cce blog

Public TV in the P2P world

While living in Hong Kong earlier this year, I felt something "missing" from my life -- English-language TV. Equipped with broadband internet access, I began watching huge amounts of video on my computer -- whole documentaries from PBS's Frontline and reasonably-long clips from The Daily Show, as well as obscure movies/documentaries I'd find on file-sharing networks. That's when I began thinking that non-commercial content providers like PBS, BBC, NPR, etc could reach a much wider audience by distributing more of their programs for free on the web.

Archives of most public radio programs are currently available online, but public TV archives, because of the bandwidth costs, are much less available. Some, like PBS Frontline and BBC News, had shows online, but bigger archives on the scale of archive.org's movies or the Library of Congress "American Memory" motion picture archives were more what I desired. Often a BBC video piece would drop off the site completely after a week. Annoyed at the way many sites split up, say, an hour-long piece into 6 separate video clips, I found ways to download RealPlayer and Windows Media streams, stitch them back together, and then began distributing the new full-length versions on P2P programs like Kazaa.

With new P2P distribution technologies like BitTorrent, FreeCache and Overnet, and the advent of cheap Linux server farms, concerns about the expense of streaming media services diminish greatly. By letting the users distribute the content themselves, all with the approval of the content providers -- like how Etree works -- public broadcasters could find whole new audiences, and new potential donors. After all, it's not unusual for a public radio station to receive pledges from "Internet-only" listeners these days. And something like ShareReactor, Peerweb or Transmission Films could help to catalog and rate all this new public content.

It now looks like we're taking first steps in this direction: according to this Slate article by Paul Boutin, the BBC is planning to put its entire archive on the web. This would certainly be very exciting for infotainment junkies like me searching for engaging and thought-provoking online content beyond Homestar Runner. (For example, I recently watched the Frontline episode The Merchants of Cool, a 50-minute look at the industry of marketing & focus groups surrounding teens, the practice of "coolhunting", and the rapid co-opting of "cool" new trends by advertisers/media groups, one of the best shows I've watched online, I highly recommend you watch it.)

Finally, on broadcast: what if NYC's PBS station Thirteen began broadcasting its live video stream online, much like radio station WNYC does? Most public radio stations already do online broadcasting; with cheap P2P broadcasting technologies like CMU's ESM, will live, broadcast public TV be next?

in the news

At work we got an article in NYTimes today.

Still movin' into the new apartment and looking for furniture, etc. went to the frightening warehouse store Costco in NJ yesterday to get lots of bulk products, like toilet paper by the gross, or 5-pound sacks of frozen chicken breasts. It's all factory-farmed (I suppose I've read too much Fast Food Nation), but I can't complain about the price. Anyway, I'm on the waitlist for a share of next year's harvest at the local Inwood CSA.

Not much else to report!

back from Berkfest

... and missing it already. It was really grand, and the bands were all excellent, even though I didn't recognize a lot of the names. Note to self to follow-up on Kaki King, Jennifer Hartswick Band, Stephane Wrembel and whomever his violin player was, and a bunch of others I can't remember. For all their pop sweetness, The Flaming Lips have an absolutely insane stage show ... this I realized when the singer announced he was going to do the next song "with blood," pouring stage blood on his forehead while waving a plastic sword.

Unfortunately I left my camera in the car, so no pictures. Obviously I have to get a digital camera or a camphone like Mike.

and 28 days later ...

after the zombie plague swept through the city, only a few survivors remained...

i'm off to berkfest for the weekend, seeya! i'm told they have power in the berkshires, so no worries.

... check out gothamist and this blackout moblog for some more neato pics.

where were YOU on 814?

I was at work. My computer went off (in the middle of editing something, argh) and the lab only had backup lights. So I drove to NJ, where there's power (and cable internet!) in Maplewood for some reason. Who knows why.

Cathy and I cooked chicken with freshly-picked basil (from the back porch) and made up a sauce out of onions, milk, cornstarch, white wine, chicken stock, butter, oliver oil, basil, and cherry tomatoes (also from the back porch) and it was great. Ahh, the suburban life.

