And He Blogs

One last time I’ll attempt to turn you on to the significance of what Michael Wesch from Kansas State University is trying to do. His talk at ELI 2008 in San Antonio is titled "Human Futures for Technology and Education", and his subtitle is "The Crisis of Significance". As the facilitator notes, Michael is famous for his "The Machine is Us/ing Us" video, and he continues to challenge us with more recent productions from his Digital Ethnography students.

It’s hard to summarize all of the goods points that were made in his presentation, but his central point revolves around how the classroom, and the nature of education, needs to change. If the top questions faculty are getting in their classes are "How many points is this worth?", "How long does this paper need to be?", and "What do we need to know for this test?", then that is a crisis of significance. "All learning starts with good questions" states Wesch, and if the only thing that the students are worrying about are what grade they are going to receive then there is a problem.

In fact there is so much here, and we all have so little time, I should just let you get to it right away and listen/watch for yourself.

UPDATE: None of the ELI sessions are available. Sure hope this is temporary.

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The Global Warming debate is, needless to say (but I’m saying it anyway to further this blog post), a contentious one. As Greg the Science Teacher Guy says, a more accurate term is Global Climate Destabilization. So whether you think humans are causing the planet to warm or not, or whether you even believe that the planet is even warming, this video gets a potentially important conversation going. It also frames the debate properly, not in whether the problem does or does not exist, but what are the costs or benefits to acting or not.

This video, entitled "How It All Ends" (hyperbole . . . or not?), is important not only from the global implications of the debate itself, but also because of the educational importance of science and the scientific process. This debate is what science is all about - a theory, presentation of data, peer review, skepticism, finding holes in the theory, lather, rinse, repeat.

Greg’s video makes me want to investigate more and see all the arguments for and against. I can form my opinions from people presenting evidence, but I always have more questions and I usually ask "what if they’re wrong?" Take for instance this video by the world renowned and well respected Sir David Attenborough:

Entitled "The Truth About Climate Change", it lays out (literally) the graph of the warming that’s occurring, but I’m left feeling like "that’s it, but I have so many questions?" Don’t just tell me it’s THE truth. So here’s another question. Can scientists possibly present ALL the arguments and evidence for ALL of us to be convinced one way or the other? I think this is an admirable attempt (though, as I write this I haven’t watched anywhere near all the videos) to open this debate to the public in an intelligent and scientific way. I think it’s worth my time.

Hat tip to Karl Fisch.

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I’ve talked about Professor Michael Wesch and his Digital Ethnography class at Kansas State University a couple times in the past (here, and here). His class, and especially the videos that have been produced as a result are a wonder. The good professor’s latest post is a wealth of information related to putting together a YouTube mash-up. There is so much good information here, and it starts with a link to a great tutorial on Web 2.0. More great resources include the article Recut, Reframe, Recycle from American University’s Center for Social Media. He mentions one of my favorite tools, Video DownloadHelper, a Firefox plugin that assists you in grabbing/downloading YouTube videos (and other media!). He puts a plug in for a video conversion site called Vixy.net that does media conversion. I’ve used that one, but I’ll put in my vote for another site called Zamzar that performs a similar service and adds, document, image, and audio conversion as well. He also mentions using music with a Creative Commons license, and provides Jamendo as a good place to find some CC tunes.

Read the post to see all the resources, and some of the videos that were produced in the past. Watch the video above to see a fine (and funny) example of a "movie trailer mash-up" (based on one of my favorite movies, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles). Thank you, again, Professor Wesch.

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It is interesting to watch this story unfold, but this video encapsulates the situation so well. Bill Hunt, by the way, is one of the editors at Digital Bits which I don’t read. I prefer Engadget HD’s coverage. Today they remind us not to forget that the porn industry still needs to weigh in on this

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Even with Apple’s Leopard and its more then 300(!) new features, Blu-ray playback isn’t one of them. Yet. Macworld is this week and rumors are starting about Apple launching into the high-definition disc fray. Will it be Blu-ray only? Apple is firmly in the blue camp. Will the combo drive now be a Blu-ray reader and the super drive be a Blu-ray reader/writer? Will HD-DVD be added for compatibility or will Apple ignore it in light of the beating the reds are taking recently? Am I going to answer any of these questions?

Well, I’m at the point of being totally unimpressed by speculation or even actual product announcements, whether it’s at Macworld or CES. Tell me when products are shipping first of all. As I mentioned previously, it was announced at least year’s CES that HD-DVD burners would be available in early 2007. So how many can I buy now at the beginning of 2008? Still ZERO!

