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Though previously I wrote (a bit tongue and cheek) that I was writing reviews because I had nothing else to write, that’s not the complete truth.  Granted it is part of it, but here I am writing about writing reviews and not actually writing a review, I’m just writing (I wanted to see how many times I could use the word writing and make the sentence coherent).   The other side reason I have for writing reviews is there are some other communities I’ve wanted to contribute to that I haven’t.  Most of these are review sites.   The main two are All Consuming and Amazon.   Though there are some other sites I’ve wanted to contribute thought and effort into such as Netflix and Google Books.   

Reviews are a mainstay of communities, especially online ones.   The old psychological study on mirroring proves we relate better with people like ourselves.  When someone shares the same thoughts and ideas we have an attraction to them, a kinship.   Writing reviews and contributing to these other communities give me a bound and a vested interest in these communities.   I think moving into movie, book, and game reviews were a natural progression for me after signing up for Yelp.   I joined Yelp to check it out and I find it intriguing.  Review the restaurants you go to, sharing the experience with the world.   

In the new era of personal publishing and media, we’ve all become food reviewers, movie critics, book analysts, and game raters.   The power is to the people.  Our voices may not be strong, but they exist.   When we find people with similar tastes in the areas that we love, we trust their reviews.   I’m not saying I’m an expert, I would never pretend to know what you like or you enjoy in your heart.   I can show you what I enjoy and maybe we’ll have a mirroring relationship.   One that spurs on conversation and gives us a two way street in which we can share and trust reviews from one another.   Not everything will be a perfect match, but I’m sure it will lead to some interesting discoveries.

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A couple years ago we removed cable from our house.  We didn’t watch anything really besides Law & Order and it’s spin offs.   Law & Order was not worth $80.00 per month.  While we’ve gotten our TV fix from either Netflix or legal streaming from teh major networks something was missing, Law & Order.   We were both always annoyed that Law & Order was not on NBC‘s website, but endured.  We could have received Law & Order disc by disc from Netflix, but that would have been a pain in the butt.

Recently we discovered that Law & Order is available for streaming from Netflix’s site , we are on season 4 of SVU – thank you Netflix for bringing back the normal TV fare to our lives.

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So I’ve taken over the position of webmaster for the VCMA (Vermilion Community Music Association).  This is going to start a new series as I’m going to use them as guinea pig’s for what I’ve felt non-profits need to do to survive and thrive in the web 2.0 world.   They are not a big organization, and I’m sure I received this position for my background and not my witty personality.

I’ve been working on the site for a couple of weeks and here is what I’ve found so far.   They had a private member’s section on the old site to share files and personal data.  This section was password protected, but the username field was just a front, as long as you nkew the password anything you put in the username field was accepted.  Since I’m a security engineer, this just wasn’t going to work for me.  I’ve ranted before the illusion of security and how illusionary security wasn’t worthwhile at all anyways.  The other problem was that their member page “password protected” section was just a javascript that rewrote the “HTTP GET” to a file named a combination of the requested page plus the password.   So if the page was index.tml and the password was “password” the ending HTTP in the “HTTP GET” command would be indexpassword.html.   Since it was still a plain text file without any encryption on it, in theory it could still be spidered and stored by google, thereby completely undermining any security it was giving them.

I’m working on a better and more secure solution while maintaining the balance of ease of use.   I don’t want to burden them too much on the security side.  I’m sure some of the older members would blink at me with a blank stare if I handed them secureID tokens to access their newsletters.

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The next thing I discovered is that code each web page by hand, ugh.  There was no way I was going to maintain each HTML manually and hope for any semblance of style and continuity between pages (an issue they had in the past).   They had been using FrontPage and offered to buy me a copy.  First no, no and no – currently I’m using Linux on my main computer (Ok I dual boot into XP and between WoW and Netflix streaming I don’t get into Ubuntu as much as I should), so Frontpage was out.  They were insistent at first that this is how it was done, I however readjusted things.  I moved them to WordPress which I’m not using as a blog but rather as a CMS (Content Management System).

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I manually migrated the data from the old HTML files, I spent hours converting the front page data to be “clean” data that i can migrate and copy paste anywhere.   I was a dumbass though, I should have just copy and pasted the text into notepad or a generic text editor, then I wouldn’t have had all the background crap.  This is my nore to myself to now be stupid next time.  I added images and a javascript navigation menu, but essentially the page was just a cleaned up (easy to maintain now) version of what they already had.

Now the next step is to migrate them to Google Apps for their member related information……

Somehow I always end up volunteering for Vermilion non-profits, now if only I could get one of them to pay me……

The article does make good points though he wrote it poorly and pulled out data out of thin air.  I don’t argue with some of what he is saying but let’s break it down by his bullet points.

