ok so i’m a bit late to the Lets-All-Realise-Everett-Bogue-Is-Suffering-From-Naivety-And-Megalomania Party. that’s fashionable, right?

i’ve been reading some minimalist stuff lately & it’s been impossible to avoid seeing Everett Bogue popping up everywhere.  so i read some of him too.  before too long, i couldn’t shake the impression that Everett Bogue is just another insufficiently read/educated GenYer who thinks he’s the first person to discover something, but had the nous to capitalise on it and get a bunch of Fellow Seekers to pay him to live The Good Life – for the time being at least.

congratulations Mr Bogue, you’re a the top of a tiny pyramid scheme.  you’ve successfully discovered the ‘secret’ of countless shonks before you.

my best friend spent a year traveling the world – minimalist style – in 1996, and maintain that low-possession-count lifestyle in two of Australia’s busiest & most capitalist/consumerist cities, until his untimely death a few years ago.  minimalism wasn’t anything new then, and it sure as frak isn’t anything new now, although for sure the lessons can be carried into the digital realm.

but inherent in that low-possession-count ethos was an underlying reliance on other people’s possessions typically via living in a room with other housemates WHO PROVIDED MOST OF THE FURNITURE. and fridge. and ice cube trays.  when we took a holiday in Byron Bay, who do you think brought the beach towels?!!

Everett brags about how little he owns on his site.  i couldn’t help but notice there’s no refrigerator.  or beanbag.  who supplies those?  i’m guessing someone else.  that’s not minimalism, that’s an externality of the likes that any economic rationalist would be very proud.

fuckminimalism.com ? no, fuck you, Mr Bogue.  i understood the core of (and resonated with) minimalism from one brief conversation with my best friend 15 years ago.  i didn’t need to (and thankfully now can’t) spend $17 on your ebook to tell me what can be gleaned – for free – from hundreds of honest, well-meaning people.

and us$47 for your Minimalist Business ebook? yer kidding right?  i haven’t bought an ebook for more than $15 from highly talented writers who had something NEW to say.  no surprise you ignored my tweet politely asking why Minimalist Business cost so much.  so much for Twitter being the best way to communicate with you.

as for this $25/month letter.ly cybernetic yogi shit, omg, that’s where you really lost me. as above, just another GenY kid so far up his own fundamental orifice he can’t see that he’s stumbled on what’s already been discovered long ago.  the abundance of nonsense cyber-infused new-age terminology won’t work on those who’ve seen it all before.  Facebook out – Twitter in?  fuck me, you sound like a vacuous fashion queen of the most objectionable kind.

Everett Bogue IS what i consider convergence; or history repeating itself, depending on how generous you feel today.

p.s. contrary to you bragging about your google rank for ‘cybernetic yogi’ etc, this (leanmeanminimalist.com) site and 4 others ripping you a new one, were the first 5 hits when i googled “cybernetic yogi”. i pray that when i click on Image search i’ll see a cartoon Yogibear who’s been altered by the Borg.

mwah!

Past

In one simple innocent statement, my partner highlighted the outstanding success of applying “pop-up retailing” to calendars, first brought to Australia in the mid-90s by Paul Breen, licensing the USA-based ‘Calendar Club’ brand and seasonal pop-up retailing concept.

Back then, and apparently still in many countries, wall and desk calendars were either low-value things that businesses gave away to their customers, a cunning exchange of vaguely themed utility for under-the-radar advertising; or “high end” products in niche retail outlets.

Nowadays, calendar retailing is worth several tens of $M (in Australia), forged in large part by Paul Breen’s tireless efforts to convince shopping mall managers to allocate open floor space for short term rental where – voila! – overnight in October/November a ‘kiosk’ appears at your local mall lined with every type of calendar you could possibly want.  They made easy gifts, Christmas ‘stocking fillers’ for those whom you just CBF’d buying anything more meaningful.  I’ve received a few over the years!

The trick to getting people to part with up to $25 per calendar, where previously they were free from your local mechanic / dentist / etc – is personalisation and self-expression.  The burgeoning range of wall and desk calendars catered to almost every social niche, from every breed of faithful dog and fluffy cat, to side-splittingly funny Gary Larson cartoons.  A calendar hung in the home or office signalled to others what you were ‘into’, and provoked conversation.  Oh, and you could also record what you had to do next week – if you remembered to look at it.