GWB's closed, no cars allowed into Manhattan, and going back to Inwood to sit in the dark doesn't seem like much fun. I learned a valuable lesson today: I love electricity and am sad when it is gone. OK!

two video clips

Just watched Bush and Rumsfeld's briefing from the ranch. It's 18 minutes long, but well worth the watch. I'd forgotten what it was like to watch Bush answer questions unscripted, and I'm guessing most you have too, since all we're used to are his rehearsed speeches or soundbites from The Daily Show. So do your part for civic participation and watch some C-SPAN!

... Plus I just HAD to add this (courtesy of Gothamist), which I found even MORE depressing than Bush's insincere tone and the way he deflected questions by invoking 9/11. Have you SEEN the trailer for Woody Allen's new movie Anything Else? Jason BIGGS from AMERICAN PIE as the Woody Allen character? Christina Ricci as Diane Keaton? Watching this trailer and listening to those Woody Allen lines coming out of those teenage mouths has got to be the most depressing thing in letterbox format that I've seen in a long time. Well, actually, I watched War Photographer again recently and that was worse. But just BARELY.

the broken toe weekend

So Friday night I was running around my parents' house in NJ trying to find stuff to bring back to my new apartment. I'd already laid out a guitar and amp at the top of the stairs earlier. Running up the stairs for more items to pack, I didn't bother to turn the light on -- this is the house I grew up in, after all -- and, CRACK! My foot ran right into the amp.

I thought I'd just stubbed my toe until a couple of hours later, when I was still limpin' and gimpin' around the house. Taxicab Dan was over, about to leave for Mexico, and suggested it might be broken when I took off my sock and noticed the middle toe pointing 20 degrees or so to the left. After an IM consultation with doctor-in-training Mike I put some ice on it and went to bed early, hoping it would all go away in the morning.

Came back to Inwood limpin' and gimpin' a bit less and feeling not so bad. After consulting WebMD on broken toes, I picked up some tape 'n' Tylenol from CVS and tried "buddy taping" the broken toe to a neighbor, which made it feel a little more stable and easier to walk.

The tape gave me the confidence to limp out and see Charlotte Sometimes, a great indie movie (by a Hapa director) that had Roger Ebert raving and was nominated for lots of awards. The movie was really very good and wasn't at all a "stereotypical Asian-American movie," whatever that means. They never made a big deal about the characters being Asian, like they do in mainstream movies -- y'know, the martial artist, the computer hacker, the UN translator, etc. It was just a well-written movie with a story that didn't explain everything from the outset, but let the viewer figure it out along the way. The main character hardly spoke, which the director admitted in Q&A aftewards was "risky, but only if you're making a movie that you expect a lot of people to watch." Afterwards I got to hobnob with NYC hapa powerbrokers from Swirl and EurasianNation.

Unfortunately my broke li'l toe cut the evening short -- while walking from my seat up the incline of the theater walkway, I felt something in my foot strain that perhaps shouldn't have, and I went from feeling-fine to gimpin' and limpin' all over again. I passed on dancing the night away with the hapas, director, and cast and grabbed a cab home, finally unwrapping my toe after I'd limped my way safely back to my apartment. Eugh ... purple, red, black, blue, I'd never seen that many colors on my foot before.

More ice, more sleep. Sunday morning found me worse-off than Saturday morning, and since my general rule of thumb is that things are supposed to get better, not worse, with time, I began to worry about finding a doctor. I also began to realize that if I'd had health insurance like I keep planning to get, I'd probably already have been at a hospital taking an X-ray by then. But I didn't, and I still don't, and so after much searching, I decided the NY Foot Clinic in Harlem would probably be my best bet for low-cost foot care.

