Google Earth 4.0 Beta: Nice Update

Mt Jefferson, formerly known as "lo res white blob".

I just upgraded Google Earth and where once was white blobs in the cascades are now beautiful, richly detailed mountains. Its nowhere near 100% complete but we're seeing the potential as more map data is integrated into the system. According to Google, 20% of the earth is now covered by hi res imagery and 33% of the worlds population can now see their home.

The UI is quite slick as well, not normally a Google strong point. Its intuative, transparent and immediately user friendly. Overall, this is a great addition...now if I could only watch climbers in real time on Mt Hood...

HD DVD VS Blue-ray: Primed for the Technology Trash Heap

VS

This much hyped format war is really about the last battle for video sold on physical media and its turning out to be very underwhelming. Here are the reasons why its not working and ultimately will never be the next DVD phenomenon:

1. People are OK with DVDs. Heck, some people still use VHS, although admitedly not many use Betamax or Laserdisc but I digress. DVD is a good format with great features and it still beats the pants off most network tv quality.
2. Dirty sales tactics. At twice the price, Blue-ray has some powerful allies: the retail salesforce.
   
3. Efficiencies of cooperation were ignored. Time is running out. This war for the hearts and minds of video enthusiasts has drained so much time and money that it is turning out to be expensive, boring and lacking real benefits. There is still a need for quality content, full 1080p resolution, faster access times. Meanwhile, a new kid is coming to town...
   
4. Very soon ONLINE DISTRIBUTION will start eating market share. As iTunes, Bittorrent and other RSS video aggregators become more ubiquitous, the home computer becomes the center of a computer based media experience.

Let's face it: physical media is a dying breed. We learned from music that there are some real advantages to having all of your music in a svelte, neatly organized, scratch proof package and ready to go in a moments notice. What if all of your TV and video were this well organized on a 2 Terabyte hard drive? We need to focus on getting fiber to American homes and skip the idea of this new format being the next DVD phenomenon altogether.

Democracy 0.8.4: Review

For those not familiar with it, Democracy is an excellent app used to distribute and view video via RSS. Think podcast client for video. I've been using this player for 6 months with continuous crashes and perpetually hanging downloads inhibiting my useage. After playing around with the 0.8.4 upgrade I find it finally is running smooth on OS X.

The Democracy platform has excellent potential for those looking for an online distribution method that is totally free. If you've got some quality content that you'd like to sydicate or just want to check out some original content, there is no reason not to check out Democracy Player now.