Present

However I believe that gravy train is slowly running out of steam.  I have no insider knowledge of sales or returns, but my hunch is they’ve been either plateaued or been slightly falling for a few years, a drop that’s either been masked by Calendar Club’s progress toward market saturation (geographically, the number of stores open each Christmas retail season), or unfairly attributed to the 2008 GFC & low consumer confidence statistics.  Or both.  I believe there’s another – perhaps bigger – culprit.

We’re nearly 4 years into the smartphone boom, heralded by the Apple iPhone first available in June 2007.  Until then Palm Pilot, Windows Mobile & Blackberry PDAs & smartphones were the sole preserve of geeks &/or geeky businessmen.  Among countless other things, a smartphone gives you a calendar that typically syncs with your desktop/laptop computer(s) including your corporate email/calendar/contacts system, and actively reminds you of imminent appointments.  Add the outstanding success of the iPad a year ago, followed by viable competition to the iPhone (Google’s Android, Palm/HP’s WebOS, Blackberry, Windows Phone 7) and “suddenly” a whole lot of people have a lot less reason to record their plans on a traditional calendar trapped on a desk or nailed to a wall, especially those intended for the office or home-office.

This ubiquity of high-tech calendars has only just begun, and I believe signals the beginning of the end for physical paper calendars.

Future

Sourcing calendars from publishers all over the world, Calendar Club is justified in having the tagline “The Best Selection Of Calendars In The Known Universe”.  But as the retail end-point for many calendar publishers and image banks, Calendar Club’s ability to capitalise on that imagery needs to move with the times – into the digital space.

Calendar Club needs to tackle the smartphone, pad / tablet / slate, & computer calendar reality head on.

Other than the same disease that’s beset most old-media for the past decade, there’s nothing preventing Calendar Club from creating their own software calendar ‘apps’, featuring the same imagery from their paper counterparts.  As a major multi-national paper calendar retailer, they already have the relationships with the calendar publishers & image banks necessary to garner trust to take this step into the digital domain.  It isn’t just Calendar Club who stands to rise or fall on this issue, it’s the entire ecosystem of paper calendar publishing.

Imagine a smartphone app that features all the crowd-pleasing imagery that modern paper calendars are known for, seamlessly integrating into the phone’s built-in calendar system (that syncs with your desktop/laptop computer or office groupware system).

People want to customise their smartphones for exactly the same reason they were willing to blow $25 on a dozen sheets of paper with cool pictures – especially given the ubiquity of Apple’s one-size-fits-all iPhone & iPad where there’s zero ability to ‘theme’ the built-in calendar app.  Part of the appeal of ‘jailbreaking’ an iPhone/iPad is the ability to customise the UI, and – for better or worse – Android and other smartphones offer that ability to customise.

If Calendar Club doesn’t take the lead and bring great themed imagery into digital calendars, someone else surely will.

Angus & Robertson have been around way over a century (albeit with a litany of former owners in its more recent decades), with a long and respected reputation for selling quality books in a demure manner by demure middle-aged ladies wearing sensible shoes in demurely designed book stores.  From cities to countless regional towns, they brought quality books to every corner of Australia, the Everyman’s bookseller.  They’re classic Old Media, and they sold just one product category, and – until the last several years – did it fairly well.

Borders, the hip young USA brand that Gen-X & younger oozed over in the 90s and early 00s for its multimedia retailing tour de force – not just a massive range of books, but music (pressing a few buttons to sample any CD on headphones was a revelation!), DVDs, glossy magazines & more, in large, plush, comfortable stores with its very own cafe, seemed to take the book retailing world by storm.  Clearly Borders was commoditised American economic imperialism propagating across the world like a virus, but unless you were wedded to your local indie bookstore and studying a double arts degree, visiting Borders was like a guilty pleasure, but without the guilt.

The only way these two could be less different would be to compare them to Woolworths or KMart, or an indie one-store bookshop up the proverbial street, whose rickety floor-to-ceiling shelves feel like they’re about to collapse in a plume of dusty old-school dignity.  But despite their obvious differences, two pillars – the oldest and the newest – of the Australian book retail world have suffered the same fate at the same time.  What on Earth went wrong?

