The Smorgasbord

The Japanese must be gluttons for punishment today - because I happened along this little jem as well this morning. This guys “Engrish” isn’t so bad I guess, but when he says “dis is wok and woll” - I die laughing! Thanks Banned in Hollywood.

First rule of Japanese Bug Fights - we don’t talk about Japanese Bug Fights. Second rule of Japanese Bug Fights - we don’t talk about Japanese Bug Fights!

I don’t understand sometimes how a culture can be so technologically and educationally advanced - and yet continue to entertain themselves in some of the strangest and most childish ways imaginable. If you must see more - Japanesebugfights.com.

Ever looked for bargains on Craigslist? What if someone listed YOUR stuff on Craigslist - what would you do? I read this story a few weeks back about a cruel Craigslist Prank played on a man in Jacksonville, Oregon. Robert Salisbury is an independent contractor who was gone for the day at the lake. While he was gone - someone placed an ad on Craigslist saying “forced to leave the area suddenly and belongings, including a horse, free for the taking”.

He found out because he was at the lake, and he got a call from a woman who stopped by his house to claim his horse. On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with lawn mowers, weed eaters, ladders and more - and he CONFRONTS them - and they REFUSE to give him his own stuff back! I want you to imagine this scenario for a second, you go away for a nice day at the lake, and come back to find people are basically “ransacking” your home and property. As he pulls into the driveway he finds more than 30 people going through his home and barn. All these people (basically tresspassers) had printouts of the ad they shoved in his face to fend him off.

Apparently he calls the police, and by the time they showed up most of the looters were gone. Everyone who read the ad on Craigslist - just assumed that “because it was on the Internet - it was true”! Unbelievable. This is not the first time I’ve heard of this. Another time, it was reported that a house was to be “torn down” and people came in and took it right down to the studs, including carpet, windows, sinks, toilet, lights, and all fixtures. I believe in that instance it was a couple divorcing and one party was trying to get back at the other before the house was sold.

It is funny how the Internet can be used in this way, but you can use traditional media in the same way. It also goes to show how much now people think that the Internet is just as much of an authority as television, radio, or the local newspaper. Have you ever heard of a story like this? Comment now!

I have become so frustrated by to cost of gasoline in America that day by day I’m out to “find the cheapest gas”. I use the web each and every day from daybreak until bed, so it’s only fitting that I created my own page to find cheap gas. Just click on the tab at the top of any page on this site for a map:

All you have to do is input your zip code at the top to get gas prices in your local area for all listed stations and immediately find out “who has cheap gas” by you!

I commute a lot, and spend a LOT on gas each week. This will help me save money on gas quite a bit I a logon to check the prices every morning before I leave the house. I encourage you to bookmark this page and regularly visit to find the cheapest gas by you too!

Rent Books and Audio books with BooksFree, no late charge, free shipping, it’s basically Netflix for books!

I want to tell you about a new service I recently found, and I don’t know why somebody hadn’t started this company 5 years ago. It’s always cool when a new service comes around that uses the web. Do you have Netflix? Ever used Netflix? It’s the service where they send you DVD’s in the mail (like a rental), and when you’re done watching you slip it into a prepaid envelope and mail it back. No postage costs, quick turnaround on shipments, and you can keep an online queue of moves to be sent next. This is a great way to avoid ever going to the video store again. They also have services like Gamefly to rent video games through the mail like this, and even a few services that rent adult DVD’s this way too.

Well, it only makes sense that someone would invent the very same service for paperback and hardback books. BooksFree is a service that has over 100,000 books available from classics to recently released, and you can signup and have them sent to your home free of shipping charges just like Netflix. It’s like having your own library that you can check out what you want, when you want - without ever having to visit the library.

If you’re looking for the latest novel by Steven King, Michael Crichton, Mary Higgins Clark, or John Grisham - they have them all and more! One bonus feature is - if you’re a commuter (like me) they also have a huge stock of audio books, so if you drive a lot this service is perfect for you! I think it would also make a great gift for any reader - maybe for your Mom or Dad on Mother’s or Father’s day! You can cancel it anytime, and they have plans that start at $9.99 too. I think I’ll get as much use out of BooksFree as I do out of Netflix!

People who believe in Scientology are crazy. They really are. They can slice and dice it any way they want, but there’s no denying the fact that the crux of the religion is the fact that they believe in aliens, and it’s the source of all our troubles today. I find it no small laughing matter that so many celebrities are awash in Scientology because they all live in some kind of fantasy land anyway, and they have to believe in something that crazy just to justify their own life and lifestyle. Recently it was announced that the woman who does the voice for Bart Simpson donated 12 million dollars to her Scientology faith. When I saw this South Park clip below I laughed and laughed because every single shred of it is absolutely true. That’s what makes it so funny - you’d think they made some of that up for the cartoon, but they didn’t, it’s all completely true. After you read the clip, just visit Xenu.net and you will be shocked and amazed what a cult Scientology really is and how many people they have completely brainwashed over the years.

