Stage6 Shuts Down

Stage6, of the high quality DivX video streaming fame, has shut down. And it's not even April Fools' Day. There were feelers sent out by the folks at DivX a few days before but I never really paid heed. This is the worst piece of news I've heard in years. Their homepage shows this message:

Stage6.com has been shut down. Thank you for supporting the service.

We created Stage6 with the mission of empowering content creators and viewers to discover a new kind of video experience. Ultimately, the continued operation of Stage6 was a very expensive enterprise that required an enormous amount of attention and resources that we at DivX are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it's really as simple as that.

Sigh.

Apparently they are looking to drive a new initiative where they provide a platform for streaming internet video to TV's, thus driving their DivX enabled devices into the market. But when the world is heading towards online video and the like, with even outlets like Netflix launching an on-demand streaming service, surely they could have worked some way out to continue having stage6, or at least struck a deal with A. N. Other software company. After all Stage6 has developed into the best site for high quality video content with a really good online community.

Oh well, my frustration at not being able to have access to high quality (free) TV shows anymore knows no bounds. Twats!

Update: Techcrunch gives a detailed account of situations that eventually killed Stage6. And the sad thing is, it was more a war of egos than anything really technical. After all, what happens if your entire core team quits! So as I said earlier, 'Twats!'

The Coming of Age of the Social Network

I have trashed some of the annoying elements of social networks, and mildly joked about Orkut in an earlier post. Of course, whether the 'humour' actually came through is entirely up to the readers. But these days I have seen stuff going on in social networks that are genuinely exciting.

In fact I should be saying social network. (Emphasis on the singular)

Facebook is making great strides in becoming a much more useful place for people. Yes, the social network can actually be a place where time can be spent productively. Recently Facebook launched the 'Marketplace' that allowed members of local networks to sell second hand stuff. More like Craigslist. The Texas A&M network posted on campus job openings on Marketplace.

SEO Does Work at times

I saw a spike in my site stats today. Not that the spike was particularly steep. But the stat whore that I can be on occasions, I casually looked at my search engine terms for the day:

oox film stream
ovguide
american dad episodes free streaming
free stream sites like tv links
alluc streaming
(hosted movies)( movie links)(streaming movies)
best of internet free movies online watch forumz
streaming movies now
the best site for streaming tv shows
free new high quality stream movies
divx online str
stream dexter tv
alluc.org other websites stream movies tv shows
stream tv shows divx
www.tamil speak.com
film stream joox
divx streaming 24 joox
stream latest movies tv links
streaming tv shows address
streaming divx website tv show
american dad streaming
ovguide down
streaming tv shows south park
divx movie streaming joox

Much joy appeared at finally seeing people coming to the site with search terms that actually led to relevant content here. So will that mean more Search Engine Optimized post titles (which also translates to trite unimaginative titles)? I hope not.

Free Streaming Movies and TV Shows

Yes I admit I have been guilty of baiting search engines for the title, but trust me, there has been reasonable amount of research going into this post. So keep reading.

The best part of internet these days is the sheer wealth of streaming media that is available in video form. The popularity of sites like Youtube, DailyMotion and many more such sites is not just due to being able to upload your home made videos. It is the ease of being able to watch copyright material such as cricket, football clips, TV shows and movies. While such acts by the users are not going unnoticed by the MPAA who are trying their best to bring down Youtube and sports associations such as the English Premier League have slapped lawsuits against Youtube for allowing people to upload clips. (As an aside, I wrote a post earlier on the consequences of the EPL's lawsuit against Youtube.)

But those things aside, there is still some time to go before the law manages to catch up with these 'illegal' activities. I doubt if they will manage to completely clamp down on them because they still haven't been able to stop Bit-torrent sites entirely.

The TV shows and movies that are present in these video streaming sites are not very easily accessible by simple use of the search bar. But when one wants to watch them there are other sites that index your favorite TV shows, and link to them episode wise. Some of which we'll talk about here.