When Borders entered Australia in the late-90s, the two were genuine competitors with unrelated owners, and quite different business models.  But for individual reasons, both came under the ownership of Pacific Equity Partners (PEP), who formed REDgroup Retail to hold them, alongside Whitcoulls in New Zealand (and other sundry non-book entities).  By this stage, the wheels were already wobbling.

My guess is these two very different businesses were originally seen as complementary; A&R serves the Everyman, and Borders served lattes to the hipsters.  Unfortunately the devil is in the detail.  Borders AU/NZ/Sing were already in serious debt when snapped up by PEP, and A&R were headed down the same path.  Not surprisingly, two negative cash flows do not make for a positive cash flow, and under this growing mountain of debt (now totalling some $130M !!!) some truly horrible things have been done to both brands in a desperate futile attempt to stem the flow of borrowed money.

There’s been a bookshelf of words written this past week about REDgroup entering voluntary administration & who’s to blame.  Some of them hold water, some of them are utter nonsense, and some I’m really not remotely qualified to comment on.  Fell free to tell me which ones I got wrong!

• Much hoohar has erupted over the claim by REDgroup’s CEO that the parallel import restrictions were a significant contributor in REDgroup’s demise.  However, given that (a) many of their books were marked ABOVE the Australian RRP (ie. they can’t have been too concerned about discounted books from offshore retailers), and (b) REDgroup’s own submission to the Productivity Commission in 2009 recommended KEEPING the PIRS, this is all clearly bumkum smokescreening.  According to Henry Rosenbloom from Scribe Publishing, the US and UK don’t allow parallel imports either, and if Australia were to do so it would have severe implications for local publishers, authors and printers, to the benefit of their overseas counterparts.

• That GST should be applied to offshore imports, or be exempted from certain domestic retail categories, to “level the playing field”. This one’s gotta be the ultimate scapegoat, and Gerry Harvey had his hat handed to him in the court of public opinion in January this year trying on this furphy.  Suggesting that some select few endangered species of the Australian retailer genus should be GST-exempt is mind-boggling.  AS IF the Australian Government is about to do away with a major component of its GST income – the GST targets the retail level!  Online retail – from both national and offshore retailers – has steadily grown in the last decade from obscurity to significance.  In 5-10 years when I can try on a digital pair of jeans on my digital avatar and check for proper fit & see what they’ll look like from a virtual mirror on my high-resolution monitor, or point my smartphone at the corner of the room to project an image of a new sofa to see if it’ll fit in my room, and click a button to have it delivered, clearly the scope of what can practically be bought online is only going to grow, so why on earth would the Government set a precedent for slitting its wrists & slowly bleeding to death?

• That too much of Borders stock was inappropriate for Australian readers’ tastes.  Maybe.  As Patrick Carr says on Newmatilda.com, Borders “sacrificed profitability for market share. They poured huge money into extensive stockholdings. Their hope was that if they stocked everything, shoppers wouldn’t look elsewhere.”  Unfortunately that didn’t work out so well, and I’m guessing that’s behind a lot of the $130M about to be written off by banks, publishers, and other creditors (everyone except their owners, PEP).  Whilst it was a correctable problem, paying off the debt from that catastrophic error when it’s already a tough market obviously wasn’t possible.  But it doesn’t explain Angus & Robertson’s equal lock-step demise…

• That the honourable centenarian Angus & Robertson have been disrespectfully relegated to bargain-bin & best-seller-pulp status, undermining the value of their time-honoured brand.  If you narrow your range to pulp, don’t be surprised when customers buy pulp for a fraction of the price from Woolworths or Amazon/et.al.  But how did that happen?  Perhaps extorting smaller local publishers for an additional $2.5k to $20k to stock their books might’ve had something to do with them deserting the once respected chain, leaving A&R without unique compelling product?

• There’s just so much more entertainment available now, and so much more competition for our disposable dollar & attention.  Even a mere two decades ago we consumed media distributed by news papers and magazines, TV, movies, music (vinyl/CD), and that was about it.  Computer/video games were niche, and there was no (recognisable) Internet/WWW.  Nowadays we have a smorgasbord of tech to keep us entertained & distracted on a whim anywhere, and all of them are seriously challenging the old-school old-media business models of physically-distributed media with territorial copyright licensed to 3rd-party distributors, or highly regulated & gate-keepered traditional electronic media.  Whilst the pie has grown much larger along with our prosperity, the number of ways that entertainment pie is now sliced has exploded.  We are reading less books.

