Thoughts
Web Purge 2.0
Mar 16th
I had some inspiration that I should go on a purge of all the web sites that I personally think I should stop using, I slept on it overnight to make sure it was not a flash in the pan idea that I would regret later and once my mind was made up, I went on a purge of all the site I had registered and used.
USTREAM TV
The first casualty was Ustream.TV – this was of no use to me and I had my fill so armed with this I made sure I deleted the Video’s I had recorded, removed the show and finally the user accounts, I Mirrored this on my IRC Client, no more shall I be on there for whatever reason, be it watching shows or broadcasting. More >
Will Windows 7 be as fast when it goes Gold
Feb 3rd
I have seen many reviews of the Beta of Windows 7 and even tested it myself – I agree it is faster “out of the box” then Vista and uses less memory, less services are running and by all accounts seems to b the answer to Microsoft Prayers. The thought on my mind and I know this from every single beta MS has ever put out there – will the end product be as good?
I see this as a make or break time for MS in terms of Operating systems – they still make lots of money anyhow on Servers and people buying machines with Windows pre-installed but were they make there real money is not from consumers but from the 1000′s of licences companies buy for each desktop OS. Even when they do bring out Windows 7 – many companies will want to wait for Service pack one.
Virgin TV – Initial View
Jan 31st
As Part of my Upgrade Pack – I picked the Virgin Media ‘M’ TV Deal – this is there lowest TV Package from a choice of three (M, L and XL). I was never a fan of Virgin / NTL TV as there was and always will be problems with this set-up and is in no way a comparison to SKY for example.
Do adverts work??
Jan 2nd
It goes without saying that putting adverts on your website and hoping for the money to come rolling is the perfect dream in that your getting paid to do not much at all. Of course the problem is that Adverts do not pay out unless people click on that and most people are stick to death of seeing adverts – they are either blocking them or plain ignoring them. The question is then – can adverts actually work on a website?
The problem wth retail stores today
Dec 30th
Sony HC51
After looking into every angle on which camera to buy and finally thinking about buying one at long last, I had said to myself that the Sony HC51 which used Tapes but had firewire was the model of choice. The local Curry’s had this very model on sale for £135. Now I know I could find it on-line for £119 but by the time you add P&P – then its not such a bad price and of course you get to take it home then and there.
DV Camcorder – Which one??
Dec 27th
I have been thinking for some time now to buy myself a CamCorder – times have moved on and there is some varied choice out there and of course my needs are slightly different from the average person. The Mac has both Firewire 400 + 800 right on board and the ability for the Cam to be picked up as a Webcam should the need arise and this is what a lot of people already do when streaming.
Requirements
I need to be able to plug this Camera into both the Mac and the PC – all of my igs have Firewire and USB – so no major problem there. I need to be able to use it as a Fancy Webcam (with zoom etc), record and edit normal stuff and the quality to be god along with the cheapest one that does the job.
The State of Live Streaming today
Nov 26th
Live Streaming – Has it advanced any?
The various web sites out there offering the ability to stream live about 6 months ago was new and fresh, had no advertising and easy to find various streams to whatever took your fancy. Basically anyone can set up a web cam and stream but it take bandwidth the cater for many people and this is where they come in, you in fact stream to one server, needing about 400kbps upload and the server relay’s this out to as many as thee bandwidth allows. Bandwidth / Servers are not Free or even cheap for that matter – so why did they offer such a thing (much in the same way YouTub offers Video’s in this sense).
Advertising
One Way to claw some of that money back is to put advertising across the pages and even the live stream as a means to get some income back in but this maybe only works if people are actually clicking on them. I have noticed all of the main players (Ustream, Stickam, BlogTV, Justin.TV) have adverts on there video now – the reason why the stream’s is people were embedding the Stream on there own pages and by-pasing the adverts (replacing them with there own in fact).
People get annoyed with the advertising
I have seen either by the forums or other means people make statements such as:
“I did not give them permission to put adverts over MY Stream”
or
“They should give me some of the revenue – it is me providing the content”
What people seem to have forgotten is that the service has to be paid for in some fashion, it is Free, if you want Advert Free Live Streaming – then you will have to either find something that is paid for or run your own (lot of upstream required).
Moderation
There is nothing more annoying to the vistor then coming to a room, having a chat and then getting kicked off or even banned for what is deemed for no reason. You have no real course of action to complain other then changing your IP and attempting to come back but personally you are fighting a loosing battle. Remember that as they get rid of people – that is one less person who is visting there stream and for every subject, there is many people streaming about it. One some streams, the only thing you loose from the above is the ability to type messages – many have there chat embeded in the stream or in the case of Justin.Tv for example – you can see the chat anyhow even if not logged in.
Tech Streams
I just want to give a special mention to the MANY tech Streams out there – while I give them credit for sitting there and giving free tech support (or at least trying to), you do get what you pay for and not all the advice given will be any good or for that matter be any better then Googling it. Remember also it is hard to type the exact problem – imagine trying to explain an icon on the task bar which comes up and goes quickly, easier to speak but most won’t have voice comms going.