Google Reader Goes Offline

When Scoble gave that now famous interview about managing his 622 feeds a day, he mentioned that one of the few disadvantages of Google Reader was the lack of an offline reading facility.

It now appears that biggies like Google actually listen to comments of A-list bloggers like him. Although I doubt they might have come up with the offline add-on so soon.

Anyway Google Reader feeds can now be read offline. So, for those highly addicted RSS-readers going on long trips here's the solution. Google Reader requires you to select the Offlines option in their feed menu and prompts you to install a GadgetGears Firefox add-on. Once done installing, you have to restart the browser to be able to start downloading the feeds.

For further details go ahead and read the tutorial.

Songbird - Firefox of Media Players

Now after systematically dismantling the hold of Internet Explorer over the user's internet browsing experience, comes another threat - this time to proprietary media players. Songbird might not only hurt Microsoft here, but also other biggies who are much more prominent in the post-ipod world.

For the geeks (if they haven't already heard of it, that is), Songbird is built on Mozilla's XULRunner interface, which allows seamless integration with all platforms, be it Windows, Mac or Linux. For the not so geeky, Songbird is a player that, apart from serving as your everyday desktop based media player, plays media from the web. You can browse web sites from the player itself and if you land on sites that contain music it will crawl that page and create playlists from all the media present on that page. What more? You can just click on the song in the playlist and it will play it just like it will play your local audio. It downloads the ID3 tag information and everything, and you can save the song by dragging and dropping it into your library. Yes it's as simple as that.

The screencast at the end of the post will better explain what this player is capable of.

Moral Policing and Elite Indian Institutions.

There has been a lot of furore over the painting of arts student Chandramohan. We know how our government protects every micro-community in India that takes offence to anything ranging from art work to some one even thinking offensive thoughts. How they manage to read someone's thought, I leave it up to your imagination. (I was making that one up.)

But the subject of my discussion here has got to do with policing something else - the online world in institutions of higher learning. The subject of my ire is the Indian Institute of Technology - Roorkee.

EPL - The Biggest Threat to Youtube?

The following post, although stems from football, is very much relevant for any other form of entertainment from video hosting sites like Youtube. I had posted this on Soccerlens, but feel it to be fairly general to be posted here too. One doesn't need to know football to get the point of this post. So read on and share your thoughts at the end of it.

As we all may know by now, the English Premier League is to sue Youtube for what it calls copyright infringement on its content. The EPL has accused Youtube of “knowingly misappropriating” its intellectual property by “encouraging” people to post goal videos and highlights of Premiership games. [source]

It doesn’t end there. The League authorities have filed a ‘class action suit’ asking anyone and everyone whose copyright has been infringed upon, the success of which would mean the shutting down of Youtube (They have also set up a web site for this).

It is understood that the EPL is well within its rights to protect its copyrights and challenge Youtube (which ironically is one of the best promotional vehicles of the EPL), but what the League authorities would do well here is to pause for a while and rethink their strategy.

Text Link Ads and Blog Monetization

Part of the attraction of setting out to your own domain is the opportunity it affords one to fully customize the look of the blog, and hence maximize the chances of making money off it. As regular visitors might note, this blog is not big on the monetizing front. Yet.

Download Music from MySpace

Well, I don't know how long it will last but if you go here it will direct you to enter the MySpace URL of the particular band that you are interested in.

This is the easiest way to download songs from MySpace. All you need to do is copy and paste the bands homepage into the script below and click on the appearing download links to download the songs from that band's myspace homepage.

Just enter the band's MySpace (e.g. http://www.myspace.com/peterbjornandjohn) and download! Links expire after one minute, just press Decode again. The process to display the myspace songs can take a while, just be patient.[via]

I gave it a shot and it worked. Murdoch and his minions have some serious bug fixing or software overhaul at hand. But for us guys, good luck while it lasts!