• No one’s talking about this one, but it can’t have helped matters that REDgroup made the tragic mistake several years ago of being convinced that SAP would be a good thing for their business IT infrastructure.  Surely a swish new world-class enterprise management system would make things better, right?  Did no one at REDgroup do their homework and read about the litany of over-budget & over-time SAP implementations scattered across the world in the previous decade??  Books have been written and websites dedicated to documenting their spectacular failures.  As other smaller entities in REDgroup came to make major IT infrastructure decisions in recent years, SAP was given a wide berth, for fear of crippling their own business with a grossly expensive and agonisingly slow development cycle.  Aside from that, any IT department that has a two week waiting list to delegate an internet domain name for their own online ecommerce store (something that can be actioned in 5 minutes) has way bigger problems than being duped by blowhard SAP salesmen.

• eBooks & eReaders are taking a share. Yes, but I suspect this one’s a trivial component dwarfed by the other factors, but no doubt it’ll grow into a major additional bite in the coming years.

• Let me drop two dirty words in the book industry: self-publishing and eBooks.  Thy time approaches.

Ben Rennie, chief of UnclutteredWhiteSpaces.com, has offered for me to write for his site semi-regularly, so here’s my first two articles:

http://unclutteredwhitespaces.com/2009/10/techydude1/

http://unclutteredwhitespaces.com/2009/11/danilic/

hopefully more to come…

IceTV has won its three year battle against Channel Nine’s specious copyright suit against IceTV.

http://www.icetv.com.au/news/?p=614

Nine’s competition reviewed IceTVs processes from a copyright perspective years ago & decided there was nothing for them to answer for.

so i’m not sure what, at this late stage, Channel Nine’s end-game was supposed to be in persevering with the case, but now that i’ve switched entirely to using Elgato eyeTV + IceTV (in other words, the tv tuner in my TV is rarely used now), not-infrequently seeing “not available” in the program guide for Channel Nine (due to IceTV’s observance of the original judgement’s ruling) made them (Nine) look – once again – like frakking idiots.

if it’s not in IceTV, I CAN’T (read: won’t) WATCH IT !  admittedly there’s rarely anything on Channel Nine worth watching… more Two & A Half Men, anyone??? <yawn>

lets hope Channel Nine give up on this bullshit for good, and, um, perhaps focus on being a TV station in dire need of pulling thier finger out, programming-wise.

i hope the people at IceTV are drinking the champaigne tonight, they sure deserve it after being dragged through 3 years go specious copyright claim bullshit in Nine’s futile attempt to dodge the future.

if they put up a localised blog with comments, they must want some feedback!  here’s mine… ;)

“

1) my login-failure solution:
after an unhelpful reply from tech-support (”be patient”) my patience wore out after 3 days unable to login, having tried clearing browser caches, restarting browser, rebooting, trying other PCs, all with no luck. UNTIL i clicked on the ‘English’ language link at the top, then bingo, able to login fine ever since. maybe it was just a coincidence of timing, but one minute no joy, the next i’m in.

2) ‘Private pics unlocked’ notifications incorrect:
i got one today, which said “xxxxxx has unlocked his Private Pix for you.”
but *I* am xxxxxx, it should (of course) say the name of the profile that sent/unlocked :). looks like a simple coding oops.

3) no search by postcode/distance:
the temporary removal of this feature before the site went live was a major tactical blunder – unless you had a REALLY good (undisclosed) reason to NEED to migrate to new servers before it was ready on the new version.

Manhunt is of limited _efficient_ use without this critical feature (i don’t care how many hapless users don’t use search, wasting time online is their choice!), and now with one amorphous mess of hundreds of towns (and several of my local inner city suburbs missing, inc Collingwood, Clifton Hill, North Fitzroy!!!), it’s even worse than the original Manhunt and postcode/distance search is still weeks away :(.

who wants to wade through endless “who’s online” lists containing everyone in the state? or wade through that amorphous mess to list who’s online one suburb/town at a time? i really think you need to somehow get sensible area groups in the list too (not just as a stop-gap until postcode/distance works). yeah i noticed you can now add a bunch of suburbs to a saved-search, which is great, but that only applies to search, not simple ‘who’s online’ lists.