1. Broadband Speed – his assumption that you would buy it anywhere online – in the immediate future as this scales there are two options other then the most obvious update the broadband infrastructure in this country.  The first being it is more likely that major media distributors will have a distribution within your ISP (as long as you use a major one) – since it would be within it’s own network and there would be no connection fees associated with routing traffic over another ISP – all of that ISP’s user would be able to get full speed other then crossing and routing across a partners internet link (which is the real reason ISP throttle you down) – The second is IP multicast which if implemented woudl take most the strain of the ISP – it would take the same amount of bandwidth for hte ISP to send the data to all users on a given subnet/ IP range as it would to a single user – a combination of the two is where this is going.   He also seems to avoid the fact that whenever you watch an “on demand” movie on your cable that it is digital distribution – just on pipes you can’t normally route traffic through.   That works fine for most americans.

He also add that it can take an hour to download a movie – Most movies are 2 hours in length – which means under his assumption that I can watch it streamed no problem – the movie doesn’t have to finish downloading to start watching it (author of the article MUST be using bit torrent instead of a good streaming mechanism so we’ll forgive him).

2. Tiered Download Capacity – addressed this by having distribution points within your home ISP – having this would cost the ISP nothing to give you traffic that stays within their network – it’s when you cross the router that exits their network which costs them fees.  Most logical is that you will see “features” offered from your ISP which state you can do all this within the walled garden (aol style) and the tiered pricing kicks in when you leave the garden.

3.  Media Cost – it’s all dependent on if you want to own something – here is the crux – if you “rent movies” but can get them anytime or anywhere for 3.00 -5.00 dollars a viewing this means you need to watch and pay for it 4-7 times before it actually costs you more then owning it.   He pointed out that it would take 12k to replace his movie collection in blu-ray and stated he could do a trade in – well the trade in would give him 2-3.00 per DVD he traded in – so this would give me at the most 1800.00 – I’m sorry that’s not a large enough dent.   If you do “buy” a digital movie which you can, it does cost about the same as a physical copy – but yet less then current Blu Ray titles – so this really is where you need to decide if you would spend 12k on replacing all your DVDs to Blu Ray.  He also added the full albums cost more if you buy them online versus the store – well radiohead and NIN are both turning that theory on it’s head.   But also how often is it that you want every single song on an album.

4.  Storage Costs – he qouted a number of 8.4 TB that would take to store of all of his data – having ripped enough DVD’s myself I’ll say that 99% of the 200+ dvds I own are single layer – so they max out at 4.3 GB and most don’t even take up all the space on the disk – so 2.5 TB would store all of his DVDs nicely – Ironically I have about 2 TBs at home and it didn’t cost me the 1800.00 he qouted.   I have drives that have lasted for years and yes the storage space is spread out all over the home network – but my server does have over 1 TB.

5. Adoption – a couple things he missed here is that the XBOX 360 and PS3 as well as computers all support streaming media – most blu-ray players are rumored to be able to support it in the next specification lock – so that is something to take note of before he qoutes the 1k media computer.   Actually since home servers are coming to be more common the computer hooked up to your TV can be add for under 300.00.

He is right about how the distribution is going to happen and hte problems it faces.   The recession if anything is going to help spur this.  One friend because of my arguement is getting netflix and dropping his cable – his cable costs 800.00 a year on top of his internet.  Streaming will replace cable before it will replace straight purchased movies – but once the public becomes comfortabel with one the other will follow.

Also don’t forget one thing – Sony is betting on both Blu-Ray and streaming.   They realize that it’s a good thing to hedge their bets.

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I was a creature of habit that even when I wasn’t watching TV it was on and would watch TV “settling” for shows – I mean there are very few people who watch the Magic Johnson Show or Becker before they went to bed just because it was on and something to watch.

One of the major changes has been technology, both the advancement of it and the lack there of. When we purchased our new house about a year and a half ago we picked up cable immediately and the gluttony of television kicked. After the introductory period of 29.99 a month ended and the bill went up to 59.99 a month we sat and questioned if we really needed it.

It seemed that we were only watching law and order 99% of the time – since it was always on. Since I was a big DVD purchaser I looked at this as being 1-2 box sets of other DVDs that I could buy that month instead of cable. At that point we ditched cable. Our house is far enough from the major cities that we get one stations and even that is 75% snow. This meant no more live television for us. We started watching the shows we liked via streaming media on the computer we have hooked up to the television or via our laptops.

Slowly I got out of the buying a girth of DVD’s and subscribed to Netflix – this saved my money since in the 5 months I’ve had Netflix I have only purchased 3-4 DVDs that I really want compared to the 10-15 I would have purchased otherwise.

Netflix and streaming mean that there are no more late nights watching Becker or Sisters because nothing else is on. I no longer have to settle and the process of going to a website and multitasking is a bit more active than traditional TV viewing.

So by using streaming and Netflix I watch more shows that I want to watch when I want to watch them. I also save money. Netflix is 16.99 a month compared to the 59.99 for cable and the other 100.00 a month I would have spent in DVDs. My quality of life has actually improved since I don’t waste time on shows like the Magic Johnson talk show any more (yes I realize that was canceled long ago but I wanted and apt comparison to the bottom rung of television I was on).