Porno for mobile: a sure shot

The porno video content to mobile is blooming.

Last Monday Catalan TV3 broadcasted a special report on the blooming porno mobile video industry. It showed the business opportunity the mobile offers to the porno film industry. The program also rised up the lack of regulation upon this consumption of this type of content by youngsters.

(The video will be only available for free for the next few days. It is in Catalan)

Blogeurs et vidéobloggeurs, vous êtes des suspects!

Attention blogeurs et vidéoblogeurs, la police metropolitaine de Londres vous considère des suspects ! (heureusement j'ai vendu le pickup de mon père... Je capote...)

Beware, bloggers and videobloggers, the London Metropolitan Police suspects of you!

Spain is different (pas un post sur technologie)

« Spain is different » ce la définition que Franco utilisait pour expliquer la différence entre l’Espagne et le reste de la planète, ce qui justifiait la nécessité de la dictature. Juste avant son décès il avait publiquement dit qu’il laissait tout « attaché et bien attaché ».

Hier, 30 ans après, il y a eu des élections locales (et provinciales dans certains province de l’Espagne). En Catalogne ils étaient que des locales. Deux faits saillants :

• La participation n’a pas atteint le 48%.
• Dans ma ville de naissance, la Plateforme pour la Catalogne (un parti raciste carrément lepeniste) a obtenu un élu grâce au voix de deux quartier habités majoritairement par des enfants issus de l’immigrants andalouse des années 60s (comme moé) où a peine y habitent des immigrants maghrébins ou latinos. Dans le quartier centre-ville l’abstention a atteint le 65%.

Je Déprime…

Aujourd'hui j'ai tombé en amour avec...

• La qualité et l'idée du site de Made in Montréal. (J'avoue qu'une larme a ecroulé en regardant ce vidéo). Félicitations à Blue Sponge.
  
• Life After Death by PowerPoint (ou, is there life after powerpoint). Ben drôle.

Life After Death by PowerPoint

• Neave.tv
• Participate.net: Movies have the power to inspire.

Google Hoax

Finally I have discovered the real algorithm behind Google!!! Eureka!
No, seriously. I applied to Google News to include my blog into its indexation (you can call me pretentious) and I got this this reply:

"Thank you for your note. We reviewed http://le-depanneur.blogspot.com/ and
are unable to include it in Google News at this time. We don't include
sites that are written and maintained by one individual. In addition, we
currently only include articles from sources that could be considered
organizations, generally characterized by multiple writers and editors,
availability of organizational information, and accessible contact
information. When we reviewed your site we weren't able to find this
evidence of an organization.

We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we'll
log your site for future consideration. Thank you for your interest in
Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team"

It is funny 'coze Google is:

• Under trial for its illegal indexation of journals.
• Getting more and more lawsuites due to piracy contents in its Youtube service.
• A source of viral and hoax contents.

On the one hand, it is comforting to feel some humanity behind Google. Someone has waste his/her time to arbitrarly to not consider my blog enough interesting. On the other hand, it worries me. I confirm some base concepts of postmodernist construction of truth and reality.

Anyway, it will not affect my opinion that Google is the best communication enhancer platform.

What did it happen to the Yahoo! Current Network?

When redacting my previous post, I dived into the Current TV world, that i consider one of the ever best ideas on iptv. Some time after I discovered Al Gore's Current TV, I got surprised because of the Current TV - Yahoo! partnership, what was called the Yahoo! Current Network.

Current TV is an independent cable and satellite TV cable network broadcasting in the USA, UK and Ireland. Current TV programming is mainly based on content provided by users. The content providing is based on Current TV's website. Users upload their contents which allows other users to rate it. To set up the schedule, Current TV chooses between the top rated contents.

When the Yahoo! Current Network was launched it created a big buzz in the sector. Specially, because not long ago, Current TV was flirting with Google. Google and Current TV looked like the perfect non-mainstream couple. And then, the move towards Yahoo!

It seems that, as every divorced couple, they have spared parts and split their belongings and both follows its own path.

Then I read this message from Current TV:

"As of December 1, 2006, pursuant to the Contest Rules, Current TV, LLC ("Current") has TERMINATED the Yahoo! Current Launch Contests in connection with the Yahoo! Current Network ("Contest"). All Contest entrants will be notified of this termination by Current TV, LLC. All rights related to any Contest entry that Current has not optioned as of December 1, 2006 shall immediately revert to the original owner and Current shall have no rights in or to any such entry. Thank you for supporting the Yahoo! Current Network. We apologize for any inconvenience."

C-Net also echoes this split up: "Current is exploring better opportunities to distribute our content," (Current TV spokesman Alex Dolan).

I donno' if I get the full implication of the business model shift Dolan was refering to. What I see is that between Google and Current TV there is no content sharing, as it was with Yahoo, but a diffusion of Google's content.