4) the tedious logout/log-back-in shuffle to remain reasonably visible:
basing the ordering of lists according to how recently someone logged in would have to be one of the most brain-dead designs i’ve ever come across in this genre of site. i understand you wanna ‘reward’ those who remain active (rather than those who just login & walk away for a day/week like some on Gaydar!), but this logout/log-back-in BS is not (and never was) the answer – not for us, and not for your systems that have the additional burden of processing several/dozens(?) of logouts/logins per actual user session.

it is in fact a fundamental admission that you haven’t nailed that problem at all if i have to do the work for you on top of actually being an engaged user. that there is still no way for a user to select how a list should be ordered, other than your hard-coded ‘time since last login’ is probably the fundamental problem.

5) search flexibility
even if(when) postcode/distance search is reinstated, i still find the limitations of search feature to be quite frustrating – i can tick various attributes to be “yes, i want them to be into this”, or leave it un-ticked for “i don’t care what they answer here”, but there’s _still_ no way to filter on “i want them to NOT be into XYZ”, which is sometimes where the best filtering happens for some users/purposes (eg. guys4men.com)

i understand a single tick-box is nice n compact, and a 3 way choice (probably a drop-down list) on each attribute will take up alot of space, but for your ‘get on, get off (quick)’ mantra to be realised, there needs to be better ways to filter guys out to minimise results lists.

6) web programmers love making stuff in fancy AJAXy/fly-over/hover/translucent/auto-pop-menu/blahblah, and sometimes it works well, but not on the main menu, especially now that your auto-drop-down menus are across the top instead of down the left side – i’m finding they pop-down almost every time i move the mouse to/from the browser tab bar &/or other stuff on the desktop, which is incredibly frustrating, and utterly unnecessary. so what if i have to click the menu to drop it down?!? i’d rather that than have them getting in the way all the time when i had no intention of ‘clicking on’ the menus anyway! it’s web-designer wankery that doesn’t serve the user.

7) “he’s online now” lights
speaking of web-designer wankery, those new indicators to show if someone’s online are far less ‘readable’ with all that orange simulated LED bezel BS surrounding them. someone in the design department’s been drinkin way too much of the coolaid…

Manhunt, overall i like the new layout, and i dont mind ’silly bugs’ cuz they can be fixed, and i really appreciate that there’s this this localised blog to keep us in the loop & make feedback easy (and bypass the scripted robots in tech-support), but as you can probably tell, and as a paying customer, i’m pretty PO’d not only because a major upgrade to the site has left a critical feature missing for unspecified weeks, but much moreso that a major redesign has failed to address glaring limitations in functionality & usability.

i was questioning whether to remain on Manhunt after my current subscription, and unfortunately this ‘upgrade’ hasn’t done much to increase the site’s utility for me.

not only does the upgrade seem to have been rushed, with Australian’s used as beta testers like it or not, but too few improvements beyond a new coat of paint.

sorry to stick the knife in, but this seems like a classic case of an IT upgrade project mis-managed (too influenced by web-designers & not addressing core issues or features) and poorly executed from the user’s perspective.

“

* UPDATE:

Tim at Manhunt emailed to thank me for my comprehensive feedback, which may help nail a bug or two (as well as assure me that my thoughts were heard loud & clear ;), and a brief email exchange ensued.  I neglected to mention in my comment on their blog that much of what they’re doing is behind the curtain stuff aimed at achieving better scalability, and to that end, “more power to them”, it’s a complicated and major undertaking for websites of this size & 24/7 operation.  He assured us in further blog comments, and in his emails, that they’re flat out dealing with the cut-over, but that the postcode/distance search is the next cab off the rank, with several other popular issues including some i’ve raised as also high on their agenda &/or being (re)considered.  Perhaps there is hope yet.  One has to give credit for any organisation willing to put thier cock on the block in a public blog/comment forum and engage their customers ‘face to face’ rather than only through the arms-length of tech-support.  Thanks for listening & hearing, Manhunt, I’ll wait patiently for what’s around the corner, and perhaps beyond.

A Queensland man has been charged for re-publishing on a video-sharing site a viral video of a man swinging a baby around like a rag doll.  The video he uploaded to the site was reported to police by a Britton.

