The New York Times erected its paywall on March 28 in the U.S. While it is a fairly permeable wall (links from various sources will provide you with free access, and your first 20 visits each month are free), the Times’ subscription model is way out of whack with the rest of the industry. Head on over to The Understatement to see a chart showing just how much more expensive the Times will be than any other online source.
For all the talk about “new media,” it appears that old media still powers the online trends of today. Last month, HP released the results of a study that showed that user activity and number of followers on Twitter do not contribute strongly to trend creation and its propagation. Instead, mainstream media play a role in most trending topics, and act as a feeder of these trends.
Hot tubs aren’t the only things that can double as time machines. Your computer can, too, with a bit of help. YouTube Time Machine is a website that allows you to pick a year, and watch video content from that year.
The site is pretty simple. A slider across the top allows you to pick a year (currently from 1860 through 2010). The content is pre-selected by the folks who run the site, and is fed to you randomly for the year that you select. You can filter content by type, allowing or disallowing certain categories of content. The current categories are Video Games, Television, Commercials, Current Events, Sports, Movies, and Music.
As an example of what you might get, when I selected 1986, I was presented with a video montage of television commercials that aired in 1986, the music video for Bon Jovi’s Livin’ On a Prayer, a trailer for Short Circuit 1, a montage of television show openings, and Marv Albert’s best sports bloopers of 1986.
The site isn’t perfect, but it is still in alpha status. Often, videos that I skipped kept returning as I skipped through content, and there is no way to list all of the selected videos for a year. Still, YouTube Time Machine offers a nice journey down memory lane. Does it bring back memories for you like it does for me?
If you want an easy way to stream media from your home computer to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, and want it to be free, you’re going to want to check out ZumoCast. It appeared in the app store on September 8th, and it has been awesome ever since! Read more
We don’t often cover news stories here at 40Tech, but this one bears mentioning. A recent FCC decision [PDF file from FCC site] now allows the movie industry to disable analog outputs on your equipment in certain situations. Say what? Yes, you heard that right- in some cases, a content provider can reach in and mess with your gear.
This started back in 2003, and an FCC ruling concerning Selectable Output Control (SoC). SoC is what the MPAA wants to use to close the analog hole, by disabling outputs that don’t support HDCP. Previously, such conduct was prohibited.
Under the FCC ruling, a movie that has never been released on DVD or Blu-ray can be restricted for 90 days, by using SoC to disable the analog outputs on your gear. As some have pointed out, this isn’t all bad, because the content in question would be content that isn’t currently available, so those with analog gear won’t be missing anything that is currently available.
What is the practical effect of this? It really has three ramifications, two of which are bad. First, owners of older equipment without HDMI ports might be unable to get some of this new content. Second, all owners will be unable to make backups of this new type of purchased content, as the analog hole will be closed (some articles solely discuss streaming or on demand content, but it is hard to imagine that the industry won’t try to sell you movies, too, leaving you at their mercy to save it on their system). Third, if you have a newer television, you may get access to new content.
Is this a good thing? Does the ability to get new releases, earlier, offset the control the movie industry will be able to exert over your gear?
Photo by RocketRaccoon