TIOTI - TiVo for the Web? (A Review)

Yesterday I got an invite from the guys at TIOTI to beta test their system. I duly went about the drill and here are my brief thoughts.

TIOTI stands for Tape It Off the Internet. It is a site that's targeted at TV shows and provides Bit-torrent links to download shows off the net. I'm sure you must be wondering if the thing's legit. Well, that depends on a lot of factors. First of all, is TiVo legal? Umm, yes. We can record shows off our TVs and we all know how much these rips contribute to the over all scheme of things as far as TV piracy goes. These recorded shows go on to the computers and the web as bit-torrents. But then I digress. Let's focus on what's good about TIOTI and then move on to the gray areas.

Joost - A review

A review of Joost was long time coming. I had posted earlier on how it could revolutionize the way couch potatoes sit on couches and the way it could change the whole ratings system and TV programming in general. Last week I got an invite after a really, really long time to test the beta version.

The Curse of the Social Network

I am not a very 'social' person. I take time to start talking or initiate conversations. Once past the initiation stages, my talkative instincts take over and then the pain dawns on the unfortunate listener. But I am not very social to begin with, although that hasn't stopped me from having over 200 friends on my Orkut list.

AGLOCO - Another Pyramid Scheme?

When I first saw this I felt 'yeah right!'. Apparently its a service that pays you for surfing the net. I have seen plenty of them earlier but this one seems to have grown so much in popularity that it might be actually prove little hard to ignore. It started with much fanfare and a grand advertising campaign.

World Cup ‘Fever’

It's a strange feeling. Just when you resign yourself to the truth that the Americans couldn't (and would never) care less about football (soccer), you have another sporting event that most of them will never ever hear of in their lifetimes. Quite understandable, their hatred for Britishness. Baseball and American football were invented out of a need to play sports that were not British, during the freedom movement. While soccer keeps flitting, albeit briefly, in and out of the American consciousness - once in four years like the Olympics - due to the sizeable Hispanic influence, cricket would mean no more than either the insect or this. So for desis living in the American heartland, things could feel strange and lonely during the World Cup.

I feel sorry for those desis who had come to the US about 10 years ago. Must have been some sacrifice, missing the biggest sporting event of the homeland. Those were the days of the dial-up and the odd broadband service, when cable companies might have charged a graduate student's yearly salary for a World Cup package. Thanks to hi-speed internet, as I have said earlier in connection with Joost and online TV shows, live sporting events are cheap (and *whisper*... even free!). I have been doing some savage searching on the net, looking for decent world cup packages. For those of you looking for legal options, Dish network has the rights in the Americas and offers it for a measly sum of $199!

But I am not here to talk about the TV option. There are a whole lot of sites that have good paid coverage which are much cheaper. cric20 promises the entire package for $100 and if you use Google Checkout by March 10th to buy it, you can get it for $70. They have another package where you get the matches of a particular team plus semis plus final for $60 and individual games for $2. But if you are bent upon not spending a penny, then there is the Sopcast option, which is the P2P software for streaming television. Neither legal nor illegal, it is in the gray zone where much of modern internet technology falls. Sopcast which can be downloaded from here, has a whole bunch of preloaded channels that can be selected and watched. But it is highly unlikely there will be a cricket channel. So there lies the challenge. Of looking for links that can be used with the software. So my random surfing brought me to www.tnlcricket.com. It has a lot of Google ads among others cluttering up the site, but the focal point is the small chat box in the middle of the page where people give out links to matches that can be used either with Sopcast or with IE7. Highly unreliable, but that is the price for free streams. If people get any other sites with free streams, let me know. I'll be grateful.

Back to the cricket, it is good in a way that I am not in the middle of the media madness that descends in India during the world cup. The frenzy that gets drummed up makes one feel that this is THE world cup for India. I have a rather more detached view this time round. Funnily, I am more concerned about Manchester United lasting the distance (and regaining the EPL title) with all their sudden spurt of injuries than with the Indian team that just cantered to a win against WI the other day. The main challenge is to make it past the Super 8, and after that I might start getting real serious.