The controversial three-minute video had already been published widely across the internet and shown on American TV news shows. The clip can still be found online today.

Chris Illingworth, 60, a father of four from Maroochydore, thought he would share it with fellow users of Liveleak, a site similar to YouTube but focused on news and current events. In two years, he has uploaded hundreds of videos to Liveleak.

(source: theage.com.au)

the implications for ordinary internet users who propagate certain material is enormous.  in the minds of Do-Gooder Extremists, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re the subject in the video, the videographer, performing citizen journalism, or simply passing/soliciting comment on the subject – all seem to be fair game for those who charge themselves with the task of “protecting the children”.

as the article goes on to suggest, this year we have indeed reached hysterical levels of ridiculousness in efforts to combat child abuse and child porn (and yes, there’ve been some excellent wins, too).

just for the record, i abhor child abuse & child porn.

but for the love of god, is it too much to ask for you do-gooder maniacs put your efforts where they might actually MATTER and COUNT for what you supposedly stand for?

cuz from where i’m standing, these mindless shenanigans are just wasting my tax-payer money.

i can only hope(?) there’s A LOT more to this Queensland man that hasn’t yet come to light – other than being an ordinary netizen – to justify this crap.

Hey Leo, Paul,

Leo, I reckon I’ve got your next MacBreak Weekly episode feature topic.  I reckon Sneaky Steve’s slipped in the biggest ‘technologically disruptive’ Trojan Horse of all right under our noses while we were all ooh-ing and ahh-ing over something new and shiny.

You better grab a coffee, but I think it’ll be worth it :)

I just got home from my friend PJ’s place, who was one of the dedicated lucky ones to snag an iPhone 3G here in Melbourne last Friday.  He’s got an all-Mac setup (although iTunes on Windows PCs will all work the same): iMac in the study, MacMini connected to a 32″LCD TV & 5.1 sound system with the gorgeous Apple Bluetooth keyboard; AppleTV connected to same (or could be in a 2nd room); a Mac laptop (doesn’t matter which type); and now the iPhone (3G or otherwise) with software v2.  And for good measure lets also throw in an ‘AirTunes’-capable speaker system in the bedroom (or simply any sound system with any old or new Airport base-station with AirTunes audio output connected to it).

You’ve undoubtedly seen for yourself or at least heard by now about some of the capabilities of Apple’s new free iPhone app ‘Remote’ (top free download?!?), how it can control an AppleTV (or even multiple AppleTVs!), very sweet!  You might also have heard that you can control any other iTunes ‘source’ with it – run iTunes on any Mac or PC and be able to connect to it remotely from the iPhone using the Remote app.  And you might also have heard how you can use the iPhone’s Remote app to control iTunes on that computer to send its audio output to any AirTunes audio output device, including the AppleTV (ie. the media is coming from the Mac/Windows desktop or laptop, but being played on the AppleTV or any other AirTunes audio system.  That’s all working right now, just seen it all with my own eyes, and clearly fantastic!

Stay with me here…

PJ’s also got eyeTV running on his MacMini working as a DVR for free-to-air TV, using Australia’s excellent IceTV EPG.  Pure simplicity!  But there’s also an eyeTV/IceTV iPhone app that lets  you not only program your eyeTV DVR remotely, but also stream your eyeTV-recorded media over Wifi to your iPhone!  Because with the eyeTV software, you can export a recording to any iPhone, iPod (any type) or AppleTV resolution/format, so you get a perfect fit for the specific device’s LCD resolution.

So, we’ve got free-to-air DVRd content, an AppleTV full of ripped, &/or rented &/or bought content, content on any other Mac or PC, playable on any audio or video device in the home, all remote controllable from a single iPhone – or multiple iPhones!  *With the near promise of real-time transcoding capability using the GPU instead of the CPU, perhaps even a MacMini could do this in real-time, skip the post-process.  Almost any other modern Mac certainly could.  This is all in our (Mac) homes RIGHT NOW.  Lets collectively call this state of the art in domestic mass consumer a/v “Version 1″.  If this isn’t already a techy’s wet dream with even more just around the corner, I don’t know what is!