This is my review of “hulu.com”, the TV network and movie studio attempt to battle YouTube head to head.

I’ve been working online for 13 years. In that time we’ve seen the rise and fall of Napster, the birth of IM, online chat, and “social networking”. I’ve read that 70% of the country (or more) has a broadband connection. I was appreciating that fact today uploading 200K pictures to one of my web sites. Zing, zing, zing, all 100 of them were uploaded in just a few minutes. What does all this mean? The web is growing up. It’s maturing. It’s also changing how we live our lives, and what we watch and see and do. I was just telling my son the other day that I remember when I was a kid we had one tv in the family room and an antenna rotor. There were 6 channels to watch, the three major networks, one PBS, and two independant channels. In my house today we have a flat screen tv, DVD, VCR, a Wii, and a laptop in the family room. Every bedroom but one has a PC. Every bedroom has a tv and a DVD player. My son’s room has an Xbox 360 and 7 or 8 older classic game consoles. He also has a wireless mp3 player. We have a 3 base telephone set with a Vonage line, and 2 adults and 2 teens in the house have cell phones. The house has wired and wireless broadband throughout. Both of our cars have satellite radio.

In other words - there is no shortage of multimedia distractions in our home. I can’t imagine that we’re much different more or less than millions of other families. What this means is traditional media should be worried…VERY worried. Traditional broadcast media, or what we call “terrestrial tv and radio” - they should be the most worried of all. If cable and satellite tv haven’t already nearly killed them compared to their decades and decades of near total dominance - the web has usurped the rest of. But the web has also hurt traditional print media like newspaper and magazine sales, and it’s also hurt the recording and movie industries. Rather than try and embrace the “information superhighway” nearly all of these forms of “traditional media” have dragged their feet. Since the advent of the Internet has also meant the ease of “digital distrubution” some media have resorted to frivolous lawsuits against private citizens in a vain attempt to scare the public and keep themselves fat and happy. While YouTube is still a big of a mess (as far as copyright infringement and video quality are concerned), the model that has made it so successful is flourishing better than flowers in a manure pile.

I wasn’t surprised when NBC first announced it’s deal with YouTube. It seems like they were the first major network to make a deal with YouTube. Maybe it was that experiment that taugh them it could be done better. It wasn’t long ago I heard NBC was going to create their own online video network. As soon as I heard it I just said “whatever”, figuring that it would about as successful as all the other “video clones” currently sprouting up. And then last week I heard it was live on hulu.com.

Naturally - I had to check it out, and I have to admit I figured in less than 5 minutes I’d chalk it up to be a complete and utter failure.

When I went to hulu.com for the first time the first thing I noticed when browsing around was that multiple networks were participating. Bravo, Sci-Fi, FX, G4, Sony, Sundance, E!, Fox, Universal, NBC, the NBA, USA, WB, 20th Century Fox, the NHL and more had signed on.

In addition major movie studios such as Lionsgate, Metro Golwyn Mayer, and 20th Century Fox had signed on.

Even though it would appear that there are less than 1,000 full pieces of content within the site currently (based on the fact that you can browse them from one or two web pages), I think that the quality of the content indicates there is much, much more to come. Within just a few minutes I found that I could be instantly watching Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Family Guy, The Office, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Ice Age, Point Break, Sideways, or Weekend at Bernies. These are major titles, and many current broadcast shows.

For the purposes of this review I chose to watch a movie - “The Big Lebowski”. I should mention that prior to this I had already signed up for a free “account” which you have to do to view content. It was nothing extravagant, just a simple form and then email verification. Which surprised me, because the movie I had chosen to watch was “rated R”.

I mean honestly - I was glad it was so easy to just “start watching”, but who’s to say I really was the appropriate age? They asked my age when I signed up, but both my teens are savvy enough just lie about that - as are the bulk of the web aware youth today. So after the obligatory “intended for mature audiences” screen, the next thing I’m faced with is of course an advertisement.

I was concerned about this at first, but in the scheme of things it’s really not that bad. If you look at this images check out the timeline at the bottom of the pic. The white dots in the timeline are commercials. For this two hour movie there are 11 dots, and added to the one at the beginning that’s 12 commercials for a two hour movie. These are 30 second commercials, and that amounts to 6 minutes of ads for the entire movie. Compare that to 24 minutes of commercials for two hours of television or 15 minutes of previews in the movie theater. All traditional media has always been based solely on this type of advertising model - it makes complete sense to just carry it to to the web. Oh - in addition in this image notice that wherever you move your mouse, the exact timestamp appears, which is handy for moving to any point in the timeline you would like (no you can’t forward past the commercials).