P.T. Barnum, I mean Steve Jobs, will take the stage on January 15th and whoop the Apple fanboys faithful into a frenzy with something that is over-hyped and over-priced. I think it borders on criminal that a DVD burner is not standard equipment on all Macs at all price points. Now will we just have the Blu-ray version of this scenario? I’m trying to remember the last magic gizmo that Apple announced that was reasonably priced.

UPDATE: And the answer is . . . nope! Though Apple did update the Apple TV, and in doing so lowered the price ($299 to $239) and offered to current owners a free upgrade to the new features. Who says they’re not about value It looks to me as though Apple feels the future is in HD downloads and not Hi-Def on physical media. Though it appears that there are more restrictions than discount airfare tickets.

Photo by ::stromberg

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Of all the crazy “LowerMyBills” advertisements, this one freaks me out the most! The girls legs and those boots (?) have a nauseating effect on me, and it has been on Weather.com for the last several days now. Please stop. Please?

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I’d like to elaborate on my first post of the year, which is now relegated to a placeholder for my first lie of the year. My purpose here is to put forth some facts, perspective, opinion, and some predictions. This was probably going to be that first post, but I was still suffering from the New Year hangover. No, not from alcohol, but from the same hangover that any parents have after surviving a Christmas season with a 5 year-old and driving almost 1500 miles. So here are my thoughts on this "format war".

I’ll first disclose that I went with HD-DVD, and I also wrote about this before and proclaimed that HD-DVD will triumph. Well, I’m now ready to switch my vote, at least to the extent that Blu-ray can win this war. Obviously something or things have swayed me to see the blue camp emerge as victor. Was it the announcement that Warner (and with it, New Line Cinema) has decided to go Blu-ray exclusive? Partly. However, there are other writings on various walls that help the decision along.

Here’s the real news. It’s really no big deal, at least not for average consumers, who are NOT caring in droves! Obviously they will care at some point though, and that point is getting nearer with HDTV’s going into more and more homes. But, to their credit most consumers have been waiting, and Blu-ray or HD-DVD players have not been coming home along with the HDTV’s. Now that I’ve called the consumers smart, let me say that they have come to this smart decision to wait, with faulty logic. They are looking to that all too familiar historical format war, VHS vs. Betamax and saying "I’m not getting stuck with a loser." Well that’s wrong when it comes to this war. The losers will be the companies, and not the consumers, that back the losing format, or rather the one that gets absorbed.

Absorbed? Que? What I mean is, unlike the VHS vs. Beta situation, the losing format’s discs will just move to another player that is compatible, and it’s already happening. The LG company is leading the way in this aspect of the battle. They were one of the first to come out with a dual-format player that played both discs. You see this format war is much more akin to the DVD+R vs. DVD-R war. You remember that one right? It was in all the papers. OK, maybe not. It was resolved rather early on. In case you missed the distinction, DVD "plus R" and DVD "minus R" are two incompatible formats of writable DVD media. Both camps touted their strengths and abilities. But somewhere along the way somebody built one of those drives, and eventually a writable drive, that supported both. War over.

Now originally I went with HD-DVD because I was betting against Sony, who has proven that they can screw up, a lot (read my post from July 2006 for the list of abandoned Sony formats). What I didn’t weigh as much were the other backers of the Blu-ray format, Panasonic (who beat out Sony in the VHS/Beta war), Apple, Dell, Samsung and Pioneer. All of them are going up against, essentially, Toshiba and Microsoft. Intel and HP are in there too, but HP is hedging by including Blu-ray drives in their PCs. HD-DVD support also includes movie studios such as Paramount, Dreamworks, and Universal. Now, one of them, Warner/New Line, has defected to Blu-ray, and that is big. Paramount did support both, but they made an announcement of HD-DVD exclusivity (that’s when people thought the war was won by HD-DVD. Silly isn’t it?). That’s not as big news as a defection.

I also went with HD-DVD specifically because of the Stanley Kubrick films, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, were all coming out in HD-DVD only (they are Warner movies). Many others that are desirable to me, like Blade Runner, are available on both formats. Another of my desired films is The Fifth Element, and that is Blu-ray only. I was waiting for either Blu-ray to fail miserably as this is a Sony Pictures release, or wait for it to come out on HD-DVD after Sony ran away with its tail between its legs. Not a very likely scenario from the outset, and even less likely now.

What’s the history behind the war? Well I won’t go into details, but in many respects it was a mini-war between Sun, who wanted Java-based code included for interactive features, and Microsoft, who wanted their code to be used. To get more info on the war and the specs take a look at the Wikipedia articles on HD-DVD and Blu-ray. I’ll have lots more to say about high definition video (including what exactly it is), and the formats that are being used to bring it to us, in future posts.