But lets not stop there.  Think of the potential:

Steve made a very specific point at MacWorld about how AppleTV v1 (and everyone else) got it wrong.  AppleTV Take2 was all about untethering the AppleTV from the compulsory need for iTunes on a Mac/PC.  But of course this is just AppleTV software Version2.  The only way is up.  Hold that thought for a moment…

Just one next version of eyeTV (or a competitor) could totally usurp Slingbox and its rather expensive ilk, if they choose to rise to the challenge.  On a suitably powerful Mac doing the transcoding / up/down-scaling in real time*, could send that recorded, or live, TV out over the ‘net to your iPhone 3G, all remote-controlled via the eyeTV/IceTV (or competitor) app on your iPhone3G (or any iPhone or iPodTouch using WiFi).

And there’s no technical reason why Apple couldn’t similarly allow iTunes content to be streamed via the home LAN (WiFi or wired) onto the ‘net (perhaps even SSL encrypted?), over 3G into your iPhone, anywhere, if they wanted.

I’m not very familiar with the options available to you in the US, but I’m guessing there’s existing technologies/products for getting cable-TV content under similar control/availability.  Where ever you are with 3G or WiFi, there’s all your TV and media, without having to hold it on your iPhone.  No expensive Slingbox/etc box needed, it’s all potentially doable now with the devices we already have, with the very next generation of this collection of software!  Sure, 3G bandwidth coverage and/or cost is currently an issue in some places, but that, as always, is a rapidly improving issue.

Or how about this:

Apple have just sneaked into our homes – without any of us realizing it until it’s under our noses – a complete infrastructure for remote control of ANY device in the home that has a LAN connection (WiFi or wired).  This is the first reason why I’ve CC’d you, Paul :).  The whole gamut of Home Automation, and home security, if suitably equipped with LAN access, and adhering to a hypothetically open Apple Remote protocol standard, could all be controlled from your iPhone or iPod Touch, completely usurping an entire – and expensive -  segment of the Home Automation market: integrated control.  And, pending the license availability of the Apple Remote protocol (unless it is already?), all possible right now to anyone so inclined to design it in.

Whilst these HA devices could, if they wished, still retain the various techniques/protocols/proprietary-standards currently used to integrate them, they could also support the Apple Remote protocol, and open up their HA & security market not only from the sales growth potential brought about by the unprecedented ability to mix-n-match previously incompatible products, but also a broader target market more able to afford the product.

Have I just been smoking too much, or Is this not a HUGE opportunity, and threat, for so many players in the home media and home automation and home security arena?  All from just two cute little devices, and one deceptively adaptable OS?

Put the next AppleTV Take 3 (or oh-so-easily hacked AppleTV), or any Mac, back into the equation, with new apps, and you’ve got your media – anywhere you want, home automation, and security (including CCTV low-frame-rate video recording?) integrated, on your living room big-screen TV, remote controlled from your iPhone, potentially all with existing hardware (barring of course the cost of HA & security devices around the house, which runs a huge range of capabilities and prices).

Will Apple finally realise the much speculated potential of this little wonder-box?  Is the AppleTV Apps Store just around the corner, finally?  No more illegitimate hacks needed to bridge its gaps?  All the building blocks are now there.

First came the Apple Computer, then the Macintosh, then the iPod, then the iPhone, each almost universally regarded as revolutionary or at least extremely progressive leadership.  Has Steve Jobs just laid the foundation for his next coup – as well as those of many others thus far barred entry into these traditionally expensive up-market dedicated-hardware market segments (nirvanaish home media, home automation& home security) – right under our noses?  Has he just demonstrated yet again the repeatedly delivered promise of general purpose computers replacing multiple dedicated devices (and often closed/proprietary ones) at a fraction of the cost, size and user-complexity?

I don’t know if anyone else has published similar predictions for iPhone Remote technology and its potential capabilities, but just for the record (cuz he’d kill me if I didn’t ;), my friend PJ foresaw embryonic versions of many of these ideas (current reality and imminent possibility) well over a year ago when we first laid eyes on our AppleTVs.  So I wonder how much of this Steve Jobs foresaw before that, when the AppleTV was just a twinkle in his eye?  Or do these things almost inadvertently have a knack of growing into something far greater than their constituent contributors, with Jobs merely a pro surfer of the front wave of personal technology, rather than the hand of God pushing the wave along?!?  We do call it the Jesus Phone!