In this next image I show you the menus that appear when you mouse near the edges. At the bottom you’ve got the standard play/pause, timeline, and volume - but there are 4 options on the left and 4 options on the right.

The second from the top right is “Pop Out”, which allows you to watch the movie in it’s own browser window like this (the menu only stays when you mouse near the edge):

The “share” option leads you to a social media sharing menu with options for myspace, facebook, digg, windows live, del.icio.us, reddit, StumbleUpon, or Google Bookmarks. Look at this, major networks and movie studios brazenly asking us to “digg” them!?

Another option they give us is to email it to a friend:

And in an incredible YouTube ripoff moment they give us the ability to “embed” anything. Wow, you can embed a 2 hour movie in your blog? Why yes you can…

There are also options for “full screen” and even one to change the video quality from 360p to 480p. I applaud them for actually stating the quality without the usual “broadband” and “dialup” type options. I tried viewing the movie full screen in 480p, and it wasn’t choppy at all, it instantly buffered, and the quality was pretty good. There wasn’t much I didn’t like about the entire experience. I found that there were sections on the site for just “clips” and another for full length series and feature films. Searching was easy and brought expected results. Play was pretty instant and the entire site seems to be on a pretty good backbone with some pretty good servers and bandwidth. I know wonder that if the free vintage TV series at NBC.com I wrote about a few weeks back also run on this network (or not). I would have to presume “yes” since a search for the A-team on hulu.com brings immediate results.

In synopsis, I have to say that I am very impressed with Hulu and I’m very surprised that the major networks not “get the web” and aren’t yet again trying to screw us. One of the modern “conveniences” that has long since bothered me is the fact that modern media thinks that we (as consumers) are stupid. They blatantly believe they have the ability to charge us over and over and over again for the exact same content. Case and point - I paid full price for the Rolling Stones “Tattoo You” album when it came out when it was released in 1981. Then in about 1985 I bought in on cassette, and again probably about 1995 on CD. If I want to listen to it on my phone, Sprint wants me to buy it again - and even if I do (buy the full song) I have to pay $3.99 just to use “Start Me Up” as a ringtone. To play it on my iPod I have but the album again on iTunes, and for the privilege of listening to those Stones songs on my satellite radio - I have to pay a monthly subscription fee. Sometime in the near future I’ll probably be forced to buy it yet again in an “HD Audio” version. This same example could also have been the movie “The Blues Brothers” which I have now on both VCR and DVD. I’ve yet to try and view it on my iPod or one of our computers. “F” you guys! Don’t you get how sick of this I am? I don’t want to continue to buy “licenses” for the same content on different devices.

While Hulu doesn’t completely address this issue, it’s a start, and I hope that the other major players follow suit. As an online markete the thing I really find hilarious is the fact that major media are just figuring out the web, but the sex industry has been raking in over 300 billion online for many years now with the exact same model (give tons of free content away and sell loads of advertisement). If you want to see if hulu is for you or not - I give to you John Belush in one of my favorite SNL sketches “Samurai Delicatessen”:

Looking for “free online games” that are as good as Xbox live? These browser based games have PC features, and how can you beat free?

So I’m watching “Attack of the Show” the other day and they showed this new site called “InstantAction.com“. They hailed it as “Xbox live for the PC”, and if someone is ballsy enough to make that kind of claim - well, I just have to check it out. When they showed it on t.v. they said it was “social gaming network”. When you get an account, of course you’ll have an “inbox”, a “profile”, and a list of “friends” to play whenever you logon. The service is free (for now), and they have 4 full games that you can play in a web browser. There’s one game coming they showed on tv that’s not on there yet that looked an awful lot like a Metroid Prime ripoff. I don’t care if it’s a ripoff or not, as long as it’s free to play and cool.

So, I went to instantaction.com and created a new account. I logged in for the first time and just picked a random game to try. “Think Tanks” was the first game I checked out. It’s pretty simple, you can “start a game” or “join a game” (and of course play with others). You start with a little “My Party” box on top right where you can in effect “host your own room” and invite friends to play.

I decided to try “single game” - I mean, who wants to get slaughtered by real people the first time they play? I took about 3-4 minutes to download the game on broadband cable the first time, but once you have it - it loads right up. Also - I used Firefox, and it had to install a game launcher “add-on” extension and restart the browser the very first time. There are 12 worlds or “levels” you can play, I just opted for the default level 1 “Medulla Mesa”. When the game started I was impressed with the detail of the terrain. Your player is a short and stout little tank with turret on top. The arrows move you around the level, and your mouse aims the crosshairs of the turret, the mouse button fires. There are 7 other thanks, and you basically roam around the level and shoot at them and take them out before they do you. When you die, you come back after 3 seconds. This fact, and how the other players are shown on the map reminded me sooooo much of Halo it wasn’t funny. There are “powerups” throughout the level. I had a lot of fun playing, but really sucked because of the fact that I was on my laptop. You really need a real mouse and not a touchpad to stand a chance in this game. Here’s a snap of the gameplay action:

So the next game I tried was “Marble Blast” which was of course a blatant ripoff of Marble Mania. Neverless, a fun game in which you navigate your marble through different levels by avoiding pitfalls, jumping, and trying not to fall off ledges and down holes. In this game you have an “individual challege” where you “beat the clock” - or you can do the “realtime multiplayer”, which seems like it would be kind of weird for this kind of game. I guess you race other players when you play that way. If this type of “maze game” is your bag, you’ll love Marble Blast, especially ’cause it free! Here’s a pic of the action when I completed level 1:

The third game I tried was “Cyclomite” - which I don’t really have anything to compare it to. Seems pretty original. You control a wheel in the center of the screen that has spokes, and each half is a different color. From the outer edges of the screen come these “meteorite” things that you have to “intercept” with the wheel. If the color of the meteor matches the color of the “spoke” in the wheel it touches, it is absorbed, otherwise, it “stack” on the edge. If you get the wrong color stacked too high - game stops and you lose. I’m sure there’s more to this game once you get going, but I didn’t play it much longer than to figure out how it worked. Here’s a pic of “Cyclomite” during gameplay:

All in all Instant Action wasn’t a bad experience, and it does say “beta” on their logo. If they think they’re going to build up a community of “free” games and then douse a membership fee on it like gasoline, they’re just doomed for failure. Also - they’re going to have to step it up a bit to be able to compete with Xbox live and online console gaming. They may need to get more servers too, I never did get to play “Screw Jumpers” at all, since it would never fully load. It’s either the most popular game, or it was just bogged down from their mention on G4 TV. In any event, you’ll have some downtime over the holiday weekend - you should check out these “free online games” when you’re at the relatives house with nothing to do! They should work just as well in Internet Explorer if they don’t have Firefox where you’re going….but if they don’t - install it for them!

I was checking my email today and I get my weekly email from NBC. I’m probably stuck getting emails from NBC in the first place because my wife used my email address voting for “Deal or No Deal” last year sometime. Usually just throw the email away without reading it, but the title was “The A-Team is back on NBC.com”. I mis-read that and thought they were “back on NBC” which kind of freaked me out. The first words out of my mouth were “Who’s playing Mr. T? It can’t be….like…Mr. T?” Right there - they got me! They sucked me in, I just had to know. I viewed the email and saw this:

Turns out the are putting old episodes of shows from 25 odd years ago on the NBC.com web site. They must have been targeting people from my demographic this week, because I grew up with most of those shows, like the A-Team, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Miami Vice, and Emergency! They sucked me in even further, I click to see just how good the quality was on these - because let’s face it, who could resist watching an episode of the A-team online?

I was really surprised, when I clicked a got a web page, chose the “A-Team” and when the interface came up I chose an episode and was watching within seconds. I had the ability to choose from any season, any episode. The quality was good the movie was clear, and right away a commercial came up. I thought then that maybe I would be bombarded with commercials the entire time but the message said “very rew interruptions due to Sponsorshp from sprint…”. In fact, in the timeline under the movie I noticed that the “notches” in the line represented when the commercials played. You can’t forward past them, but they are only 30 seconds.

The flash interface that plays the movies works well, and there are “large” and “full screen” options to watch all the TV shows. The full screen option was a little lesser quality, but still completely watchable. Thank you NBC for doing something right. I only wish that the movie studios and record labels would wise up and do the same.

I find a lot of things on the Internet, but today made me realize that it’s been a very long time where I read something that engaged me so much I lost an entire hour before I knew it! I think you’ll love this one….you know those ridiculous Nigerian scam emails you get? There is an entire web site devoted to “baiting” those nigerian scammers and screwing with their heads! Wasting their time and resources so badly that they can’t devote their full resources to scamming others. The post their scambait stores in their entirety on 419eater.com. That in itself is a pretty funny and engaging read. But here’s a scambaiting so good that the scammer is tricked into getting a tattoo!! The story was awesome, you’ll be wanting to tell your friends about it. It was such a finely executed trick - I am very impressed. Check it out, you’ll find it a very worthy read.