Somehow, I am more excited about the Twenty20 World Cup later this year. India has hardly played any Twenty20.

Open Source Colas and Naughty Old Gates

Yes it is precisely that. Funny this is what some random tag surfing brought me to. I've heard jokes about outsourcing where people talk about outsourcing almost any kind of service however insane, but not many about open source stuff. But this one beats it all!

If you’ve been to a computer show in recent months you might have seen it: a shiny silver drink can with a ring-pull logo and the words “opencola” on the side. Inside is a fizzy drink that tastes very much like Coca-Cola. Or is it Pepsi?There’s something else written on the can, though, which sets the drink apart. It says “check out the source at opencola.com.” Go to that Web address and you’ll see something that’s not available on Coca-Cola’s website, or Pepsi’s — the recipe for cola. For the first time ever, you can make the real thing in your own home. OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License.

Of course the people who made the drink weren't really serious about making something big out of it, and it was used purely as a tool for educating the people and extolling the virtues of open source software. However the software company that actually used this strategy ended up finding the drink to be more popular than the software!

But my question is if there is a chance where certain products (by that I mean tangible ones, not software) could be made open source, what would that mean to the economy of some of the evil empires that currently have a monopoly over? I would think that to be kinda far fetched because the people who make these products incur some significant cost which wouldn't be worth the while to release it for free (maybe my dear IIM friend might care to enlighten us!). But hey, if Linus Torvalds could invest his time and effort into giving birth to Linux and realeasing his baby to the world for its growth and nourishment, then why not other products?

And on the subject of Operating Systems here is a link that I have been wanting to post for a while about. Despite widespread criticism and its obvious security flaws I have been a staunch supporter of the Windows OS. I like the way they make things easy for the common user. Mac users will have other ideas, though the Mac may really be user friendly, maybe more than Windows. (Which reminds me... last semester while working in one of the labs in the University, I had to help someone set up a VPN client on a Mac, and trust me, it was then I realised that Macs don't have a right click! I have to admit it was the first time I'd used a Mac and I did find the graphics impressive, but it was different - though not necessarily less or more user friendly than Windows - and would take time to get used to) Anyway, getting to the point, I love the Windows OS (but adore Firefox) and respect the work Microsoft does. They have a really smart bunch of people. But I am not really sure about Bill Gates. There's been far too many occasions where his behaviour, or let's say his communication abilities have been found wanting. This is the second situation of late, where I've seen Gates exhibit obvious nervousness/weakness or something not befitting the richest man in the world. (the other one being his immediate stand up and leave while cameras were still aimed at him in Jon Stewart's Daily Show)

I don't agree with the particular blogger's constant Vista-is-another-crappy-thing-to-come-out-of-Microsoft rant but I do see Gates' response to questions he would normally expect to be asked, particularly the Apple comparison, as appalling and highly defeatist, given that the interview was also a small part of the huge promotional campaign that Microsoft has undertaken for Vista. In case you want to read the interview here it is.

I know, I have been writing more stuff about world and current issues than I usually write about. Maybe it's got to do with my abnormally increased frequenting of blogs in general and tech/entertainment blogs in particular, but for those who are terribly interested in my phenomenally eventful personal life, I'll get back to one of those 'personal experiences' posts soon.

But before that I would have to give one more link that's totally unavoidable and getting a lot of press lately; I must admit, another gem from the erstwhile pop princess, current one-step-from-rehab wastrel and quite possibly future Courtney Love. Yes you might have guessed by now. Our very dear Britney Spears.

Update: Lest I have another post about it... due to its relevance you might want to read about the blame game/excuses from the current CEO Steve Ballmer for the rather poor sales of Vista. It comes as little surprise that the object of his frustration is a familiar enemy but a close friend of us desis atleast! Personally I believe it will pick up after their usual SP1, SP2 and the like.

The next big thing

The internet has slowly and surely crawled into my psyche and it is little wonder that I can live in peace even if I didn't have a T.V at home. To be a bit more specific, it is Web 2.0 that has really brought about this change from a couch potato to a ermm... laptop tomato. Suddenly I could afford to skip primetime hits like 24, House, Heroes, Smallville, Prison Break... that I have been religiously watching on T.V. No, I am not talking about torrents, but apparently television studios have recognized the importance of the internet and stream the episodes of current seasons on their official websites. Of course, this is only for the privileged few (by which I mean users in the US!). Apart from T.V shows, I had Sopcast come to my rescue when I wanted to watch the English Premier League and live cricket. Of course, this wasn't legal but nonetheless, like most illegal Internet-based technologies, brilliant stuff. It used the power of P2P (peer to peer) technology - read Napster, Kazaa - to stream content. Instead of downloading you were streaming, which solved the bandwidth issue with overloaded servers. So more the peers, more the speed of streaming and hence during big live games you will get brilliant speed and pretty good quality.

Now what I am getting at, is an application that intends to incorporate television with this P2P technology. I had been to their website a week back and they were looking for beta testers, so I put my email address in their queue. Yet to get a reply. I'll wait. Today I found this link though a month old that interviews the people behind the application called Joost, also known as The Venice Project. The main men involved in this are another pair of those formidable Internet duos (not Sergey Brin and Larry Page) - Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the guys behind Kazaa and the guys behind Skype. They sold off the latter to ebay for a cool $2.6 billion. Traditionally, both their killer apps have been free. But this time they are looking at going the legal way by bringing production houses on-board. To quote from the article here's an excerpt:

In a little conference room tucked behind a bull pen bustling with new hires, Friis flips open the laptop. He pokes a few keys, locates a Wi-Fi network, hits a few more keys. Then, with a final click and the slightest little smile, he spins the machine around and -- how about that: a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, running full-screen. Another click. Razor-sharp footage of pandas munching shimmering stalks of bamboo. Click. Fear Factor, back from the grave. Click. Earth: Final Conflict. Click. Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Laptop TV! Not to mention desktop and palmtop. "It even looks pretty good hooked up to my plasma," Friis says. How do you say touché in Danish?

But he's not finished. A flick of the cursor brings up a see-through virtual remote control with buttons for Play, Stop, Skip, and Reverse -- plus something novel: a box labeled Search. An icon at screen left opens a translucent program guide that lists Indy Racing, Warner Music, National Geographic, and other attractions interlaced with personalized "smart channels." How many? "Basically, it's infinite," Friis says. Another click opens a palette of widgets straight out of a late-model online social network: buddy list, IM, and options to "Rate It!" and "Share What I'm Watching!" Then up to the top for a window labeled Content Owner's Area. "We're still working on that."

"Pretty cool, yes?" he asks.

Yes.

I say Yes too. And in typical childish Boratishness I add, 'I like. I like.' to that. Even if half the things promised comes true, it is like entering the next level of awesomeness (and at this point I proceed to jump with joy). Also a potential blow for traditional cable operators, and disruptive towards broadcasters who are currently bringing their shows online. The article did not acknowledge the prescence of softwares that already exist (like Sopcast) but gives a solution that might prove to be legal and profitable without actually burdening the end user, both financially and mentally (apparently the ads will be reduced by 90%!).Of course from the HDTV-like screen shots it already looks like a winner. Howevere Youtube and the like wouldn't have to fear for the moment because they are not yet big on the users-uploading-their-own-channels bit, citing possibilities of users uploading copyright material.

But till then I'll wait for my turn (if at all I get a mail from the geeks at Joost) for beta testing. And yeah, if any of you beta-testers reading this have an invite-token send me one.

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Joost_The_next_big_thing_for_streaming_TV]