OK, RDF Mode: OFF, you can stop puking now :), but I labour the point, Paul, because I read your WinSuperSite blog a couple of weeks ago that was essentially a call to action/arms for Microsoft to wake up and pull their finger out, and I fully agree with it.  But, as (a) a long-time & rather techy Windows non-fan-boy, who (b) for the last 5 years has progressively been trying to elude the offensive mundanity of commercial broadcast TV in preference to “what i want, when i want it”: DVDs (purchased, and rented via Bigpond’s a-la-Netflix), podcasts, bittorrent, Joost, (etc. etc. etc.) and now finally in Australia iTunes TV & movie downloads, I’ve (c) just spent a difficult 12 months switching from Windows to Mac, based only in part on a whiff of the promise of “a better way of life” and the demonstrable surperiority-in-a-simpler-way in many ways (though not all) of the Mac / iPod / iPhone /AppleTV platforms.

Now I’m twelve months on from that leap of, erm… faith?, and now that we’ve reached this post-iPhone3G / AppleTV-Take2 point, I feel even more confident that I made the right decision ALSO because neither 12 months ago nor now are we seeing anyone or anything from Microsoft, let alone anywhere else, that suggests it has a hope of catching up to what we all (can) have right now.

But who would have thought all of this would come so far so soon?  It was only less than 4 years ago, with Australia’s beligerantly stupid 3 free-to-air commercial TV station oligarchy (who, seeing their writing on the wall, tried to sue IceTV, and failed) ensuring that the only way I could watch Battlestar Galactica was to  anxiously wait for someone on the other side of the planet to post it on ThePirateBay & download it via (comparatively slow) bittorrent, dragging my recliner arm chair into the study to watch it on my 17″ LCD monitor!

Now I can just press play on my AppleTV when it’s automatically downloaded.  They get their money, and I’m tickled digital.  Is this finally not win-win, a truce with the big-media industry?  Can we now just get on with it?

What of the next 4 years?!?  Maybe, finally, DRM will be gone completely, seen for the needless sham of scared old-media executives who for years resisted the inevitable, clinging to their unsustainable business models and brandishing thier lawyers club?  Yeah you’re right, probably not.

But we’re still living in awesomely interesting times!

Cheers, Anthony.
nocomply2007@gmail.com

“old media” (large monolithic tv/radio/newspaper organisations) are feeling the threat of “new media” – smaller (sometimes tiny) nimble online sites serving news & insightful commentary & entertainment, from various styles of social-networking sites (in words, pictures & video) to millions of networked blogs & podcasts.

‘new media‘ and ‘Web 2.0′ are a democratisation of media at a time when old/big media amalgamated ownership elicits even greater conern about diversity & vested interest. it’s an enabler for anyone sufficiently motivated to reach to a hitherto inaccessible public audience (and talented enough to keep them!). this is a time of transition & experimentation, and the end-point – if there will ever be such a plateau again – is unknown, and certainly old media will reinvent itself (it already is) to adapt to our rapidly evolving preferences for how, when, & where we ‘consume’ media. i suspect the already slightly fading line between old media and new media will disolve into a continuum that offers the best of both worlds more seamlessly than it does now.

the fossil-fuel industry – despite being fundamentally entrenched in almost every facet of modern life & will fight like hell to stay there – is facing the question of its fundamental long-term viability (global warming) & sustainability (Peak Oil). we & they know it’s just a matter of time. in the orther corner, we have the renewable energy industry, who, rather than waiting for the hard ground to meet our fall, are slowly but surely proving – most on a small scale – their viability as substitutes for fossil-fuel sources.

in particular, renewable energy’s ubiquitous, small-scale, distributed nature flies in the face of the few large monolithic power stations, distributors & retailers. it promises to give consumers greater choice, and less reliance on a few god-like utilities, for some even complete independence from ‘the grid’ or even the ability to feed their excess back into the grid.

renewable energy represents a much finer-grained redistribution & democratisation of the energy industry, from selection of type (solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, etc) according to the natural capacity of the local environment, to choices of source – from an installation small enough to fit in your own back yard or roof, through facilities powering a neighbourhood or town, right up to massive systems rivalling fossil fuel output.

and you can bet the thought of this has the fossil fuel industy’s knickers in a huge twist!

Happy Valentine’s Day fossil fuel industry. but i just don’t love you any more! please don’t be offended, it’s not you, it’s me…