Tech

My opinions on all things tech related

There are 271 posts filed in Tech (this is page 24 of 28).

Do you Jybe, daddio?

Michael Stephens just drafted me into a Jybe session!

Jybe is a plugin for Firefox and IE that lets you co-browse. Whatever anybody brings up in their browser, all the others in the same Jybe session see. There’s also a mini chat room at the bottom so everyone can talk while browsing. Michael has screenshots.

Like IM, it does seem to do be well suited for a virtual reference environment. However, it isn’t perfect. While Michael could drag us all with him into EBSCO search results, Jybe doesn’t seem to pull everybody into every kind of restricted access site. Going to my admin page where I make new posts for example, everyone else merely saw a login screen. There is also no reflection of when one person scrolls up or down a site, though Jybe’s web site says that’s in the works. Jybe also seems to only work in one tab in Firefox, multiple tabs aren’t supported.

With a little more development, I think Jybe could make a wonderful virtual reference tool. What if voice communication could be added? Or the ability to lock others out from changing the page? That would enable a nice method of doing a distributed presentation, especially with the hypothetical voice chat added.

Gotta run now, but more thoughts later maybe. If anyone else wants to play around with Jybe, let me know!

The Economics of Video Game Rentals

On my lunch break today I popped down the street to Blockbuster. I had an itching to play a new video game, and a gift certificate in my pocket.

$6.99 for a video game rental now!! That pricing is simply insane. If I hadn’t had a gift certificate I would have walked out gameless. Let me point out the insanity:
(as a side note, imagine the value to patrons of libraries with console games circulating!)

For $14.99/month you can subscribe to Blockbuster’s online Netflix-type rental service. That gives you three movies out at a time. In addition, you get two free in-store rentals each month via printable coupons. Let’s assume that you use both of those rental coupons on video games, which incidentally cannot be rented through the online service; they’re in-store only. Using your coupons on video game rentals covers $13.98 of your monthly fee. If you would have rented those two games anyway, you can in effect get the movies by mail service for a mere $1.01 per month.

I can’t understand why Blockbuster’s game rental fees are so out of line with their standard movie fees, which I believe are in the $4.50 range.

Meanwhile Gamefly has popped up to deliver to the games-by-mail market. Their pricing seems out of line to me as well: $21.95 per month to have just two games out at a time. Most games that I really want to play I can probably find used for that price.

Speaking of video games, any corporate sponsor want to send me a PSP? I’ll give you free ad space for life 😀
In seriousness, it looks like an amazing convergence of wireless, video games, and portable media players.

Sneakernet reborn?

There’s a new Pew Internet report out from yesterday on the topic of music and movie downloading.

Particularly interesting is the rise of iPods and other portable media players as a file swapping mechanism. 19% of those surveyed have used the method.

While on the surface all the RIAA lawsuits seem to have cut down on use of Kazaa and its ilk, I wonder if the real result is just the pushing of file sharing further underground and into more personalized spaces. 28% have gotten music and/or videos through e-mail and instant messages.

And then there’s usenet. I haven’t seen it covered at all in the file sharing press bonanza of recent months. It takes a bit more technical savvy to find what you’re looking for, but there’s more copyright infringing materials on usenet (not to mention being a haven for child pornographers) than you’d believe.

Ah well, just some thoughts.

Choices

Every year I let myself spend about a third of my tax refund on something fun. This year I’ve got it narrowed down to two choices:

Upgrading my current 256mb Muvo TX to the 1GB model with FM radio. With money from ebaying the old one, it fits in the budget.

OR

Buying a paid account on Flickr, with some cash left over.

Thoughts and/or opinions?

Stoopid Firefox Tricks

A new Firefox extension, Greasemonkey, has some interesting implications. GM lets you run user-defined scripts that modify the html of pages as they are downloaded for viewing.

One such script is Butler. Among other things, it lets you bypass the saving restrictions on Google Print books.

Now that I think about it, one thing was not covered at CiL: hackers (I lose the term losely here). Odds are almost certain that any security placed on digital files online will be cracked wide open. Take iTunes for example; their DRM encoding has been bypassed twice in the last two days.

Granted, your average consumer is not going to use these techniques, or even be aware of them. But the threat of cracking and hacking is real, and needs to be taken into account when using computers in libraries.

Flickr News Flash!

So I was just browsing the Flickr Blog…

Yahoo is buying Flickr!

I never heard any of these rumors that supposedly foretold the purchase, but it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Now I’m torn between upgrading to a paid account now for the “super mega bonuses” and waiting for the cheaper version to come… I’m also assuming functionality remains the same. Crossing my fingers.

Oooh

Interesting blogging ideas up at StructuredBlogging.org

They’ve got a new WordPress 1.5 plugin for standardizing the structure of reviews of items (DVDs, books, etc) in XML. Theoretically a search engine could then identify item reviews on every blog that uses the system and aggregate together the collective public wisdom of a product.

I’m gonna go play with it, try to get a sample review up.

oh, and apparently there’s templates for blogging an event, too. CIL anybody?

TV’s at each seat

Michael McGrorty, a Councilor of the ALA, has a blog!
http://librarydust.typepad.com

This is probably common news, but I’m still exploring the library blogosphere.

He has a wonderful post on prevailing attitudes in libraries today, as well as how change is viewed. When discussing how libraries had reacted to, instead of shaping, the Internet:

I was sitting not long ago with some folks at a table in the midst of an ALA meeting when the topic of the Internet came up. I suggested an analogy: that the library’s response was as if movie theater owners had reacted to the emergence of television by ignoring the competition, then putting TV sets at each seat rather than by selling their films to the television networks. In return I got a table-full of strange looks.

I’m happy someone at the ALA understands these things and knows what is going on. Very well written, too.

Ineffective Blogging

Despite my recent praise for the Sci-Fi Channel, sometimes they still just don’t get it.

This morning on their ‘Sci-Fi Wire’ service of SF-related headlines and news stories, I found this entry. I’m a Harry Potter fan, so clicked into the story anxious to see the new cover.

But there’s no link anywhere. The cover is out there in the ether, but Sci-Fi won’t tell me where.

And don’t get me started on their movie of the week, “Mansquito”…

AllOfMP3

Anybody know anything about AllOfMP3.com? It’s a Russian site that sells supposedly legal downloadable songs. No DRM of any kind, and available in very many formats.

You pick your compression, and then get charged about $.02 per MB of song.

Interesting concept, I’m just wondering if the purchases are considered legal in the U.S.