This morning I limped my sorry self down to the subway and over to the clinic. This is getting to be a pretty long blog entry for such a pointless topic, so I'll finish quickly: an X-ray showed that I there was indeed a fracture, so nice podiatrists wrapped my toe up snugly so I won't hurt myself again (as I did in the theater). The bill: $90 for the visit, and $60 for the X-ray. Probably less than the deductible on a health plan. Thus: who needs insurance? Oh wait, ME.

radio-controlled mobs

This is an idea I circulated around with a couple of friends yesterday, before the dinosaur mob, and I submit it here for those (like glowlab, satan's laundromat and fancyrobot) who think the mob idea is just about played-out in its current form, and are brainstorming where it could go from here.

Little slips of paper with instructions distributed by single points of contact don't scale well (though they've admittedly worked so far). A better instruction-giving method is necessary to make these mobs perform more complex and interesting tasks. Mobile phone text messaging is an interesting idea and has worked in the past, but requires a list of all participants' cell phone numbers. So, my idea: radio-controlled flash mobs.

The mob in this case wouldn't necessarily all have to converge on one spot, but rather an area of a block or two, filling the sidewalks in a busy tourist/business area like Wall St or Ttimes Square. Mobbers would be instructed to bring FM radios and wear headphones, tune to a certain frequency, start walking around a fixed area and listen to the radio for further instructions.

The mob organizers would then use a backpack-sized low-power pirate FM transmitter to direct the mob. The possibilities are all fun/exciting: imagine everyone walking clockwise around a certain block, then spinning around quickly on command from their headphones and walking the other way, like a school of fish. Or everyone could stop, point at the sky, cover their mouth, and say "it's a bird ... no ... a plane ..." Or "Hi-five the person next to you!" then "Now get in a shouting match ('WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?') and storm off."

Organizers could play, say, a well-known song, the pledge of allegiance, a nursery rhyme, the gettysburg address, a repeated slogan, etc, and have everyone quietly repeat/singalong with the words to no one in particular -- multiplied by hundreds of pedestratian mobbers packing a small area this could have a sort of "I'm in the matrix!"-like effect. Or it could just erupt into a fit of giggling.

This could help kick the flash mob idea "up a notch," and I suppose more into the arena of "performance art" that people seem so eager to call it. It could also be a cool new technique for protesters/activists who want to make a dramatic message of some kind.

I have an 18 watt "pirate" FM radio transmitter that needs a little bit of repair but would fit in a backpack and has a pretty big broadcast radius. Not sure if the transmitter person would have to be a couple floors up in a building, or could broadcast from street level, and whether the antenna could be hidden in the backpack too and still get the same signal strength. Some field-testing would be necessary.

Feedback I've received from friends:

• legality: unlicensed FM transmitting is illegal, but the transmitter would only be on for 10 minutes and would affect a very small area, making this not really a big deal. though now that i've published this idea on my blog i suppose it wouldn't be too hard to figure out who's doing the transmitting ;>
  
• from kennyb: who has an FM radio anyway? Everyone has iPods now.
  
• from ben: "if only the headphones were invisible. not everyone would have those little mono earbuds. everyone wearing headphones and acting in unison would sort of make the method of transmission obvious, thereby decreasing the inexplicability of the mob. this may or may not be important." i don't think this is a big deal because lots of people wear headphones already.
  
• more ben: "expanding on your idea a bit, it might also be interesting to get the mob to form shapes via cleverly crafted directives distributed by radio or whatever. artfaggy issues this would raise include:
  
  • how does the mob know what it's forming? can you distribute information in discrete packets that form the key to some sort of decoding mechanism that people can follow easily? can you form a "mob consciousness" that "knows" more than any of its individual parts? (a: yes.)
    
  • who is the audience? does it matter how big the audience is?
    
  • what's the most ironic message that can be spelled by a mob in formation on the ground? is it "ME"? "LONELY"? "INDEPENDENT"?
    