I’ll leave you all with a few facts, opinions, suggestions, and general wisdom(?).

• Blu-ray has always done the better job of acting like the superior technology. There is no perceptible difference between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. They both look the same - which can be described as great. A current Blu-ray ad has a man making a statement something like this - "I have friends who have HD-DVD players, and it’s nice and all, but Blu-ray knocks it out of the box". BS. There are technical differences with both formats, but again, to the average consumer there is no difference. You should also be aware that there are differences within the formats between the movies themselves. Take the movie Blazing Saddles for instance. The movie was made in 1974, before digital was even a word, at least to Hollywood. The HD-DVD version is sharper than the DVD version (I have both), but the film grain keeps it from looking as high-def as other movies out there like Serenity, which had the advantage of doing a direct digital transfer. Having said that, even with the highest quality transfers to the new formats, some people don’t really see much of a difference between DVD and the high-def versions of movies, or at least not enough to get excited about it.
• Which leads to this next point, both HD-DVD and Blu-ray players play regular DVDs. OK, that statement may have been obvious to some, but it’s another reason why the comparison to the VHS/Beta war is inaccurate. Even if you get stuck with the "losing" format, the player will still play DVDs. Maybe not much consolation, but it’s something. Also these next-gen players are the best up-scaling DVD players available. That means they make your current DVD collection look great.
• Oh and do I need to say that the quality of your display device needs to be adequate to really see the difference. You don’t need to run out and buy a display with 1080p. What’s that? Well, suffice is to say that 1080p is the most overrated specification in the industry right now. It’s kind of like the megapixels in digital cameras. The more you have the better right? Well not necessarily. It’s the quality of the optics, the size and quality of the chip capturing the digital signal, etc. Same goes for displays. Plasma and LCD panels do not have to support 1080p to give you a great picture. For all intents and purposes, there is no difference between 1080i and 1080p.
• HD-DVD inexplicably hasn’t yet released (as of January 2008) a burner that you can add to an existing computer system. They’ve announced ones, but after a year still haven’t shipped in any real quantities. You can order Toshiba laptops with them, but that’s it right now. Blu-ray is on their second and third generations of burners. Remember, these new formats aren’t just about video. They are also about storage. People want storage in the ranges of 25-30GB, and Blu-ray is kicking HD-DVD’s butt on this one.
• When an inexpensive dual format player exists all this hullabaloo will die. People will buy into high def DVD’s when the price point hits each individual’s sweet spot, and when they get an HDTV. Once consumers realize that a disc from either camp will play on a single player, the high-def disc cruise ship will leave the harbor.
• Finally, consumers are going to get smarter about HD content. Much of it will come from other sources namely the Internet in the form of independent, alternative content (and free?), and online rentals. Also, I watch a lot of content on my cable system. It’s only going to get better and more plentiful and varied and wonderfully higher definition. Until the next higher definition format comes along. You think I’m kidding look at SED, OLED and 4K.

Photo by Samanathon

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OK. In my last post, my first of 2008, I lied. It was parenthetical, but still a lie. Well at least it was an implied lie that I was in a "blogging funk" and that my post was going to cure that. Neither was true. In fact it is much closer to the truth that I have so many ideas, and things, and stuff to blog about, I just don’t know where to begin. Well, so I began the new year with a simple post with a link to a news story about a subject I enjoy following - high definition video.

Like I said, I’ve got lots of other ideas, etc., etc., to blog about, but will I? Did I just lie again, my 2nd of 2008? Such a loaded word, lie. Shannon and Gardner have pledged that they will blog every day in 2008. Are they lying, and just don’t know it yet? Jerry made the point to me in our duPont office that Gardner already failed (lied?) because he started his resolution on January 2, 2008. OK, maybe he composed it on 1/1/08, but then, Gardner, you owe us two on 12/31/08!

I don’t think Jim posted every day in 2008, but I bet he had over 365 posts (and that’s a good thing!). By the way Jim, I’m now beating you 2-0 in 2008!!! Oh, and Patrick, Martha, Jerry? I wish you would blog more. Seriously, I hope Shannon and Gardner are able to keep their pledge, because they both write such interesting stuff. And so, here is my promise to you for 2008, dear readers of my blog. I promise to blog as many times as is right for me in 2008. No more and no less (but hopefully more).

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(This is to get me out of my blogging funk)

HD DVD group cancels CES press conference in wake of Warner announcement.

Fight photo courtesy of Ari Bakker

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