are revealed in the above video? Were the police trying to create divisions between protesters by provoking an incident?

The video itself shows three such protesters, one holding a rock, provoking the police. What’s interesting is that they’re being stopped by other protesters — some normal-looking suit-wearing Council of Canadians/union leftists, others peacenik hippie mask-wearing-but-not-rock-throwing chant-yellers — and both groups are accusing them of being police officers.

Some other Montebello videos:

| In the news, Media, On the Net, Technology

Journalists, wikiscan thyself

It seems a little online tool called Wikiscanner is generating a lot of media attention. It searches through anonymous edits by IP or IP range, a simple enough concept that in itself would not be worthy of attention (in fact, Wikipedia already allows you to list the edits made by a particular IP address anonymously). What has gotten the media all riled up is the application of this: tying those IP ranges to recognized organizations like the New York Times or the White House.

It’s even got some local attention after a computer from City Hall was fingered as being behind a defacing of executive committee president Frank Zampino — though it turns out that apparently wasn’t the case.
One thing that isn’t really made clear in these reports is that the edits are being made by people who work within the organization, but not necessarily management. In fact, it’s more likely to be some schmuck working a boring office job than a high-level executive wanting to control public opinion.

And like most edits in general on Wikipedia, most of these edits are pretty benign. Fixing spelling mistakes and correcting minor facts on articles about sports teams and musicians.

But some are embarrassing, or just plain silly.

So I’ve applied the Wikiscanner to some Canadian media IPs I know. (Know any not listed here? Let me know.) Here’s some edits I found that were made from within these organizations:

CBC:

Toronto Star (and related organizations like the Kitchener-Waterloo Record):

La Presse:

The Gazette/CanWest: