2008 September on The uber geeks

Chris Fehnel
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Sameer Barkawi
About, Posts, Website

Colin Devroe
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Anime Added to Hulu

By Sameer Barkawi with no reader comments

Anime will now be streamed for free on Hulu. Shows from Viz, Gong, and Funimation will be streamed, and include shows like Naruto and Bleach, with more to come later. Found via Anime News Network.

“Hey DJ keep playin that song, all night, on and on and on.” Isn’t that how Zhane opened their 1993 hit “Hey Mr. DJ”? Isn’t that a little “pie in the sky”? Creating a great selection of music, that works well together, all night is an incredible challenge.

I know this firsthand. A few weekends ago my wife and I had a few friends over for a party. Musically I thought I had it all. I fired up iTunes, meticulously combed through my library, hand-picked each song, ordered them just how I wanted. I ended up with was a fantastic playlist dedicated to the event. Enough for 4 or 5 hours of continuous play. To top it off I had the iTunes remote application for my iPhone installed so that I could control the music and volume from wherever I was in the apartment. Party music bliss.

But that was a few weekends ago. A lot has changed since then. Apple released iTunes 8 which comes with a brand-new feature that, if I had iTunes 8 a few weekends ago, would have saved me tons of time.

This new feature is called Genius. After using it for a little over a week I can say that it is exactly that. The underpinnings of Genius, though I have no knowledge of the precise pieces that are working behind the scenes, are not really all that new. Other applications and social Web sites have done what Genius does for a while. In fact, some might argue that they do it better and are indeed more fun than the way iTunes 8 does it. That is, create a playlist based on your listening habits, and the listening habits of other iTunes users, with the click of a button.

As with many products that come out of Apple it isn’t what iTunes 8’s Genius feature does that is amazing. It is how simple it is to use. It is how useful it is. And, the fact that it is built into the most popular jukebox and digital music players helps too. So useful in fact that it has changed the way I listen to my music library completely.

You see I’m of the sort that, up until the release of iTunes 8, really enjoys using the iTunes Party Shuffle feature. What Party Shuffle does is it will take my entire iTunes library, throw it up in the air, and whichever songs fall first are put into a never-ending list that just keeps playing. There is some logic behind Party Shuffle, I believe, but the logic isn’t palpable in the list as you see it. So in effect, it is completely “random”.

This saves me from making any decision whatsoever about what I want to listen to each day. I just fire up iTunes, hit Party Shuffle, and hit Play.

I’ve seen people who put together some really great playlists to listen to while at their computer, and they do it in several different ways. I’ve seen some based on metrics (which can be done with iTunes’ Smart Playlist feature). Playlists created based on the number of times you’ve listened to the song or, perhaps the amount of time that has passed since the last time you listened to it. Others I’ve seen are created completely by hand. These are the real audiophiles that I’ve met. Those that used to burn really great mixed CDs for road trips, workouts, or easy-listening.

Again, I don’t do this. I don’t have the time or the desire. I just want some music playing in the background when I’m working and, on occasion, get an appetite for a specific artist or soundtrack. But then iTunes 8 Genius has, again, changed the way I listen to my music library.

Now, instead of just using iTunes to create a random, never-ending playlist using my library, I stop and think for a moment what sort of mood I’m in. I find a song that I believe reflects that mood, and I click the Genius button. Immediately I’m presented with a list of either 25, 50, or 100 songs that go really well with the song I selected. Apple called this feature Genius for a reason. The song selection, which comes out of your very own library, is incredibly good. I have yet to come across a single Genius-created playlist that I thought didn’t work well.

How in the world are they able to do this? I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version. iTunes has always kept track of what you listen to. You’ll notice, regardless of the version of iTunes you have installed, that iTunes knows the number of times you’ve listened to a song and when you last played it, as an example. But Genius goes a bit beyond that. Genius takes this, and other information, and sends it over the Internet to a central database. When you request to make a playlist on, say, Zhane’s Hey Mr. DJ., iTunes looks at this central database to determine what other people have listened to with this song and constructs a playlist based on other iTunes user’s music-listening habits.

It works. It’s quick. And I can’t imagine iTunes without it.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to create a Genius playlist for my next bike ride based on The Raconteurs - The Switch and The Spur from their album Consolers Of The Lonely.

IMDb Joins the Online Media Fight?

By Sameer Barkawi with no reader comments

Yesterday, IMDb launched a new feature on their site. Aside from providing credit information, forums to discuss movies, and keeping up with the latest news articles in Hollywood, it is now branching out into the streaming video arena.

Our goal is to show our users every movie and TV show on the Internet for free on IMDb.com.

says Col Needham, IMDb site founder. At first, I was happy. I thought, we can always use more online media. The more groups that get involved, the closer we are to having full control of how, when, and where we watch our media. FilmSchoolRejects picked up this story as well, throwing IMDb into the middle of Hulu and TheWB as competition. But there was something about Needham’s quote made me take another look at the IMDb “service.”

Let’s not jump the gun on IMDb yet and call them competition of any kind. Most of the movies and shows available are streamed on a Hulu flash player. Some are even from CBS’s online streaming service. The only part that seems at all worth looking at is the Independent Shorts selection, but in today’s age, most could probably be hosted anywhere from Vimeo, Viddler, or YouTube. What makes IMDb so special?

In short, not too much. IMDb was bought by Amazon, and so it has access to plenty of media. It could, I suppose, aid in the distribution of indie filmmakers, but I’m not so sure as to what degree. paidContent.org has an article, explaining Amazon’s decision a bit more.

…it is likely IMDb video would be used more as a promotional tool. It even says so in the release: The rotating video content is provided by CBS, Hulu, Sony Pictures Television and about 500 indie filmmakers.

That seems unfortunate. The article eludes to over 6000 titles that could become available, but only as rotational content. This is more of a feature that should’ve been available a while ago, and is just now coming out like an afterthought. IMDb is doing what is described by its name: being a database for all things movies, including the movies and clips themselves. Only, they aren’t showing anything you can’t find elsewhere, and in a prettier package.