I think Ben's idea above would make it more like a marching band than a mob, though. If you wanted to be a pretentious artiste, you could call the whole thing a theater project and prescribe certain times for "improvisation," i.e. "do whatever you want for 20 seconds." Then you could be the Stockhausen of flash mobs. So, uhm, comments?

dinosaur mob review

Last night's MOB #6 was cute, but a bit of a disappointment. I met up with Kennyb, Ben, and Ton (public-art pranksters themselves, of Astor Cube fame) at 7pm at Hamburger Harry's in Times Square, and on my way to their table walked right into a young man passing out slips of paper with the following instructions:

Duration: 6 minutes (Gather at 7:18; disperse at 7:24.)

The Site: Toys R Us (Broadway at 44th St).

By 7:15, situate yourself on the second floor of Toys R Us, away from the Jurassic Park section.

At 7:18, approach the giant animatronic dinosaur. Fill in all around it. It is like a terrible god to you. Stare at it transfixed.

At 7:20, drop to your knees, still staring at the dinosaur. Whenever it roars, moan and cower behind outstretched hands.

At 7:24, disperse. No one should remain in Toys R Us after 7:27.

KEEP THIS SLIP HIDDEN. NO PHOTOS OR INTERVIEWS BETWEEN 7:15 AND 7:20.

And that was basically exactly what occurred. Kenny finished a beer, we got up, went to Toys R Us, and got in a loong line up the escalator to the second floor where the giant dinosaur was. Hundreds of people amassed and we ended up at the front of the crowd, pretty close to the dinosaur, but not as close as the photographers and cameramen all poised to record whatever was supposed to take place. There were a LOT of people.

Then conversation started to peter out and people began simply staring at the dinosaur. I tried to keep an awed stare on the thing while I made sideways conversation with Ton, and wondered whether we would really all get down on our knees, which seemed a little silly to me.

After a few awkward minutes, a wave of kneeling suddenly swept across the room, taking me by surprise, and I found myself simply obeying the collective groupthink, half-heartedly waving my arms in praise of the dinosaur but mostly feeling silly. But people really did all put their hands out and began to moan -- check out these great pictures.

The moaning began to die down, and though we were on our knees, no one had really cowered yet, but suddenly the dinosaur roared loudly and everyone screamed, and covered themselves with their hands. Then the dinosaur roared, again, louder this time, and I have to admit with everyone else cowering in fear it wasn't hard to join in the cowering-and-yelling routine. The dinosaur roared again, propelling us to a climax, and after that died down everyone just got up and started walking out.

All told, it seemed pretty silly: afterwards I couldn't help thinking we'd all go swallow goldfish next, or see how many people we could stuff into a phone booth. As I said in my last entry, I still think these things need a real purpose -- political, artistic, or otherwise -- or at the least a cleverer idea than convening the huddling masses in a Toys 'R Us. Blogger Queixa agrees with me here, and bloggers fancyrobot and Satan's Laundromat (good photos) shared my hopes that the mob would take place outdoors in Times Square proper, rather than inside a store with insufficient entrance/exits.

Then again, mob supporter/reviewer fred hoysted and this glowlab guy (good photos) only have good things to say, calling it "surreal, hilarious chaos," and that "a symbolic point was scored on behalf of anti-capitalism." I doubt that's really the reason people came out, though. BBC Newshour has a very good bit with a few Salon-like "It's, like, so cool!" quotes from happy NYC mobbers, plus a very funny talk with the unwitting host of London's first mob, at a sofa store on Tottenham Court Road. He had an interesting observation on what these mobs are, in essence: "It's a secret society, basically ... they meet every fortnight, receive secret instructions, and yesterday just happened to be 'Sofa Appreciation Day!'"

But I think the common feeling among these blogger reviews is: where does the idea go from here? My last blog entry might seem a bit negative, but after seeing hundreds of people show up for no good reason, it's obvious that there's some kind of potential for artistic or political expression here, beyond what Meetup.com and Dean for America types have harnessed so far. I have an idea or two. I guess I will post them here next.

mobs

It looks like I might participate in a "flash mob" tomorrow in Times Square. It's a cute idea (flashmob.info, mobblog), -- hundreds of anonymous hipsters/geeks converge on one spot, perform an inane task like clapping, making bird noises in central park or visiting a shoestore, and disperse. Okay, so it's a dumb idea.

