8×8

‘ve been busy playing around with the new Joost Internet TV application, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. My first experience with P2P Internet TV was in 2006 during the World Cup, I used PPLive and PPStream. While they did the job, the interface was pretty brutal. You can think of the Joost application as the Apple Ipod of P2P TV, slick, slick slick!Another reason why at the time PPLive and PPStream were not that interesting to me compared with Joost is the content, since most of the content was for the Chinese or Korean market. The winner of the Internet TV application race will obviously be determined by the content that they provide. Even though Joost is still in Beta it has some quirky, punchy content that is definitely entertaining. Some highlights for me were the Gong channel that has some pretty funny Japanese Anime, Fab Channel for live concert recordings and they had a TV show from Alliance Atlantis, Total Recall 2070 that caught my attention. And of course the news is out that they did the deal with CBS, so thats pretty significant. Joost is currently free and supported by advertising. But not advertising in the traditional TV sense, I only experienced one ad that was 5-10 seconds when the show started or once in a while during the show.

I also tried Vuze which is snazzy interface for a pay service to get HD quality torrents that are protected under DRM. DRM is dead and nobody likes it including the guys at Azareus, so hopefully they will get around it soon. The big plus is they have done a deal with the BBC to carry their content. However all content on Vuze is regionally restricted (and to some degree on Joost too). This is a major negative, as they are currently not allowing me to watch the BBC in the Netherlands, while in the mean time I have 6 BBC channels on my digital cable service….

It will be exciting to track the developments as they unfold… but I’m left with one interesting thought. If I could watch PPLive and PPStream P2P TV that was seeded by the community. What is stopping us from writing an open source P2P Internet TV service that carries more Western content, where people can start seeding live shows from there digital TV services… that way the community would have access to all the content not just a subset of networks that did the deals with the InternetTV providers, and it would be region free…. it would be interesting to discuss at least the possibilities.

I’ve been playing with RubyonRails for a while and really enjoying the productivity boost I get with it. The only downside was the IDE solution. Coming from the Java world I am Eclipse junkie, and love my debugger. I starting using RadRails and I loved it, but it was lacking in the AJAX/Javascript side of things…. but now there is Aptana Gives you a Javascript editor and debugger within RadRails…..

This is definitely going to be my development platform of choice for my up coming projects!

Last weekend, Jeniece and I made a quick trip to Norway to do a fjord-tour. Pretty amazing the variety of scenery you pass through on the Oslo-Bergen train line, it’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful train rides in the world. We took the train from Oslo to Flam (with a Norwegian a), and then took the ferry through the Sogne fjord to Bergen (longest fjord in the world). We arrived in Bergen Saturday night with enough time to sit down to a nice dinner in Byrggen the old town with these dimley lit alleys between the timber buildings. Highley recommend the restaurant there called Two Chef’s. We were back in Oslo for Sunday and went to the National Gallery which was cool because 1. it was free and 2. they mix the classic pieces with the modern. Also outside in the parking lot they had a huge area where people were building a cityscape out of white legos. If you want to have a look at some of the pictures you can look at the Norway album on my Fotki Page.

Today we are going to bike to Amsterdam’s Bos (forest) for a picnic and then to the Cobra Museum in Amstelveen.

The summer weater is back, enjoyed a sunny day of 23 degrees and no clouds today! Took advantage of it by going on a bike ride from Amsterdam to Alkmaar on the LF7b (national bike path). I have created a new album of this weekends pictures and from the last couple (concert fotos are from the Uitmarkt and the 7 bridges jazz festival). Check out the album here. Up a bit late but decided to go see the Afropunk documentry at the Rialto, well worth checking out the film. Oh, And don’t buy stone crab from Albert Cuyp. We nearly got food poisoning tonight when we cracked open what looked like some nice claws to find they smelled like amonia!

Check out my photo albums from the wonderful summer of 2006: wedding in Amsterdam, honeymoon in Greece, and a trip back ‘home’ to Ireland.

Went to see El Gran Silencio at the Melkweg last night. What a band! They are from Mexico and play a high energy mix of ska reggae dancehall and hiphop. Had the whole crowd moving, and the best part was they had the biggest smiles throughout there set. They were really having fun. Now all I need to do is learn some Spanish so I can understand what they were saying.

Today I realized the benifits of hotswapping in eclipse. Check out http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-ecbug/ which demonstrates  what you can do with the eclipse debugger, including hotswapping the code of the running java app that you are debugging so you don’t have to waste time restarting your application.