Monty’s Afterword

NBC has hammered in the final nail, pulling all its TV content from Apple iTunes. If you been following this feud between Steve Jobs and NBC you know that this has been in the works for some time now. In fact, I remember being in Newark, NJ shortly after the decision was reached to stop providing iTunes with new episodes. I was desperately trying to find the latest The Office episode via iTunes. Of course, I couldn’t find it, so I turned to NBC’s website, which on the hotel’s connection was too slow to view. I then turned to Amazon’s UnBox, which had started selling new NBC TV shows in place of iTunes, but I was on a Mac. Incompatible. So after about a half an hour of jumping around from site to site trying to watch TV on a laptop, I gave up. I was defeated.

Fast forward to today, nearly two months later and I’m reading this blog about the final moment of NBC’s removal from iTunes. What’s changed since my experience in Newark? Not much. If you’re a Mac user you still can’t download NBC’s TV content; not by NBC Direct nor Amazon UnBox. You’re stuck right now with viewing their content by streaming it over the Internet through NBC’s website or their hulu.com site which is still in beta. But, NBC Direct is promising to be Mac compatible soon. In the meantime, you better enjoy getting your content streamed to you, as that’s the only way your going to get it. As for me, that’s fine and dandy, but I lot people like the downloads so they can manage their content, perhaps viewing it on an iPod or Apple TV, etc. For those folks, they’re going to have to be patient. But, we’ve all got time to kill, right? When do you expect you’ll have new content to view with the ongoing Writers Strike? Seriously, TV viewing sucks right now– it’s like Nick At Night every night with re-run after re-run. So what’s the point?

I give up on you TV.

The good news is that even with NBC’s departure from Apple iTunes, TV Networks are realizing their full Online potential. That will eventually mean that viewing TV online will be a painless process. There’s just a few road blocks ahead, the writers who are demanding a cut in Online revenue and Digital Rights Management (DRM). Once those things are ironed out, I’ll be throwing out my 19″ RCA and crowning my Mac computer the King of my living room.

A recent blog entry from CNN Money’s Media Biz tells a story of sinking stocks for the New York Times. The points of interest for this particular write-up is the strategies suggested for the NYT to try to subdue their flagging numbers. The one that caught my attention is a frightening trend; sell yourself to a media conglomerate. The Wall Street Journal has mulled it over. It may seem that the only way to survive is to partner up. As an advocate for independent media, I frown upon the idea. Wait… here it comes…

But, in all seriousness, people in the business are losing jobs and the threat of a looming recession may force more media consolidation. Only time will tell. And the discussion to follow will be how the Internet will play a part in preserving an independent voice and the fight for net neutrality. That’s a ways off. Until then, take a read to learn more about the creek the NYT has found itself up.

As an editor I do have love for Microsoft Word, despite that it’s hideous to look at and throws curveballs at you from time to time. But, if you don’t need all the features of a full blown word processor, Buzzword.com is a great alternative.

Buzzword is an online word processor that looks good and has enough bells and whistles to actually be useful for most word processing applications. Hey, if this isn’t cool, I don’t know what cool is. I wonder if this could become the new way we write manuscripts. I’m thinking this could be useful for educational institutions. If students had to log-on to use a customized Buzzword application for writing term papers, professors might be able to catch plagiarism before the work is published. That is, Buzzword is an application concerned with writing acquisition first and foremost. Isn’t it scary though, that as I’m writing someone (or some spider crawling my text) could be analyzing my writing, checking it for errors or for the content itself. Hmmm… that could be dangerous. Connected word processing could be an open door for controlling our right of freedom of speech.

Despite my discretions on the not-so-real (yet, anyhow) dangers of online word processing, Buzzword is beyond just capturing your words. As one can see it’s perfect for adding a great deal of formating, too. This is a fully functional word processor that’s easy to use and easy on the eyes. I’m a fan.

Not too long ago, Andrew Burke (who I’ve previously mentioned on this blog and who I have a movie-sized poster of in my cube– well kind of) showed me this funky online video site, VBS.tv. Content wise, VBS.tv has made a lot of progress, but it hasn’t been until now, when the NY Times picked them up for this article, that I noticed. It was definitely worth a revisit for me and very satisfying seeing that an independent online media outlet can not only survive, but thrive and create content that is very compelling. So if you have some free time this week and you’re not fighting off the tryptofan watch some shows. It will blow your mind.

That’s right. Remember that compact scooter craze that hit every middle school like the roller blade revolution in the early-1990s? No. Good. Forget about all that, because the electric skateboard is here to make arrant fools out of Michael J. Fox and the hover board creators of Back to the Future II. The GroundSurf electric skateboard has the perfect blend of cool and tech and more importantly it’s real. Find out more on Gearlog’s blog.