Then, surprisingly we come accross Google Current: "Google Current airs every half hour on Current TV and provides a look at what the world is searching for on Google", updated every hour!.







I think it is a very interesting move for the iptv/audiovisual sector, and we would love to know any details you may be aware of. You are welcome to post your comments.

CNN to launch video-citizenjournalism program

Today (19/052007) at 12.00h (heure normale de l'est) CNN will launch its first user-generated video content program: News to Me.

News to Me wil broadcast videos created by users as well as videos produced by Blip.tv, Jumpcut.com, Revver.com and ThePalestra.com.

With this experience CNN will incorporate a similar Current TV approach to content distribution.

This approach is based on users that upload content which will be rated by other users. The top rated content will be broadcasted. At first sight, the difference is the pay-scale for video creators. In Current TV, users whose content has been selected for tv schedule are rewarded. There is not such reference to payments in the News to Me scheme.

3alacarta VoD, a mirror for IMPlayer and BBC

3alacarta is the IPTV service of TV3 or TVCat, the Catalan public broadcaster. It was launched a couple of years ago through the CCRTV Interactiva, the Internet division of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation (CCRTV).

Up to now the business model was based on an mixture offer of free and and pay per view content. Always on a Video on Demand scheme. It is to believe that this model was not very successful, though the website was very popular. From now on 3alacarta will show for free all content broadcasted during the last seven days.

But what is "astonishing" is that 3alacarta can be watched worlwide! (People from the BBC, are you writing it down?)

We recommend you the radio internet service from the CCRTV: ICatfm. Enjoy it before copyright nights will stop them webcasting abroad (as it has happened with Pandora).

BBC iMPlayer ready to go (but internet is not international network)

Some weeks ago we exposed that the BBC was undergoing a Public Test Value to analyze the impact and suitability of their iMPlayer proposal.

Well, some days ago the BBC Trust Board has finally aproved the iMPlayer with some changes. I would say minor changes.

You can read the it here.

Two outsanding observations:

1. the large participation of implied actors (consumers, industry, lobbies, etc.)
2. the iPlayer will use Digital Rights Managment (DRM), although it will be under a neutrality plataform scheme, that is, they will not use a single type of DRM, as Apple used to do up to not long ago.

the iPlayer is intended to be "an application in development offering UK viewers the chance to catch up on TV and radio programmes they may have missed for up to seven days after they have been broadcast, using the internet to legally download programmes to their home computers. iMP uses peer to peer distribution technology (P2P) to legally distribute these programmes. Seven days after the programme transmission date the programme file expires (using Digital Rights Management - DRM - software) and users will no longer be able to watch it. DRM also prevents users emailing the files to other computer users or sharing it via disc." BBC

Of course, there is a doubt on what content will be available from abroad. Something is clashing and it is time to fix it. But who? WIPO? We will come back to that.

If you have been a iMPlayer trial tester, your opinion will be welcomed.

Here it is a good comment in the Guardian Technology Blog.

Previous post on iPlayer: iPlayer BBC on-demand service goes under Market Impact Assessment

Wifi is in the air... But what do telcos think?

You just have to set up your computer wifi connection anywhere and you will reach many wifi network connection. Of course many of them are locked up so you cannot connect.

Moreover, the latter cellular generation include wifi connection.

In fact, where do we use the cellular:

• At home
• At work
• Waiting in a cafe for somebody who's late
• At a friends house
• At a shopping center
• At the airport or stations
• ...

So what if sharing wifi connections experiences (under secure schemes) do popularize? There are some experiences (Guifi.net, Fon,...).

What if people use voip software (no calling cost) to communicate in those place?

How would telcos react?

In fact, they are reacting. We will come back on that.

Recommended reading: Wi-Fi is Evil by Mark Evans

Pandora lock out: signs of the future

Pandora has been forced to close down (http://www.pandora.com/restricted) since the music industry has alleged Pandora did not have the rights to webcast away from the US.
It is nothing new. BBC radio unplugs non-UK listners when tthey webcast a Premiership match. They only have the rights for the UK territory.
It is to believe that this practice will be increasing in the forthcoming months. I see two very important implication on that:

• a new actor comes up to the undermined net-neutrality scene: the right's holder. Up to now it was feared that internet providers or States would interfere in the traffic content.
• Next step is to shut down all internet radio and "real" radio that are webcasting their signal. In fact they all schedul and broadcast music and other content whose rights belong to a third party. In fact, in this right moment i am listening from Spain to Radio Canada which is broadcasting "Audi Coelum" by Claudio Monteverdi and featured by IAN PARTRIDGE, NIGEL ROGERS, COLIN TILNEY, EUGEN MULLER-DOMBOIS, HEINRICH HAFERLAND, THOMAS BRANDIS. Radio Canada is infringing the copyright as they are broadcasting abroad.

A new post on net-neutrality trap will be coming in the next days: Who does net neutrality really really interest?