It's so dumb it sort of raises the question: what the hell's the point? The media reports and various participants have been spinning it as 21st "performance art." The Salon article has some cute quotes from a few of the hip, vapid youths who showed up: "It's sort of like being at a protest, but without the politics." "It's random art." "It's zeitgeist stripped bare ... It's urban festivity." And the worst one: "It's not like you have to have a cause, to be an activist."

Gosh, because, like, who wants to have to have a cause, and get caught up with all that baggage? A protest without politics, indeed. Perhaps the bored NYC Internet bourgeoisie were getting jealous of Hong Kong and Iran and wanted to go out and DO SOMETHING without, well, doing anything. It seems to me just silly nonsense from kids who ought to go GET a cause of some kind rather than stand around in a shoe store giggling like idiots.

The idea of a spontaneous mob isn't that new, though in the past they've usually converged for a reason. In Manila, the 2001 "People Power II" protests that ousted President Estrada relied heavily on technology, as well. The half-million-strong mob, many not typical protesters but pissed-off middle class types, was drawn in just hours mostly by mass-forwarded mobile phone SMS text messages. SMS forwards aren't as popular in the US as they are in Asia, where they were blamed for a SARS-related panic buying spree in Hong Kong, and have been censored by authorities in Shanghai. They're like those annoying email forwards you get from friends & co-workers, and in Manila they were essential to organizing the protest:

"Estrada was given a deadline by a panel of opposition negotiators: he had to resign by Saturday at 6 a.m. All through Friday night, demonstrators continued to gather. This has been called the pager revolution for good reason: within minutes of the Senate vote, text messages had flashed through the Manila ether telling anti-Estrada Filipinos to GO TO EDSA [Epifania de los Santos]. Hundreds of thousands converged on the capital, following directions to, as one message put it, WEAR BLACK TO MOURN THE DEATH OF DEMOCRACY. Said another text message: EXPECT THERE TO BE RUMBLES."

Now that's a "smart mob," which Howard Rheingold seems to think will be "the next social revolution." So these mobs have potential, and, I admit, my curiosity is getting the best of me. Plus I've found a good excuse to go: Fedex has unsuccessfully tried three times to deliver my Berkfest tickets, so now I have to go down to Fedex HQ on 42nd St within the next two days and pick them up before they're returned to sender. The flash mob will be happening tomorrow, just a few blocks away, beginning just in time for me to get back from work, off the A train at 42nd St, and up to one of the predetermined meeting points.

So. I'll let you know.

new apt, power surge, stuff

so justin & i helped bryan move a uhaul full of stuff into the new place on 207 yesterday, but justin forgot his digital camera so you're all gonna have to wait a little longer for pictures of the place. it's nice. cathy came up (she's crashing with me at 215 this week) and walked through it with a gaping mouth and called it a "castle on a hill." justin was also impressed and already wants to move into a spare room we were planning to make a study. pictures soon, i hope!

in other news, i was woken up monday morning by a very loud thunderclap that set off several car alarms in the neighborhood. i thought "that was odd" but went back to sleep. when i later and tried to check my email over breakfest, the cable modem lights were out, so i figured the cable people were fixing storm damage or something (though my TV worked, an ominous sign).

but last night i looked at the back of my laptop and i noticed the yellow LED light on the ethernet jack was steadily lit, with or without a cable plugged in, turning off only when the machine was unplugged and powered down. it turns back on as soon as you plug it back in or turn it on. thus i'm slowly turning to the conclusion that my network card got fried by a power surge through the ethernet cable. yikes. either that, or the cable modem was fried, though this seems less likely given the funny laptop light behavior...

in more other news i missed president harding is a rock star. at least the american affect will be showing for another month.

in even more news, had anyone heard about the IBM pension case? i sure hadn't...