------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- Vol 2, Issue 1 Happy New Year! I hope you and your family had a wonderful celebration together to ring in the new year. Things were pretty low-key around the Peters' household this year. With the new baby, midnight was kind of a far shot, so, instead we got together with some friends for a quiet dinner and rang in the new year at midnight (OK, midnight in the Azores). This issue kicks off the second year of this missive and with it, I'm going to hit on what may be the future of "television": Hulu.com. Hope you get a chance to check it out! ---------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: A Vision of Television 2. Blog Posts 3. Shameless Self-Promotion 4. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: A Vision of Television ---------------------------------------------------------------- Many years ago, when (figuratively) dinosaurs roamed the earth, streaming media first happened upon the scene. The early pre-cursor to Internet Radio catered primarily to the techie crowd -- and only the techie crowd would put up with it. On the best of days you were lucky if it sounded like a cheap AM radio going through a tunnel. The audience from that era would be pleasantly surprised by how far we've come -- Internet Radio with stereo or even CD-quality sound, YouTube videos springing up all over the place -- streaming media has evolved to an amazing degree. So what could possibly be missing? How about some premium content? Don't get me wrong, there is some really fun stuff over on YouTube. Some is inspiring, some laugh-out-loud funny, some of it just plain bizarre. Sometimes, though, at the end of the day, all you want to do is kick back and watch an episode of "The Office" or chuckle over one of the classic "commercials" from Saturday Night Live. For some reason (copyright issues?) those don't seem to be available. Well, now they are. Hulu (hulu.com) is a service supported by a number of the big studios, including NBC Universal and FOX. They stream both full episodes and short clips from a variety of their shows. In addition to "The Office" and SNL, mentioned above, the catalog includes current shows such as "Chuck", "Heroes", and "Bionic Woman", shows that were crowd pleasers in their time, like "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly", and even a few golden-oldies, like "McHale's Navy" and "The Outer Limits". The video is of exceptional quality and can even run in full-screen mode, if your computer has the power. In the smaller screen mode, even my older Thinkpad notebook computer can handle the video speed. In addition to simply viewing the video, you can also rate and comment on it and even embed the whole video or even just a clip in some other location (such as a blog) similar to what you can do with YouTube. You get all of this and you don't even have to install any new software. The video plays in a Flash-based player, similar to how YouTube works. So, what would you expect to pay for all of this? It turns out the service is free (for now at least). The videos have a sponsor and there are commercials during the showing. In a two-hour episode of Firefly, I think there were *six* 30-second spots in all (probably as many as you would see in a single commercial break on broadcast TV) -- hardly an unbearable price to pay. The Hulu main site is still in private beta. You can sign up for an invitation to take part and hope that you get one. It might take a while. If you'd like to check out some of the offerings right now, though, you can go over to OpenHulu (openhulu.com) and access the videos from there. You might want to check it out quickly as there is a news blurb on their site which indicates that their site might be moving. If you do end up checking out this service, I would love to hear your opinion. Drop me a line at gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com and let me know what you think. Copyright 2008, Greg Peters ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Blog Posts ---------------------------------------------------------------- Links to posts on the "Clearing Up the Confusion" Blog from the last year: Sunday, December 23, 2007 -- Remember The Milk Add-On http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/12/remember-milk-add-on.html "I just wrote about 'Remember the Milk' in my e-zine this past week. It's a great tool to keep track of all of the tasks you might have to do in your everyday life. A number of folks who follow David Allen's 'Getting things DONE' teachings apparently swear by it..." Saturday, January 27, 2007 -- Clearing the Mental RAM http://clearing-confusion.blogspot.com/2007/01/clearing-mental-ram.html "I've been reading another good book lately. It's called 'Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity' by David Allen. I checked it out from the library and, ironically, didn't get a chance to crack it open until just recently..." ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Shameless Self-Promotion ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 4. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: You can subscribe to the "Clearing Up The Confusion" E-zine at: http://www.cyberdatasolns.com/ezine Questions: If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding the Clearing Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at: gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright and contact information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Greg Peters is required, with notification to the original author. We never send the "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-zine uninvited, and we NEVER share, sell or rent our mailing list to anyone. Your privacy is safe with us.