Where are they all heading?
Quite simply I see many of the Live Streams and people as a passing phase and many will move onto something else at some point. I am only speaking about myself in this respect as the things I used to do 1 year ago for example, I do not do now and I find it hard to see someone a year from now still streaming 24/7 unless they have nothing better to do. I see ISP’s bringing in more Capping of data and the streaming sites charging or limiting the time.
Dropbox – the continued review
Nov 5th
I have been using Dropbox for a while now and would like to feed back some of the reasons why it is good to have. To remind you, drop can be found HERE (https://www.getdropbox.com/) and it comes as a free (limited) and a paid for service. The Free Service give you 2GIG, though I am thinking that the general public (I am a early Beta tester) might only get 1GIG. You can upgrade to the full package of 50GIG $9.99 per month or $99 per year.
It works by virtue of installing an application across any OS you might have such as Windows, OS/X or Linux and this create a folder for you to save files to. It is important to note that any files you put in there will be uploaded to your account and depending on your speed, might take some time. When you link another computer to this account – this will download any updates it finds – so both computers “Dropbox” will be in sync in that respect.
The uses I found after a while were as follows:
- Updated CV on work computer and placed in Dropbox so was around to grab at home, saved USB Keys.
- Put a few MP3 files on shared folder for me / others to grab as required.
- Put pictures I needed to blog so I could update blog post from work with my own picture.
You can designate a shared folder and invite people in there – handy for sharing larger files, it is a automated process and case of drag, drop, forget (though it eats up my upload bandwidth for a while).
The Origins of the Name Mauldor & LiquidSilver
Apr 20th
Mauldor
This spans back to when I used to play Legend of Mir 2 ( A 2D Isometric MMORPG) and I was trying to find a name for one of my Characters, I was after a sort of Demonic type name and of course the name Demonic was taken (very common). A Search on Goggle provided me with a list of name of Demonic in nature and one of them was Mauldor was one of them I think at the time. This name stuck and I used it for many games along the way. It seems that people struggle to pronounce it but the way it is said is quite easy:
MAUL – as in DeathMaul from Starwars and DER stuck on the end. {Maul} {Der}
Americans seem to struggle the most and often mistaken for the guy from the X-Files:- Fox Mulder – though the saying is the same.
LiquidSilver
I needed a web site domain name and its very hard to come up with something that no-one else has yet used. I did not want a gaming type title as this boxes the website to a certain area. I was messing with Photoshop at the time and one of the Plug-ins I had installed and was using at the time was called LiquidSilver which gave the Text a Flowing Liquid type look. I originally bought and used the .co.uk name and when moved, I took the .org name. Using such a name meant the site design or Logo was easy enough to make as all you had to do was give it a Liquid type feel and it fitted in with the name.
A World without computers or the Net?
Mar 12th
The internet / Broadband is now mostly widespread around the world and allows people to interact in real time with people they have never met or know anything about, this can be in a Video game, Chat room, Emails, Live Streaming and many other methods. For some people, if you took this away and were only left with a computer what would they do? Looking at myself, my “net” activities include watching people in UStream, Chatting in MSN, on Skype / iChat and downloading new things to play with. If I took the “internet” part out, personally I would not be on the computer half as much as I am now.
If we then took away computers as a mean to entertain – what would you then be doing? Watching TV maybe, going out with your friends a lot more, the cinema or many other things. You would be forced to interact with real humans and not some cyber person. This brings me onto another subject and I shall call this “Hiding behind the net”
Hiding behind the Net
When you go online in any form of Chat room, Game or similar medium – you can be whoever you want to be. This can be the annoying Spammer, the nice helpful person, the abuse angry person, a Female (f your male), tech expert and basically the list goes on. You can say what you want to the the other people as you know there is no come back – you can Hide your IP if you so wish and the worst that can happen – you can Temp Banned or blocked.
I see people arguing on forums and even to the point of them saying they are going to find that person and kill them (or similar) but the reality is none of this ever happens. This can be because the people are all from different countries for example and its not like you can spend lots of dosh to get a flight just so you can give them a piece of your mind person to person. What about the Teenager who gets a kick out of pretending to be female for example – sending some random picture they found on Google to pass themselves off as one sexy Chick – I do not know what they get out of this but I see it happen all the time.
Why does this differ from Real Life?
Imagine you are out and about and some Spotty faced Teenager walks up to you and start giving you crap, in this instance you can beat the crap out of them, get the police involved and so forth – this is why it just does not happen. Another aspect is that not just speech alone (or typing) gets the message across, the other half is Body Language. I shall give an Example:
In an office you have a guy who has lost his hair, you know him well as you work with him and get along just fine. You joke to him and say “Hey Baldy – get me a Coffee you @£$%” – As you will probably laugh as well (or just smile) – you both know that you are only having a laugh and all is well – no blood is spilt. Now put this context to say a Chat room and its starts to look a lot different – it could be seen as you are aggressive and before you know it – your banned.
The only way to combat this is Video chatting or even just Audio chat – There is no Hiding who you are as they can see you quite clearly on the screen.
